Gilmore Aaron: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Gilmore Aaron: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:673;Page:19539] 
AARON GILMORE (National) 
: 
 It is an absolute pleasure to stand and speak on the imprest supply debate and Appropriation Bill. We heard from the previous speaker Maryan Street and her speech just points out the problems that the Labour Party has. That prior speaker sits on the front bench of the Labour Party and one would think those members would know something about basic economics. What we heard from that speaker was that in Nelson apparently no one likes bikes and no one wants to use the cycleway. What we heard from that speaker is that those members do not understand that the coal that is mined on the West Coast is actually used to make steel overseas. It is not burned in power stations. As a former spokesperson I understand on the environment one would think that member would know that.  
You see the problem we have with the Labour Party is that it does not know what it really wants. We heard from Stuart Nash earlier. Mr Nash is the inventor of the so-called great revenue tax—not the extra tax on profits but the revenue tax that the Labour Party came up with. He said we do not have a plan. I can tell that member that we have a wonderful plan. It is about getting our debt under control about investing in our future about investing in Canterbury which has been broken as my colleagues Amy Adams and Rahui Katene pointed out and about jobs and putting in place 170000 new jobs across the country. I can tell members that I was in Christchurch on Saturday and I picked up the  
Press 
. In the jobs section of the  
Press 
 there were 22 pages of jobs—22 pages. Do members know how many pages of jobs there were in the  
Dominion Post 
? There were 4 pages. The reason is that we are about growing the economy in the real park not in the public sector bureaucracy here in Wellington. We are about getting jobs where it matters and those are the jobs that create sustainable growth and incomes for people. We actually looked— 
Phil Twyford 
: Where are they then? 
AARON GILMORE 
: I tell Mr Twyford that he might need a job in a few months. There are plenty of jobs in Christchurch so he should come down and we will give him a job. I could even give him a job working the back of a shovel. Maybe that member might learn a bit from that once or twice.  
We have a situation where yes we will have a record deficit this year. We will have the biggest deficit New Zealand has ever seen but it will halve next year and it will halve again the year after. The year after that we will be in surplus. Under Labour we would have another $5 billion a year being borrowed—the borrow-and-hope strategy. Labour members do not understand even basic economics. They seem to be in Stuart Nash’s world stuck in the 1920s. If we can borrow a huge amount of money and spend it on stuff it will all come right. That seems to me absolute lunacy.  
We have talked a bit about Canterbury. My area of Christchurch in particular in the north and east of the city has been terribly affected by coming up to 9000 earthquakes in recent times. I was horrified by what we saw last Monday standing there and going through some of the processes and seeing the damage. I spent most of Friday and Saturday up to my knees in muck digging out my parents’ house for the third time. That was quite devastating to go through.  
This Government has committed $8.8 billion of Government money to the rebuild of Canterbury. It is important that it is a Canterbury rebuild not a Christchurch rebuild.  
There has been a lot of information discussed about where that money will be spent. I want to talk a little bit about the $5.5 billion that will be spent—not the $3.3 billion from ACC and the Earthquake Commission but the $5.5 billion. It is quite critical. Of that $5.5 billion $1.1 billion will be spent on rebuilding all the local body infrastructure—the roads the power supply and the water supply—which provides the infrastructure to everybody’s homes. I was very happy yesterday when the water supply in Christchurch became drinkable again for the first time in over a week. That was a very good step forward. The fact that we could not drink our water for a week was actually a hard and difficult thing for us to go through. The water supply is back on but it is critically damaged and needs a lot of work.  
Our sewer systems are critically damaged and they need millions spent on them—maybe hundreds of millions I do not know. From the last count there are about 20000 homes in Christchurch that still cannot flush their toilets. The Government is putting significant amounts of money in the Budget to allow that to be fixed and I think that is a good thing.  
In addition there are many broken schools in Christchurch. Many of the schools on my side of town including the schools my children go to had raw sewage flowing through them for 3 days following the earthquake we had on Monday. Fixing that costs money and that money has been allocated in this Budget. We have high schools on my side of town that have been ruined beyond repair. One of them in particular is a high school called Avonside Girls’ High School which has 1200 girls who used to attend that school. That school is in very serious danger of never operating again on that site. There is $85 million allocated in the Budget to repair the schools that exist in Canterbury and I think that is an admirable step forward.  
There is also an additional about $500 million of contingency funding that has been put forward in the Budget for the recapitalisation or the potential recapitalisation of AMI Insurance. That might not mean anything for those people who have insurance with other companies but the about 40 percent of Cantabrians of whom I am one who have their insurance with AMI are very concerned about the stability of the payouts they may receive following the earthquakes. This Government has put forward $500 million in its Budget to make sure that AMI is covered and I think that is a good step forward.  
We are quite concerned about some of the issues at some of the insurance companies and their behaviour. I personally have had some issues with local insurance companies. I will not name them here today but many of the insurance companies in New Zealand need to pull up their socks and be a bit smarter at best—and words I cannot use in this House at worst—about how they should operate with the claims they are dealing with in Canterbury. We have somewhere in the region of 300000 insurance claims that need to be dealt with and $5.5 billion to be spent on that. But there is about $3.2 billion that has not yet been allocated in the Budget. One thing I have been surprised about is why with all the hoo-ha we hear from Labour members they have not asked where that $3.2 billion will be spent. It looks like a giant slush fund. Some people will say well maybe it is because it is unallocated expenditure. I have never seen in this House anyone find out how a $3.2 billion unallocated slush fund will be spent. It is not exactly a slush fund; it is to be spent on things we do not yet know about. There is $3.2 billion to be spent on things we do not yet know about. Some of that is to be spent on remediating buildings and properties over and above the requirements of the Earthquake Commission. The Earthquake Commission has $3.3 billion but there is another $3.2 billion that exists in the Budget numbers to spend on remediating land over and above the Earthquake Commission’s requirements. So I say to people who might be listening today in Christchurch that there is plenty of money there to make sure their homes and properties are repaired. The Government has allocated sufficient funds to make sure those people and their loved ones are safe and their homes are properly repaired and brought back to where they were.  
I now want to talk a little bit about something else something a bit different. That is the incompetence of the Labour Party. You see in the last week we have had voodoo economics with those members talking about how they will fund things. They have talked about our tax cuts and how outrageous they are. Well those members do not seem to remember that it was not just a drop in income taxes that resulted; we also put up the taxes on those dodgy property developers and speculators who exist in the place. Labour seems to forget that. Those property speculators are now paying hundreds of millions of dollars extra when under Labour they were getting away scot free. We care about making sure there is a balance in the tax system and that is why we are making sure those property speculators and developers are paying their fair share. That is why we put up a change to make sure the international multinational corporates are paying their fair share. It is not quite as simple as the Labour Party seems to think. Yes income taxes have dropped but many others are paying more and more. The Labour Party seems to be remiss in understanding those differences that exist.  
I want to finally finish with a couple of extra comments that my colleague Tau Henare mentioned. Following the Budget we had some interesting comments from two groups that I want to touch on. One was from the Salvation Army. It is not necessarily a good friend of the National Party all the time but Major Campbell Roberts of the Salvation Army said: “we are relieved the Government hasn’t taken the opportunity … to prune social welfare. It shows that a centre-right Government can be fiscally prudent without gutting welfare.” That is the nature of a National Government. Age Concern’s National President Liz Baxendine said: “Older people are especially concerned about health care and this sector appears to have done well in this year’s Budget … Minister Tony Ryall says he’s committed to protecting and growing our public health services and we welcome that assurance.” This Government is investing more in those things that matter not in those things that do not. That has to be welcomed and given the polls we are seeing the people of New Zealand up and down the country are wholly welcoming it. That has to be a good thing. Thank you very much.