Brownlee Gerry: Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
Brownlee Gerry: Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:13519] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 The Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill is very poorly titled. Perhaps it should be called the “Labour Future for Working Families is the Road from Work to Welfare Bill”. That would have been a better description of it because what it does is say to people like the teacher in Waihi: “Even though you are a valued professional in the community even though we want young people like you to make a commitment to the teaching profession unfortunately the wage and salary increases expected in this country are so poor and so despondent that all you can expect is a Government benefit in order to keep up with the expenses of life.” 
Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: The centrepiece of the Government’s Budget the Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill should be renamed the “Labour Government’s Promise to Workers to Take the Road from Work to Welfare Bill”. This bill says to teachers in our community like the man from Waihi who earns $55000 a year that the only chance they have for getting more income for their families in the next 3 years is to wait until 2007 to get a lousy $140 a week extra. That should tell every teacher in this country that the Government does not anticipate wage and salary rises from this economy in the next 3 years. It is saying to working New Zealanders that if they expect to have more value from the money they earn they will have to take it by way of a benefit. We will see 300000 families advantaged under this legislation but 1.2 million families will still have to work and battle hard to pay their way through this very difficult world. 
I ask Dr Cullen when he proudly says that this will give the Waihi family on $55000 a year an extra $150 a week in 3 years’ time what will happen to that family if that particular teacher has moved up through the salary scale—remember he has two salary levels to go yet—picked up maybe one or two management units and got himself over $60000 a year. The answer is that he gets very very little and certainly gets a lot less than he would get if a tax solution had been found that would advantage low-income New Zealanders. This will go down in history as legislation and a Budget that gave up on growing the New Zealand economy and said rather that if New Zealanders want to get some advantage from being in work in the future they will also have to sign up as welfare beneficiaries. 
This bill should have its title changed. It should not be cynically described as the Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill when clearly the only place it leads to is welfare and that is not the sort of aspiration that New Zealanders expect from a Government. It will be good to get on the stump against Labour members some time next year. People will be saying: “Hang on you guys spent $7000 a minute passing a bill through all stages of urgency to put more money in our pockets. Where is it?” The Labour members will say: “Well if you vote for us you can have it in another 2 years’ time.” People will not believe it because alongside that they will understand that any prospect of wages and salaries growing in this country under this Government is now gone.