Bradford Sue: Budget Debate 
Bradford Sue: Budget Debate 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 First of all I would like to take a moment to address the vexed matter of the tax cuts that are being promoted so vigorously by National and its friends. Since Thursday we have had the right inside and outside the House baying for tax cuts on the basis that they will stop workers going to Australia and will increase capital investment. The reason workers are going to Australia just happens to be that wages are much higher there than they are here. Even if the thousands of New Zealanders who are on $11 or $12 an hour were to pay no tax at all here they would still be earning more in Australia. 
Many New Zealand employers stubbornly refuse to compete in the international labour market and that has nothing to do with taxes. Would our corporates invest in capital expenditure and higher wages if they received a tax cut? If the past is anything to go by they would be unlikely to do so in most cases. The trickledown theory exists only in mythology. Increased profits in recent years have not been spent in that way. If Mr Key had his way I suspect we would simply see increased dividends being paid out to overseas shareholders and hear calls for even higher tax cuts in the next year. 
The calls for tax cuts seemed to be very coordinated. It reminded me of the 1980s when right-wing thinktanks around the world promulgated ideas of deregulation and asset sales which somehow suddenly became a sociocultural norm. In New Zealand we had an unfortunate cabal that actually put those radical ideas into practice. The result was massive public debt thousands of jobs being lost and a huge transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. We have slowly recovered from that but the looters and pillagers are back. The same voices are calling for tax cuts now and they are doing it for the same reasons as they did then. Luckily for ordinary New Zealanders Dr Cullen has the intelligence to see through their arguments to the underlying truth. Luckily he has had the fortitude so far to resist them. 
I now turn to the area that I have been most involved in with regard to this Budget. I am of course delighted that it includes $11.5 million over the next 3 years for the Buy Kiwi Made programme for which I am responsible as Government spokesperson. Since I have taken over the programme following the death of Green co-leader Rod Donald I have been working hard with my own adviser; with the Minister for Economic Development Trevor Mallard; with his office; and with officials from the Ministry of Economic Development to turn the dreams that Rod had for the programme into reality. Key to that work has been consultation with businesses unions sustainability organisations Maori organisations and local government and central government agencies. 
I have met with a large number of individual firms and have been very impressed with the determination of both owners and workers to continue production in this country even against what at times are severe odds. Although the owners of those companies have had plenty of opportunity to express criticism I have heard very little criticism from them of my bill to remove age discrimination from the minimum wage. I have heard no demands for tax cuts nor complaints about compliance costs. If there was any criticism of the Government it was in areas of trade policy and came from firms that felt they were not being given a fair go with regard to Government procurement. Many firms seem to feel unloved unvalued and unacknowledged by the Government and by the general public. The fact that the small-scale Buy Kiwi Made project values those firms and their workers is appreciated by many of them. I am of course hopeful that the programme will achieve much more than that. None the less it is important that we respect and not take for granted the people who produce the goods and services we all use every day—that we do not acknowledge only the smart suits and the moneyed men and women who just play with the wealth created through the production process. 
I was pleased to make the announcement of the funding for Buy Kiwi Made at the iconic Swazi Apparel factory in Levin last week together with local MP Darren Hughes who was representing Trevor Mallard. The launch was attended by representatives from the local council Business New Zealand Textiles New Zealand the National Distribution Union the Clothing Laundry and Footwear Workers Union and the Buy New Zealand Made campaign. Since that launch I have been inundated with emails from firms and ordinary citizens congratulating the Government and the Green Party on the Buy Kiwi Made initiative. Just today the Trade Liberalisation Network not a traditional ally of ours issued a media release expressing support for it. 
I have seen only one negative comment regarding the Buy Kiwi Made campaign since its funding was announced. That comment came from one of ACT’s two part-time MPs Rodney Hide who took a few minutes out from  
Dancing with the Stars 
 on State television to complain about the use of taxpayers’ money for Buy Kiwi Made. That was in stark contrast to the previous deputy leader of the ACT party Ken Shirley who has just taken up the position of executive director of Organics Aotearoa New Zealand. That organisation has been a recipient of taxpayers’ money through another Government - Green Party Budget initiative. Mr Shirley is quoted as saying that his new organisation received a much-appreciated $1.5 million in Government funding for the next 3 years as part of the overall $2.2 million package. It seems there is not one law for all in the ACT party—or perhaps Ken Shirley like hundreds of other ACT members has left the party to join reality. 
Turning to other aspects of the Budget I would like to commend the Government for some of the better features contained within it. For example the ongoing extension of Working for Families and the removal of interest payments on student loans for graduates who remain in New Zealand are both supported by the Green Party apart from our serious reservations about the fact that Working for Families continues to entrench discrimination against beneficiary families and their children. We welcome the increased funding for the SKIP: Strategies with Kids—Information for Parents programme and more help to deal with bullying in schools and for family violence prevention. However I do not quite understand how the extra $9 million over 4 years allocated to a range of crisis support services will actually go anywhere near to meeting the real costs placed on some 400 organisations that are struggling to survive at a time of increased demand. 
I am particularly concerned about the impact of ongoing inadequate funding on groups like Women’s Refuge that are absolutely at the front line and are receiving ever-increasing numbers of referrals from State agencies. That situation highlights a number of problematic issues at the juncture of the relationship between the Government and the community sector that Labour still fails to adequately address despite years of task forces consultations and other such attempts at mutual understanding. For example organisations like Women’s Refuge which provide critical services should receive adequate funding on an ongoing basis as a matter of course. As the Government sends more and more referrals to them so the funding should increase. And why does the Government continue in some cases to prioritise giving money to itself in order to increase its own capacity when if the money was given to groups that provide front-line services instead a lot more could be achieved? 
Similarly the Budget fails to deal with the crisis in residential aged-care. Although of course I am glad that an extra $68 million over the next 4 years is heading that way the average 51c an hour per worker it will add to wages across the board if it actually gets to all the staff will do very little to alleviate the bitterly low wages and stressful working conditions that afflict large parts of the sector. The Government should be making sure that all the additional money goes into boosting wages and it should also be guaranteeing minimum staffing standards through regulation for the sake of all concerned. I believe that Labour should seriously reconsider its overall strategy. Does it really want to go on endlessly sinking taxpayer dollars into for-profit aged-care rather than consider steps to move it back to a mix of public and not-for-profit provision? 
In the housing arena the Greens welcome the ongoing funding for some State house acquisition in the $16 million - plus allocated for third sector housing. But that is nowhere near enough while we have around 11000 people still on Housing New Zealand Corporation waiting lists and the potential of community-based housing providers still remains largely untapped. The number of people who are living homeless remains a concern and continues to rise. The Government should take a lot more responsibility for assisting voluntary groups to provide safe affordable accommodation to our most vulnerable citizens as well as work across departments to ensure that health housing income and employment needs are met for those who are the most vulnerable. 
Finally I cannot help but conclude by joining my fellow Green MPs in expressing sheer amazement at the wilful blindness of the Government in spending $1.3 billion on roading in this Budget. What price do all the MPs who scoff at us think oil will be at in 5 or 10 years’ time? The Government continues to pour billions of dollars into roads that will end up being nearly empty at a time when we should be racing against the clock to get our rail sea and bus infrastructure into place as fast as possible before petrol and diesel hit $5 a litre or more. We would also do well to invest some of the apparent roading largesse into doing more to help our most vulnerable citizens and the community-based organisations that serve them.