Parker David: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17933. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour): TheNew Zealand Herald said in respect of this National policy that it was the “Great Brain Robbery”—stealing ideas off the Labour Party but in reality a pale shadow of them. The credit for this policy in respect of children and paid parental leave should go to Jacinda Ardern and Sue Moroney. They are the ones who got this up on the political agenda so much so that the National Government was scared and decided that it would implement a shadow of it. This bill the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill which has just been presented under urgency—and I have not had time to read it in detail yet because it really has only just been tabled minutes ago in the House—is the first piece of legislation considered under the Budget the Budget in which the Government has had to fudge it in order to get back to Budget surplus and fund this. The National Government does not like that truth but it is the truth.What are the clearest fudges that we have found so far? Well we know that compared with last year’s Budget the Government has got $560 million less as the Crown’s share of Canterbury’s share of local infrastructure costs. It has gone down in terms of the Government’s Budget by $560 million. That is a week after the Christchurch City Council produced a report—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: KordaMentha.Hon DAVID PARKER: —an independent report from KordaMentha to say that its share of those same costs were going up so it is just not credible for the Government to say that those costs are going down. Further than that we have also uncovered a document that shows that the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee had a deal with the prior chief executive of the Christchurch City Council and the Mayor of Christchurch that they would not review the numbers until after this Budget and until after the election. That is really cynical—really cynical.The second thing that we have uncovered is that we now know from the dodgy announcement by Judith Collins in this Budget reflecting her personal conduct as a Minister that the Government has overcharged ACC levies by $120 million this year which overstates the surplus this year by $120 million. So it says that it is going to reverse that out next year but it has kept it for this year. It did a similar thing last year.The other area that is a bit dodgy is that the Government is putting $375 million into transport spending in Auckland in addition as a loan robbing the future National Land Transport Fund and funding it out of a notional interest-free loan. If the Government really wanted to do that this year it should have booked that as an additional capital expenditure this year rather than having this pretence at an interest-free loan.Health spending has gone down in real terms. I have crunched the numbers with the help of some of our staff since this announcement was read out. We know using Treasury’s own model that health spending is going backwards by 2.3 percent in real terms. It is going up in nominal terms from $14.4 billion to $14.7 billion and that is total Crown spending on health or core spending. Using Treasury’s own model and taking into account inflation and demographic changes in real terms according to Treasury’s own model that is a 2.3 percent cut—a 2.3 percent cut. So this Budget surplus—yes it is real and it is good. Governments have to be prudent and get back to surplus. But it is a fiddle. The Government has fudged it. It has fudged it.In respect of this particular measure it is half of a best start. Half of a best start is what I would call it. The Best Start package from the Labour Party is better than this. In fact there is no one person I am told by our spokesperson—and I am sure this is correct—who would be better off under this package compared with Labour’s Best Start package. In other words the Best Start package is better for everyone who is better off under this package.There are a couple of things that stand out as being wrong with this package and I should not be surprised by this. The most vulnerable in New Zealand do not get anything out of the measure that we are passing today. That is despite the fact that those New Zealanders who are most vulnerable have faced increasing power prices increasing rents—in some parts of Auckland rents have gone up by 40 percent—and despite those very real increases in their costs which for those people have actually gone up more than the cost of living. The cost of living is an average across the country but the costs for these vulnerable New Zealanders have gone up by more than the cost of living and yet this package does nothing for them. Despite the fact that we have got 285000 children living below the poverty line the only really significant policy in respect of child poverty in New Zealand in this Budget this year after all those rising housing costs rising rents rising electricity bills and increasing numbers of children living in poverty is that the most vulnerable children in New Zealand do not get anything—anything—not 1c. They do not get one dollar—not in this year not in the year after and not in the year after that. They get nothing.In a country where we have got rising inequality the Government denies it. We heard the Prime Minister misrepresenting those statistics again today in the House in his Budget debate speech. He stood up and said that the Bryan Perry measure of income inequality which is the ratio of low incomes to high incomes has not got worse according to him. Well actually it has got a bit worse under the Government. It has not got as bad as it did in earlier times but it has still got worse. He says that because of that we have not got rising inequality. That is just such a facile argument. It shames me that we have in New Zealand this country that used to have low levels of child poverty a Prime Minister who stands up and pretends that we have not got rising inequality in New Zealand.New Zealand used to be in the best quarter of the OECD advanced nations in the world when it came to income inequality. We are now in the worst 40 percent. So we have moved from being in the best quarter in the world to the worst 40 percent at a time when the OECD as a whole has been getting worse. There was a bad trend internationally and New Zealand beat that bad trend by being even worse than the bad trend. The only push against that trend of income inequality rising in New Zealand in recent decades in a material sense was the last Labour Government through Working for Families which of course at the time the Prime Minister called communism by stealth.Even the Bryan Perry measure which shows a disgraceful increase in income inequality under-measures income inequality because it excludes capital gains and other irregular income which are concentrated amongst the wealthy. That is absolutely clear from the data series. We have proven that in the House. We have actually even forced Bill English to admit it but the Prime Minister pretends it is not the case. That is income inequality as measured by the Bryan Perry figures which are credible but they are only a subset of income and therefore they under-measure income inequality and yet we know it is still getting worse.The next thing to say in respect of that is that when you have income inequality that is at the level it is in New Zealand even if it does not get worse from year to year overall inequality does get worse because every year the consequences of that inequalitystack up. You see that so clearly in New Zealand. Seventy-five percent of New Zealanders think that those gaps are widening in New Zealand under this Government. They are absolutely right and the statistics prove it. The number of children living in poverty whatever measure you use is going up. The number of people who own their own house is going down. It is the lowest it has been in 50 years. We should not be surprised because this Government runs New Zealand in the interests of the wealthy who do well out of those settings of rising inequality because they get to own an ever-higher proportion of the assets in New Zealand including a higher proportion of our houses.As for this bill we will be supporting it. It makes things a little better than they were. It is only half of a best start. It is a pale imitation of it. It does not improve the lot of the most vulnerable and it does not deal with the terrible imbalance that we have in our economy. That is all I have got time for at this first reading.