Hughes Gareth: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 29 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2591. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Speaker. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. It is a privilege to take a call on the Budget debate. This is a Budget that has been called so many names in the last week—the “paper boy Budget” the “paper girl Budget” the “nickel-and-dime Budget” and the “black” Budget. It has been called a zero Budget not just because of the zero new spending and the $8 billion deficit but because of that zero hope and zero compassion for those 200000 Kiwi kids growing up in poverty and zero plans for how we are going to boost our economy.  
We heard it from the Prime Minister we heard it from the Minister of Finance and now we have heard it again from the Minister of Conservation—the absence of the recognition that our economy depends on our environment. I cannot believe that we had the conservation Minister not use the word “conservation” or “environment” once in her speech. Our economy depends on the environment. This is why our valuable “clean green” brand has been costed as worth over $20 billion to our gross domestic product. This recognition is what is lacking.  
The Budget could also be called the “drill it mine it frack it cut it sell it Budget” because these are the only planks this Government has for economic development—to drill it to mine it to frack it to cut it and to sell it. I would like to touch on three of its planks to dig more holes and dig more wells across New Zealand as the only plans they have got. I would like to look at the costs associated with these policies and the economic impacts and to say that it is just not worth it. It is not worth it for New Zealand.  
We are exporting a bit of oil at the moment. We exported just over $2 billion worth in the last financial year. Obviously it is important: we need to be exporting and we need to be earning foreign exchange. We are doing so well because the price of oil is so high but let us look at the flip side. We are importing more than $8.3 billion of oil in return. We are not even getting a third of the way to self-sufficiency. Looking forward this is a major strategic risk. That $8 billion fuel bill is already 16 percent of our imports and is our single biggest import. Every US$1 price rise in the price of a barrel of oil wipes $40 million to $60 million off New Zealand’s gross domestic product.  
Facing those big strategic risks governments councils and militaries all around the world are getting together and developing oil reduction plans. But our Government has got no plan to even start planning to reduce our dependency on oil. Instead what it does have is a plan to increase our dependency on oil and look at production. We are addicted to oil. This Government somehow found in an austerity zero Budget $14 billion to borrow to throw at these uneconomic roads of national significance. All this is going to do is increase our dependency on oil.  
The second leg of its plan is to drill it mine it and frack it. This brings huge risks to New Zealand. The only way we could be a net oil exporter as the energy and resources Minister grandly proclaimed in the briefing to the incoming energy and resources Minister is to drill deep—very very deep. We are talking as much as 3 kilometres down. As we have seen recently for the permits being given off the coast of Wellington Christchurch and Otago this Government did not even bother to consult with the people or the councils in those regions. The drilling could be between 1 kilometre and 3 kilometres deep and this brings a huge risk. What we are talking about are exploratory wells this summer and when you look at America with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill which was another exploratory well we see that it came with a massive environmental cost and a $40 billion clean-up.  
New Zealand has nowhere near the level of capability to deal with a spill. This Government could not even deal with the  
Rena  
oil spill a spill of a couple of hundred tonnes on the coast of the Bay of Plenty. This is why New Zealanders are so concerned about this Government’s risky deep-sea oil drilling plan; it is because oil on our beaches is not academic any more. Kiwis can see it they can touch it they can smell it and they do not want it on our beaches. They do not want to risk it especially when the economics do not stack up.  
What we know from the Government’s deep-sea oil plans is that there will be hardly any jobs hardly any taxes and hardly any royalties and we know that the profits are going to go offshore. So Kiwis could be facing 100 percent of the environmental risks for 5 percent of the value of the oil. We have been rated as having the fourth-lowest Government take—that is royalties plus taxes—of any oil-producing nation in the world. This Government is selling us far too cheap. When you add on the pages of tax exemptions foreign oil companies can access in New Zealand when you look at the tens of millions of dollars this Government is throwing at them picking winners in an absolutely unsustainable field you can see that there are going to be hardly any royalties and hardly any taxes and there will be hardly any jobs.  
We know that in Taranaki it has the lowest employment rate per percentage of GDP of any sector of the Taranaki economy. We know that last year the oil industry successfully lobbied the National Government to get foreign oil workers put on the immigration skills shortage list so that they can expedite foreign workers to work on foreign-owned foreign-controlled oil rigs yet we are the ones facing the cost. We are the ones facing the environmental risks. We are going to see hardly any jobs hardly any taxes and hardly any royalties and we know that the profits—100 percent—will go offshore.  
So a spill would bring such considerable risk to our economy that it does not stack up. A spill would destroy that valuable “clean green” brand. A spill would be catastrophic for our fisheries and aquaculture industries. A spill would also mean that it is the taxpayer coming to pick up the tab. This is what we have seen happen with the  
Rena 
. Last week the Government appropriated $35 million and previous Minister for the Environment Nick Smith reckons we could be looking at a $130 million bill. Because this Government sat on its hands and refused to sign up to the 1996 bunker convention and refused to update the Resource Management Act and is still carrying over the woefully inadequate penalties to the new Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill it is still sitting on its hands and is quite happy for the taxpayer to pick up the tab.  
This is the big problem in the Budget: it gives $14 billion for new motorways tens of millions of dollars to clean up oil off our beaches $1.7 billion to throw at and subsidise polluters over the next 3 years through the emissions trading scheme and $2 billion for tax cuts for the wealthiest Kiwis. But the maths are mad and are not in New Zealand’s interests. There is no hope no vision no compassion and no plan going forward.  
That is why the Green Party is proposing concrete realistic solutions that are going to benefit our environment and benefit our economy. Probably the best example of a benefit—and to give the Government credit it is good to be working with it on this scheme—is the Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart home insulation scheme. Our economic experts have calculated that we have seen $1.2 billion in direct benefits from that scheme since it has been running. So there are some win-win opportunities out there. We wish the Government would grab the rest of them. Instead of selling State assets we should be driving these companies to export.  
The global renewable energy market could be a $100 billion global market place in the next few years. If we got just 1 percent of that in exporting our renewable exporting our geothermal and exporting our hydro experienced expertise and technologies we could be providing tens of thousands of jobs that would deliver hundreds of millions of dollars of economic benefits to the advantage of New Zealand. It would provide good Kiwi jobs and provide high-waged jobs. We would not need to see all those numbers of Kiwis—who could fill Eden Park—fleeing over the Ditch every year.  
So there are solutions out there. We are going to keep proposing them until the Government gets the right idea. We are not holding our breath because the Government’s only plan for the economy is to drill it mine it frack it cut it or sell it and that is no plan for New Zealand. Kia ora.