Foss Craig: Taxation (Budget Tax Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Foss Craig: Taxation (Budget Tax Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3971] 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 First of all I take this opportunity to congratulate our Minister of Finance the Hon Bill English on an absolutely fantastic Budget for these strained times. It is a Budget for the future. It is a Budget that builds the platform for a much more aspirational realistic transparent New Zealand. It is not a Budget for the next headline. It is not a political Budget. It is realistic it is transparent it is robust and it is fair. Some may even call it a boring Budget but I say to members opposite that this Budget should probably have been in place about 4 years ago. 
This is the Taxation (Budget Tax Measures) Bill. It is part of the “road to recovery Budget”. I just note this point after hearing the Hon Phil Goff’s Budget speech. Is Labour not missing the Rt Hon Helen Clark and the Hon Dr Michael Cullen? We know that Labour members are missing them because Phil Goff’s speech was a total shocker. It was as if he had turned up and could not deliver the speech he had written earlier. I think he had talked himself into thinking that entitlements would be cut that superannuation would be cut— 
Hon Members 
: It was. 
CRAIG FOSS 
: —and that Working for Families would be cut. To that I say no no and no. I could pose the question to anybody as to how much his or her superannuation was changed by this Budget. How much? Actually the answer is it was changed by zero. Superannuation is unchanged and it is committed to. All entitlements are unchanged and the commitments that were made were held because so many New Zealanders need to have some certainty to get through these unfortunate times this one-in-60-year event. 
I would like just to take issue with the foresight that Mr Cosgrove has suddenly developed. He told us that apparently 2 years or so ago when the IMF issued a report—I think I remember the one the member was talking about—that the current global economic conditions were all known. He alleges that Mr Key and Mr English should have foreseen these conditions. I will turn that question round. Did Mr Cullen the finance Minister at that time foresee it? I recall a quote from Mr Cullen talking about how the subprime crisis in the US would not hit the shores of New Zealand. I think that was said in about April last year 2 or 3 months before his 2008 Budget. 
I point out that so far this National Government has delivered over $1 billion in tax cuts which will assist over 1.5 million New Zealanders. That is in addition to the $500 million or more of tax compliance improvements that we have made for small businesses. I come back to the foresight that Mr Cosgrove developed. I will point out some figures. In the operating balance before gains and losses in Budget 2008—we remember that New Zealand went into the recession under the previous Government about a year before the rest of the world—a 0.5 percent surplus was forecast. In the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update on 6 October 2008—members will remember that prior to the election—a 0.9 percent almost 1 percent deficit was forecast. Remember that that is when we started to get into the decade of deficits which was basically if the policies of the previous administration had continued in their current shape and form we would be in awful shape worse than today because this Budget is starting to put us on the road back to recovery. In the December Economic and Fiscal Update on 18 December 2008 the surplus was minus 2.2 percent. We can see that the numbers have shown a marked deterioration until this point today. In Budget 2009 we are at negative 4.4 percent. That is unfortunate and none of us like to be in that position but I am so pleased that a National Government is in place to start to bring some accountability some transparency some robustness and some prioritisation into the Government’s accounts. 
I will go back to Mr Goff’s speech. He seemed to totally ignore the fact that $50 billion less will be coming in revenue to the Crown over the next 3 years. That is $50 billion less to allocate to entitlements or whatever. He has totally ignored that point. Mr Goff Mr Cunliffe and Mr Cosgrove have all been talking about what a great time it is to buy assets. That implies the question: why did they buy so many in the last 5 years? They are saying assets are now cheap. I say to these financial gurus of forecasting which they have suddenly turned into that actually hindsight is a great thing. But I say to them not to go down that track because they will be caught out—somewhat tragically for their personal standing. Thank you Mr Speaker.