McKelvie Ian: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcKelvie Ian: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 20 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18144. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I am not surprised Opposition members are applauding that speech from Su’a William Sio. I do not dislike anyone much in life but I certainly think some of the things they say are odd. If the previous speaker thinks that the Government is going to lift people out of poverty he has got another think coming. Unfortunately it is not the Government that lifts people out of poverty; it is an economy that is driven by sound policy that lifts people out of poverty. So he has got his foot firmly in the wrong hole. Last year I started addressing this very same debate with the statement that we in theRangitīkei support the return to surplus and now we are there. I also said we needed to grow production not consumption and we are getting there. The other thing I talked about was that we must support families and we are certainly getting there as well.It is a privilege to be part of a Government led by John Key and Bill English. Firstly we have performed better than any other Western economy in the past 5 years have produced an economy that is growing at a rate of 2 to 4 percent—and 4 percent this year—over the next 5 years and restrained Government debt to 26 percent of GDP. Again it is a great performance by any standard especially given the fact that we have maintained support to our beneficiaries in every respect during the course of that recession. We have put significant extra resource into the education and health sectors and continue to support New Zealand’s most needy families.In the past 4 days—and I heard Jacqui Dean talking about this—I have travelled extensively in my electorate as I do on a weekly basis. I have an electorate where it takes even longer than in John Hayes’ electorate to drive from one end to the other because he has got straight roads. I have travelled extensively in the electorate but not since the days of fertiliser subsidies have I seen a positive reception to anything that has happened in New Zealand like the one I have seen in theRangitīkei in the last few days. Of course we in theRangitīkei were very keen on those fertiliser subsidies back in the 1960s.John Hayes: I did the numbers for that.IANMcKELVIE: Did you John? Thank you. That was very good of you. Anyway the interesting thing about this Budget and fertiliser subsidies is that a lot of the aspiration in this Budget will achieve exactly what the fertiliser subsidies of the 1960s did. It will increase productivity. It will increase the country’s wealth. It will increase families’ security.The difference between this Budget and those of the last Labour Government is that this Government very clearly spends money where it will get a great return for the people of New Zealand. Children’s health lasts for a lifetime. The family tax credit puts money where it is needed: in the families of newborns in New Zealand. This Government in the past 5 years has achieved some amazing results in law and order. There has been a 26 percent reduction in youth crime a 20 percent reduction in overall crime and reoffending has reduced to 12.6 percent. This in fact means some 9300 fewer victims on an annual basis. That is very significant. The Government has also put another $10 million into helping the fight against sexual violence which is certainly an issue that blights a large number of New Zealand families. I heard Mr Goff speaking earlier about the law and order sector. He fails to accept that the modernisation that has been undertaken in the law and order sector in the last 5 years has made huge differences to the efficiencies of that sector. This Government has maintained the number of police on the streets of New Zealand. It has done a wonderful job in my view of upgrading and modernising our prison service. We now have people leaving prison with some real hope of work and of not going back to prison.These are some of the reasons why the people of theRangitīkei are so positive about this Budget. I called in to buy a bit of lunch at my local takeaway shop yesterday. Oddly enough I knew the owner. The boss literally ran out and shook my hand telling me what a great Budget it was. I immediately knew what Bill English felt like. That man was excited about the Budget. He has a young family and he knew that the actions undertaken in this Budget will make a difference to his future and to his family’s future. Defence plays a very important role in theRangitīkei. Another $535 million is being injected into the defence forces. In my electorate I have the LintonŌhākea and theWaiōuru army bases all of which will benefit significantly from the extra resource that is being put into the defence forces. That will make a big difference to my part of the world and I am sure it will give our defence forces a whole lot of new confidence.I want to touch briefly on housing too because I have a very different issue in my electorate and I know a large number of my rural compatriots have the same. We haveno shortage of housing and we certainly welcome anyone to our region who would like to come and live there. The policies of this Government are giving people incentives to come back and live in rural New Zealand. Jobs in tourism agriculture and the service sectors around those two major industries are creating new opportunities for people in our electorates. There is plenty of opportunity for those people who find it difficult living elsewhere to come and live in our electorates and make the most of it. I also want to talk very briefly about theManawatu Community Trust which runs all of the ex-council houses in Feilding. It has done an amazing job with those 212 houses in Feilding. It has got them all up to date working very well and fully tenanted. I think that there is a lot of merit in community housing trusts being set up and continuing as our Minister of Housing has indeed encouraged in many parts of New Zealand.I also want to talk briefly about science funding which I am particularly pleased about—in particular the addition of $57 million to contestable research funding. That will make a big difference to the activities of the research institutes around Massey University which of course is in the heart of my electorate. Also I want to talk about the investment of $83 million to raise tuition subsidies in science health and agriculture. They are three parts of our economy that are critical to our future and particularly in the science and agriculture departments are producing great results in terms of an export income potential—and of course health is going to be critical to the future of us all.This Government is one that invests where the most benefit accrues to the people of New Zealand. We invest in areas that pay a dividend for the future. We invest in the long-term gain for future generations. The single most encouraging item for me in this Budget is the projected household income growth over the next 4 years. I think this is the single most important thing we can achieve in New Zealand: to grow people’s incomes and their ability to earn. I think that the projected increase of some $7000 by 2018 in the average take-home pay is a pretty significant effort and I think it will probably improve further on that given the growth our economy is expecting and certainly given the performance of our export sector at the moment. So I think we can look forward with a great deal of confidence to the result that this Government has achieved particularly around increasing people’s take-home pay and their ability to live better than they could before.One of the challenges our agriculture sector has faced over the years has been inconsistency of income and hence profit leading to a boom-and-bust mentality where we have very high taxation one year and the potential for a refund the next—not conducive to good business. I know that for years the agricultural sector has battled with this. This Government faces the same challenges with economic growth and one of the challenges our Minister of Finance has chosen to do battle with during the course of this Budget is the fact that we have to get some sustainability into our growth patterns rather than having dramatic growth spells and then losing that growth potential. So I think he has done very well with that. The sustainable Budget does not dramatically increase Government expenditure. Of course Government expenditure has a great influence on what happens with inflation interest rates and all sorts of other things so having very moderate increases in Government expenditure is extremely important. I think the Minister of Finance has done extremely well with that.This party in Government believes in empowering individuals and families to do better to achieve their aspirations and to compete in the modern world. The parties on the other side of the House aspire to capture individuals and families and trap them in a sea of State dependence. I think that is definitely the wrong attitude. The people of New Zealand understand this now and will support a Government that frees them to seize the opportunities available to them and keep interference in their lives to a minimum.Finally I want to congratulate Minister English on a very competent Budget. I hope for New Zealand’s sake that he gets the opportunity to produce many more of them. Thank you.