Parker David: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 28 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10406. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Again today we had another typical announcement from the Prime Minister. He made an announcement of $2 million a year going into food in schools—just enough to get a headline but not enough to make a substantial difference. That is the way this Government operates. It knows it is in trouble on child poverty it knows it is in trouble on housing it knows it is in trouble on electricity and what does it do? It just tinkers a little bit but it never does anything sufficiently large or substantial to make a difference that will be significant.This is the National Government’s—is it its fifth Budget? It is its fifth Budget but it has not yet balanced one Budget. Labour ran nine Budgets and we ran surpluses every time—every time. We actually had very substantial tax cuts for families with children and we cut the corporate tax rate from 33c to 30c in the dollar and improved write-off for short-lived assets.Andrew Little: What of the Crown debt?Hon DAVID PARKER: Well over that same period we reduced Crown debt Mr Little. We reduced gross debt from 38 percent of GDP to 18 percent of GDP and we got net debt down to zero.What was National calling for at the time? It said it did not want the big surpluses that we ran; it wanted more tax cuts. What foolish behaviour that would have been. That would have left New Zealand in the same position that the United States Great Britain and most of Europe are facing as a consequence of having Governments that did there what National would have done here had it been in charge and that would be to fritter away those surpluses. As a consequence National would have had us in very very difficult times at the moment. Even Bill English who is not really a Labour Party supporter was forced to acknowledge at the time he took office that this was the rainy day the Labour Government had been saving for. So this proud record that Labour has of fiscal responsibility goes back—Hon Dr Nick Smith: Rubbish.Hon DAVID PARKER: —just about through every Labour Government that you have ever had. Dr Smith says “Rubbish”.Hon Dr Nick Smith: It is.Hon DAVID PARKER: Dr Smith who was the most fiscally irresponsible Prime Minister in your life? It was Mr Muldoon. Mr Muldoon is the only fiscally irresponsible Prime Minister that we have had. John Banks—who looks like he is on the phone over there—is the only one left here who was a supporter of Mr Muldoon and I am not surprised that the ACT Party—Hon Phil Goff: He named his dog after him.Hon DAVID PARKER: He named his dog after him. Well that might be appropriate. He also modelled his own behaviour after him because he tripled council debt when he was last the mayor. The Labour Party is not fiscally irresponsible. We have never been fiscally irresponsible and our record shows that.Hon Dr Nick Smith: Tell the truth.Hon DAVID PARKER: So this should not be a debate about austerity compared with Government spending.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Sorry. The member cannot say that phrase. There is a well-known Speaker’s ruling; 42/3. Do not do it again.Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you Mr Speaker; I am sure that will not come off my time.We had shiny pledges from the National Party in order to get into office. It promised us a brighter future. It said: “Wave Goodbye to Higher Taxes. Not Your Loved Ones.” Since then 200000 people have disappeared to Australia. Since then we have had electricity prices continuing to rise at double the rate of inflation. In fact last year they went up by five times the rate of inflation. We have got rampant house price inflation.We have got a two-speed economy where some parts of the economy are thriving—i.e. the speculative economy. Speculative housing investment in Auckland is driving rampant house price inflation. And National does nothing about it because it has caused the problem. Forty percent of its income tax cuts went to the top 10 percent of income earners and National is surprised that those people are out there trying to buy more and more houses while a lot of people—in fact the majority of young people—cannot afford even one. Not only that but National knows that it is a tax bias that is driving over-investment in property at the cost of jobs and the productive economy but it does nothing about it.We have got a two-speed economy in the regional sense in that we have got some regions doing well and lots of regions doing poorly. We have got unemployment at over 15 percent amongst Pasifika and Māori groups. There is a two-speed economy for them.We have got a two-speed economy age-wise with young people increasingly in insecure work without secure work and career structures to keep them in New Zealand.What has the Government done in terms of its promise to create 170000 more jobs? We had Mr English again in the House today trying to say that it was something other than an election promise when I have got here with me the advertisement that was on the television which says “170000 more jobs”. At the time of the Budget where were they? The Government got only 8000 more jobs. It was 162000 behind. That is yet another broken promise from the National Party.We have got rampant house price inflation. The Government is really spooked by the fact that the Labour Party has struck a chord with people. We have said that there is a need for some planning interventions and the Government has brought forward some of those—indeed it has overreacted in one part of it—but only after the Labour Party and the Auckland Council said that the Government has got to let it give effect to the Auckland Plan. But the Government does not have a clue as to how it is that you get on and build more houses. It is actually quite simple. You get on and you build more houses. But it will not do that. It does not have a clue as to how to solve this problem. It is blaming councils which it is apt to do and Nick Smith has been blaming councils—Phil Twyford: He’s the worst.Hon DAVID PARKER: —saying that it is all the councils’ fault. He is the worst at it. He talks up a crisis as he did with ACC. Blaming councils might take the heat off the Government but it does not take the heat out of the problem.We will be holding the Government to account on this problem because rampant house price inflation is set to continue. Indeed it is an absolute indictment of this Government that the upside projection in this Budget—the upside projection in this Budget—is predicated on more house price inflation driving more debt and more debt-fuelled consumption. That is the great scenario in the Government’s Budget. That is the upside scenario in the Budget. Its growth strategy is to make the imbalances in the New Zealand economy worse.Let us talk about the national overdraft. The national overdraft is our current account deficit. The national overdraft is something that Bill English said he was going to fix. He was going to rebalance the economy. But under National the national overdraft is already the worst in the developed world. Five years into its—Dr David Clark: Worse than Greece.Hon DAVID PARKER: It is worse than in Greece. It is worse than in Greece. It is the worst in the developed world according to the IMF. And every year from here it gets worse still until the end of the projection period. So National’s overdraft has us—instead of borrowing $10 billion extra overseas next year or selling assets to overseas owners—going to $16 billion in the projection period. As Russel Norman said today in the House there is an extra $60 billion of net international liabilities in the forecast period.These guys could not run a bath—they could not run a bath. They have not got extra jobs. Electricity prices keep going up at twice the rate of inflation. And what do they do about all these things? Nothing. Because you know in the end the National Party stands for vested interests. It stands for John Banks keeping secret the donations from Skycity. He is currently facing charges before the court in respect of that abysmal lack of judgment. We have the National Party giving New Zealand the misery of pokie machines in return for a shabby deal for a convention centre in Auckland.Hon John Banks: What’s happening to the polls?Hon DAVID PARKER: What has happened in the polls? What has happened in the polls is that there has been a more than 10 percent two-party swing from National to Labour since the election. What has happened in the polls in terms of ACT is that wecannot find it. Polls have just about stopped reporting ACT because it is under 1 percent. It is below the margin of error. That is what has happened in the polls.This two-speed economy is not working for ordinary New Zealanders. That is why 200000 people have left for Australia. Forty percent of them are between the ages of 18 and 30. They are our future—the young people. It is shameful—absolutely shameful—that they are leaving. We used to hear Bill English saying that the Government was sticking to a plan that is working. Well that is gone. I have not heard those members skiting about the brighter future or saying “Wave Goodbye to Higher Taxes. Not Your Loved Ones.”—all these flash slogans. They are all being proved wrong one by one and as a consequence the shine continues to tarnish in respect of the National Party. This is a bad Budget. It does not address any of the fundamental problems of the New Zealand economy.