Hughes Gareth: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 21 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18236. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker.Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. I know that I am not the oldest member in the House tonight but I know that Budgets are not what they were once upon a time when all New Zealanders would tune in on the wireless and hear the news coming out of Wellington to find out how it affected them their family and their community. They are sort of more muted affairs now but they still have a huge impact on our national economy and on households. I think that Budget 2014 is a great time to take stock of how our national economy is doing but more important to take stock of how that national economy is working for all New Zealanders.Budget 2014 was all about the surplus. Bill English has over 5 years made this the only measure of success. It was a test so important that he would have sold off the energy assets and juggled the numbers in the books just to achieve it which is exactly what we saw happen. This was always going to be the surplus Budget and although we celebrate the increase in free doctors visits for 5 to 13-year-olds and the small extra funding for things like computers in homes which are some good little initiatives we also acknowledge that the Greens would have got us to surplus too. In fact in the lastelection we were the only party that took a net fiscal position to the electors of New Zealand that would have seen a Green Government paying down more debt. So achieving a surplus was good but as economists like to say about surpluses—and it is important to point out that economists are also like weather forecasts in that they are often wrong. You know it is the only field where you can win a Nobel Prize disproving the truth of someone before you. It is an area where the Treasury analysts and the economists focus just on the numbers. Well what we also have to focus on are the real people.This year while people were maybe reading about the surplus in the newspapers we also saw that people were struggling. I was visiting them in Wellington in the soup kitchen on Monday. We see them sleeping in cars in Canterbury. We see numerous families to a home in South Auckland. When we talk about the surplus in the Budget what does it mean? An economy that works for all New Zealanders. Right now internationally what we see is that the richest 1 percent have 16 percent of the wealth yet the bottom half have only 5 percent of the wealth. Right now in National’s New Zealand 290000 Kiwi kids are growing up in poverty. It is a travesty that in this land of ours which feeds and exports food for 20 million people our kids are still going to school without food in their bellies. At a time when business confidence is up we have got to ask ourselves whether the economy is working for all New Zealanders when we look back and we reflect that we work some of the longest hours for some of the lowest wages and pay some of the highest costs of living in the developed world.As Russel Norman pointed out in his Budget speech the legacy of this National Government will be 30 percent of children living in poverty a 50 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions and debt—mountains and mountains of debt. When John Key took that seat in 2008 our net Government debt was around $16 billion. Since then it has increased to over $61 billion. The interest is being paid by all of us—by our future generations and our kids. At a time when Bill English is focusing on the Budget surplus this election we will be pointing out the other surpluses—the surpluses of poverty of inequality and of pollution. The only thing that this Government cannot point to is a surplus in housing or housing ideas and solutions.In the 20 September lead-up we are quite happy to be talking about the surplus of inequality and of poverty but we are also going to be talking about the deficit—the deficit of ideas of innovation and of leadership which are the things our country is crying out for. Our Budget shows the critical challenges and problems facing New Zealand into the future. Depending on raw logs and milk exports around the world is not a credible economic strategy. The taxpayer subsidies for the Choruses theTīwai Points theAnadarkos and theSkycities may help the Cabinet club mates but it is not helping those real families who are sleeping in cars or where there are many families to a home.Our economy is more simplified and more dependent on raw commodity exports than ever. What it is time for is thinking of a future Budget a Budget that has a surplus of hope; a Budget that presses Ctrl-Alt-Delete on National’s failed economic agenda for the 1 percent and reboots to a richer New Zealand; a Budget that has a surplus of clean energy building a clean energy economy and an internet economy which thrives and brings in IT businesses to New Zealand with a second internet cable; and a Budget that ditches the Government Communications and Security Bureau Act and the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act. So this election while National is offering a deficit of ideas and a surplus of pollution and inequality we will be offering a surplus of hope real leadership a clean economy and an innovative economy protecting our environment and lifting our kids out of poverty. Kia ora.Colin King: Mr Speaker—