Tremain Chris: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTremain Chris: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 30 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10595. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CHRIS TREMAIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): The opportunities for all New Zealanders presented by this Budget are exciting and I say that not lightly. The opportunities presented in this Budget for all New Zealand are exciting and I am proudto be part of this Government—absolutely proud. This Government is prepared to grab the opportunities that will enable all Kiwis to benefit from this Budget. We are delivering that through our clear plan—a clear plan to rebuild Christchurch to responsibly manage the Government’s finances to build a more competitive and productive economy and to deliver better public services.The crazy thing is that the Opposition—Labour the Greens and New Zealand First—will vote against every part of this Budget. So let us go through it in some detail: to rebuild Christchurch one of our principal objectives—the Opposition will vote against it.Denis O’Rourke: Failed. Too slow. Not enough. People are dissatisfied. Don’t hold that up as an example. That’s a failure.Hon CHRIS TREMAIN: It will vote against the $40 billion that this country will spend down in Christchurch through this Government to put that beautiful city back on her feet. And Mr Denis O’Rourke will vote against that. He will vote against Christchurch and helping to get her back on her feet in this Budget. Shame on you Mr O’Rourke. Let us think about that for a moment because it is a huge investment from this country. Forty billion dollars is about $100000 per citizen down in Christchurch. It is something we have to do as a country. But the Opposition including New Zealand First will vote against this.The second part of our plan for all New Zealanders is to responsibly manage the Government’s finances. In that regard I think we are making great progress albeit there is still work to do. Just a few years ago we were staring down the barrel of an $18 billion deficit and 2014-15 will see us get across the line into a surplus position. If we are able to achieve that we will be one of the few Western countries in the world to be able to achieve it. That is absolutely fantastic. It is proved by the facts the actuals. We are actually improving on the forecasts. We are holding our expenses on track and our revenue is actually above and better than what we are forecasting. That is on the back of 3 percent growth last year and growth is forecast to go forward again. That will allow us to keep our debt down.So for Mr Damien O’Connor to stand and say that this Budget would not benefit all New Zealanders is absolute rubbish. It will hold our debt at no higher than 38 percent of GDP and then we have a goal of getting it back down to 20 percent. And Mr O’Rourke again will vote against that in this Budget. Shame on you Mr O’Rourke.What that is actually delivering and the really exciting thing—because it is tough; often employment is an indicator lagging behind economic growth—is what we saw in the first quarter of this year. It is exciting news: the unemployment rate dropping from 6.9 percent down to 6.2 percent. That meant 38000 additional jobs—Hon David Cunliffe: How many percent above your targets was that?Denis O’Rourke: What about the 170000?Hon CHRIS TREMAIN: —into the economy in the first quarter. Opposition members do not like that do they? It does not go with their story to see us actually delivering jobs. And again they will vote against that. In terms of restoring the economy back to surplus Opposition members—Mr O’Rourke Labour and the Greens—are against it. They do not want us back in surplus they do not want us bringing our debt back and they do not want the economy growing.The third part of our plan for all New Zealanders is to build a more competitive and productive economy. That is being driven strongly by our Business Growth Agenda. Today I want to focus particularly on building export markets because that is a big and important focus of growing the economy. I want to focus particularly on my responsibilities as Associate Minister of Tourism in that regard. As a country we havenow set a goal of getting from 30 percent to 40 percent of GDP through our exports. That is a huge task to take on but tourism can deliver strongly in that area.Our Business Growth Agenda has a number of initiatives that we have been ticking off as we go forward including a real focus on growing the Asian markets. That is exciting. The opportunities out of Asia are just absolutely fantastic. We are spending $10 million per year on a major events fund to bring events to this country. New Zealand First will vote against that as well. We have got a convention centre off the ground and not only in Auckland; we have got convention centre plans for Christchurch and for Queenstown. The Opposition will vote against them.Our Māori Tourism Action Plan is very exciting. The leveraging of the Hobbit movies has been huge for this country and is actually growing more tourism particularly from our traditional markets such as Germany. We have rolled out the Cycle Trail—a $50 million investment into one of the most exciting tourism initiatives that we have ever seen in this country.Denis O’Rourke: You’ve got to be joking.Hon CHRIS TREMAIN: Just to go out and ride—try this Mr O’Rourke. Go out and try cycling on one of these. I know it would be difficult for you but actually go and try it and see the New Zealanders and the international tourists who are just loving that. We are also bringing new and improved airline services into the country with the likes of Hawaiian Airlines flying in here now giving us direct routes up into mainland United States.That is what we have been doing. The exciting thing is that this Budget delivers $158 million on top of our existing spend into the tourist industry. That is phenomenal—a 40 percent increase in the Budget. And do you know why that is? This initiative will drive growth across our country. It will drive the opportunities that we are trying to achieve through our plan. We are actually investing in this for all New Zealanders. So let us have a quick look at that. There is $24.5 million to support growth in our existing markets. So we are not throwing the baby out with the bathwater; we still have markets like the United Kingdom the United States of America Japan Germany Australia and China—our key traditional markets—and we are going to invest more money to bring those markets to New Zealand.The exciting news is the investment of $44.5 million into three emerging markets—three new emerging markets—of India Indonesia and Latin America. These are wonderful opportunities. I know that my colleague here Mr Bakshi is really excited about the opportunity to bring lots of Indian tourists down here to New Zealand on our shoulder season. I think that is fantastic. They do not tend to come here so much in the middle of our main season but in the shoulder season. That helps us to grow the markets.We are investing $20 million to target high-value spending visitors because the trend historically in the last few years has been more visitors but actually lower spending so we really want to focus on that high-value end of the market. We are investing $34 million to bring new business events down here to support the convention centres and to support a range of events throughout the country which again are exciting opportunities to grow the economy to grow our export dollars. But also another $28 million is part of that $158 million for the tourism growth partnership investing and helping to add value to the tourism industry and once again grow our export earnings from that. The Opposition will vote against that initiative. It will vote against jobs in this country. It is unbelievable.I just want to finish with the fourth plank of our plan and that is to deliver better public services. Once again the Opposition will vote against this as well. Despite tough economic times the Government has held itself accountable to lift service levels acrossthe State sector. I mean when you are faced with many departments—such as my own the Department of Internal Affairs; a wonderful department—that have had to deliver service increases in a period when they have also had to deliver an 8 to 10 percent efficiency dividend that is a remarkable achievement and I want to compliment my team at the Department of Internal Affairs on what they have been able to achieve. But during the same period they have also rolled out some pretty amazing new services. A good example is the passports online service which just yesterday achieved 70000 online renewals—Hon Member: How many?Hon CHRIS TREMAIN: —within a 5-month period—70000. That is at a 19 percent reduction on the level of cost for passports than we previously did and actually it is on average a 3-day turn-round time. That is a remarkable achievement.Simon O’Connor: How much?Hon CHRIS TREMAIN: It took 3 days on average to turn round those passports. So this Budget will also deliver some key funding in there for result area 10 which my department is responsible for. Our goal there is to lift the ability for all Kiwis to liaise to work with Government on an online system. So our aim is to get the common transactions up to 70 percent of citizens using that system by 2017. We have got specific funding in the Budget to do that—$2.9 million of collaborative funding across the departments to work together to deliver better services for this country and we are seeing great results. Already within about 18 months we have seen an increase from 29 percent to 41 percent of people using online Government services. That is absolutely magic.On top of that there is additional funding of $14.5 billion to roll out the igovt or the RealMe service which will once again leverage up online services for this country delivering better services for New Zealanders. And once again the Opposition will vote against that. I am excited about this Budget I am excited about the future for New Zealand and I think that the opportunities ahead of us for our country are like never before. Thank you.