Volume 699 Week 73 - Wednesday 21 May 2014Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 699 Week 73 - Wednesday 21 May 2014[Sitting date: 21 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18159. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Wednesday 21 May 2014Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.VisitorsMyanmar—Speaker House of NationalitiesMr SPEAKER: Honourable members I have much pleasure in informing the House that His Excellency UKhinAungMyint Speaker of the Myanmar House of Nationalities is present in the precincts of the Chamber. I am sure that members would wish that he be welcomed and accorded a seat on the left of the Chair. I also acknowledge the Speaker’s delegation in the gallery.UKhinAungMyint accompanied by the Deputy Speaker entered the Chamber and took a seat on the left of the Chair.Sittings of the HouseHon ANNE TOLLEY (Deputy Leader of the House): In accordance with discussions at the Business Committee I seek leave for the House to suspend for the dinner break at the conclusion of the Hon Shane Jones’ valedictory statement today.Mr SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none.Questions to MinistersPrime Minister—Appointment of GCSB Director Dotcom Case andDrone Strikes1.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition) to thePrime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.Hon David Cunliffe: Why did he state on 4 April 2013 that the role he played in Ian Fletcher’s appointment as head of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was “Only that the State Services Commissioner came to me”—came to me—“with the recommendation.” when in fact he personally phoned him to encourage him to apply for the job?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because at the time I was asked in the House that was my recollection. At the end of the day it was my appointment anyway.Hon David Cunliffe: Who organised the breakfast meetings on 17 June 2011 and 12 March 2010 between him and Ian Fletcher at the Stamford Plaza and Hyatt Regency respectively?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I cannot be 100 percent sure but to the best of my recollection it would be my office.Hon David Cunliffe: Given that to the best of his recollection his office organised both meetings is it correct that the 17 June breakfast was held 3 days after he signed off on the interview panel for the GCSB director’s position and 3 weeks before the existing shortlist of candidates for that position was scrapped; if so does he still claim that the GCSB role was not discussed with Mr Fletcher at that breakfast?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: In answer to the last part of the question yes.Hon David Cunliffe: Was anyone from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet or his office present at the meeting held on 14 December 2011 to brief on Operation Debut against Mr Kim Dotcom?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well no one from my office was. I cannot be sure whether the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet had a representative there.Hon David Cunliffe: Does he stand by his statement “We share information in isolated cases about New Zealanders with our partners and we do that when there’s a really good reason to do that.”; if so what policy governs when and how the GCSB shares that information and whether any limits are placed upon its subsequent use?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes—some where it is believed to be relevant.Hon David Cunliffe: Has the Prime Minister sought or received any advice on whether remote operations such as drone strikes against non-combatants or in non-declared conflicts are compatible with international law?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No.Budget 2014—Government Expenditure and Interest Rates2.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) to theMinister of Finance: In preparing Budget 2014 what advice did the Government receive on how responsible fiscal management will take pressure off interest rates for New Zealand households and businesses?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance)on behalf of theMinister of Finance: The Government recognises that interest rates are the single largest cost on families with a mortgage. That is why we are focused very much on keeping rates lower for longer—certainly much lower than the almost 11 percent mortgage rates of 2008. In that context the Budget has struck a very good balance between investing in priority areas such as families and children and staying on track for surplus without putting undue pressure on interest rates. Last week the Minister of Finance released Treasury advice showing the impact of increasing the Budget operating allowance. The allowance is the amount set aside at each Budget for new policy initiatives spending or revenue initiatives. This advice confirmed that increasing the allowance to $1.5 billion in Budget 2015 is around the upper limit before it begins to materially affect interest rates.David Bennett: What did Treasury’s advice say would be the wider economic consequences of significantly higher Government spending?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: That is a very good question and one that the Opposition should listen to carefully. We all know what those consequences would be. We saw them in 2008 when Government spending increased sharply. Floating mortgage rates reached almost 11 percent which hurt households and businesses across the country. Treasury advised that in an economy expected to be operating at or above capacity significantly higher spending would lead to a more pronounced interest rate cycle push the New Zealand dollar higher and push interest rates up. This would increase pressure on the tradable sector and work against efforts to rebalance the economy and create jobs. Treasury said lifting the annual operating allowance to $1.5 billion would have an official cash rate impact of around 0.15 to 0.3 over 4 years. The Government would still meet its objective of reducing net Crown debt to 20 percent of GDP by 2019-20. You can simply imagine how much higher interest rates would be if we saw the sort of large operating allowances we saw under the previous Government.David Bennett: Why did the Government seek Treasury advice about the likely impact on interest rates of an increase in the annual operating allowance?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Because interest rates are very important to Kiwi families. The Government wanted to modestly increase spending in priority areas but remain fiscally responsible and not put undue upward pressure on interest rates. This will provide options for targeting extra investment to further improve public services repay debt resume contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and possibly make modest tax reductions in future years. However it is very important that we donot return to the big spending increases of the mid-2000s which together with a doubling of house prices forced the Reserve Bank to push up the official cash rate to a record 8.25 percent. That is why we sought the advice.David Bennett: How does the Government’s planned $1.5 billion annual allowance for Budget 2015 compare with allowances up to 2008 and what were the consequences of those large previous allowances?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The proposed $1.5 billion annual operating allowance is a very modest one compared with allowances before 2008. As the Minister mentioned at the Budget lock-up last Thursday the final year cost of the five Budgets to 2008 averaged almost $4 billion per Budget. In fact the final year allowance in Budget 2008 alone was a whopping $7 billion. The impact of that sort of reckless Government spending was obvious. Floating mortgage interest rates were almost 11 percent the economy went into recession ahead of the global financial crisis exporters were going backwards very quickly and we were left with a $3.9 billion fiscal deficit in 2008-09—before the global financial crisis and before the Canterbury earthquakes—because revenue could not support that high spending. We certainly would not want to go back to that situation again—Hon Trevor Mallard: 2008-09 wasn’t before the GFC. That’s just nonsense.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: It is absolutely correct Mr Mallard. You should listen carefully because that is why the New Zealand public will not support your party to come back.Capital Gains Tax—Investment Properties3.Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour) to theMinister of Finance: Has he received any report from the Treasury disproving the analysis from Westpac’s chief economist that a proposed 15 percent tax on capital gains on investment property would have a significant effect on the net present value of residential rental property investments; if so will he table that Treasury report?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of theMinister of Finance: Firstly for the benefit of the member I note that Westpac advises that its absolute clear preference is for a comprehensive capital gains tax on all properties in New Zealand. I have not received a report from Treasury on the particular proposal the member refers to. However Treasury has advised on the expected general effects of capital gains taxes over and above the one we actually already have which applies when assets are bought and sold for profit. Again I should point out that Treasury’s preference if there was to be a capital gains tax is that it should be a comprehensive one as well. Anyway Treasury said that although a capital gains tax would deliver no long-term reduction in house prices and “the majority of the effect”—Hon David Parker: Oh rubbish.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —well you can disagree with Treasury; we know that you do not accept its advice any more—“would be felt by tenants through higher rents”. So the majority of the effect—this is according to Treasury which Mr Parker does not listen to—would be felt by tenants through higher rents. Another report said that the devil is in the detail and that working out whether the pros outweigh the cons of a capital gains tax “would be a very substantial exercise.” The Inland Revenue Department’s view which was also reported by Treasury was that the practical disadvantages were likely to outweigh the advantages.Hon David Parker: I seek leave to table the Treasury report dated 27 September 2012 on information on a capital gains tax limited to investment housing.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The document has now been well described. It is a Treasury report dated 27 September 2012. Is there any objection to that Treasury report being tabled? There is not.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Hon David Parker: Does he agree with the advice in that Treasury report that the taxation of capital gains on investment housing excluding the family home will redirect investment into savings and the productive economy?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I do not have that particular quote from the member but I do have the quote—which I suspect is from the same report—that says that there would be no long-term reduction in house prices and that the majority of the effect would be felt by tenants through higher rents. Once again Treasury’s preference is for a comprehensive capital gains tax on every single New Zealand house.Hon David Parker: Does he agree with the advice of Treasury in that same report that the taxation of capital gains on investment housing excluding the family home will “reduce the price of housing and increase affordability of owner-occupied housing;”?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No and in that case any suggestion that putting a capital gains tax on 25 percent or thereabouts of New Zealand housing would have that sort of effect is an exaggeration. If you want to see an example of where that has been done and where it has not been successful look at Sydney Australia.Tim Macindoe: What other comments have Westpac economists made about an additional capital gains tax in New Zealand?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I have seen two other quite relevant comments from Westpac economists highlighting very significant drawbacks of adding an additional capital gains tax. The first is that they point out that it is unlikely to happen because it would be complex to administer and worse much of the burden would fall on tenants who tend to have low incomes which is exactly the same advice as received from Treasury. The second comment I have seen from Westpac economists is that top-end properties rather than low-end properties would be less affected by a capital gains tax so price differentials between high-priced houses and low-priced houses would widen. That is because investors are less prevalent at the top end of the property market. So it is rents at the bottom end of the market that would be most affected. So once again the Labour Party in its attempt to fiddle around with the economy would lift costs on those members of society who could least afford that. There are two very good reasons in addition to many others that an additional capital gains tax is yet another dead-end for Mr Parker.Hon David Parker: Does he agree with the advice of Treasury in that report that the taxation of capital gains on investment housing excluding the family home will “reduce the level of foreign borrowing compared to the status quo.”?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The reality is that we have a capital gains tax on investment properties right now. We have tightened rules for loss attributing qualifying companies we have prevented property investors from using rental losses to inflate Working for Families payments and we have increased the Inland Revenue Department’s funding to target property speculators and that has been raising $2.5 billion in additional tax. So the Opposition acts like there is not a capital gains tax on investment properties now and there is.Tim Macindoe: What other reports has the Minister seen from Westpac about the New Zealand economy?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: It is interesting that Mr Parker’s new friends at Westpac have been actually considering the nature of the New Zealand economy after the next election. They say that depending on the outcome of the next election the marketimplications would be substantial. For example if a certain outcome occurred they would see a downturn in domestic demand a period of slower economic activity due to business uncertainty businesses holding off on investment and hiring decisions and difficulties for a new Government to keep Government spending in check. It would push up interest rates. That is the Westpac prognosis under a Labour-Greens Government.Hon David Parker: Why does he not stop the pretence and admit that National’s housing policy has been totally ineffective and adopt Labour’s comprehensive housing policy which addresses both demand and supply by implementing a capital gains tax excluding the family home building 100000 affordable houses and restricting purchases by offshore buyers?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: In Mr Parker’s bubble that would make a difference but actually they are the policies that some parts of Australia have had for some time and their house prices are higher than New Zealand’s. This Government’s policies of freeing up the supply of housing have doubled the number of houses being built over the last 3 years and those numbers are continuing to climb—Phil Twyford: Rubbish!Hon STEVEN JOYCE: It is absolutely correct. This Government is focused on managing growth positively for jobs for Kiwi builders and Kiwi construction workers not clamping down with yet more taxes to drive the economy back into recession which is the proposal of the Labour Party.Tim Macindoe: What other reports has the Minister seen opposing an additional capital gains tax because of its many drawbacks and problems?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Weirdly I have seen a very interesting speech to the Property Investors Association conference which was in July 2005. This speech which was unusually good by a Minister for the standards of the time noted that the Government of the day agreed with a review known as the McLeod Tax Review which concluded that—Hon David Cunliffe: Tell us about Rob Muldoon.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Be quiet Mr Cunliffe; I am coming to your punchline. The review concluded that the disadvantages of such a tax such as its complexity and costs outweighed any theoretical benefits. The speaker at that conference went on to say that the Government of the day believed that the status quo was entirely adequate and that any form of new property tax should be off the agenda. That speech was delivered by none other than the then Associate Minister of Finance David Cunliffe.Budget 2014—Financial Support for Families4.METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) to thePrime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.Metiria Turei: When the Prime Minister said that the Budget would focus on young families and those vulnerable children who most need our care what rationale did he use to exclude 60 percent of babies born into poverty from getting the parental tax credit payment?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: For a start off the $500 million package aimed at families which includes three of the five elements includes all New Zealanders. In terms of those who are on benefits there are other ways of addressing that through emergency benefits or extra supplementary payments.Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I was very explicit in my question: it asked for the rationale in excluding children from the parental tax credit. That was not addressed by the Prime Minister.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The difficulty was the member was not as explicit as she is now saying she was in her question. On this occasion the Prime Minister has addressed the question. But if the member wants quite a specific supplementary question the way to do it is to ask it.Metiria Turei: Can the Prime Minister confirm that according to Budget documents an overarching objective of Budget 2014 was to “increase the amount of payments made to families with newborns”; if so why did his Ministers direct officials to increase payments only for newborns whose parents had a job?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: In answer to the first part of the question yes.Metiria Turei: At what point in the Budget process did he and his Ministers decide to exclude babies born to parents on benefits from additional financial support for newborns?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not have the exact timing of that.Metiria Turei: Can the Prime Minister confirm that the newborn payments are designed to help families meet the cost of having a new baby and to relieve family stress; if so what is the rationale for denying that additional financial support to a baby whose parents do not have a job?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: In answer to the first part of the question yes.Metiria Turei: What advice has the Prime Minister sought or received on whether excluding the children of beneficiaries from the parental tax credit breaches the principle of treating all children in low-income families equally for all child-related tax-funded payments?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Families are treated in different types of ways depending on the support they get from the Government. Those who are on benefit are able to receive hardship assistance and many of them do.Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My question was very explicit about the advice that he had sought or received. He did not address that question at all.Mr SPEAKER: It is a marginal call but I will allow the member to ask the question again.Metiria Turei: What advice did the Prime Minister seek or receive on whether excluding the children of beneficiaries from the parental tax credit breaches the principle of treating all children in low-income families equally for all child-related tax-funded payments?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: To the best of my knowledge my office did not ask for any advice on that. The Minster for Social Development’s office would have done so and the advice it was given was that there is wide-ranging support for the people in the category she mentioned.Metiria Turei: Will the Prime Minister immediately extend eligibility to the paid parental tax credit to all New Zealand newborn children on the basis that every child born in New Zealand deserves improved life outcomes in order to meet the stated objectives of Budget 2014?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No.Budget 2014—Vote Education5.MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore) to theMinister of Education: How will Budget 2014 continue to support the education system?Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. The Government will invest $857.8 million over the next 4 years and the remainder of this year for new education initiatives and sector support. Despite the tight fiscal environment this will take total spending on early childhood primary and secondary education to $10.1 billion in 2014-15. This is a significant investment in our childrenand New Zealand’s future and is part of a comprehensive range of practical measures in Budget 2014 to help families and children. Raising student achievement continues to be one of the Government’s top priorities and this is recognised by a further substantial boost to funding for early childhood education and schools.Maggie Barry: What initiatives does the Government have under way to support the profession to raise achievement?Hon HEKIA PARATA: Work is well under way on setting up the flagship $359 million Investing in Educational Success programme which was announced by the Prime Minister in January. The initiative creates four new career roles to support the education profession and to build quality and consistency of teaching and leadership across the system. This is the largest single investment in teachers and school leaders that they will have seen in their careers. It sits alongside the review of professional learning and development the transformation of the Teachers Council and the work we have done to recognise strengthen and value the profession. The Government has made a major commitment to raise student achievement by backing the teaching profession to win.Chris Hipkins: Why has the first round of charter schools been given an extra $9 million over the next 4 years which equates to around $6000 per student per year in addition to the up to $40000 per student per year they are already getting while State schools in the local areas receive only around $6000 to $7000 per year in total and have received a funding increase in this year’s Budget that only barely covers their increasing costs?Hon HEKIA PARATA: Because that covers the shortfall of the investment in these five schools which cater for 340 students who have been failed by the system. Our Government is an “and-and” Government and we are focusing on both the mainstream public system which is getting $10.1 billion and providing for five schools out of 2500 to raise achievement for five out of five kids.Maggie Barry: What other Vote Education initiatives were included in Budget 2014?Hon HEKIA PARATA: We are also putting substantial extra funding into day-to-day operations and modern infrastructure for schools and early childhood education centres. This includes $85.3 million more for schools’ operational grants. That is $600 million more in the last six Budgets. The continual increase in schools’ operational grants over successive Budgets has equalled or exceeded inflation. We are also investing a further $155.7 million over 4 years for early childhood education including an increase in funding rates to help keep fees affordable as well as forecast growth in the number of kids attending early childhood education. Government spending on early childhood education has almost—[Interruption]—listen up—doubled over the last 6 years from over $800 million in 2007-08 to $1.5 billion this year. That is how much this Government cares about education.Te Ururoa Flavell:Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Kia oratātou. How will Budget 2014 develop and improve literacy for our most vulnerable communities andwhānau and what achievements have been made to date?Hon HEKIA PARATA: An extra $2.4 million of operating funding over the next 4 years will go to the Reading Together programme so that it can expand to include more than 140 decile 4 and 5 schools. Reading Together is a research-based programme that helps parents to support their children’s reading at home. The extra money will cover the extension of the programme into all decile 4 schools and up to half of all decile 5 English-medium schools. The programme will be available to students in years 1 to 8 and their families. Research has identified Reading Together as a low-cost high-impactprogramme with strong evidence of effectiveness. For example—[Interruption] Sorry to bore the Opposition about—Mr SPEAKER: Order! It is not only the Opposition you are boring. The answer is long enough.Budget 2014—Free General Practitioner Visits for Under-13s6.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai) to theMinister of Health: What consultation with general practitioners nurses and district health boards did he undertake before announcing free doctors’ visits for children aged under 13?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration) on behalf of theMinister of Health: I thank the member for the opportunity to talk about one of the most popular and positive announcements in Budget 2014—free doctors visits and prescriptions for children under 13 made affordable by the hard work of our health professionals over the last 5 years. As is customary for Budget initiatives there was no formal consultation with general practitioners nurses or district health boards. However the policy was promoted and discussed widely by the health sector in recent times including the Children’s Commissioner and the Māori Affairs Committee. I am sure the member will join with the Government in welcoming this policy which is all about providing better support to children and their families.Hon Annette King: In light of that answer has the New Zealand Medical Association subsequently advised him that general practitioners could raise the cost of adult consultations in order to cross-subsidise the cost of seeing more children if the subsidy is insufficient?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The advice I have seen is that the New Zealand Medical Association strongly welcomed the policy with the chairman Mark Peterson saying it improved the situation for children by targeting services to those who need them most. He was at the head of a long list of supporters including the Medical Association the Paediatric Society numerous general practitioners—Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My question asked whether the Medical Association—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I heard the question and I am sure the Minister heard the question. I will now allow the Minister some time to answer it.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: That list includes numerous community general practitioners the College of General Practitioners and thousands of parents from around New Zealand.Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My question asked whether the Medical Association—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am going to ask the member to repeat the question.Hon Annette King: Has the Medical Association subsequently advised him that general practitioners could raise the cost of adult consultations in order to cross-subsidise the cost of seeing more children if the subsidy is insufficient?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I cannot confirm whether amongst the plethora of positive feedback that the Minister has received that little barb was received by him.Rt Hon John Key: Has the Minister seen any reports of other political parties who might be interested in following this policy—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Prime Minister’s question is out of order. There is no responsibility of the Minister for other parties’ policies.Hon Annette King: How many consultations per child per year on average did he base his announcement of $30 million to pay general practitioners for free doctors visits for children under 13 years of age?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I cannot answer the exact question but I would encourage the member to put the question down in writing or read the Budget—I am sure it is in there somewhere. What I do know from evidence of the under-sixes is—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Minister has now answered the question.Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Could I ask the Minister to refer to the page in the Budget where—Mr SPEAKER: Order! No the member cannot do that. She has a supplementary question if she wants to continue.Hon Annette King: Is the amount to be paid for a consultation for a child under 13 years likely to be more or less on average than the $74 per enrolled child paid for free visits for under-6-year-olds?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: As the member well knows the scheme is a voluntary opt-in scheme. The Government is very confident of its success. Given the fact that 98.2 percent of children currently qualify for free health-care as an under 6 and the fact that 97.7 percent of under-sixes get after-hours care the Government is very confident that the scheme will be very popular and widely taken up.Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You might have noticed that I asked whether it was more or less than the $74—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. The difficulty I had was that I actually could not hear the detail of the member’s question because there was so much noise coming from both sides of the House. I am going to invite the member to repeat the question.Hon Annette King: Is the amount to be paid for a consultation for a child under 13 likely to be more or less on average than the $74 per enrolled child paid to provide free visits for under-6-year-olds?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I am not in a position to answer that question but I am sure that if she put it down in writing we could.Budget 2014—Support for Vulnerable Children7.Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) to theMinister for Social Development: What measures does Budget 2014 contain to support vulnerable children?Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development): Budget 2014 is all about families and this caring National Government is delivering for them. A key part of our families package is a $33 million investment in our most vulnerable children on top of of course those free doctors visits for under-13-year-olds an extension to paid parental leave and an extension to the parental tax credit. I also like that we are extending paid parental leave to caregivers such as those who are doing Home for Life and working so hard. There are around 22000 cases of abuse and neglect of children in New Zealand every year and 50 children have died in the past 5 years because of extreme abuse. That is why $16.4 million of extra money is being invested in the Children’s Action Plan which resulted from consultation with New Zealanders. This money will be funded towards the Vulnerable Kids Information System which is about sharing information about those most vulnerable children and also a new hub that is there which is about making sure that we have got the phone calls going to the right place and are tracking where those children are being looked after.Hon Phil Heatley: What investment does the Budget make in the children’s teams?Hon PAULA BENNETT: Included in the $16.4 million for the Children’s Action Plan is money for eight new children’s teams. The two pilots have been running in Rotorua and Whangarei and they are steadily growing and working with more children. A children’s team will work with children who are just under the threshold of ChildYouth and Family. The teams assign a lead professional whose job it is to ensure that the kids have one plan. At the moment we see those children having an education plan a social work plan and a health plan. We are going to pull them all together into one then a lead professional will make sure that they are actually reaching those milestones and being safer and better protected.Jacinda Ardern: Has the 2014 Budget allocation for care and protection services kept pace with inflation since she took office?Hon PAULA BENNETT: From memory the Child Youth and Family budget has had a 15 percent increase over the last 5½ years.Hon Phil Heatley: What support does the vulnerable children’s package provide to Child Youth and Family exactly?Hon PAULA BENNETT: The children’s teams as I said are working with those children who are just at that lower-risk end of the spectrum so that Child Youth and Family can then keep its focus on its business of intensive case management for the protection of those children who are being abused and neglected. This Budget supports Child Youth and Family by providing an investment of $13.7 million including money to trial some new approaches to understanding how best to work with children. But there is also funding in that for more one-on-one therapeutic placements for children in care and more support for Child Youth and Family caregivers including coaching and specialist training. The reality is that these children are incredibly complex and have very high needs in many cases. This extra funding will go to them.Pacific Communities—Economic Inequality8.Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere) to thePrime Minister: Does he stand by his statement that he has a “plan to deliver a brighter future for New Zealand.”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes. That statement was made in the context of my walking into Westpac Stadium and talking about the number of New Zealanders going to Australia under a Labour Government. Of course if we decided to do that video again for the 2014 election I would hold it in a phone booth.Su’a William Sio: How have Pacific peoples enjoyed a brighter future under his Government when according to the 2013 census the median incomes of those living inMāngere have decreased to $19700 a year since 2006 while the incomes of those in Devonport have increased by almost $5000 to more than $35000 and that is without even adjusting for inflation?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not know where the member gets his numbers from but the New Zealand Income Survey shows that average weekly earnings for Pacific people in paid employment have increased from $670 in 2008 to $764 in 2013. That is an increase of $94 or 14 percent. But frankly I would not expect the member to get the numbers right. Labour does not have a Treasury analyst any more; it has a marketing consultant.Su’a William Sio: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! This is a point of order.Su’a William Sio: I am happy to table—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! That is just abusing the ability to raise a point of order to seek to table a document. Those figures are freely available. If the member wants to continue his political debate he does that by raising further supplementary questions.Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I seek your advice on where that leaves the Opposition asking questions when the Prime Minister begins his answer by challenging figures from in this case the census. We are left in the position whereyou say “Well you have to use further supplementary questions for that.” and we are then not able to table the information that the Prime Minister has effectively accused Su’a William Sio of making up.Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I am on my feet. If the member resumes his seat I will assist. It is quite in order for any Minister to rise to his feet and dispute the figures and use some other figures. That is in order. It has been a practice that I have observed here for a long period of time. To try to then table census figures which are freely available to all members if they want further information is an abuse of the system. If the member wants to delve into these figures he should do it with further incisive supplementary questions.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Before I hear the member if the member is in any way attempting to dispute a ruling that I have just made I will take a serious view of it.Hon Trevor Mallard: Not at all.Mr SPEAKER: Good. Then I look forward to the point of order being raised.Hon Trevor Mallard: The suggestion that I would like to make is that I think probably because of the noise in the House the Prime Minister did not hear the question because he said “I don’t know where you got your figures from.”Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member is now just trifling and using the point of order system to do so. It was a political question that was raised. It was addressed by the Prime Minister. It has been answered. If the member wants to continue his line of questioning he should do it with further supplementary questions.Su’a William Sio: I will ask again. How have Pacific peoples enjoyed a brighter future under his Government when according to the 2013 census the median incomes of those living inMāngere have decreased to $19700 a year since 2006 while the incomes of those in Devonport have increased by almost $5000 to more than $35000 and that is without even adjusting for inflation?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am glad the member asked how many Pacific people are enjoying a brighter future because the answer is that 45000 Pasifika children aged between 6 and 12 will get access to free doctors visits.Hon Annette King: It’s got nothing to do with the question.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: We know that Annette King is opposed to free doctors visits. When we look at tertiary training and the brighter future we expanded the number of Māori and Pacific training places from 600 to 3000. When we look at early childhood education participation for Pacific people it went up from 83.6 percent in 2007 to 89 percent. When we talk about a brighter future for young Pacific people in National Certificate of Educational Achievement it has gone up from 55 percent in 2008 to 71 percent for school-leavers very recently. If we look at the number of people on the unemployment benefit that has been falling in recent times. I think all New Zealanders are sharing in the brighter future.Su’a William Sio: How then does he explain that under his so-called rock star economy Pacific people are facing an unemployment rate of 13 percent with Auckland Pasifika people on 14.6 percent unemployment and all consistently in double figures in the last 5 years under his watch?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I would be the first to accept that Pacific unemployment is too high. That is why the Government has been working on a variety of programmes like trade training for people. That is why we are working on lifting education standards so that people have more qualifications. But I do say this one thing to the member and I think he should take it out into the Pacific communities when he goes out in his constituency on the weekend. Under this Government we will continue to welcome migrants from the Pacific; under his Government guess what? His leader is saying no tohis fellow Samoan friends and families who will be stopped under a Labour Government and its anti-migration policy.Su’aWilliam Sio: Does he still stand by his “brighter future” statement when under his Government only 18.5 percent of Pacific people own their own homes compared with 49.8 percent for the general population and 56.8 percent for those of European origin?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes. Of course we would like to see the level of homeownership among Pacific people increase which is why the Government is doing a number of things. But I will say this: the one thing we do know is that if Labour becomes the Government and it applies a capital gains tax—Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order and it will be heard in silence.Grant Robertson: It is out of order for the Prime Minister to inaccurately represent other parties’ policies.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: If I was inaccurately doing that the member would have a fair point of order but actually it is the member’s policy to have a capital gains tax.Mr SPEAKER: The member asked a question around how the Prime Minister stands by his statement about delivering a brighter future. The Prime Minister answered that and then certainly led into towards the end of his answer other parties’ policies. That is not an appropriate way to answer a question. I accept that and I was standing to my feet to try to conclude the Prime Minister’s answer as the member raised his point of order but it is a legitimate point of order.Building and Construction Industry—Security of Payments to Subcontractors9.JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green) to theMinister for Building and Construction: Will he change the Construction Contracts Amendment Bill or promote other legislative change to ensure that money held by a main contractor for payment to subcontractors when their work is completed is not used for any purpose other than paying those subcontractors?Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment) on behalf of theMinister for Building and Construction: The Minister is sympathetic to the position of subcontractors. Officials have been instructed to consider all options to protect subcontractor payments including legislation. This is an important issue and it is essential that any solution is robust. The Minister intends to meet with the Specialist Trade Contractors Federation to discuss the recommendations from his officials once they have completed that work.Julie Anne Genter: Given that subcontractors lost millions in the Mainzeal collapse well over a year ago because their retention moneys were used for other purposes how much longer will subcontractors have to wait for this simple legal protection of their money?Hon AMY ADAMS: I would point out to that member that the Minister has been in the role for 14 days and he has instructed his officials to report back to him on this issue within the month and then very quickly thereafter he will meet with the federation and progress it.Julie Anne Genter: Why is the Government not fixing this problem in the bill that is before the House right now when so many submitters have already asked that this particular bill deal with the retentions issue including the Building Disputes Tribunal the Building Industry Federation the Construction Strategy Group the New Zealand Contractors Federation Inc the New Zealand Law Society the Specialist Trade Contractors Federation Steel Construction New Zealand Master Plumbers Gasfittersand Drainlayers (NZ) Inc the Electrical Contractors Association of New Zealand and many others?Hon Amy Adams: I note that the Commerce Committee in its report suggested that the amendment that the member is talking about would be out of scope for the current bill but I know that the Minister is working through this very carefully with his officials. I would also note that the advice I have had indicates that the sector does not support the legislative fix that that member is promoting.Julie Anne Genter: Will the Government fulfil its promise to act in the wake of the Mainzeal collapse and support my Supplementary Order Paper to ensure that subcontractors are paid for their hard work given that the Government’s bill does not do so?Hon AMY ADAMS: I can tell that member that the Government is not intending to support her Supplementary Order Paper because as I have said first of all we have had some advice that it may be out of scope. Second of all it does not deal with all of the issues in this very important area and a solution needs to be robust. Third and most important the sector does not support it and wants to continue with the process that the Minister is running.Julie Anne Genter: I seek leave to table an issue ofBuildLaw which was put out by the Building Disputes Tribunal which suggests that my Supplementary Order Paper is excellent and is exactly the sort of thing that the Government should be pursuing.Mr SPEAKER: Well the easiest way forward is for the House to decide. Leave is sought to table this particular opinion on a member’s Supplementary Order Paper. Is there any objection to it being tabled? There is not.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Freshwater Management—Budget 2014 and Reform10.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) to theMinister for the Environment: How does Budget 2014 help communities and councils manage their local freshwater resources?Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment): The Government is undertaking significant reforms to better manage New Zealand’s freshwater. These include a National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management a proposed national objectives framework national bottom lines collaborative planning processes and better water accounting. In addition we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on freshwater clean-ups. As part of this last week in Budget 2014 we announced an additional $20 million of new money over the next 4 years to help councils improve the way they plan and make decisions about managing their local freshwater resource and to help communities restore their local freshwater bodies.Jacqui Dean: How will the funding support better decision-making?Hon AMY ADAMS: Good decision-making must be backed by robust high-quality information. Funding in the Budget includes $12 million to support water science economics guidance and implementation for the freshwater reforms. This may include greater information on the current state of their water bodies and the economic and environmental impacts of various water-quality targets and improved data collection to monitor progress. There is also $3 million that includes support for collaborative processes for freshwater management including the development of tools guidance and support. We know these processes have the potential to include a wide range of stakeholders in decision making resulting in stronger more robust outcomes. A further $5 million is targeted to supporting community-led restoration projects through the Te Mana o te Wai Fund announced in partnership with the Māori Party.Te Ururoa Flavell: Is the Minister promoting a compulsory national objective for primary contact for freshwater management; if not why not?Hon AMY ADAMS: What the Government has proposed so far—and I would reiterate that final decisions have not been made—is a compulsory bottom line for human health. That would be the first time ever that there would be a requirement on all councils to manage all freshwater bodies for human health. It would be a decision for the community as to whether they manage that water body for wading and splashing or for full immersion activities. That will depend on how each community views that water body and how they use it. I would also note that actually the board of inquiry in 2010 specifically removed the reference toswimmability.Justice Ministry—Employment Issues11.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) to theMinister of Justice: Does she stand by all her answers to Oral Question No. 11 yesterday?Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): Yes especially my statement that this Government is focused on the big issues.Hon Maryan Street: When the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Justice first advised her of the situation in respect of Nigel Fyfe’s employment what was her response?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: My response to Mr Andrew Bridgman has always been that these are matters for him to decide.Hon Maryan Street: Did the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Justice raise the situation of Nigel Fyfe’s employment with her more than once; if so was her response the same each time?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I really would like that member to be a little bit clearer in her question because she seems to be making some sort of allegation. Mr Bridgman raised with me—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! Allow the Minister to answer the question.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Tell the truth.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: That is out of order. Perhaps the member would like to ask again because I am not quite sure what she was trying to say.Mr SPEAKER: The way forward is for the member to please repeat the question. If we could have a little less noise from the Opposition side it would then be easier for me to hear the answer.Hon Maryan Street: Did the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Justice raise the situation of Nigel Fyfe’s employment with her more than once; if so was her response the same each time?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: My answer to Mr Bridgman when he raised the decision that he had already made in relation to Mr Fyfe and the leave that he was taking was exactly the same.Hon Maryan Street: Did she ever refer to Nigel Fyfe as a “bad egg” to any Auckland acquaintance?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I do not believe I have because it is not a term that I would normally use. It is an old-fashioned term.Hon Maryan Street: Who suggested that Nigel Fyfe should be put on gardening leave or be reinstated as a special projects manager?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I would have no idea. It was obviously a decision of the chief executive not mine. He did not discuss with me what he was doing.Budget 2014—Departmental Output Expenses12.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) to theMinister of Finance: How much have departmental output expenses been cut in Budget 2014 for the 2014/15 financial year compared with the 2013/14 financial year?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of theMinister of Finance: They have not been cut. Departmental output expenses have increased slightly from $12.99 billion in 2013-14 to $13.015 billion in 2014-15. But actually rather than focusing on the amount we spend the focus has to be on the results we get from public services because of course as the member may be aware money does not grow on trees. The Better Public Services programme sets 10 challenging targets for delivery. We are making good progress and the focus is very much on value for money as well as on the overall amount.Andrew Williams: I seek leave to table a document prepared by the Parliamentary Library that shows that departmental output expenses have been reduced by—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The document has been well described. It is a report prepared by the Parliamentary Library for the member himself I am assuming. Is there any objection to that being tabled? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Andrew Williams: What was the reaction from heads of departments in response to the significant cuts to departmental output expenses across four ministries in his Budget?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am sorry but the member is simply wrong and I am trying to divine why he is running this line of questions because that is certainly not the advice from the Budget. As I said if anything the departmental expenses have gone up very slightly. To be of assistance to the House I wonder whether the member is confusing the change of expenses from just single category to multiple category appropriations under the new law which may look like a change in some tables but in actual fact is exactly the same.Andrew Williams: Does he believe additional police officers will be able to be recruited into the police force given the fact that he has cut a whopping $42 million from the police output expenses budget?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: On the particular matter that the member raises my advice is that that was simply a one-off amount that had been placed in the 2013-14 year. It was never expected to continue in the 2014-15 year and it is not having any impact on police numbers.Andrew Williams: How well does he think that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is set to manage health and safety given the increase in workplace deaths and accidents in forestry and in mining and given the fact that the Minister has cut $30 million from the labour department section of the ministry’s budget?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I think it is important for the member to understand that there is a change there in the setting up of the Crown agencyWorkSafe New Zealand where some previously departmental money has been moved into theWorkSafe New Zealand budget and there is actually a big and significant increase in the investment in health and safety through that adjustment. I think again it is important to note also the work that is being done in that area. Although it is very early days we are seeing fortunately some reduction in the casualty rate in the industries that the member raises.Andrew Williams: Does he believe that rural and provincial New Zealand will still have good access to courts and will not face further court closures given that he has cut $22 million from the Department of Courts budget which has seen courts closed in the likes of Dargaville Feilding Upper Hutt and Warkworth?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well I do not agree with the member’s negative analysis. In fact one of the key reasons we are needing less court time than we did previously is that crime has dropped so dramatically under this Government which is why I make the point that actually it is not just about the amount of money spent; it is the quality of that expenditure. The member may not know this but as I said before money just does not grow on trees. No matter how much you water the trees you do not get more money.Andrew Williams: Having cut police courts labour and at least 30 other departmental output budgets by over $284 million how much additional funding has the Prime Minister’s Diplomatic Protection Squad been allocated in the Budget 2014 given the last 4 consequent years of million-dollar blowouts for protecting the Prime Minister?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: And there I was feeling slightly guilty about that arboreal comment before—but no longer because actually I think that the member’s question is ridiculous. The simple fact of the matter is—as I pointed out to him at the very first question he raised—that it has gone up slightly and that this Government is focused on getting results for the investment we make. Actually one of the successes of all the Ministers in this Government—and I think for the Minister of Finance it makes it easier for him to do his job—is that we are actually continuing to get better results from our public services all the time without putting buckets of extra money in.Andrew Williams: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I did not hear any response to the Diplomatic Protection—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The answer addressed the question that was raised by the member.Budget DebateDebate resumed from 20 May on theAppropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill.Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Ātēnā koe Mr Speaker.Otirāhurinoaitōtātou Wharetēnā koutou katoa. Mewhakanuitātouitēneitahua-pūtea.Kua kite katoatātoui te pai me tehuamōngāwhānau katoa o Aotearoa.[Thank you Mr Speaker. Greetings indeed to all of us throughout our House. We must acknowledge this Budget. We have all seen the value and benefit in it for all New Zealand families.]I am pleased and proud to be standing to speak in this Budget debate 2014-15. It is the kind of Budget that is absolutely apposite to its circumstances. We have had six Budgets that have had to be delivered over the course of this Government and each one has been putting in place the building blocks for a stronger economy a richer wealth of society more support for the families and children who need it the most and investing in the sustainability of our country and of our people long term. This Budget delivers all that it should. We have come out from the mess we inherited from the Opposition and from the global financial crisis deftly managed by the Minister of Finance. Each year we have had the right amount of stimulus and the right amount of borrowing balanced against the right amount of investment because we understand unlike those Opposition benches that money does not magically pour through a hole in the sky. It comes from investing in businesses and backing those companies to make greater investment choices themselves to employ more people to offer more jobs to articulate what skills they need and to make sure that our education system delivers on that.This Budget reflects our main priorities: strengthening our economy getting more growth out of it and getting better public services of the kind that my colleague StevenJoyce was just mentioning. We do not simply fund departments to keep existing; we fund them to deliver better services and we are getting better services from our very experienced and capable Public Service. We are also working in a more focused and integrated way amongst Ministers across all portfolios. Again we understand unlike the Opposition that people do not live their lives in sectors; they live their lives. As a result of that you can see that at the heart of this Budget is a big heart for families and children.We are extending paid parental leave and the parental tax credit while at the same time investing more into early childhood education—$155 million which caters for the growth we are already having in early childhood education which itself is a sign of growth in the economy as parents are going back to work and as more people are finding jobs and seeking better and higher-quality early childhood provision for their children. But alongside this at the heart of this Budget is a significant health investment: extending free doctors visits for those up to 13 years old and providing for those prescriptions. We have been able to do this over time because we have built the base to make that possible. Together that $500 million package at the heart of our Budget shows how much this Government cares for is concerned about and is prepared to make an investment in the families and children of this country that we as a country can afford to make.I want to talk a bit more specifically about education. We have had some questions in the House today about why youth unemployment particularly in Pasifika and Māori communities is at the level that it is at. The answer is simple. Those young people if they do not have the skills they need cannot get the jobs that are available. Eighty-four thousand jobs have been created in the economy in the past year. That means more people are getting back to work and of that nearly 11000 are young Pasifika people. We want to see more young people getting the opportunities to get into work and to make a life for themselves and for their families. But that has to be off the back of a sustainable investment which is education. That is why in our portfolio we have for the first time gone over $10 billion. This Government puts its money where its mouth is. It knows that good-quality early childhood education puts our young people on the best learning trajectory possible.We have a Better Public Services target of 98 percent of all new entrants in 2016 having participated in early childhood education. We are at about 96 percent. Both the Pasifika and Māori communities have increased their participation and that is great because it means they can move on into primary school with a stronger set of skills—socialised eager and keen to participate in their own learning. We see improvements across primary schools as well as into secondary schools and on into secondary-tertiary transitions or at least on into training into apprenticeships into more academic courses and into employment.That happens because we do thisunsexy but necessary job of ensuring that five out of five children get the best possible education they can get. That means working away at the system. It means as I have already indicated that we have nearly doubled the investment into early childhood education. We have taken it from $800 million to $1.5 billion over the last six Budgets. At primary and secondary schools we have increased the investment by about 45 percent. The flagship investment of $359 million which the Prime Minister announced in January was the single biggest item in this year’s Budget. That is directed at how we raise the quality of teaching and leading in our schools so that we get more kids across the line and more kids able to make choices for themselves about the kinds of lives they will live.In addition we have recognised that our schools need day-to-day support in their operational funding—$85 million in this Budget. That $85 million keeps pace with theprojected cost of inflation which is only one factor but an important factor. In the last 6 years this Government has put over $600 million into providing that day-to-day support for schools. We know how important it is that schools are able—and this is all their discretionary spending. That is in addition to all of the other investments that we make into schools for professional learning and development for curriculum support and for the very strong investments we are making in properties. New schools are being built in this country.In Christchurch of course about 28 new schools will be built over the next 10 years and 115 schools in all will support a refresh of the education network there—one of the four priorities of this Government. We can expect to see that becoming a leading education network in New Zealand but I think in Australasia as well because of the support we have given to that community and because those education leaders in Christchurch have risen to the many many challenges that they have had to face over the last 3 or 4 years. That has been supported in a wider sense by the investments that my colleague the Hon Gerry Brownlee has made across Christchurch. Our Government has not once resiled from its commitment to ensuring that those communities will be rebuilt that they will continue to be a priority to us and that we will put money in there as it is required and it will be invested wisely to sustain the growth of that community. Education is one part of that story.We are also putting investments in education into the School High Health Needs Fund into Reading Together and into Computers in Homes. These three programmes together will support some of our most needy families. There is $3 million over the next 2 years for Computers in Homes. We expect to be able to help 1500 more families. The Computers in Homes programme does two main things. It helps families to become acquainted with and confident about skills to engage in the digital world. They learn how to use a computer they learn how to access the internet and they learn how to design their own CVs to Google jobs online and to get the information they need. At the end of the programme they receive a computer and 12 months’ access to the internet. But the second equally important and powerful contribution that Computers in Homes makes is that it connects with their children who are more and more being exposed to the opportunities of digital learning in our schools. This Government has invested $700 million into making sure that our kids can participate in 21st century learning. Of that we have invested in ultra-fast broadband to the school gate and we have ensured that the schools are wired to benefit from that connection.My colleague the Hon Amy Adams has been relentless in ensuring that not only are our contractors on time to ensure that this is happening in schools but actually they sometimes get ahead of our timetable. Led by my colleague the Hon Nikki Kaye we have invested in the Network for Learning. This is a managed network that brings data into schools—good quality high speed free 24/7—to support the best possible 21st century learning unlimited and uncapped. This is a $700 million investment and we are continuing to invest in that space making sure that our properties are modern learning environments; that they are fresh light flexible spaces; that they are earthquake-proof; and that we are dealing with leaky buildings. Minister Kaye has overseen a renewal of that very important part of the education portfolio.Our Government has prioritised five out of five learners and this Budget invests to make sure that that becomes a reality every day in classrooms and early childhood centres up and down our country. We are back in black.Le’aufa’amulia ASENATI LOLE-TAYLOR (NZ First): Talofa lavamalo lesoifua.Fa‘afetaitele mo leavanoailau afioga a le Speaker. It is evident that this Government has reassessed its stance on the Pasifika party vote and has indicated in no subtle manner how it hopes to win the hearts of the Pacific population. The decision toput a Pacific face to the role of Minister paved the way for deliberate visits to church services to appeal to the Pacific mass. Even Judith Collins managed to attend a Samoan Catholic mass in South Auckland inMāngere at theMalaeola accompanied by her Asian and part-Samoan husband and followed by a Samoan entourage—an over-the-top display. It was—[Interruption] Sorry I hear somebody.Tim Macindoe: This is the Budget debate.Le’aufa’amulia ASENATI LOLE-TAYLOR: It is. It is coming. It was a masquerade and artificial mana to somehow woo the hearts of the congregation.The National Government clearly expects to take Pasifika votes for granted. You may fool a few but it is not hard to see the underlying game played by National. As we watch the game play unfold there is no real hope given from Budget initiatives that yet again are titled with empty promises of improvements and of a brighter future. The strategy is clear—let us skim enough Pacific party votes to win this election. Let us make them feel good by attending their churches for the first time in numbers and in the year of the election. The problem with this strategy is the undermining of Pacific communities in their ability to see through the facade and recognise good policies that give concrete results to all. Why is it that Pasifika are always—always—on the extreme spectrum of negative statistics yet the last to benefit from Government interventions?The Minister of Pacific Island Affairs has made it clear that the Pacific language is not a priority for this Government. He needs to tell the Prime Minister that language is a very important aspect of learning. It is considered a very important part of the Pasifika culture and schools should be allowed to incorporate languages into their curriculum. New Zealand First will encourage Pasifika to speak their languages. The problem this Government has is that it knows exactly what the needs of Pasifika are but it is reluctant to follow through with any real commitment.It is simple. Pasifika want to earn a stable and fair wage through employment. Pasifika have lost almost $90 a week in their overall weekly income since 2009 yet the cost of living has gone up dramatically. Last year’s Budget saw a pathetic 3000 trade training initiatives introduced to appeal to young Pasifika. A 2014 pre-Budget announcement of $20 million for 6000 more apprenticeships for all New Zealanders shows an increasing demand in priority trades. There needs to be a decrease in the number of Pasifika “neet” youth. Those are the youth who are not in employment not in education and not in training. You would think that with a surplus more would be invested to encourage trade training particularly in the area of rebuilding Christchurch and housing construction in Auckland which would benefit the New Zealand economy.Housing affordability is now at its worst and it is impossible for any of the Pasifika people to access homeownership. It is now at its all-time low of almost 19 percent. Well what can anyone expect with a 20 percent deposit now required and the cost of houses starting from $400000 upwards? The 41 new special housing areas in Auckland will not be effective for many. This Government is out of touch in its belief that the average family can afford over $400000 for a new home.Pasifika do not want handouts. They want the opportunity to work hard in order to earn a living to support their families. You may boast about a surplus but I can tell everyone listening to and watching this debate right now that Pasifika communities are not as excited. One can only hope that the $20 million to $25 million expected spend on Pasifika futures will not end up in the same dubious business asWhānau Ora. Public accountability is imperative in making sure that taxpayers’ money is not being spent on or used to finance projects that deliver unsuccessful outcomes. Pasifika need worthy projects that deliver jobs affordable housing education and good health systems. It has been said by many Pasifika orators of our time: “O le manuusupona temauauma iaanufe o letaeao.”—a bird that gets up early will inherit all the worms in the morning.When the Samoans translate that into oratory wisdom it is that early and well-prepared hunters will catch all the goodness available. A Government with advanced strategies will achieve its expected outcomes if there is genuine commitment for Pasifika which is not the case.Bill English and Nick Smith rambled on and on last year about how the Warm Up New Zealand: Healthy Homes programme was expected to insulate around 46000 homes. Well why do they not come to South Auckland and explain to the Pasifika constituents why many of them are endlessly on the waiting list or forever waiting on the 0800 lines for somebody—anybody—to listen to their housing concerns? Why does the Minister not tell them why waiting for 4 months after speaking to an 0800 line robot about urgent maintenance issues is standard process under his Government? Why does the Government not tell those affected by rheumatic fever asthma and meningococcal disease that it is sorry but to toughen up and to continue to live in an unhealthy unsafe and overcrowded housing situation? Why does Tony Ryall not explain to them why they have to basically prove that they are on their deathbed before anyone will address their health issues?No doubt you will try to cover these issues with the recent release of the $4.3 millionMatanikolo Project to provide 22 families with a better living situation. What a joke. That is a complete joke.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. I just wish to advise members that courtesy is contagious. There is far too much background chatter and unless it relates to parliamentary business I would urge members to take their private conversations outside the Chamber.Le’aufa’amulia ASENATI LOLE-TAYLOR: That is a wonderful comment. Thank you very much.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! The member must not comment.Le’aufa’amulia ASENATI LOLE-TAYLOR: I know that 22 families down one street alone are crying out for help. They are crying out for improvements in their quality of life and future prospects. Too many families will be crammed together on small sites and many of the special housing areas are in places where families are large. Yes indeed you have targeted low-income households but not for any other reason than to ensure that they are left at that end of the spectrum. When you see the struggle of living every day for these struggling families and the overwhelming amount of debt that these families are unable to climb out of there is no light. Why has it taken so long for an initiative to expose the current dire situation of the loan sharks in this country who have preyed upon the vulnerability of low-income families for far too long? Pasifika are often the targets of these low-life lenders who care only about profit margins with no regard for the social implications. Dodgy loan sharks should be held to account and there should be a cap on interest rates.Many of the community may still be excluded if they do not meet basic requirements. Given the harsh reality of the current housing market situation even with this initiative low-income Pasifika families will not be able to afford their own homes. Pasifika parents are put in an uncomfortable situation when schools recommend compulsory school payments and donations. There are also requirements for them to buy laptops and modern technology. Does this Government understand the level of debt a Pasifika student is left with after seeking the rewards of higher education?New Zealand First will lift the minimum wage to $16.50 an hour and the free general practitioner visits should be implemented immediately not next year. Is the election game plan worth playing out when it continues to put many in the back pocket?National might demand the Pasifika vote. It might demand the Pasifika people’s vote but do not tell me that you honestly deserve it because you do not. Thank you.Hon CHESTER BORROWS (Minister for Courts):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. It is a privilege to be able to stand in this Budget debate. I had an interesting week last week. On Monday just gone I went and spoke to Grey Power South Taranaki. We had a really good discussion. Grey Power South Taranaki is a pretty feisty bunch of people. They are always happy to take it to you and ask you the hard questions when you are there to speak to them. But the fact is that South Taranaki and Wanganui over the last few years are experiencing something they have not experienced before and certainly not under other Governments and that is that they are experiencing a higher level of GDP per capita than they ever have before and funnily enough inWanganui’s case a higher level of employment than is the national average. This is because both areas within my electorate are built on the back of the export industry. What we know is that under the previous Government there was not a single job grown in the export sector for 10 years. Looking at where that sits now this Government is focused on providing some certainty around financial policy and some certainty around people investing in the economy particularly in the export sector.The economy of Taranaki and South Taranaki as it comes into the Wanganui electorate is built on the back of dairy farming and the oil and gas industry. Those people involved in oil and gas receive a higher level of remuneration than those employed in similar jobs in other sectors. That is the nature of the industry and it has been very very good for our part of the world and very very good for our country. In respect of dairying though that as people know has been undergoing a purple patch over the last few years in terms of reward for those who are involved in the industry not only farm owners and operators but farm workers as well.The big threat here comes from those promises we have already had from the other side of the House in terms of a Labour-Greens Government. What we know is that there will be a change to personal income tax. It will go up under a Labour-Greens Government. We also know that commercial tax rates will go up under a Labour-Greens Government. We also know that there will be changes to the labour sector—for instance the loss of the 90-day trial and the increase in minimum wages to $15 heading towards $18 after that. We also know that there will be changes to ACC and changes to the Resource Management Act. We also know that there will be the imposition of a capital gains tax and we know that there will be increased charges for carbon. So what we know then is that electricity prices will go up as well and the cost of doing business in this critical export area of dairying is going to become very very heavily taxed and levied. The average dairy farm milking about 400 cows for 140000 kilograms of milk solids is expecting then that it will pay well in excess of $2000 per week in excess taxes and levies and the averagedrystock farm about $1000.This is a critical thing for our electorate. Those people whom we are working with and whom we are speaking to have got their heads around that very very well indeed. The response for instance at the Wanganui riverside market was interesting too. Wanganui as people will know is an area that has struggled in some aspects. Its demographics are such that it has a higher than average older population. That population does not keep in as good health as other relative populations. It has a lesser number of people who are well educated and they are involved in less remunerative work. So the gains that we have made from health care for instance are very very near to the hearts of those people in Wanganui. While many developed countries are freezing or reducing health funding National is spending more on health than any other Government in New Zealand’s history—$1.8 billion of extra investment over 4 years—and taking health spending next year to a record $15.6 billion.It is interesting to note that over the last few years of the Labour Government the Whanganui District Health Board struggled. It struggled to meet its targets it failed in a number of areas and it was in the media for all the wrong reasons. Yet over the last 6 years it has been in the media for all the right reasons. When you look at the measures and when you look at the traffic light index of where those hospitals are required to perform it is meeting all those targets and sits in about the top five of all district health boards around the country except for a couple of measures which are mainly around smoking cessation and others.When we look at the education sector in Wanganui we do very well with our schools there albeit after a lot of depopulation; there are more schools than are required for the population and there are a number of empty chairs. What we do know is that the schools that operate within Wanganui do incredibly well. It is good to note too that the Government is investing heavily in education and recognising the expertise of teachers and principals and their ability to share their expertise around the community in which they work. As every electorate MP knows you may have many many schools within your electorate and they operate at different levels. You can walk into some schools and they are absolutely humming; you walk into other schools and it is like putting on a big wet duffel coat. To share that expertise around those schools in order to make sure that every child has the opportunity for the best possible results in their education is a great thing.I would like to talk a little bit about my portfolios in respect of courts and youth justice. Over the last few years we have invested in courts and invested in savings and we are seeing the results of that which are fantastic. We have invested in the modernisation of courts and I know that across the House we have received support for the investment we have made. Implementing the use of technology within our courts has been a high priority for us and we would like to one day achieve the status of a paperless court. That is some way off; nevertheless it is an ambition that we hold dear. It seems ridiculous to me that the way New Zealanders interact with their banks pay their bills book their hotels and air travel and do a number of other things is all online but when we have to deal with the courts it has got to be a paper-based system. We are moving very quickly in order to be able to change that. An example of that for instance was the Environment Court’s 5-week hearings in relation to theDenniston Plateau where the whole of the court hearing was held oniPads. There was not any paper used through that court process whatsoever.But the big bugbear in courts is reducing waiting times and work on hand. So overall in the last 12 months we have seen an 8.9 percent drop in the time it takes for a court case to move through the District Court system. That is a 16-day reduction. In the criminal jurisdiction it is up to 18.3 percent or a 23-day reduction in the average time of work on hand. Disputes tribunals have sped up just over 21 percent or 17 days quicker than they were before. We are seeing this reflected all the way through our court system and we have firmly between our teeth the bit that is going to take us to an even more efficient system. In collections for instance when we came into office we inherited a debt book of unpaid fines. It was $806 million when we came into office in 2008 and now it is down to $554 million. That is $554 million that is incredibly frustrating because you cannot get your mitts on it. It is like knowing there is $100 stuffed down the back of your couch but you cannot quite get to it. We are doing everything we can to ensure that we can get our mitts on it.I want to finish off with a bit of a story around our youth justice results. When we came into Government in 2008 we set about changing the way we were delivering youth justice to our young people. We received a lot of stick for that. As the legislation went through the Social Services Committee we had a lot of stick about the initiativeswe were taking in the youth justice sector to extend the periods for supervision with activity and supervision with residence and to bolt on to the back of that the ability to have therapeutic treatments around drug and alcohol violence and abuse and those sorts of things. Probably the hottest one was around the introduction of military activity camps. Just to bring Parliament up to speed in respect of our results there in the first 12 months post - military activity camp 79 percent are reducing their frequency of offending 16 percent are not offending whatsoever 81 percent are reducing the severity of offending and there is a 53 percent reduction in violent offending. It is good to note that the heat has now gone out of this debate. Labour the Greens and all parties on the Opposition side are fully in support of the youth justice initiatives that we implemented in 2008 because we are seeing the benefits of them. Thank you.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I always enjoy the build-up in your introductions to the next speaker Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. For all of the rhetoric in this House in the aftermath of the Budget I think it is still important to reflect that ultimately Budgets should be about one thing. They should be about people. It is easy to get distracted by all of the different debate around appropriations and year-on-year comparisons but underneath it all people are ultimately what a Government’s Budget should be about. At the end of the day there is no better measure as to whether a Government is serving the needs of the country the needs of the people in the country than whether the Budget is directed towards the immediate needs that those people are facing. If we were to distil down those needs I think it is pretty simple to see through all of the media coverage around people’s concerns at the moment and the worries that families have—and even when you are a politician and youdoorknock you know immediately at the top of your mind what people are worried about in their day-to-day lives.That is what this Budget should have been about. The things that people are worried about are really simple basic needs. Firstly they are worried about whether they can afford to live in a decent house—and not just whether can they rent it but whether they can ever aspire to live in their own home—and whether the home they are living in is warm and dry and that their kids are well and safe inside it. Secondly they are worried about whether their kids are generally getting a good start—the best start—in life and having all of the opportunities that they had as parents. No matter what and no matter how you paint parents from across the spectrum underneath it all almost every single parent without doubt wants better for their kids—without doubt. Thirdly people those individuals we are talking to on the doorsteps are worried about whether they have the kind of job that enables them not just to get some satisfaction from getting up in the morning and going and doing that job but to provide for themselves—that is whether they can sustain themselves with the income and the wages that they are receiving in that work let alone provide for a family.So in that context based on those three simple needs how did this Budget perform? Well the Government has talked a lot about the needs of families. I think probably it detected that there was a desire amongst people to see something for families in this Budget. I think that as Labour members we did a pretty good job of raising the profile of the needs of family members. We set the bar with the Best Start policy. We challenged the Government to do something also. But the challenge was based on evidence. There are 285000 children living in poverty in New Zealand. That is roughly 27 percent. But if you break that down even further for all of the Prime Minister’s rhetoric about what he has done for Pasifika people in New Zealand one in three Pasifika children is living in poverty. They are one of the major groups who are suffering particularly at present in that regard. We know also that of that group 10 percent are living at what has been called the hardest end of poverty. That means theyare living on even less than what the poverty line is established at which is 60 percent of median income. We also know that three out of five children living in poverty will live there for a long time. They are most likely to live there in their youngest years so under the age of somewhere around 4.When we know all of that what did this Budget do for that group? The Minister of Finance talked about tackling the hardest end of poverty. He said that last week in the House before the Budget came out. He said that that is what his Government was going to do. But did it? I almost find that there is an irony in this—that the Government stated that this is the very group that needed a targeted response but the targeting happened precisely around them making sure that they were the only ones almost who were excluded from the Government’s Budget measures. The Government extended the parental tax credit by an extra 2 weeks so families get it for 10 weeks now and it upped the rate a bit to $220 a week. That is all good stuff—not quite as much as we would have liked but all good stuff. But the Government then said the parental tax credit will not go to anyone on an income-tested benefit yet the majority of families living in poverty are those exact families. So unfortunately the notion of it being a “fudge-it Budget” started right at that place for the families who needed it most. And what did the Minister of Finance say those families would get? Well they should celebrate because apparently they got a CPI adjustment and that is about it.The Government has come back and said in defence of itself that it has made free health care for under-13-year-olds universal—starting next year I should add. Well I would wager that probably what the Government did was go away and do a rough calculation. Since National has come into Government we have had 40000 preventable hospitalisations for children. If you want to save money for the taxpayer one simple thing to do would be to try to put a bit more money into primary health care and see whether you can prevent those hospitalisations. It is a simple measure. It is a simple act to take. But as Dr Nikki Turner has said free doctors visits do not solve the root causes of poverty and therefore they will not resolve poverty-related diseases. And what are those poverty-related diseases? They are respiratory illnessesbronchiectasis and illnesses like that; more and more infectious skin diseases; and of course the one that gets batted around the most rheumatic fever. All of those illnesses come out of the basis usually that we have children living in damp cold overcrowded houses. So if you genuinely wanted to get to the root causes of those issues and therefore help those at the hardest end of poverty as the Government purports then you would have been dealing not only with the housing issue which we know that this Budget did not but with the fact that ultimately parents want to be able to manage their own circumstances. Where is their economic independence? Where is the focus on ensuring that they have the wages and the salaries required to make sure that they are able to ensure that their families are growing up in an environment that prevents those illnesses?But what else did the Government set out as its own measures for success in this Budget? We had veneer—the facade I guess—of wanting to support families but next was the surplus. The Government set up a goal that basically said that if it achieved surplus then it would have achieved every goal it needs to achieve as a Government—end of. That is all that needs to be done with this Budget. And yes the Government got there. But how did it do it? Well by holding on to ACC levies at a higher rate than it needed to by cutting down spending for the Christchurch rebuild—which by the way is meant to be our primary economic stimulus—and by reframing New Zealand Transport Agency spend as loans. It is doing that in the context of having already clocked up $56 billion in debt. We are paying $10 million a day in interest on the debt this Government has accrued. What a shameful thing that is.But what we have argued and Labour is strongly putting forward as a counter is a plan for surplus that at the same time resolves some of the systemic issues that the Government chooses to ignore. On poverty for instance we need to act immediately. We need immediate relief for those children living at the hardest end in their early years. The Best Start package does not help for 10 weeks; it helps those families for 3 years because we know that those are the most important years. The second thing is immediate action on low wages. We will lift the minimum wage and we will support a living wage but we will also recognise that we need to lift wages generally. We need a high-wage economy and you achieve that through investment in research and development through a monetary policy that supports exporters and our manufacturers and by just generally acknowledging that we have to do things differently if we are going to give our families the economic independence they deserve. On housing—because it is after all about kids about jobs and about housing—the market has failed. It is obvious. Everyone knows it; everyone has seen it. We are going to get stuck in. We will ourselves as the Government build 100000 affordable homes. We will introduce a capital gains tax so that our tax system is fairer and we will move away from a housing market that is dominated by speculators. We will say that if you want to own a home in New Zealand you need to be a resident here. That is fair enough. And we will make sure that we have the social housing we need to support those who need it most.Budgets should be about people. We know that New Zealanders want New Zealand to be the fair and equal place they grew up with it being. We can return to that. We can do it by making sure that every child has the very best start in life that every family has a warm dry home and that everyone has a job that keeps them supported and gives them dignity. That is a Government you could believe in and that is what Labour will deliver.JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): The Prime Minister was right when he said in question time that the Labour Party used to care. The Labour Party used to care about a growing economy. The Labour Party used to care about the welfare of New Zealanders. The Labour Party used to care about those who were down on their luck and needed help from the Government the most. But when we hear Labour Party MPs questioning popular and necessary Budget initiatives like free general practitioner visits for those under 13 when we hear Labour MPs wanting to impose more costs on New Zealanders wanting to buy homes when you hear Labour MPs now complaining about the fact that New Zealanders are voting with their feet and are staying in this country you have to wonder why the Labour Party is in such dire straits right now. It is because it simply does not get it any more.The Labour Party simply does not get it any more but New Zealanders do. New Zealanders get it right now because they understand that this economy is growing. They understand that more children are getting an education in this economy. They understand that more children are getting the health care they require and that more operations are taking place. They understand that crime is coming down and that the law and order situation in this country is so much better than it ever was under Labour. And they also understand that wages are rising and that it is going to become even easier to get into a home in future years. They know that it is working.Jacinda Ardern was the last individual speaking from the other side. Jacinda Ardern is the police spokesperson for the Labour Party. I have heard her make comments about the police budget in recent weeks. The fact of the matter is that when it comes to the police our police are doing such a good job that crime is down 20 percent.Hon Annette King: You wait.JAMI-LEE ROSS: Those members do not like to hear it. They like to cackle from the other side of the House but crime is down 20 percent. We have the lowest crimerate in 33 years. When Annette King was in Government crime actually started to rise just a little bit in Labour’s last year. It actually started to rise in her last year when she was the police Minister. Crime has now dropped by 20 percent. Reoffending in this country is coming down. Reoffending is down 12.5 percent in this country because of the investment of time and effort that Ministers like Judith Collins and Anne Tolley have put into the police and corrections budgets. New Zealanders know that that is the situation. They know that it is successful. They know that it is working.Jacinda Ardern also talked about housing. I am glad she talked about housing because I live in the Botany electorate where some of the important special housing areas that are going to get Auckland housing moving again are taking place. Nick Smith just recently a couple of weeks ago announced the largest of the special housing areas in Flat Bush near where I live. In the Flat Bush special housing area 4500 houses are going to be built—4500. The people living in that area are seeing housing taking off. They are seeing the builders getting out there and working. They are seeing the developers getting out there subdividing the land and increasing the supply that we desperately need in this country.And then we hear the Labour Party talking about its 100000 houses over 10 years. Well guess what! That is 10000 a year. Under National we are already building 13000 right here. Thirteen thousand houses a year are going to be built under National under the housing accord and the special housing areas. The Labour Party’s big idea for housing is 100000 houses 10000 a year. That is fewer than are being proposed and it is happening under the special housing area policy that this Government is implementing. And that 13000 is only in Auckland. The Labour Party’s plan is supposedly for across the whole of the country. Labour simply does not get it. Its numbers are wrong and it actually will not do anything under the policies it is proposing. If it really cared about housing it would get in and support Resource Management Act reform which this country desperately needs—Resource Management Act reform that is being blocked by the likes of the Labour Party and being blocked by the likes of the Green Party. Those are policies that should be taking place.If we look at a capital gains tax those parties believe that that is the grand panacea for housing. Well it is being done in Australia right now and guess what! It is not working. Under Labour housing costs went up by 96 percent. In the past 5 years they have gone up by only 28 percent. Compare that 96 percent with 28 percent. If you want to ask New Zealanders whom they believe on housing just look at the statistics. They know that the Labour Party has got it absolutely wrong.I also want to talk about jobs because jobs are what is going to get New Zealanders wealthier. The jobs are what is going to get New Zealanders out of welfare and on to a better track for their lives. I listened a little bit to Asenati Lole-Taylor and Jacinda Ardern lamenting the fact that there are individuals out there who do not have jobs lamenting the fact that there are individuals out there who are in difficult circumstances. That is absolutely right.There are people in this country who need a helping hand. There are people in this country who need to get back on their feet. The only way they are going to get back on their feet is if we have a growing economy if we get more jobs for them if we help get them better educated and if we ensure that law and order is sorted out in this country. Those are the things we are doing. Those are the things that are going to get people out of the poverty trap. The extra 170000 jobs that will be created over the next 4 years will get those people out of the poverty trap. The 84000 jobs that were created in the past year are helping to get New Zealanders out of the poverty trap. Fifteen thousand New Zealanders are coming off welfare right now. Fifteen hundred a week are coming off welfare right now. In the last year 30000 fewer children ended up living in benefit-dependent homes. Thirty thousand children are no longer living in benefit-dependent homes. Those are the children who are going to be the success of the future. Those are the children whose parents have been able to get into work and who will be better off because of it. For everyone else who is on welfare right now we should be doing everything we possibly can to help them get a job help them get better educated and ensure that they and their children are healthy—that is the way to a prosperous New Zealand.Those people on the other side might like to think that we over on this side are all just rich Tories and everything like that. Well I have to say I remember growing up in South Auckland with a young mother and no father in a poor household. You know the best thing I was taught when I was growing up was to work hard get educated and do what you can to get ahead in life. If every New Zealander who wants to get ahead in life just worked hard got educated and put their best foot forward with help from the Government to get into jobs that is the way New Zealanders get ahead in this country.I am particularly proud of being a National member of Parliament when we are seeing more kids getting educated. When we came into office 67 percent of children were getting National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2; that is now at 77 percent.Hon Trevor Mallard: Standards are dropping.JAMI-LEE ROSS: Standards are not dropping. National standards are ensuring that we can actually measure how things are working properly. Trevor Mallard the failure of an education Minister never cared about properly measuring children. It took Anne Tolley to sort that system out. It took Anne Tolley to put in place a national standards system so that New Zealanders actually know how their children are faring.I am also proud of being part of a Government that is investing properly in Auckland transport. There is hundreds of millions of dollars of money being invested through this Budget and in past Budgets into Auckland transport. We are fast-tracking development in Auckland transport over the next 10 years. The Prime Minister last year announced $10 billion worth of investment in Auckland transport. That has been reflected in this Budget and New Zealanders living in Auckland know that as well.ACC levies are coming down more jobs are being created more kids are getting healthy and more kids are getting an education—that is what this country wants. And if you want to see how much New Zealanders appreciate the fact that this country is in a much better shape just look at how they are voting with their feet. Under Labour 3000 New Zealanders a month were leaving for Australia; now it is only 350. Labour wants to change the immigration system as it stands. It wants to change it completely. It is actually a bit confused about it. But right now the statistics are showing that New Zealanders are voting with their feet. This country is in much better shape because of the John Key - led Government and I am proud to be a part of it.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I welcome the Government’s move to fund doctors visits for children under 13. That is required urgently. However the detail of the implementation requires scrutiny. For under-6-year-olds parents will find that doctors visits are not truly free and still incur significant charges. How many parents understand that New Zealand’s children will have to wait another 13 months before free doctors visits come into effect? The legislation is required immediately. How many children will suffer in the next 13 months because of this delay? We all agree that there should be free medical care for children under 13 and I call upon this Government to advance the legislation to come into effect before the House rises on 31 July. I welcome the move to extend paid parental leave to 18 weeks but again parents will have to wait nearly 2 years for the 18 weeks to apply.I turn to education. Sure money has gone in but most of it is being used to fix leaky buildings and to create a restructuring—executive teachers executive principals. Where in this Budget is the planning for 2020? Steven Joyce has been quoted as saying that ultra-fast broadband will revolutionise the way we trade the way we operate and the way we communicate and he is right. But the reality is that New Zealand is seriously lagging behind the rest of the world on two fronts: planning and infrastructure. We need ultra-fast broadband immediately. Where in the Budget is there money to upskill our children young people and the existing workforce to provide us with the digital literacy that is required?We are fast moving into a world of predictive computing wearable computing and quantum computing where computers will mimic and synthesise in seconds information that currently takes months. Retail as we know it is changing dramatically. We are moving from a world where the consumer goes to the market to one where the market goes to the consumer. Thousands of jobs will be lost but thousands more will be created. Where is the identification of and planning for the skills and competencies of children young people and the existing workforce to operate and to face these challenges? By 2020 we will have 3-D printers just like—Hon Trevor Mallard: He should have read it through first out loud.BRENDAN HORAN: —we used to have fax machines. They will be ubiquitous. There is a word for you—sorry Mr Assistant Speaker; it was Mr Mallard I was referring to. And manufacturing as we know it today will end. We need money in the Budget so that New Zealand businesses can compete in the new world that is coming. Our workforce needs these skills and competencies and so do we. So where is the plan?I turn to housing. In the Budget the shame of housing is Christchurch. It is a stain on the soul of New Zealanders that the people of Christchurch are still suffering. Last week I met a couple—a 70-year-old and a 74-year-old—who after 3 years are still living in unhealthy conditions because of the bureaucratic failure of the Earthquake Commission and Southern Response. This couple had their first claim turned down because inspectors were too lazy to lift the carpets so a 70-year-old and a 74-year-old had to do it themselves. Then they paid over $20000 to private engineers and found that the concrete flooring slab had cracked and that the waterproof membrane was breached promoting an osmotic effect and lifting the water up into the house. How can these people still be suffering after all this time? They are still fighting for fairness.The truth is that there is a complete lack of accountability in Christchurch. Who is accountable for the bungling bureaucracy that has forced people in Christchurch to live in squalid and unhealthy conditions for over 3 years? Who is the person responsible for holding up the cheques to the people in need? Who is the person responsible for ensuring that work done meets the required standards? Who is responsible for Southern Response’s low-ball settlement offers? Who is responsible for the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment guidelines that were supposed to provide uniformity for reinstatement? These guidelines actually breach the Building Act because they provide for a lower level of repair and reinstatement than that Act requires. The citizens of Christchurch have been treated with contempt.We need an urgent inquiry into building practices and into billing by contractors. I know of jobs being overcharged. Here is an example: $200 worth of materials $600 worth of labour and finally the Earthquake Commission being invoiced for over $15000. Added to that the Government is saving money off the backs of suffering New Zealanders breaching trite law by operating to section 9 of schedule 3 and substituting that section of the Earthquake Commission Act ahead of the primary definition which is to reinstate homes to as similar a condition as when new. Trite law requires that an Act must be read in its entirety but the Earthquake Commission is reading andoperating section 9 of schedule 3 in isolation. In Christchurch we need accountability and we need it now.I turn now to Vote Parliamentary Service. Recently I have received information that raises real questions about the use of parliamentary funding by a party. I am writing to the Speaker asking that the Parliamentary Service investigate these matters and report to him. There was a clear precedent for this when in December 2001 the then general manager John O’Sullivan reported to the Speaker on the Alliance electorate liaison unit. That report swept aside any uncertainty that might have existed and clearly stated the rules. The leader of New Zealand First cannot claim to be ignorant—Richard Prosser: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.BRENDAN HORAN: —but in the past 18 months has ignored the rules—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! There is a point of order.Richard Prosser: The Budget debate is around the Government’s allocation of funding for various means and the use of that funding—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No. Look—[Interruption] Order! The member will sit. The member in opening talked about Vote Parliamentary Service. That is what he is speaking on and he can continue in that vein. I am listening very carefully to what he is saying. That comes under Speakers’ rulings. I am inviting Brendan Horan to continue.BRENDAN HORAN: It is good to see he had a voice there but it is a shame he does not have vertebrae.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is completely out of order. That is an attack on the integrity of a member of this House. The member will withdraw and apologise for that comment.BRENDAN HORAN: I withdraw and apologise for that comment.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Brendan Horan—continue.BRENDAN HORAN: He has deliberately withheld information from the board of the New Zealand First Party. The New Zealand First Party—Andrew Williams: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Under Standing Order 117 “Personal reflections” “A member may not make an imputation of improper motives against a member an offensive reference to a private member’s affairs”—Standing Order 117.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Look I know that this is a very interesting subject. This debate is about the spending not the person. We are in a debate on Vote Parliamentary Service. Anything to do with the appropriation and the way that money has been appropriated how it is being used and how it is being spent is a matter for debate and that is what we are on now. So Brendan Horan will continue.BRENDAN HORAN: The New Zealand First Party is using taxpayer-funded computer software for party political purposes such as campaigning and fund-raising. The program code named Vanguard—Barbara Stewart: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Again Mr Horan is transgressing Standing Order 117 making a personal reflection against a member or a—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No no. The member has talked about a party. He has not mentioned any individual in this matter.Hon Annette King: That’s cute.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry? And if we look at Standing Order 117 it says that “A member may not make an imputation of improper motives against a member an offensive reference to a member’s private affairs or a personal reflection against a member.” I am listening very carefully to this. The member must keep focusing on the appropriation to the Parliamentary Service the use andappropriation of that money and any concerns that the member may have if that is the way that his speech wishes to continue.Andrew Williams: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Speaker has in the last 2 weeks on numerous occasions advised members that if they have any issue in this regard it should be referred in the normal manner through the Privileges Committee or through other official channels; it should not be raised in this House. The Speaker has made that ruling on numerous occasions. We would like that to be upheld.Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The member will sit. It may well be the case that there is a referral to the committee but this is a debating chamber and members in this House have freedom of expression freedom to express their views. I am listening very carefully to this. I will ask the member to focus on Vote Parliamentary Service. As I have mentioned before the debate is about the appropriation of the money and the use of that money and the member should not bring into account the integrity of any member of this House. All members are honourable members. I will ask the member to focus on that.BRENDAN HORAN: Vote Parliamentary Service—the New Zealand First Party is using taxpayer-funded computer software for party political purposes such as campaigning and fund-raising. The program code-named Vanguard is a constituent relationships management system that stores personal details of voters and is used for mass mail-outs. Other political parties have these programs too—Barbara Stewart: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This program has not been launched. It is not part of—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): That is not a point of order. I will ask members that on points of order they be relevant to the matter. That is not a point of order.BRENDAN HORAN: Other political parties have these programs too but they are funded by the parties themselves and operated outside of Parliament. New Zealand First paid tens of thousands of dollars out of the leader’s budget to develop this software and has its parliamentary staff working to run the program for election year. This is a clear breach of Parliamentary Service guidelines.An internal party strategy document dated 9 March 2014 states under the heading “Funds”: “Campaign fund request first 2 weeks April—Self-funding after initial distribution followed by use of Vanguard appeals to focus groups.” A memo to the party board by the president Anne Martin dated 10 March 2014 states: “The director of operations canvassed the use of Vanguard computer program. Suggest board advised of its uses including candidates’ college program as well.” This use of parliamentary resources for fund-raising appeals and political campaigning is more than questionable especially from the New Zealand First Party which promised a fair go in the last election. The public have a right to know what their money is being used for and whether it is being used legally.A company called Lone Star Market Research was registered on 1 August 2012. The company’s sole director is New Zealand First’s director of operations in Parliament and is a member of the party’s campaign committee. The company was set up with the intention of conducting political activity for New Zealand First. New Zealand needs an assurance from the Parliamentary Service and the leader of New Zealand First that Lone Star Market Research has not received one cent of taxpayer money nor had the use of parliamentary resources.Barbara Stewart: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.BRENDAN HORAN: The New Zealand First—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! There is a point of order from Barbara Stewart.Barbara Stewart: This information is totally incorrect. It is just fantasising and although I realise it is a wide-ranging debate—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No no; I do not need any help. I have indicated that anything relating to Vote Parliamentary Service is in order. If the member ties that into Vote Parliamentary Service that—Barbara Stewart: But it’s wrong.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Whether it is wrong or right is a matter for debate. This is a debating chamber. It is not for me to judge the accuracy of the information that has been presented. So long as it ties into Vote Parliamentary Service it is in order. Brendan Horan has 1 minute remaining.BRENDAN HORAN: Vote Parliamentary Service—the New Zealand First Party membership secretary present at board meetings and recorded in the minutes of those meetings is paid by Parliamentary Service for a full-time out-of-Parliament support role in the New Zealand First office in Bank Street Whangarei. That is a clear conflict of interest. This paper trail leads down the pathway to inappropriate use of public moneys serious conflicts of interest secrecy and a lack of transparency and accountability and all from a party that purports to hold everyone else to task. There seem to be clear breaches of the Speaker’s directions on the provision of services to MPs and parties. Staff would seem to be in breach of the Parliamentary Service code of conduct. I call upon the leader of that party to open his leader’s budget accounts to the scrutiny of the Speaker first and then to the public of New Zealand.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call the Hon Chris Tremain. [Interruption] Point of order Brendan Horan.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): I seek leave to table an email received on 6 May 2014 stating facts regarding Vanguard.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): I seek leave to table the minutes from the New Zealand First board meeting on 2 March 2013.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): How many points of order do you have?Brendan Horan: Well there are a number. [Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Look—[Interruption] Order! One moment. Look points of order will be heard in silence. I am asking the member how many points of order he is intending to bring forward.Brendan Horan: Three more.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): OK.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): I seek leave to table a New Zealand First memo to electorates in mid-July.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): I seek leave to table a report to the board by Anne Martin of 10 March 2014.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): I seek leave to table a report of a strategy meeting on 19 March 2014 entitled “Use of Vanguard for fund-raising”.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.Hon CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier): It gave me huge pleasure to return to the Hawke’s Bay after the Budget was announced last Thursday and to share it with family friends and constituents. It was extremely well received in the Hawke’s Bay. People have seen unlike the Opposition how we have gone through a very difficult recession over the last 6 years and how this Government has progressed through that recession and has landed this economy in a superb position to go forward. They are seeing the results of that now in terms of job growth in terms of the economy going forward in leaps and bounds and most particularly in terms of the turn-round in immigration. If there is something that says that this country is going ahead it is when the migration statistics turn round and all of sudden we see net positive migration back to this country.This will be my last Budget debate speech before I leave Parliament. I am extremely proud to have been part of this particular Budget. I am extremely proud to be a New Zealander and extremely proud to be a member of this House and of the National Party supporting this Budget which was delivered last Thursday. National came into Government on the promise of delivering a brighter future. We have delivered that brighter future through our actions over the past 5 years and through the outstanding Budget of which I speak.Do not take just my word for it. International commentators around the globe are watching New Zealand become an economic prosperity story in the South Pacific. Take Standard and Poor’s for instance which cut New Zealand’s credit rating in 2011 after the Canterbury earthquakes and which has now said of this Budget that the Government is on track to meet its targeted operating surplus in 2015 which would improve the fiscal balance consistent with its AA currency rating and stable outlook. That is just one international commentator.Secondly Standard and Poor’s has also said that the Government is consolidating its fiscal position partly reflecting its ongoing efforts to reduce its cost base while maintaining public services. I think that is what Kiwis understand. Throughout the nation be it in Wanganui Auckland or Hawke’s Bay we have got through this without cutting the guts out of public services. We have actually continued to deliver them to make increases particularly in education and health and the public has seen the results of that particularly in the Better Public Services area which Chester Borrows spoke of earlier.In education on which Hekia Parata spoke—in early childhood education and in every area of education we have seen lifts. It is absolutely fantastic. We only have to look across the Ditch to Australia and its comparative Budget to see the chalk and cheese of South Pacific Budgets. On the one hand we have New Zealand which forecasts a $300 million surplus in 2014-15 and as a result provides positive choices for new spending debt reduction and/or potentially tax cuts into the future. On the other hand we have Australia which just a day earlier forecast a $30 billion Budget deficit massive expenditure cuts to its schools hospitals pensions and its foreign aid together with tax increases to arrest the deficit decline. That is the recipe that the Opposition in this House has delivered. That was the position that we came into in 2008 with ever-ongoing deficits forecast. The Australian situation is also the legacy of a Labor-Green Government and of uncontrolled spending. We saw it here when we came into office as I said previously.Putting that aside let us return to our Budget. It looks ahead building on the hard work done by Kiwis to 2 percent to 4 percent economic growth and a $372 million surplus growing to $1.3 billion in 2015-16 and $3.5 billion in 2017-18. That gives us real choices—$1 billion of new spending in this Budget and $1.5 billion in 2015. Government debt will peak at 26.4 percent way below where it was originally forecast in 2008 when we came in. We are seeing wage growth. The average annual wage is up $3000 in the past 2 years and is expected to rise by $7600 to $62300 by 2018. That is positive news. That is the economy going forward. We have also had forecasts of 170000 new jobs over the next 4 years and ACC levy cuts of around $480 million. That is significant. Consumer and business confidence is at an all-time high. That is to be celebrated. But as I said earlier of particular note is the turn-round in migration. If Chester Borrows and Dr Paul Hutchison reflect on where we were at in the mid-2000s the emigration out of this country was dismal. Now we are seeing net positive migration. That is a positive thing.I am particularly proud that as we have got choices we are now delivering for families supporting children and families through this Budget. As the economy grows of course we can deliver more jobs and better wages for those families. In particular there has been a $500 million package of practical support for young families particularly for vulnerable children. That includes free general practitioner visits and free prescriptions for all children under 13 4 extra weeks of paid parental leave increases to the parental tax credit and an additional $155 million for early childhood education. There we are seeing significant rises in Māori and Pacific Island children attending early childhood education and improving their results in school. We are also seeing $33.4 million extra to support vulnerable children which includes eight new Children’s Teams to work with at-risk children.This is a great Budget. It demonstrates a Minister of Finance at the top of his career. I want to congratulate Bill English and his team on their outstanding effort. Name for me a Minister of Finance with a better track record in the world at this point in time. Name for me a better Minister of Finance—I challenge you.The success of this year’s Budget has resulted in some very interesting and immediate political moves across the country and in the provinces. Firstly we saw the very hard-working Darien Fenton decide that she was retiring. Then interestingly we saw a range of Labour candidates announce that they would now not be standing for the list in Hawke’s Bay. Both Stuart Nash and AnnaLorck have announced they will not be seeking a place on Labour’s list.This is very revealing and it can be for one of only two reasons. Firstly they have read the tea leaves and they have realised they will be so far down on the list that they will not have a bolter’s show of getting into Parliament through that door or secondly they have been following the polls they have watched the Budget and where that has landed and they have realised that even with a good list position the chance of them getting into Parliament is remote. So they have decided to go for an all-out constituency—not list—contest. So what we now have if Labour did not already know are a couple of rogue candidates in the bay. Goodbye party vote; hello personal vote. Goodbye party vote; hello personal vote.Here is what is going to happen. Candidates will have wildly different policy positions and they will not put their leader’s photo on their billboards. That is for sure. Consider those billboards because this is where it gets really interesting. Some of you will recall that at the last election Stuart Nash went all out for the electorate vote as well. He thought Labour and its leader were so bad that he would not put Phil Goff on his election billboards. So he did not. Despite this strategy he lost and was tossed out of Parliament. What is the bet he will not put David Cunliffe on his billboards this year?He has got a track record in this space. And what about AnnaLorck? Will she have David Cunliffe on her billboards? Well with tweets like this one: “Can’t waittilCunliff turns up in HB… We haven’t forgotten he sacked our DHB…he’s no leader he’s a bully”—he’s no leader; he’s a bully. What a classic. She also refused to delete those tweets when she was challenged.So here is the wider question: will she put David Cunliffe on her billboards and how many of those in the Opposition will? Will Trevor Mallard put David Cunliffe on his billboards? Just imagine if the hierarchy in the Labour Party allows this to happen around the country. Just imagine if it allows rogue candidates like Nash andLorck to prevail against the unity of the party. If it allows this to happen Labour’s party vote will implode. I predict an absolute whitewash.This is a fantastic Budget. I am proud of what it has delivered for New Zealanders around the country and for families. It is outstanding progress for our country and it is fantastic to see the turn-round in migration. Thank you.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): That was a very very ironic speech from a member Chris Tremain who is bailing out of the National Party. He is not willing to stand again in Napier because Stuart Nash is going to beat him at the next election. And what is he doing now? He is now helpingStu Nash win the seat for Labour. That is what that member is doing. So I found that speech very interesting when he wanted to name the Labour members who wanted to retire forgetting that he was doing that himself.I actually have found it almost cringe-making to listen to John Key Bill English and now Chris Tremain today crowing about how much better New Zealand is doing than Australia under a National Government. They did it on Budget day. Chris Tremain did it today. Well you know they remind me of one of those cricket commentators we have in New Zealand. We win one test out of four and suddenly we are the world champions. The National Party members think that because for one year we have a better record in some things than Australia we are now doing far better than that country.Well I say before they get too cocky and make us look like fools let us have a look at just a few facts. The unemployment rate in New Zealand after 5 years of the National Party is now on a par with Australia. The Australian GDP per capita is around $48000 in US dollars and New Zealand’s is 30 percent below. That is today. The New Zealand Government’s surplus was at 3.7 percent of GDP in 2007 and it went to a deficit of 5.1 percent in 2010 while the Australians had a surplus of 1.5 percent in 2007 and they ended up with a deficit of 5 percent of GDP in 2010. In other words the last Labour Government left the National Party in a much better state to handle the global financial crisis in New Zealand than any other country.I have to say have a look at the growth projections in the New Zealand Budget and have a look at the growth projections in the Australian Budget. In 2015-16 the growth projections in Australia pass New Zealand. In 2016-17 there is an even bigger projected growth in Australia compared with New Zealand and in 2017-18 it is the same. I have to say one swallow does not make a summer and one year when we might have beaten Australia does not mean that we are now in a better position. I cringe when we go into that sort of behaviour. The Aussies must be having a good old laugh over there as well.One of the things that John Key has been saying about this Budget is that 12 percent of households now pay 76 percent of all net tax in New Zealand. Well I need to tell the members opposite that there is no such measure as net tax. What he is saying is totally untrue because he ignores GST. Forty percent of our tax take comes from GST. Who pays most of the GST in New Zealand? Those on middle and low incomes. In factthose on low incomes spend almost all their money and that means they pay GST on everything that they buy.I want to turn to the health budget and say now for some real facts about the health budget. Here are some truths abut what has been happening to health funding under Tony Ryall. I think it is now time to put aside the political slogans that have been posturing as a health policy and look at the impact of six Budgets under this Minister of Health.Did the members opposite realise when they were clapping and cheering on Budget day that the health budget has been reduced in real terms by 2.3 percent in this Budget? They are not my figures; they are Treasury’s own figures and they are in the “blue book” if members want to go and look at them. If they take the time to read the shape of health in the future under a National Government if it is re-elected they will see that it does not look good at all—not my figures; Treasury’s figures. And they are not old figures either. They are the latest figures and projections in the Budget document put out by Treasury which we heard today from Mr Joyce—when he wanted to quote Treasury—we should be listening to.So let us have a look at what these figures are. We have got 2.3 percent less in this health budget—that is in total expenditure—and we are going to have when we look at 2015-16 3.7 percent less. In 2016-17 it will be 3.6 percent less and in 2017-18 it will be 3.1 percent less in real terms.I have to say that those figures are from the Budget projections in the National Government’s own Budget. Did New Zealanders know that? Did they know that National has not only cut this year’s health budget by 2.3 percent in real terms but is projecting a cut in the health budget out through the years? That is the truth. That truth needs to be reported in the media. I am really disappointed that a fact like that which is going to affect people’s health through the services the Government provides—and perhaps affect the way that people vote—is not being portrayed in the media.Those are big cuts in health when you consider that all but one Budget under Tony Ryall has cut the health budget. We now know what is happening in health in terms of the provision of services. Then next year should the National Party win people are going to say: “Oh my goodness! Oh no! There’s been a cut in health care. My I’ve heard that my mum can’t get an operation on her dodgy hip.” or they will find that her home help has been cut. Well I have to say wake up New Zealand. The National Government has cut the health budget. If you vote for those members they are going to cut it every year in the foreseeable future.In this Budget we did welcome the free doctors visits for under-13-year-olds but the devil is in the detail. The questions I was asking today were not meant to criticise the fact that there was free health care for under-13-year-olds. After all after the Budgets of the 1990s when we had had affordable health care and the subsidies were taken away by Ruth Richardson and the National Government I was the Minister of Health who brought them back in. I am very committed to affordable primary health care. But what this Government has not provided to our doctors is what the level is of that subsidy that is going to be provided in order to give that service to children for free.I have to tell you that the New Zealand Medical Association has said publicly that it may have to cross-subsidise and charge adults more if the amount paid per child per visit each year is insufficient. The question I would then ask is what impact that will have on our old folk—those who are on a fixed income. They live on the pension. They have nothing else and many of them are saying to us now: “Paying $45 $47 or $50 for a doctor’s visit is already too much from our pension.” If the association is going to cross-subsidise for children what is the impact going to be on those people who are important people in our community?So it is up to the Government now to tell us what the subsidy is that is going to be provided. Will the $30 million per year over 3 years cover the cost? There is no doubt in my mind that doctors are not just going to do it for free. There is no free ride here. Somebody is going to have to pay for it.Another feature of this Budget as the Minister of Health said is that there is going to be another $100 million for elective surgery. Well I have to tell you that it is $100 million over 3 years—over 4 years; not 3 but over 4 years—David Shearer: What?Hon ANNETTE KING: —$100 million over 4 years—is $25 million a year across 20 district health boards and that is about $1.25 million that each district health board will receive. Do not expect to get your hip done any time soon. Then we come to public health which is $1.25 million per district health board each year—Hon Members: More.Hon ANNETTE KING: —$1.25 million more—and $1.25 million will not pay for many hips. As for public health under this Government it has cut $16.2 million—Hon Anne Tolley: No.Hon ANNETTE KING: —out of public health. Have a look at the figures Anne Tolley. Do not shake your head. That is what this Government has done and then it has the cheek to talk about obesity and stomach stapling.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): It is a great pleasure to take a call on this excellent Budget 2014 and what a coincidence it is that Annette King has just spoken about figures. She was the Minister of Health who presided over a doubling of the health budget over 9 years when there was a decrease in productivity and a decrease in surgical operations. Under this Government in just under 5 years there has been an increase in surgical procedures of 40000 per year. It is all very well for Mrs King to talk about more money. Health systems around the world are characterised by almost infinite demand but finite resources. Mrs King would never have enough money to be able to organise a health system properly whereas under National over the last 5 years we have seen huge gains in productivity and huge tangible gains in immunisation and surgical procedures; in radiation therapy which has become world standard; and in public health.But I just want to say that this Budget is a Budget worth celebrating and from right around the country we have heard commentators say how excellent it has been. In the electorate of Hunua which I represent just about every sector has been totally totally delighted by the Budget whether it has been the teachers whether it has been the farmers whether it has been the business people or whether it has been the doctors and the nurses. The business people of New Zealand have been very pleased by the National Government because it has set a very clear agenda and it has kept to its promises. One of its major objectives was to achieve a surplus and that is indeed what it has done.But it is quite extraordinary that Mr Parker the finance spokesperson for the Labour Opposition is suggesting that Labour too would have achieved a surplus. Well we all know that Mr Parker and Mr Cunliffe are prisoners to the Greens and the unions—to the Marxists and the socialists. They would spend more they would borrow more they would tax more and there is no way on earth that they would achieve a surplus under the current pressures that are facing them. The only way that the Greens and Labour could generate a surplus would be if they were to bring out Russel Norman’s franking machine—the money-printing machine—and away they would go. He was the champion of quantitative easing and what a shambles that would be.It is a curious coincidence of biology that we have just learnt that a little creature called the Tasmanian devil has become an endangered species. But if one really thinks about it the Tasmanian devil would cause absolute chaos if it was let loose in NewZealand. In fact I did get a description of it: “Its spine-chilling screeches black colour and reputed bad temper led the early European settlers to call this creature The Devil.” But really the Greens and Labour are a huge danger to the financial stability and sustainability of New Zealand and I am glad to report that the good people of Hunua absolutely recognise that fact.The doctors and the nurses around New Zealand are very much welcoming this Budget. Free access or taxpayer-funded access—there is no such thing as free access—for children is the best way to get early treatment and avoid hospitalisation. We have people like Dr Nikki Turner from the Child Poverty Action Group who is also head of the Immunisation Advisory Centre and has been campaigning for this for years and she is delighted that the National Government has delivered. We have got people like Professor Innes Asher a very distinguished academic from Starship who has written many papers on the fact that if children can be treated early for skin infections often they can afford lifesaving treatment which goes on for months for very very serious skin infections. This is a win-win. This is a win for the children and a win for the scarce health dollar.The farmers in Hunua have welcomed this Budget. They have welcomed it because the taxation base is broad and reasonably low. Hopefully it may go down even less but the clear signal is reward for effort. Inflation is 1.6 percent economic growth is destined to rise above 3.5 percent and interest rates remain relatively low. There is significant investment going into innovation and science in the agricultural sector and furthermore there is an investment of $40 million more into irrigation and water storage. I must say that up in the area that I live in in Hunua the drought this year has been worse than the drought last year and yet we have the Labour Party and the Greens opposed to more irrigation and opposed to water storage at a time when it is absolutely crucial for the backbone of our economy—the farmers the horticulturalists—to ensure that they do have access to water.The teachers in Hunua are also extremely pleased because they have seen an investment of a further $858 million over 4 years making a total of $10.1 billion in early childhood primary and secondary education. Indeed there will always be people like Annette King wanting more. But of particular interest to me and I would say the Health Committee is taking an investment approach in the very early years to allow children the maximum chance to achieve their full potential but also expecting them to exercise individual responsibility as adults. It was great to hear that there is a further $155 million for early childhood education which brings the total in New Zealand to $1.5 billion on early childhood education. That is something we would never have dreamt of 10 years ago but it will allow something like 98 percent of all children to be able to receive that early childhood education.There is no doubt that very early investment pays off and the Health Committee has indeed shown that in its latest inquiry and that has been backed up by international experts such as the winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Professor James Heckman who has shown beyond doubt that front-loading pays off hugely compared with investment later on in life. There is no doubt that this National Government having put in place the Children’s Action Plan the Vulnerable Children Bill and the newborn legislation—they are all part of the investment approach. The $500 million package for families and children is far superior to the scattergun undirected half a billion dollar announcement that Mr Cunliffe made at the beginning of the year. Much of that would have been wasted. Personally I would challenge any Government anywhere in the world to keep focusing on the investment approach in the very early years whether that be through gold-standard services in reproductive health education maternity or postnatal care or in the area of nutrition.There was another great announcement by the Minister of Finance which was that the healthy New Zealand package to concentrate on exercise and good nutrition will be rolled out around New Zealand. This 2014-15 Budget can only be described as a littlebeaut.TE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Kia oratātou e te Whare. These are historic times to be speaking to the 2014 Budget as a strong and independent Māori voice in the Parliament of this land. In 2 days’ time we celebrate 10 years to the day since over 200 people gathered at Hoani Waititi Marae in Auckland. At that time representatives fromTe Tai TokerauNgātiWhātuaTāmaki-makau-rau Tainui Raukawa Waiariki Te Arawa in my areaMātaatua and Ngati PorouNgāti Kahungunu TeĀtiawaNgātiApa Whanganui Raukawa ki te Tonga and the New Zealand Māori Council journeyed across the country to attend a hui to discuss the need for an independent Māori political voice. It was that hui that mobilised over 200 Māori leaders to build on the momentum gained from thehīkoi opposing Labour’s Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004. This hui unanimously agreed that the people are ready to act collectively to bring to the fore Māori interests of value to all New Zealanders.So began the journey of the Māori Party a journey that has taken us through a 3-year term in Opposition and two subsequent terms in a relationship with the Government. Today I read a release from the Labour Party that talked about the Māori Party gains in this year’s Budget and it described them as being mere crumbs on the table—crumbs on the table. If the $100 million of new money for Māori development that we achieved in Budget 2014 was crumbs then the money received in times of surplus when Labour was in Government equates to a mere third of a crumb—a third of a crumb. I am thinking of the days of plenty in 2007 when theoretically Māori should have been at the very best we have ever seen. Times were good. In that memorable year Dr Michael Cullen announced a mere $35.6 million committed not just to Māori but also to Treaty-related initiatives—$35 million. I say it was memorable because of course 2007 was the year that Labour chose to vote against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People citing opposition particularly to article 3—the right to self-determination. That happened on 13 September.One month later in the same year 2007 on 15 October more than 300 police carried out the dawn raids on a dozen houses all over Aotearoa in response to what they described as terrorist threats from the indigenous activists. So yes in the context of theTūhoe raids and the rejection of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People I guess that even a third of a crumb is memorable. Comparing the two then we see $35 million in 2007 for Māori and the Treaty as opposed to $100 million of new money this year for the Māori Party initiatives. That is how it stacks up. But listen there is a bit more: $35 million in 2007 compared with $300 million across a whole range of votes in 2014—of both new votes and reprioritised funding which have tangible benefits forwhānauhapū and iwi. That is just a little bit over 10 percent of a crumb—10 percent of a crumb.That year was if you like a perfect storm. There was a rare combination of circumstances that came together to convince iwi Māori that the time had come for a new direction. That direction came some 12 months later with the relationship formalised between the Māori Party and the Government to form a coalition of the willing to negotiate a more successful future for all to enjoy. Budget 2014 reveals that the Māori Party has pushed this Government hard on a number of matters including a commitment to establish the $30 million Māori Information and Communications Development Fund in 2014-15 the establishment of a $5 million Te Mana o Te Wai Fund and the establishment of a centre of research excellence for the funding ofmātauranga Māori research. We recognise the relevance and effectiveness ofWhānau Ora as a lead social and economic transformation approach for Māori Pasifika peoples and other New Zealanders through the ongoing funding committed toWhānau Ora the work of three new commissioning agencies and the establishment of a Treaty-based partnership group comprising senior Ministers and iwi leaders to provide joint direction oversight and promotion ofWhānau Ora.I will go on. We are following up on the recommendations of Te Paepae Motuhake—the name of that report wasTe ReoMauriora—through to the Māori Language Strategy and the proposed amendments to the Māori Language Act which the Hon Dr Pita Sharples hopes to introduce into this House prior to the House lifting for the 2014 election. I note the aim to secure funding to invest in three economic development initiatives that will address some of the outcomes sought in the Māori Economic Development Strategy and Action Plan: He Kai KeiĀkuRinga. There is funding secured for Māori radio and TeMāngaiPāho for iwi Māori economic development and $16 million for the Māori housing fund to support the repairs and rebuilds of rural houses and developing Māori social housing providers. There is $90 million to provide free general practitioner visits and free prescriptions for all of our tamariki up to age 13. And most important and most exciting of all the Moving the Māori Nation national fund is about investing in capacity-building and development and support for sporting and cultural excellence. That is just a start.Do we believe in the collective rights of indigenous people? Well hell yeah—hell yeah. What is even more exciting about the 2014 Budget is that it shows the maturing of the relationship between the Crown and iwi—a relationship that has been evident through iwi leaders now being able to be intimately associated with the policy development process right across key portfolios of the Government. We are particularly proud of the Budget’s $5 million fund in respect of the package to support children and families as the absolute foundation of our nation. That is what having influence is all about.If I can in the last few minutes that are available to me to talk about the Budget I would like to just angle a little bit of discussion across to one who is leaving the House today Mr Shane Jones. Te uri o roto o TeAupōuriNgāiTakotoTararāanō hoki taerānō kitana tahaWēra. Kotētahimeakāorei tino pai ki a au ko te wero o te Māorināi a auotirā tePāti Māoriingātaukuahipaake noho kawaneitērāāhuatanga ki a auēngarikoinei teāhuatanga otēneimea o tetōrangapū. Wero atu wero maitohe atutohe mai ka nui te mihi ki a ia. E mihi atuana ki a iai temea kaputa iai tekuaha o te WharePārematai terāneikoiatērā.Mēnā kei tewhakarongo a ia ka nui te mihi ki a ia.Koiatēneiihara mainārungai teāhuatanga o tekāhui o tehungai haere ki Te Kura oTīpene. Ko Mahara Okeroatērā ko Hone Harawiratērā koahau koētahi atuihara mainōtērā ongā kura. Ka mihi ki a iamō teāhuatanga otana werotanawhakatakotokōrero ki rotoitēnei ongā WharePāremata.Ēharai temeai ratatonu atu au kiānakōrero katoaēngariiputanārungai teāhuatanga kitānai kiteai kitānairongonei e koretaea tekaroitērāāhuatanga. Kotōnangākau temeaiwhakaputainai rotoitēnei WharePāremata. Hengākau Māoriēharai temeai rata mai Te Ao Māori ki a ia.Āe hewāihapa hewāihēēngari ā kotātau te tangatatērā. Koētahi ēarānoa atungāhēēngariitōnamutunga mai kotānakaweiānakōreroi rotoitēnei WharePāremataiētahiwā kaāhua kawatonu kitana taha ki teReipa.Ākuakitea maiai e iaitētahi huarahi heiwhāinga.Nō reira e koremutuwāku mihi ki a iai a ia eputaneiitēnei WharePāremataahakoataku kore rata atu kiētahi owanakōrero heāhua kawanei ki a auēngarikoiatērāiwhakaputainairungaitānai kiteaiitānaiwhakaponoai āotirā otōnangākau.Nō reirakātiake koēneiētahipaku kupu ki a koe e te hoa te hoa o Te Kura oTīpeneotirā te hoa o te WharePāremata.Itōnamutungaahakoa ko koetērāitērā taha ko au kitēnei taha. He Māorianō hokitāuai rotoitēnei WharePāremata. Meputamā tewāhingaro koe e manaaki e tiakiirungaitō huarahihōu. Haere mengā manaakitanga o tewāhingaro.Tēnā koutou kia oratātau katoa.[I acknowledge the member of TeAupōuriNgāiTakoto Dalmatian and Welsh descent. One thing I do not particularly like is that Māori person challenging me and the Māori Party in years past; it is a situation I do not like but that is the nature of politics. There are challenges and debates and so I salute the member. I pay a tribute to the member because he will be exiting through the doors of Parliament. If he is listening then I salute him. He was here alongside other former students of St Stephens School such as Mahara Okeroa Hone Harawira me and others. I congratulate him on the way in which he presented his arguments in the House of Parliament.I did not agree with everything he said but it was based on what he saw and heard and who could argue against that. His spirit was expressed in Parliament. He has a Māori spirit even thoughMāoridom has not always liked him. Yes he made mistakes and was in the wrong but we are all human. Others have made many mistakes but ultimately his comments put him offside with the Labour Party.He has discovered other pathways to pursue and so I offer my endless congratulations to him as he departs from Parliament. I did not agree with everything he said but it was based on his perspective and what he believed in his heart. Therefore these are short sentiments expressed to you my friend from St Stephens School and indeed my friend in Parliament.At the end of the day and although we are on opposite sides we remain Māori in this House of Parliament. Exit and the unseen place will care and protect you on your new path. Farewell with the blessings of the place unseen. Salutations to you collectively and thank you all.]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call—5 minutes Chris Auchinvole.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): Mr Assistant Speaker I will seek your indulgence and perhaps get a bell at 4 minutes?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Yes.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: Thank you. It is my great pleasure to speak in the Budget debate 2014. We all listened very keenly to the Budget speech given by the Hon Bill English. We have read Budget 2014 at a glance and the numerous very positive media reports about this ambitious robust yet quietly confident Budget carrying the stamp of integrity of a Southland farmer. But to be an effective politician it is not enough to simply listen to the sound of one’s own voice or indeed the voice of one’s leaders to read the good publicity and to pat ourselves on the back. No we leave that to the members on the other side who stay in their own silos not wishing and not being quite brave enough yet to venture out of their little coffee clutches.What we did over on this side of the House is we went and asked the West Coast community and the West Coast - Tasman area what they had taken from Budget 2014 and what was important to them. I spent last weekend going to places like Blackball and going to the more remote parts of the West Coast electorate and this is what they said. They said that the Budget was: “Steady as we go—a reliable set of hands on the economy.” “Ready to head into the next cycle of economic growth with an emphasis on health education law and order.” and “Good for young people and great to have such a commitment to broadband.” My colleagues in the same corridor as me Paul Goldsmith and Paul Foster-Bell would have varied ways of expressing the same thingwith a different degree perhaps of eloquence of vocabulary but basically the fundamental truths are there.Let us look at some of those items as they have particular relevance to the Coast such as the recent redevelopment of Grey Base Hospital. Two weeks ago Minister Ryall announced the business case for the new $67 million hospital bed facility in Greymouth. It is currently in the final design phase where virtually the whole hospital will be new. This is the biggest investment per head—the biggest investment per head—of population in New Zealand’s history in health and the Government is committed tofutureproofing the health services on the West Coast. Let us look at some of the facilities that are going to be made available. There will be a bigger maternity unit than currently exists a new emergency department a new intensive care unit three state-of-the-art operating theatres and an integrated family health centre on the Greymouth Public Hospital site and we know how well those integrated family healthcare facilities are working because of our experience up in Golden Bay. This is the highest health spend ever per head of population and it includes a boost for cancer services and elective surgery.The Budget contains many other things that are popular with the Coast people. The social housing boost is also specifically good for the Tasman region. There is $30 million to help the community housing sector to provide more homes for high-needs families. It is a family-friendly Budget.Paid parental leave is under discussion and is going to be lifted. I recognise that my colleagues on the other side—because we discussed this at considerable length at the select committee—wished to go further. My question to them now is which bits of this package would Labour not want to do or would want to cut out. Would Labour want to cut out the free doctors visits for children up to the age of 13? Would it want to cut the paid parental leave extension that we are providing? Would it want to reduce any of the many aspects of this Budget that are doing so much to help families? I think not—I think not. What we are doing is what Labour would normally do if it were being true to its own measures.This is a powerful Budget. I described it initially as having the drive and thrust of an effective farmer. Over the past 9 years we have had droughts financial deficits and natural and industrial disasters. But with strategic choices just as much pruning as was bearable and targeted policies—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. His time has expired.MELISSA LEE (National): It is a great pleasure to share the spotlight with my colleague to my left Chris Auchinvole who is such an articulate speaker but I seem to have taken 5 minutes off his time. I think that is a reflection of my very caring whip who realised that I had suffered the flu and been sick in bed for a little while so he thought he would be gentle with me. But I would have actually liked the full 10 minutes because this is such a fantastic Budget and we have lots and lots to talk about.As an adult who had been sick and who should really have gone to the doctor but who had been relying on the traditional herbal medicine that my mother concocted I reflected back to when I was a young parent a new parent. When my child was sick I was desperate to get to the doctor to make sure that my son was OK even though it was just a cold. As a young parent you worry about that. I reflect on the Budget that we have delivered this year for families. There is $90 million in this year’s Budget to enable general practitioners to offer free doctors visits and prescriptions from 1 July next year for children under the age of 13. What a fantastic thing we are doing for the families and the young people and those people who are in need in this country. Budget 2014 is a fantastically solid Budget. New Zealand is heading in the right direction withconfidence. Over this past 6 years National’s good management of the economy has meant that our books are back in surplus. Growth is at 4 percent. Wages are rising faster than inflation and there is more money for families and businesses and for the most vulnerable people.If we can go back let us have a look at what we got back in 2008. In 2008 this country was in a recession. It is now growing at about 4 percent—a fantastic record. In Labour’s last 5 years there was a 50 percent increase in Government spending which helped push mortgage interest rates to almost 11 percent and crippled the internationally competitive part of the economy. People complained about 11 percent but if I remember back to when I first bought a house I think I paid about 20 percent for my first house. People think the 6 percent we currently pay now is very expensive and very high. National has got Government spending under control and mortgage interest rates have come down.Food prices went up 10.9 percent in the last year under Labour. They have gone up only 1.5 percent under National. House prices went up 96 percent over the 9 years that Labour had the Treasury benches—Chris Auchinvole: How much?MELISSA LEE: —96 percent—and they have gone up only 28 percent under this National Government. People say that electricity prices are very high. Well let me tell you that under Labour they went up 72 percent—Chris Auchinvole: How much?MELISSA LEE: —72 percent Mr Auchinvole—and under National they have gone up only 20 percent.This Government is committed to protecting children from abuse and neglect. We have had a terrible record of that and I have spoken about that with previous bills in this House. I have talked about the 22000 cases of abuse and neglect of our children a year. More than 50 children have died in the past 5 years which is an appalling statistic in this country. I am very proud of the Vulnerable Children Bill which is before the House and as chair of the Social Services Committee I am pleased to see that the operating funding for 2014-15 is going to be strengthened with $33.2 million. There is $3.2 million for the implementation of the bill making five Government departments accountable for protecting and improving the lives of vulnerable children.This National Government is delivering on the promises we make. We are growing this country. We are making sure that those children the most vulnerable children are getting a fair deal in this country. The Children’s Action Plan is well under way and the new funding will see a further eight Children’s Teams being set up throughout the country over the next financial year. We currently have one in Rotorua and the other one is in Whangarei. Through the new funding of $13.7 million for Child Youth and Family we want to make a difference to young people’s lives so that they do not have to become a statistic so that they do not have to end up on welfare and so that we do not have a generation of children who are dependent on welfare. This is a great Budget and I commend it to the House.RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker.Tēnā koutou engā rangatirahuriraunaitōtātou Whare.Tēnā koutoutēnātātou katoa. [Thank you Mr Speaker. Greetings to you collectively the leaders throughout our House. Acknowledgments to you and to us all.]This Budget is a mockery. It is a mockery of decency and common sense. It lacks aroha it lacks wairua and it has no mana—no mana at all. It is a Budget that has no love for the citizenry of Aotearoa. It lacks compassion. I will give you an example. The one commendable part of the Budget is the free generalpracticioner visits for our tamariki from ages 7 to 13. It is great on the face of it but as for thewhānau around themotu if their kids are sick right now will they be able to take advantage of that? No. Will they be able to take advantage of that next month? No. Will they be able to take advantage of that in June a year from now? No. They are going to have to wait until July 2015 before they can take their sick tamariki to the doctor.Iain Lees-Galloway: I thought it was in this Budget.RINO TIRIKATENE: That is right and the Government put it in this Budget. This is a “fudge-it Budget” as we have said. We have heard about the Government shuffling the figures shifting things around relabelling money. We have heard from Te Ururoa talking about this great bigpūtea that is coming to Māori. Look I do feel aroha for Te Ururoa because he was very selective in this 10-year history of the Māori Party. He failed to capture two very important events. The first was the walk-out from our whanaunga Hone in the creation of the Mana party. That was a very very significant event in the history of the party. But also he failed to mention the mountain of a man from the south who actually took out the seat of Te Tai Tonga.Ēhara te Maunga Aorakii te maunganekeneke. [The mountain of Aoraki is not exactly one that moves about.] This mountain is not going to be moved. He was very selective—very very selective—in that history.But getting back to this Budget we have thekōrero the famous proverb of our people: He aha temea nui o te ao? He tangata he tangata he tangata. It is about people. But if you look at the impact of this Government and its policies over the past 6 years the situation for all our people is getting worse and in particular for Māori. I want to focus on inequality because inequality in this country at this time is getting worse. Let us just roll by all of the main indicators and all the socio-economic indicators. Our people want a good job they want a secure job and they want to be able to work a decent day’s mahi to be able to support theirwhānau look after their kids and get them educated. It is not much that our people want.But what do we see? Māori unemployment under this Government has grown from 8.6 percent in 2008 to 13.2 percent today. That is an enormous increase. We have been into double figures for the past 5 years. Is that the great achievement that the Māori Party is so excited about and is celebrating wanting to let the whole world know that they have got so muchpūtea? There is 13.2 percent unemployment. That is an indictment. And what does that mean? That means that Māoriwhānau many of them out there have still got no jobs and are still struggling to make ends meet. What is even worse is that the Māori youth unemployment rate is far too high as 21.9 percent—you could say 22 percent—of our rangatahi are not in employment education or training. This is all happening under this Government. We remember back to 2008-09 the Job Summit and the urgency that was applied to the Māori Job Summit. I was at that summit and the pressing urgency there was in terms of how we could save Māori jobs. The proof is there: double-digit unemployment for the past 6 years. That is the record of this Government.I would like to move on to homeownership. That is a bigmoemoeā for manywhānau. They want to be able to work hard to get that whare get a house where they run around have their parties and have their kids grow up. That is a distant dream for many Māoriwhānau. If we look at the Māori homeownership rates 28.2 percent of Māori own or have an interest in their own home. If we flip that over that means that 72 percent of all Māori around the motu do not own their own home. They either rent or are staying with their ownwhānau to try to get by. Seventy-two percent of our people do not have the ability or the means to be able to get into their own homes. We know that the policies that have been applied in terms of loan-to-value ratios and other things are making that aspiration even harder to get to. So homeownership is a complete disaster.I want to move on to incomes. New Zealanders are not earning enough particularly Māori. People around the motu will know that just under half of all Kiwis—just under half of all Kiwis—have had no wage increase over the past year. They are actually going backwards. By the time you factor in inflation and the rise in the cost of various necessities they are actually worse off. So that is again an indictment. We have too many young people in low-paid positions and in insecure work and too many young people who are graduating with no decent jobs to go on to.We hear about this great rock star economy that we have. Sure I am very proud that when I go around the South Island there are lots of great things happening if you go into districts like Ashburton Gore and Mataura. I was in my electorate office in Invercargill the other day and the ambassador for the Philippines was there. The ambassador for the Philippines had travelled all the way down to Invercargill to process all of the visa documentation for the Filipino community. It was great to see so manywhānau there and I am sure they are making a wonderful contribution to those regions as they are in other districts around the South Island. But it got me to think why it is that we are having to bring in so manywhānau to do jobs when there is so much unemployment here in our own country. The reason is that employers can get away with it. They can get away with paying peanut rates for immigrant workers. They can get away with just changing any terms and conditions at will. They can get away with those things because this Government has allowed that to happen because it is looking after its base which is the farmers the rural sector. We know it has always been that way but there will be a change and that is why we need a change in Government.I know that Labour has the solutions. We do have the solutions. I do not like being overly negative but I do need to correct some things when they are raised in this House. Labour does have a range of solutions. We have our economic upgrade package. I would line up David Parker and David Cunliffe any day against any of the front bench of the National Government. We have got the best policy—well-thought-through and very responsible—and very prudent economic managers. We will implement that policy when we get into office.I just want to conclude by mentioning a speech that the Hon Dr Pita Sharples gave last night when he was speaking on the Budget. Mr Sharples referred to some obscure article that was written that gave the analogy that the Māori Party was the Road Runner in stealth mode—that it was somehow quick nimble and able to do great things. There was an analogy to that cartoon. There is only one animal in stealth mode in the Road Runner cartoon and we all know who that is. That is Wile E. Coyote. We all know what happens to him. He gets run over by a 10-tonne Tory National boulder. That is what happens to Wile E. Coyote. On every show he gets run over mowed down by the National freight train. That is what has happened to the Māori Party and that is what this Government has done. This is an atrocious Budget. I am looking forward to 20 September when there will be hope renewal and a change of Government and we will be in power. Kia oranōtātou.Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development): Mr Speaker might I say just how honoured I am that you are in the Chair for my contribution to the debate on this fantastic Budget. I see that the gallery is full. That is great. We have got ex-MPs here in the House who have all come along to hear my speech. I hope they stay for Shane Jones. I hope they actually stick around because there is another show on the road shortly. That is lovely. Shane Jones I feel like I am I do not know the entrée before the main the soup before the steak and chips you know. Yes I am the little entrée that sort of warms the crowd up for you Shane Jones. I hope that you are getting ready for your valedictory statement. Can I just say because I do have the opportunityto speak just before you that actually you will genuinely be missed. It is a sad day for some of us who have enjoyed you. But I get to talk about the Budget.I am delighted that there might be a few more people who are listening in than normally would. They get to hear about the fantastic work that we are doing for families and for children in this Budget. The list is long. I get to go for a good few minutes here to talk about just how great it is and the extent to which we have gone. The one thing I think has not been picked up as much as it could have been is that more than $1 billion in savings if you like have been made thanks to a lower welfare spend than what was projected in 2010. Shall we run through that again? More than $1 billion—the forecast is lower than what it was in 2010 and that is certainly due to an economy that is picking up but equally due to our welfare reforms. One hundred million dollars has gone into the welfare reforms in this Budget. That will be $25 million a year over the next 4 years and you can already see the kinds of returns we get from that. In the last 12 months alone since we introduced the reforms the savings in the benefit spend have been about $530 million. So it is absolutely significant. That support and spending on people earlier are what make the biggest difference.I am proud of this Budget. I am absolutely proud of the work that Bill English has done and I can tell you that there has been many a night when we have debated very long into the night on what this Budget would look like and how we would respond to some of the needs of families and children. The reality is that I loved that we were debating the stuff that matters—the stuff that really counts. The reality is that with data analytics like those we have now not only do we hold more information on the most vulnerable children and young people in this country than we ever have before but we have access to it. That means we can target our funding to the children and families that need it most. Unlike Labour which would like to scatter the money across every child and the Greens who would like to throw a bit to everyone even those who do not need it and hope that it might actually hit those who are most vulnerable in this country we have gotten smarter better and far more sophisticated in how we target the most vulnerable New Zealanders and get support to them earlier. For me the significant amount of $33 million in this Budget is to do exactly that.One of the best examples I can give of data analytics and the difference it makes is the changes we have made for teen parents. We have had a reduction in the number of teen parents by 39 percent over the last 4 years. To give you the actual numbers in 2008 there were 5200 births to teen mums; last year there were 3300. We have 2300 young mums who are on a benefit at any one time. We know their names and we know where they live and what we can do is we can wrap support around them early. What we recognised was that the Government was not the right place to do that. In fact every bit of evidence on the investment approach told us that keeping them away from the Government for as long as we can will make the biggest difference. So every single one of those young teen mums has wraparound support from an adult. They now start by having their money managed for them. Their rent or board is paid up front. Their power bill is paid. They get some money on a card and some pocket money but they can work their way to independence—and can I say what an absolute difference that is making in their lives.If we were not targeting if we were not using data analytics like we do we would continue to scatter and spray money around hoping that it hits the very children and young people who need it most. The reality is that this Budget looks at us targeting it even more to those who need it more. If you look into the details of the Budget what you will see is the money that is going into that vulnerable children’s package. It lets us have another eight Children’s Teams and that is important. We have the predictive riskmodel which is actually controversial in itself. So whether you like it or not we know a lot.We know whether a child’s parents have been in jail and whether the parents have been in a State house for all of their lives. We know their benefit use. We know whether or not there have been domestic violence incidents and whether the police visited the week before. We know the vulnerability level. We know the risk factors. We know where to put support and how to get it in earlier. The difference that that can make to the harder and more complex end of what we do is significant. Children’s Teams will have that kind of information. They can then wrap one plan around a child with one lead professional who can then actually follow through and there is accountability the whole way through which makes the biggest difference.I say that Labour forgets what actually happened. The reality for these kids is that if we kept spending and if it was just about more money for every child then we actually would have seen a greater reduction in the number of abuse cases involving children in the 2000s when Labour was throwing money at it and scattering it around. We did not. What we have seen for more than 10 years is a steady increase in the number of notifications and the number of substantiated cases of abuse and neglect. Unless we target unless we get in earlier and wrap support around them and know exactly what is happening we will continue to get the same sorts of results. This Budget steps up for those very vulnerable young children who need us and I am very proud of it.The Budget also does more for Child Youth and Family for therapeutic one-on-one support. It ensures that for those very high-needs and complex-needs children we are actually able to put far more money into them. There are a few children who literally cost us millions. There are some incredibly sad cases of young people who need 24/7 one-on-one support—and even in extreme cases two-on-one support—to make sure that they are actually safe themselves and that society is safe. So there are examples where we have young people who literally have a guard with them and a therapeutic placement person with them the whole time and that is expensive. So we needed to step up and make sure that we continue that and that we are actually backing the young people who need it.What we hear a lot actually is that unemployment has gone up since National came in. I was hearing just today that there are more Pacific people who are unemployed than there were back when Labour was in. What the Labour members forget of course is that for three consecutive quarters before National came into Government in 2008 numbers had been going up under Labour and it had done nothing. What they choose to forget of course is that we had a global financial crisis which saw this Government step up and help and support those who needed it most at that very time. So yes welfare numbers went up. Actually in some respects I am proud of that. That means that we support those who need it most.This is an outstanding Budget by a Minister of Finance who is doing an outstanding job. I am incredibly proud to stand up today and support it.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Can I thank all my parliamentary colleagues for coming along to this contribution in the Budget debate this afternoon. I feel a little bit like the Parliamentary Rugby Team playing a curtain-raiser before an All Blacks match. It might be a bit scrappy but you know that it is going to be passionate. I do want however of course to note the significance of today because not only are we going to hear from Shane Jones in his valedictory speech but also I can say that this is the first time this parliamentary term that Shane has arrived before time to a speech that he is going to do in the House. I think that that is an absolutely fantastic thing.It is my duty today to be the last speaker to talk about the Budget before we move on to matters slightly brighter on the horizon. I think nothing highlights the contradictionsand the mixed priorities in this Government’s agenda than the education contribution in this year’s Budget. Charter schools are getting an extra $6000 a year per student on top of up to $40000 a year per student that they are already getting while State schools are getting only $6000 to $7000 a year per student. How is that a level playing field? If this Government genuinely cared about raising student achievement for those students who are not doing very well it would not be putting money into charter schools; it would be putting money into every State school in the country. So why do we have charter schools? Because of a dodgy cup of tea deal with a party of political ghosts—a dodgy cup of tea deal with a party of political ghosts. It prised open the crypt and out they popped with the new-right playbook and we ended up with charter schools in New Zealand. We do not need charter schools. We need to be focused on making sure that every school in New Zealand is a good school and every student gets the opportunity to achieve their full potential.While the Government is lavishing money on charter schools in its ideological experiment cooked up with the party of political ghosts schools and early childhood education centres are barely getting enough funding to keep up with their rising costs. Schools are increasingly reliant on parental contributions and are not getting the funding that they need. Bill English who railed against the increasing costs of education to parents when he was the Opposition’s spokesperson has done absolutely nothing in 6 long years about that. Every year the financial contribution parents make to their kids’ education has gone up under this National Government. Yet parents are struggling to make ends meet and this Government is doing nothing about that.This Government has instead decided to pick a war pick a fight with every teacher in the country. Over the last few weeks we have sat in the Education and Science Committee and listened to submitter after submitter after submitter say that this Government does not value them does not respect them and does not even trust them to have a say over how their own professional body operates. I think that is absolutely disgraceful. Has the Government been listening? No it has not. It has not listened at all.But there is a better way. There is a better way and it starts with making sure that every child in New Zealand has the best possible start through paid parental leave through making sure their parents can make ends meet through the Best Start payments and through providing high-quality and freely accessible early childhood education to every child in the country. Those should be the priorities. Those are not the priorities of this National Government. We should have trust and respect—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! The level of noise now coming from the Chamber is completely unacceptable. I require Mr Hipkins to have a reasonably fair go.CHRIS HIPKINS: That is all right Mr Speaker—I am pleased everybody is so excited by my contribution in the Budget debate today. We should have trust in and respect for education professionals. The best way forward for the education system in New Zealand is one that is based on collaboration not one based on a Government saying to teachers that they are not trusted they are not respected and they are not even respected enough to have control over their own professional body. It also means that we should pay attention to the factors outside the school gate that have an impact on kids when they get into school. If kids’ parents do not have jobs if they do not have adequate income and if they are not living in quality warm dry affordable houses then that is going to have an impact on kids’ readiness to learn when they get to school.Where did we see reference to that in this year’s Budget? We did not. We did not. The Government was silent on the major issues around housing affordability and job creation. The Government simply fudged it. It did not do anything about those major issues that New Zealanders are facing. If we want to get serious about making sure that New Zealanders have the brighter future that John Key promised them but hasabsolutely failed to deliver we should start with children. We should start with making sure they get the best possible start in life. The Labour Party is absolutely committed to that through increasing paid parental leave through making sure that children’s parents who need the financial support can get it through the Best Start payment and by making sure that early childhood education is available.This Government does not care about the quality of early childhood education. It has relaxed teacher quality requirements. It has relaxed the requirements for there to be fully registered qualified teachers in early childhood centres. I think that is absolutely disgraceful. If we are going to increase participation in early childhood education we should be making sure that it is quality participation in early childhood education. That is not something that this Government is delivering on. If we really want to lift the status of the profession we could start by making sure that we attract the very best people into the teaching profession in the first place and yet the Government has done absolutely nothing in this year’s Budget to make teaching a more attractive career for the best and brightest in our schools. We should definitely be focused on doing that.Why should somebody consider teaching as a viable career when this Government says that teachers cannot even be trusted to have control over their own professional body? We would not do that to lawyers we would not do that to accountants and we do not do that for doctors. We do not do that for almost any profession. In fact the National Party seems to care more about real estate agents. It mounted a filibuster against the regulation of the real estate industry because it thought that real estate agents should be regulating themselves and yet it will not allow teachers to do that. The National Party cares more about real estate agents than it does about teachers.This Budget has ignored the fundamental issues facing the education system. Instead it has sloshed money around into an ideological experiment like charter schools all because of the dodgy cup of tea deal with the political ghosts from the ACT Party. There may be one of them left in this Parliament now but I can tell you what. One of them is allowed to sit on this side of Parliament but there will not be any left in this Parliament after the coming election. Then we can finally put an end to the crazy madness that is the new-right ideological experiment of charter schools. Finally I am the final Labour speaker to speak before Shane Jones gets to deliver his valedictory speech to the House today so I would like to take the opportunity Matua Shane on behalf of the entire Labour caucus—and I know that I speak for all of us—to say that you have made an enormous contribution to our team. You have had a big impact on Parliament in a whole variety of ways. We will certainly miss you and we wish you all the very best for the future.Debate interrupted.Valedictory StatementsMr SPEAKER: Honourable members in accordance with a determination of the Business Committee I call on the Hon Shane Jones to make his valedictory speech. Could I start by pointing out to the member that I arrived at 5 o’clock to make sure that I got a seat for this important event.Hon SHANE JONES (Labour): He Reo Māorii tetuatahi.Hūtia terito o te harakeke keihea tekōmako ekō?Māhau eui mai ki a au he ahakē temea nui o te aomāku ekī atu he tangata he tangata he tangata.Kātitātou e Te Whare e huinei a koutoukuawhakamine mainei ki tewhakahōnoreiahauitēneirangiwhakamutungaōkutēnā koutou eōkupiritēnā koutou eōkutūāhinetēnā koutou eōkutūākana.Tēneiahau tetūi tearoaro ōtātoungākaitōrangapū me tearoaro o te iti me terahikuatatū iho kikonei.Kotahianake te tangatamō teāhuatanga ki tehungakuawhetūrangitia heimihingamāku ko tetoa oHikurangi Maunga a Parekura Horomia. Kia mihi atuahau ki a Parekurai matei rotoi tetau kotahi kapahemotataakenei mengāraumahara eirineii tewāpātū otēnei Whare.Rātou ki arātoutātou ki atātoutēnā koutoutēnā koutoutēnātātou katoa.[I will speak in Māori first. Pull out the centre shoot of the flax where will the bellbird sing lass? You can ask me what is the most important thing in the world and I will respond it is people it is people and it is people.Well to us assembled here in the House you who have gathered here to honour me on this final day for me my close ones thank you my respected sister colleagues and elder statesmen. I stand before us all fellow politicians and before the meek and the mighty that have arrived here.In respect of those who have passed away there one in particular whom I single out and pay a tribute to. It is the champion of the mountainHikurangi Parekura Horomia. I salute Parekura who died recently a year ago and the many memorial tributes adoring the walls of this House. Allow them to rest there among their own while we the living remain here among our own so greetings acknowledgements and salutations to us all.]It is an emotional day. I have been on a media blackout. It has been akin to someone suffering a bad experience after the recently outlawed synthetic drug episode. I have lived breathed and I have put every bit of my being whilst I was a politician—putting myself either willingly or unwillingly—in front of our people. Thewhakataukī the Māori proverb I start this speech with is “He tangata he tangata he tangata.”—people. It is with humility and honour that I stand in the midst of my peers under the gaze of the public people from business people from the community people from the north—the last frontier of rugged individualism—and friend and foe. I mention that particular expression because I see that Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble are in the House.The notion that the people who should come to see me at my valedictory are Willie Jackson John Tamihere Mr Prebble Mr Douglas and Ron Mark is a comment perhaps on the nature of my politics as a member of this side of the House. There is Willie Jackson the Māori equivalent of Pam Corkery; John Tamihere Labour’s No. 1 exile; and the two gentlemen who belong to that generation of Labour politicians back in the day. They are part of the legacy of the party that I belong to that group of reformers including Sir Geoffrey Palmer and including Mike Moore and including David Lange who in my time as a young man was a hero in the political world.After those reformists came Dr Michael Cullen the godfather of the Labour Party and Helen Clark the woman who after a meeting in CharlesWaldegrave’s house with Mike Williams enticed me into politics. They honoured me with the opportunity to enjoy the privilege of 9 years in this the highest marae the highest court of the land. And for that I owe those two individuals an inordinate debt of gratitude.I thought that before I share some observations about some of my colleagues and the ebb and flow of politics I would talk a little as to where I came from. I was born in a little area nearKaitāia Awanui. My dad was one of 17. My dad’s mother was born in 1893. She visited upon me along with my mother and father an enormous amount of love and affection for the Māori language and respect for the Anglican Church—sorry Mum I did not always hold up that part of the bargain. I say that because they sent me to St Stephen’s School where I was for 5 years. I often think of the small group of ladies fromMahurangi and Warkworth who saved their pennies to send a lad from the gumfields of the north to St Stephen’s School.I want to acknowledge the other boys from St Stephen’s School who are in this House today. Te Ururoa Flavell was my head prefect. Hone Harawira and I come from the same tribe. Our padre was Harry Taylor. I was the altar boy and Hone nicked thecross. The boys from St Stephen’s will be glad that one of their own has enjoyed 9 years here and to the end was himself—was his own man.Beyond that I went to university and I want to acknowledge five people Margaret Clark Rod AlleyRajVasil and Dame JoanMetge as well as Stephen Levine. They were at Victoria University and took a great deal of interest in my time at university.Then I went into activism. It may come as a surprise to members on the other side of the House that at one time I too along with Hone Harawira was a proud activist. But it is a rite of passage to be a Māori politician in the north and to have a burst of that activism. In 1975 Winston Peters was leader of theNgāti Wai Land Retention Committee with Dame Whina Cooper. Dover Samuels was seeking to secure the land and theCavalli Islands etc. He was a man who made a tremendous degree of progress that unfortunately was not seen by his ownhapū. And that is often the way when you pave the way. Of course there was Hone at the Waitangi Action Committee and me along with him in theKawariki group.After that I went to a meeting where Geoffrey Palmer was present to deal with the New Zealand Bill of Rights in 1985—whether the Bill of Rights should contain a provision to recognise the Treaty of Waitangi. I stood and argued against that. I said that the Bill of Rights should not subsume the Treaty of Waitangi.Geoffrey Palmer then enabled me to get a job where I followed Hekia Parata as the director of the Māori secretariat in the Ministry for the Environment. That is when I began working for Sir Geoffrey Palmer who said to me: “Jones Jones read Liddell Hart.” I went and consulted Liddell Hart. It is a book on the history of the First World War where the members of the battalion are being gassed by their own troops they are being strafed by their own planes they are being shot upon as a consequence of friendly fire—adequate preparation for Labour Party politics. His parting remark to me was: “Jones Jones write write because when you write you think. And you write so little.”I was supported by Sir Paul Reeves Dame JoanMetge and Sir Geoffrey Palmer and was chosen by Royce Elliott to be the 1990 Harkness Fellow and I went away to Harvard. It was an extraordinary experience for a young father with a young family. While I was there I sported an enormous red beard. I wandered around in a black coat etc. and I would sit with my son and we would be chatting away. And there is a great Jewish community there Mr Prime Minister—Brookline. They would look at me and they would come and speak to me in what I presumed was Yiddish; I would reply to them inNgāpuhi. And as they spoke to me in their language and as I replied further and further inNgāpuhi a myth emerged: the Lost Tribe.When I came back from Harvard University—an utter privilege for a boy from the far north to be a Harkness Fellow and to study at Harvard University—I gained the attention of Jim Bolger the then Prime Minister and worked on the settlement of the Sealord deal. Hekia Parata and I advised Mr Prebble KoroWētere Roger Douglas David Lange and Geoffrey Palmer about the settlement attempts in the late 1980s. That was when I began my journey of trying to use the currency of settlements to advance the interests of the tangata whenua.As a consequence of Mr Bolger having confidence and faith in me I became a member of the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission. I rose to the level of chairing Sealord the Māori Fisheries Commission and a host of other entities and I participated in selling Salmond Smith Biolab and delivering seafood assets back to the Chatham Islands and our Māori people. And I became a pro-industry man. I at that point said as much as possible that I would be a politician who exhausted every part of my being to generate wealth generate jobs and ensure that those prepared to take risks to actually generate an opportunity for the rest of us should not be condemned but should be supported.I just want to share very briefly the first time I came to Parliament. The first time I came to Parliament was in 1980 on the day that Matiu Rata resigned from the Labour Party. I was in his office withRāpini Abraham a leader of theRātana Church with the tohunga ofNgāpuhi Joe TokiTaupuhiEruera SelwynMuru JohnTahupārae SonnyKeepa and a host of other visitors. The second time I came to Parliament was to present a Te Reo Māori submission to Mr Austin a former South Island member from the National Party who did not turn up and it was received byWhetuTirikātene-Sullivan in 1980. Then I came back with my uncle Rev. Māori MarsdenNik Tangaroa and George Brennan and we comprised in 1980 the subcommittee of Māori policy in the Māori Affairs Committee room withWhetuTirikātene-Sullivan. So let no young pup say that Shane Jones is a stranger to the legacy of the Labour Party.Now I move on to another role but before I talk about this other role let me acknowledge some of the things that have happened to me as a politician. Helen Clark rang and asked me to support Ann Hartley one day. We went to open a playcentre a young kiddies’ centre and she said: “Shane have you been doing much doorknocking in 2005?”. I said: “Ah I’m getting used to it.” She said: “The more you do it the more you’ll grow to like it.” I have had 9 years and I like it no more today than I did then. I was a big-picture man.Helen Clark sent me to that hotbed of Labour activism Dargaville. As I dodged the brethrens I eventually made it toHaruru Falls.Haruru Falls is in the Bay of Islands. It is near Waitangi. I went to the house. I was armed with the pamphlets with Helen’s beatific face smiling off them. I approached the door—knock knock. Through the misty frosted glass I saw a figure coming to the door. The door sprang open and in front of me was a voter of my age—a woman semi-clad. The most troublesome thing was she had an imposing arrangement coming out of the top of her head in the form of a beehive. Whilst I had eagerness for the beehive—no no no. The most bizarre thing is that she went on to say: “You’re a bit late aren’t you mate?”. I retreated back not quite knowing what to say because on our side of the House you are prepared to say: “Hi we’re here to talk to you about inclusiveness equity gender equality and a bicultural Aotearoa.” All I could say was: “Ah ah Helen Clark from the Labour Party sent me here.” She said: “Oh don’t worry about it. The other MP’s already been here.” I knew then with scientific clarity that John Carter had that seat for life.Dr Cullen blessed me by enabling me to be the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and a number of members on that side of the House were on that committee when I was the chair as indeed was Hone Harawira. The first duty that I undertook of an international character on that committee was to lead a delegation to Rarotonga to advise them on transparency. The delegation comprised Doug Woolerton Murray McCully and Hone Harawira—a tall order. The only problem with that delegation was that while I was there unfortunately I fell off a motorbike. Despite parliamentary ambitions about transparency I did everything I could to hide that accident from Heather Simpson and Helen Clark. Hone Harawira immediately reported it toNew Zealand Herald’s Ruth Berry. By the time I got back to New Zealand there were 25 messages from Heather Simpson and Helen Clark. If you do not believe me I am willing to lift the leg of mytrou but for fear of sparking unintended consequences in my own caucus I will resist it.When I was a Minister I was a colourful but hard-working character. My colleagues will tell you that I never agreed with Helen that we should have a shower head policy. But when you are a member of the team and junior as I was you deliver the policy of the day. As you recall we were going to regulate the amount of water have a certain covering for hot-water heaters and as the water sort of dribbled into a bucket then you could work out whether it was 8 minutes 8 seconds or whatever it was. I knew I was ina dire situation when the only person who came to my rescue was Jeanette Fitzsimons. In those days the Greens were my fans.One other thing that I want to refer to was that while I was the Minister for Building and Construction I freed the building profession and I freed the community and the economy from the wretchedness of the Building Act so that you can now build a 10 - square metre shed without a building permit. I was not to know that the current Minister would regard that as the housing policy for South Auckland.You do make decisions in the broad glare of publicity and you think: “Hmm would I do it again?”. And I must not walk away from what was a visceral experience in terms of when I was the Associate Minister of Immigration. I want to ask how come a lot of the Chinese fellows who get to know politicians have got the name “Liu”? Kia ora Maurice. In my case the media spelled the name of the man as “L-i-u”. The political alphabet of the Labour Party spelled his name as “L - uh oh!” and that is where my political reputation ended up for a period of time.I do not want to dwell on too much more because time does not allow it but if I can acknowledge to the media that whenever I was in the gun I fronted up. I want to acknowledge Annette King. Phil Goff was out of the country when John Key in a fit of enthusiasm decided that all credit card receipts should be made available to the public. If there was ever a motivation to get the CIA on to the Prime Minister God knows that was it. Our deputy leader trusted me to go forward with one adviser John Harvey and front up to that issue. It did not cover me with a great deal of glory but please know this: I never ever ran and I was prepared to front up to the media whether it was good or bad. If I could say something to Kelvin Davis as he comes in because Prime Minister Parliament is now dishing out credit cards—I understand they are called purchase cards. Kelvin know this from me: cash is king brother—cash is king.I should acknowledge Phil Goff David Shearer and my mihi to David Cunliffe. We had our leadership contest which was probably the most liberating thing that I personally did as a member of the Labour Party. I had the ability to be paid and wander around for 6 weeks saying whatever I liked about whomever I liked in my own party and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But I have to accept that there are more people coming to my do at the Back Bencher from the Labour Party than bloody well voted for me during that contest.Winston Peters was a person who did stretch his hand out and assist me when the Auditor-General’s investigation took place. There has been a lot of idle jotting and scribbling about me and Winston Peters largely driven by troublemakers from the other side of the House. Winston and I are comrades in arms in terms of the Tai Tokerau and coming from the north. The notion that upon that political pew two halos could be situated would invite an unwanted comparison to a double-yolk egg. But I will tell you what though. Had that happened there would have been a great contest in terms of Shakespearean quotes but I would never have beaten Winston in that quote fromRichard III: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”.To move away from a wee bit of levity. As my senior colleagues would know you have fantastic opportunities when you are a Minister to rub shoulders with power brokers and incredibly influential people around the world. One night Helen invited a number of us to dine with Condoleezza Rice. We were treated to an inordinately clever exposition and account of where affairs of the world in terms of the military and economy were. I went from there in my self-drive car back to Tai Tokerau and within 8 hours I picked up a hitchhiker. So here I am going from meeting with one of the most powerful women in the world I am in the car and I pick up a hitchhiker—a young Māori lad of a similar age to my boy. As he sat in that car and we went down the road I said to him in Māori “Kapia tewini hemakaririrawa.” which means “Close thewindow; it is too cold.” He said: “Oh matua I want to leave the window open.” I said: “Why is that son?”. He said: “It makes me feel free and I have just come out of a 3½ year lag from theNgāwhā prison.” If there was ever an incident within a short period of time that made me feel humble as a Māori parliamentarian and a junior Minister that was it—to go from that level of power and influence and still to have the confidence to relate to one of my own rangatahi on the other side of the tracks so to speak.I want to acknowledge the media. I know that my colleagues have regarded me as something of a headline hussy. Well come on laugh—it is not as bad as bloody “gelding”. Give us a break! I made a decision that if I was not going to be a champion doorknocker and if I was not going to be the best pamphlet distributor then I was going to ensure that the ideas that I was paid to represent and paid to broadcast were done in such a way that we used the services of the media.It was Ruth Berry who reported my motorbike crash. It was ClaireTrevett I think who isolated that somewhat colourful remark about a de-knackerised horse thus drawing attention to the fact that I had de-knackerised a major part of my potential support in the party in the leadership race. It was Paddy Gower who showed us when he gushes enthusiastically every evening giving us the news that we heard it all in the urinal that particular week. There is also Duncan Garner. But in particular there are the senior people. I want to acknowledge Audrey Young—on age knowledge—Tracy Watkins John Armstrong and Vernon Small even if Vernon Small was the only person in Parliament who understood the Attorney-General when he was railing against the split infinitive.In the time left I will say that I sat School Certificate in 1975. I was a lad of 15 years at St Stephen’s School when my teacher was Tony Ross. He introduced us to what has stayed with me—a love of literature. He introduced us to a taonga from our side of Te Ao Māori from HoneTūwhare. The poem is:Where are the men of mettle?are there old scoresleft to settle?when will the canoes leapto the stab and kickthe sea-wet flourishof pointed paddles?will the sun play againto the skip of muscleson curved backs baredto the rain’s lashthe seas punch?to War! to War!That was the cry to come to battle. That was the cry to take up arms that motivated me and my generation to fight for our language to fight for our rights to fight to ensure thatMāori were not only an inclusive but an indelible part of Aotearoa. I am proud to have fought for the bicultural narrative that underpins our nation State. I acknowledge that there is enormous change happening to our ethnic make-up but I implore us as parliamentarians: do not untether ourwaka from that essential narrative entered into in the Treaty of Waitangi.I wanted to be a champion for industry. I have been well supported by fisheries and by forestry folk and that has enabled me to bring their ideas forward.I am a firm believer in trade. I admired as a junior Minister Phil Goff and the China free-trade deal. I will totally resist any suggestion that my country will grow richer by turning our back upon the essential importance of international trade. But industry has to lead as well. If I have been disappointed it is because I have felt that those in industry are lions in the boardroom but lambs in public. They mistakenly think that when a void emerges it will not be occupied by those with clay feet. They mistakenly think that climate change for example is the political province of lotus-eaters. They make that error and imperil their long-term profitability.So although I have sought to be an advocate for business culture I shed not one doubt about taking on Countdown because that was about respect and fairness. But that part of my career is now over. That falls now to my colleagues from both sides of the House to yes show that we can recollect and value our past but accept that the greatest duty we have is the responsibility to the future and the future belongs in a political sense to those whom I am leaving behind.To my staff Tracy Dalton in the north; Julia Buck who has been with me since 2005; young Ben Appleton who is soon to go on an army trip to Malaysia; and John and ChrissiePānapa I salute you. You have enabled me to do my mahi down here and keep the home fires burning.To my children andwhānau who are here today I hope this speech represents the end of one chapter and the opening of a new opportunity. I have with me this evening my mother. I have with me this evening also that person whom I affectionately call my beauty queen DorothyPumipī.Although there may be an element of awkwardness to name people you have to respect those who help you pick yourself up when things do not work out. So to all of those who have shown me love and to those who feel I may have dashed your aspirations by not being quite the person you wanted me to be please sing me the waiata “Please release me. Let me go.” I salute you. You have honoured me by turning out today. Please come and enjoy the oysters the clams and the fish etc. over at the Back Bencher. This is me. I am out. Kia oratātou katoa.WaiataSitting suspended from 6.05 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Budget DebateDebate resumed on theAppropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill.Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Conservation): The most significant part of Budget 2014 is that we are in the black. I am wearing a black tie to mark that because it is hugely significant. It is great news and a mark of respect for John Key and Bill English in bringing down a balanced Budget in such difficult circumstances—something that is the envy of developed countries around the world. Let me talk about how significant it is. I still remember and I have brought it down to the House with me the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update of October 2008. This is when Labour had control of the Treasury benches and the officials’ advice. Labour said—and let me list the figures to remind the House of where we have come from—that we would have a decade of deficits. In fact I checked that.Hon Todd McClay: How many?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: A decade—10 years—of ever-increasing deficits. For the financial year that we are debating Labour said that the Government would be spending in 2014-15 $5 billion more than what it would be receiving. But it gets worse. It said that debt would now be at $80 billion and even worse it said that on abusiness-as-usual basis carrying on with Labour’s policies by 2020 that debt would be $130 billion. That is a Greek level of debt. That is a bankruptcy level of debt. That is the sort of dire state that New Zealand was inin 2008.It is not like the intervening 5 years have been easy. The global financial crisis that bit in 2009 was the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. In fact Bill English has had the toughest job of any Minister of Finance 25 of them in terms of the global economic circumstances and then throw on top of that New Zealand’s worst ever natural disaster: the earthquakes in Christchurch. Add those circumstances together and you would say that it was a near miracle that we are in the black for 2014-15. I acknowledge that it is a small number $360 million but what is so encouraging is that we are going to have choices in the next 3 years with surpluses of $1 billion $2 billion and $3 billion out into future years. That is an outstanding tribute.Just to get the numbers clear debt today is $20 billion less than the pre-election forecast from 2008 and in 2020 when the projections would have us wallowing in $120 billion of debt those debt levels will be back to 20 percent of GDP with the New Zealand Government’s finances better than those of pretty much anywhere else in the world. That is an extraordinary achievement for which Bill English deserves huge credit.Listening to contributions from members opposite they sort of say that getting to surplus would have been easy. Well where have they been for 5 years? Let us go back to 2009 and 2010. Labour members including Mr Cunliffe were demanding that there be a greater stimulus package and that the Government borrow more and spend more. In every single area in which this Government has done the hard yards to get us in the black members opposite have screamed and whined and opposed and sniped. Let us give a little example. One of the things where saving was done was around the issue of night classes. Do you know what it meant in my area? I can remember a constituent in my area who was earning over $150000 strongly objecting that he was now going to have to pay for his own Pilates classes. Well sorry get a grip. Is balancing the books more important or is it the Government paying for well-off people’s Pilates classes?But it is not just there. Whether it is in terms of conservation whether it is foreign affairs whether it is defence or whether it has been primary industries across the board members opposite have opposed every attempt to get this country in the black and now they have the gall to come to this House and say that getting to surplus would have been easy. It was not. It has been hard yards. If New Zealand wants to know what it would be like with a Labour-Green Government just look across the Tasman. Australia just last week tabled a Budget with a $50 billion deficit. It is putting up taxes. It is cutting core services. It has got enormous difficulty on its hands as a consequence of the very policies that members opposite advocate for New Zealand and we say: “Not on your nelly! Let us keep New Zealand on course and in the black.”In this Budget are provisions extra steps around the issue of affordable housing. I was listening to the Budget debate and there was a contribution from a Green member. It was so extraordinary that I have to quote it. They said this: “What has the cost of building materials got to do with affordable housing?”. I am sorry but I am one of those practical engineering types. I have got news for the Greens. Houses are made of things like wood and concrete and plasterboard. If they are expensive that makes houses expensive. If we as a Government can make steps so that those things might be more affordable we actually make houses more affordable.I saw a policy announcement from parties opposite that said that they were going to grant every first-home buyer an extra $2000 and that was going to make houses more affordable. Firstly where does the $2000 that the Government gives away come from? It actually comes from homeowners from people who are trying to pay the mortgage. Itis just a money-go-round. It is actually not making things more affordable. But I say this: every country that has tried to provide grants and to simply feed the demand side of housing actually does not get there. You need to address the fundamentals. You need to go after the issues of land supply which we are going after at pace. Members opposite opposed every step this Government took last year with the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill to free up the process so that we might get more sections available so that houses are more affordable.Tomorrow we are going to be debating the Government’s changes around development contributions. They have gone up more than any other item over the last 10 years. Members opposite are opposing reductions in those development contributions and somehow pretend that they are about addressing the issues of housing affordability. There is no magic bullet to that challenging issue. We need to do the things that the Productivity Commission said we should do. But do you know what I find particularly galling? In every year from 2003 to 2008 house prices went up by more than 10 percent. One year they went up by 19 percent. What did members opposite do? Absolutely diddly-squat. Absolutely nothing. House prices went up by 96 percent over that entire period and there is not a bill or reform in any area that would have made any difference.Reflect on our 5 years. Actually house prices in New Zealand for the first 3 years during that global financial crisis period went down. In fact I had questions from members opposite asking what the Government is doing about the risk of house prices dropping. The worst year was last year. House prices last year increased nationally by 9 percent. We have introduced over six different reforms to get on top of that issue and to make a real difference and those are the real long-term answers to the issues of housing affordability.I have one last point on that question and it is that the worst thing for homeownership and housing affordability is the issue of interest rates. The Budget documents and the Treasury advice is absolutely clear that if you spend like drunken soldiers you will drive interest rates up. Treasury has very clearly put in a spending cap of $1.5 billion which we are following and every utterance I hear from members opposite is that they would exceed that drive up interest rates and rob New Zealanders of their hopes and dreams of housing affordability.This is an awesome Budget. It is a good Budget in the black making progress for New Zealand and it should be commended to the House.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): That was an interesting contribution from Nick Smith. There are a couple of initiatives like the free doctors visits and prescriptions for children under 13 that the Green Party supports but this Budget is not a prudent Budget because it is about debt. It is about fiscal debt social debt and environmental debt. When National came into power the Government debt was $14 billion. How much is it now? It is $61 billion. That is $13500 for every New Zealander—an increase of $11000 for every person in New Zealand since 2008. So John Key’s Government may achieve a small surplus but it has been profligate in its borrowing and it is burdening present and future generations with the cost of repaying that debt. That debt means that we have $1 billion in interest costs every year and that is $1 billion that we cannot spend on health on education or on the environment like conservation. There is also a major problem in the Government’s spending priorities because it is skewing some of the spending in the natural resource area towards ripping off the environment. In this Budget National found an extra $40 million to subsidise more irrigation and more pollution of our rivers and lakes but it could not find a single dollar more to properly protect our wild landscapes and our species like themōhua thekākā and our threatened native bats.Those species are faced this year with a plague of rats and stoats and yet National could not find a single dollar extra to avoid that threat. We had the Minister of Conservation trumpeting the Department of Conservation’s programme to increase predator control over another 600000 hectares to tackle the mast year. That is the heavy seeding in our beech forests which is followed by an increase in rat and mice numbers and then an increase in stoats which then turn on our birds. Yet is there a dollar in this Budget to help control those rats and stoats—that pest plague? No. There is $40 million for more subsidies for water pollution but not a single dollar more—in fact there has been a cut of nearly $5 million—in the funding for the Department of Conservation’s Natural Heritage Management System which is the programme where we get pest control done and where we get work done for our threatened species. It is the department that is going to have to scrimp and save. It is going to have to reduce its other work in order to tackle this predator plague. There is not a single dollar extra for conservation.If this had been a Green Budget we would have had a Government that looked after all New Zealanders not just the top 2 percent. We would not have had the tax cuts for the wealthy that have deprived the Government of billions of dollars of revenue. We would have invested in conservation to protect our public lands because we know that investing in conservation protects our “100% Pure New Zealand” image. It protects that $13 billion worth of brand that is so essential to the marketing of our primary produce and to bringing tourists here. It is an essential investment too because it helps to sustain ecosystem services like clean air and water; it helps to sustain our quality of life and the places where we can go kayaking where we can go tramping and where we can go walking; and it is spending that creates extra jobs in the regions. A Green Budget would invest in protecting those wild landscapes.Instead in this Budget the Government is spending on very risky ventures. By putting an extra $40 million into the Crown Irrigation Fund the Government is signalling to the people of Hawke’s Bay and the Hawke’s Bay Regional Investment Co. that it is likely to be spending on that very grandiose dam scheme atRuataniwha. It is doing that despite the fact that there are no obvious private investors for that scheme—TrustPower has pulled outNgāiTahu has pulled out—and there is a very low likelihood of getting good commercial returns. So what is the Hawke’s Bay Regional Investment Co. doing? It is looking to the Crown Irrigation Fund for a big handout to subsidise that scheme and plug the giant hole in its funding.So the Green Party knows that if we are going to have a prosperous economy we need to have an environment that we invest in not one that we rip off through subsidies. Our initiatives like the Green Investment Bank that was announced last week would seek to change the direction of our economy to put it on a much more sustainable footing in order to capture a slice of that trillion-dollar global market in renewables. A Green Budget would be about having a more sustainable course for our future not about investing in industries that pollute and destroy our environment.Julie Anne Genter: Mr Speaker—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry I was not informed that this was a split call—Hon Ruth Dyson: It’s a split call.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: It is a split call? Well in that regard you have 5 minutes Julie Anne Genter. It is helpful if members alert the Speaker first and then I can give a warning bell. It would be preferable if that happened.JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): The Budget is about choices. In the Green Party we are very conscious that resources are limited and so we have to make choices about how we spend our money. Despite what the National Party might say about us we believe in living within our means. One can tell what someone values by what theyprioritise in their spending. The Green Party values our pristine natural environment we value people and we value democracy. We would make very different choices to this Government in our Budget. A Green Budget would be one that builds an economy that serves people and protects the planet and that enriches the lives of New Zealanders for generations to come.I stood to be an MP for the Green Party because I love New Zealand. I want to help look after our precious places and all of our people and we can do that. We have so many opportunities right now in 2014 to create a clean green economy that works for everyone not just those who are already at the top. Unfortunately this National Government does not believe that we can have a healthy environment and have jobs. It consistently says that we are against jobs because we want to protect the environment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our economy exists to serve us—it exists to serve people—and it cannot exist without a healthy environment. Our economic success is underpinned by the health of our environment.I know that New Zealanders love our rivers and streams and that they want them to be clean enough to swim in as they once were. Unfortunately this Budget does not do much to clean up our rivers. On the contrary it earmarks $80 million to subsidise irrigation schemes which will make pollution in rivers worse. National is choosing to prioritise big projects—like theRuataniwha Dam a project that does not even stack up economically in the short term let alone environmentally in the long term—and the National Government is consistently choosing to prioritise a few people who stand to gain in the short term even when it will leave New Zealand’s economy and environment worse off when it will leave New Zealand’s rivers more polluted and when only a few people will benefit.Another example of short-term thinking by this National Government is the decision to prioritise billions of dollars in the transport budget on a few motorway projects that will serve only 5 percent of vehicle trips. It sounds crazy and it is. It is going ahead with these projects that do not stack up economically in the short term or environmentally in the long term. Of course there are some people who will benefit from these new duplicate highways. There are a few people who drive on those roads who will say once they have been built that they are better off. That is true but we do not see the opportunity cost and there is a massive opportunity cost to spending billions on just a few highways like thePūhoi to Warkworth “Holiday Highway”; Transmission Gully which we are taking out a private loan to fund—even though the Government claims to have returned to surplus it is actually getting us into more debt for some very dodgy projects—and the Waikato Expressway.That opportunity cost is that we will not see the improvements to safety and maintenance of these existing roads sooner. We will not see the improvements to train and bus services that could have helped millions of New Zealanders get to work and get to school more affordably and more quickly whether they travel by public transport or by car. The best way to free up the roads at peak time is to make it easier for some people not everyone to leave the car at home. We will not see the transformational and very low-cost benefits of making it safer for kids to walk and cycle to school. The Green Party has a very smart practical alternative to the Government’s programme that will improve our existing roads and give New Zealanders more choices.Housing has been raised as a major issue. I want to make just a couple of comments about housing and how the National Government is missing a huge opportunity to address both the demand side and the supply side of housing. It claims that there is no demand problem that there is no impact from foreign capital coming into our real estate market. Well that would make New Zealand an absolute exception on the world scene because it is affecting property prices in cities across the world. Secondly it says it isentirely a supply issue and that freeing up new land on the fringe is going to create affordable housing but it will also bring with it enormous transport costs. It would be wiser to enable cities to address the supply problem through targeted building and increase the opportunities for people to live where they want to live where land values are highest.Hon CRAIG FOSS (Minister of Commerce): On the day of Shane Jones’ valedictory the Greens have just given us two speeches to show exactly why he is leaving a potential Labour-Greens Government. That is an absolute prime example of a party over there with policies that are anti-growth anti-jobs under the guise of some nice green environmental wording but is actually so far to the left so devolutionary of our aspirations for our country that I do not know where to start.We note that in the Greens’ version of the Budget if they did it there would be printing presses involved because that is how they would find the money. They would get a printing press out and print money. They are against water storage and irrigation schemes across the country not just in the example of theRuataniwha Dam which the previous speaker Julie Anne Genter was talking about there. They are against oil and gas exploration around our country. They live in this conspiracy land. How do they solve the housing problem and its issues? Well I remember Metiria Turei talking about crashing down the equity that people have in their existing homes. They want to do a Green Investment Bank. Where is the capital for this bank coming from? From the printing press from domestic savings—there is a wee problem there—or from the offshore savings from evil foreign lenders to New Zealand? Where is it coming from?They have the audacity to talk about bringing tourists here and then are anti fossil fuels. How are the tourists going to get here I do wonder? They talk about jobs in the regions such as Hawke’s Bay. They rally against free-trade agreements for an exporting region such as Hawke’s Bay a country such as New Zealand and yet they talk about jobs in the regions. They were talking about water standards. Where were they supporting the previous Labour Government to help modernise New Zealand’s freshwater standards to bring in minimum standards? Where were they when we needed standards around oil exploration off our shores?I do note my colleague Mr Shane Jones’ valedictory tonight. What an excellent speech and what an entertainer and I am quite sure just quietly that some of the members opposite are probably going: “Oh maybe we made the wrong decision.” On a personal note I will miss Mr Jones. I do count him as a parliamentary friend. I do acknowledge that we had a couple of great times together particularly on our US trip together as part of the New Zealand – USA Friendship Group the Parliamentary Rugby Team and particularly on the Finance and Expenditure Committee. We had a lot of fun.Actually Mr Jones is not the only person shunning Labour. He is not the only person leaving Mr Cunliffe and Labour because up in theWairarapa Tukituki and Napier all three of the Labour candidates there are actually refusing to go on the Labour list. They are refusing to go on the Labour list. Why? How can that be? Which of Labour’s policies must they not want to be a party to? Perhaps it goes way back to MrCunliffe’s sacking of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board. Perhaps it goes back to Labour’s banning Facebook policy. Perhaps it goes back to its policy of banning friends and families of migrants to New Zealand. Perhaps it is just something to do with the man ban. Perhaps those three candidates who are choosing not to go on the Labour list and who are therefore choosing not to campaign for Labour Party policies do not want to have anything to do with the Greens. That is fair enough. Perhaps they do not want to have anything to do with Hone Harawira in a potential Government. Perhaps they do not want to be part of policy that is essentially anti-job anti-growth anti - New Zealand although it might make a few nice headlines.It is the party vote that decides the Government. It is the party vote. It is the party vote. It is the party vote. How and why candidates from the major Opposition party in New Zealand are choosing not to follow Labour Party policy on the party list I cannot understand. But I have seen this before and I have seen the results of it before. As a candidate for the Nats in 2002 I know that our organisation was not in the best shape. There were a few issues and individual candidates tried not to be on the list and ran localised campaigns. And do you remember the result? Worst result National has ever had. I am quite sure that Labour is well on that way and we are seeing that play out in the regions with its candidates.This was an excellent Budget. It is a continuation of the excellent and prudent management of our economy. A surplus has been reached. After the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update of 2008—just 6 years after that—there is a surplus of $382 million which is apparently a trifling amount according to the Opposition parties. Actually it is quite a significant amount I would suggest. What does that surplus mean? It means lower interest rates for longer—lower interest rates for longer—because of a National Government and Bill English’s Budget discipline over the last 6 years. How do we get to that surplus? What does it mean? It means more oxygen in the economy for the real job-makers out there. The size of Government to the economy is now about 30 percent and heading lower and better public services are being delivered all the time across crime health education—you name it—even though times have been tight. That is how you do things better. That is how you deliver better outcomes.It is curious that Mr Parker the Labour finance spokesman says Labour would have got to surplus anyway. How would it have done that with the decade of deficits forecast in 2008 with its existing policies and then with voting against every single measure of reform and cost-saving and budget leading up to this surplus? How could Labour have got to surplus if it voted against all those things and with the various policies it seems to be rolling out now? It is quite curious. Another curious thing is that Mr Cunliffe in his speech talked about Labour charging and targeting full employment—fair enough an aspirational goal. But then not long after that he said: “We are targeting 4 percent unemployment.” not full employment—zero—but 4 percent. Contradictory—what is he up to? I do not know. The surplus is very good for our families our country and our exports.Just to talk quickly about my broadcasting portfolio I note that the Opposition spokesman spoke and actually did not even mention broadcasting. I was quite surprised about that. A very good announcement today was that over 500000 hours of Television New Zealand archives will be transferred from Television New Zealand to the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the Department of Internal Affairs to be made accessible to New Zealanders online. That is National’s ongoing commitment to public sector broadcasting—the preservation of what we have already and making accessible stuff that has already been paid for and is owned by the taxpayer. That is actually what a better public service is. We continue to allow Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand to seize the opportunities in front of them in the challenging digital environment. The speech from the Chief Executive Officer of Radio New Zealand Paul Thompson the other day should be widely read by MPs in the House and particularly by Opposition spokespeople for broadcasting. It shows the ability of our publicly owned public sector broadcasters to begin to adapt to this very challenging and new but exciting environment.Where is Labour’s position on this? Labour’s position—and probably the Greens’ position; probably the Greens’ position would be worse—is that Labour wants to control what you watch when you watch and how you watch. That is what it would do. It is stuck in the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation one model. Labour memberstalk about building a new channel for goodness’ sake when the entire world is moving away from traditional channels because it is about content content content. We should be blind as to how it is delivered as long as it is produced got out there and Kiwis can access it.How would Labour pay for this new channel? Well it is putting a levy apparently on information and communications technology providers—i.e. internet companies. Internet providers in New Zealand will be taxed. Labour goes back to its natural position of: “If it is moving we should tax it.” Let us ban Facebook as part of that and tax the internet within New Zealand to pay for the traditional mode of broadcasting to build this new Labour channel it is talking about. It is absolute madness—absolute madness. Labour is very much in a New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation time warp. National is digital looking forward working forwardfutureproofed and looking to help New Zealand - owned organisations Government and otherwise seize the opportunity to tell New Zealand’s stories across the world. Thank you.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am advised that this is a split call—Louisa Wall.LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): That is correct. I would like to take the opportunity to mihi to the Hon Shane Jones and acknowledge that he gave his valedictory speech tonight and that many of my colleagues are over at the Back Bencher enjoying his hospitality. Many of us enjoyed what he had to say and in fact I want to pick up on something that Shane quoted in his speech. It was: “Hūtia terito o te harakeke keihea tekōmako ekō?” [Pull out the centre shoot of the flax where will the bellbird sing lass?]What does that actually mean? At the heart of the flax-bush the bellbird sings. Where will the bellbird be if the flax-bush ceases to be? What the intention of thatwhakatauāki is all about is to ensure that we aswhānau ashapū as communities and as society support those who are the most vulnerable. Actually therito which is in the heart of the harakeke is the most vulnerable. I make no apologies for the Labour Party being very clear about what our priorities are and would be if we were the Government. I particularly want to commend my colleague Jacinda Ardern and her Best Start policy which is all about making sure every New Zealand child has the best possible start in life which begins with a $60 per week payment for every child and particularly for those children who are the most vulnerable. They are the 285000 children who are living in poverty. They are the 170000 children who are beneficiaries’ children who received nothing from this Government in the Budget. The Prime Minister reiterated that today.I would like to focus on two commentators post-Budget one of whom is the Associate Professor Mike O’Brien who is the social security spokesperson for the Child Poverty Action Group. His assessment of the Budget was very clear. He said that only one Budget item would directly “affect poverty” and that was extending free doctors visits and prescriptions to all children under the age of 13. That is the only measure in National’s Budget that is going to directly affect children who live in poverty. But he had a caveat on that assessment and I am sure the National members of the House will find this interesting. This was within the context of Northland. He said that there are geographical issues for poor people living in isolated rural communities so extending free visits is of no use if you could not access them because of distance or an inability to afford to get there. The only addition I would make within the context of South Auckland is that those free doctors visits mean nothing if you do not have enough general practitioners for our children to visit.Dr Paul Hutchison is in the House tonight and he will know that Counties Manukau District Health Board and the Counties Manukau area is the lowest-provided region in terms of general practitioners. We are over 100 general practitioners short. So withinthat context you can extend free visits but the reality is that if those general practitioners do not exist in our communities then again those families do not have access to what we would consider the basics. Those basics are primary-care basics that ensure that our children particularly are strong they are healthy and they are ready and active and have the ability to go to school to learn.I also want to pick up on a comment from this article in theNorthern Advocate. It is from a man calledHuaPoraka from Dargaville. His assessment of National’s Budget was pretty easy. His assessment was that National does not care. National does not care about the children in Northland. National does not care about the children in South Auckland. If National thinks that this Budget is going to reduce poverty is going to address the issues of child poverty then it is greatly mistaken. The only other thing I want to highlight is that Gordon Campbell was very clear that this is the “let them eat crumbs Budget”. That was his assessment. I say that for some kids living in poverty it is actually the “let them eat air Budget”. What you have given children and particularly beneficiaries’ children is fresh air. You have given them nothing. You are not helping them out of their circumstances. You are not providing a hand up or a way to a better life. You have actually ignored them. That was the other assessment of Gordon Campbell—that this Government has ignored beneficiaries’ children because guess what? National does not care. Kia ora.Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): I am pleased to take the other half of this call on the Budget. What I was looking for in this Budget was its vision. What vision does it reflect of contemporary New Zealand society and contemporary issues facing our people? I was asking myself the question: does it put people first? If it did then I would take the Budget seriously. People after all are the most important. If we do not put our people first if we do not develop them well if we do not give them the opportunities then we all pay for it in the end. We pay huge amounts of money to correct those problems that are created when we do not put our people first. That was not the vision of this particular Budget. Its vision was somewhere else. Its vision was of a divisive society. It was not a vision of treating our most vulnerable well.Then I asked well what does it do—this is one of the most serious questions facing New Zealand society today—about one of the most serious problems? This is the problem of inequality. [Interruption] I say to the Hon Todd McClay that this is a problem that is facing New Zealand society. I do not think anybody in this House doubts that inequality is awful and that it ought to be addressed particularly when that inequality has very serious impacts on our children. And yet we know that the Budget did not address those inequalities. The Budget really began to say: “Well do you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to select a small group of the most vulnerable and we’re going to target some services towards them.”I know that Paul Hutchison will soon talk about targeting but when there is such a big group Mr Hutchison—285000 children who are living in poverty—where is the morality and where is the ethics of addressing 30000 of them? Where is the morality? How do you work that out Mr Hutchison? In a sense it is condemning the other quarter of a million children to poverty. What that does Mr Hutchison is it simply creates another generation for the welfare system to cope with for the health system to cope with and for the justice system to cope with. We create bigger problems down the track Mr Hutchison. And yet we know that for children that moment of their lives that 0 to 3 years is what sets them up on their development trajectory for the rest of their lives. That is what does it. Every piece of science we know says that that is where we should target. So everybody in this group ought to be targeted.But when it is 285000 children Mr Hutchison and we are targeting 30000 children what is this silly game we are playing? It really is condemning the most vulnerable toeven more miserable lives. There is plenty of evidence to show that we have not applied the kind of morality the decency for creating a society where all boats are lifted. Here we are wanting to advantage a small group of those children and that is where this Budget fails abysmally. Our alternative ideas around children in Best Start begin to address very systematically each step each segment of what it takes to lift all those boats and to give those people a better start in life.This is my last Budget speech and it is a brief one. I make it with some sadness because I came into Parliament after a life of working with the most vulnerable working with children and families for 45 years. I say with some sadness that we now see a period here when we are not addressing the most vulnerable. Much of what Nick Smith said was really just discounting 9 years of very positive development. There were 9 years of economic management that gave this Government the headroom to manage the headwinds that came. If it was not for that it would have been in dire trouble. But Government members do not have the decency to acknowledge that. It was all designed simply to create the Crosby/Textor - type spin that throws those figures around. But their own performance is really immoral. It is immoral when looked at from the perspective of putting children and families first. Thank you.Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Revenue): This is a very good Budget—New Zealand is heading in the right direction—and it is a confident Budget for a confident country. That statement sums up the difference between this side of the House and that side of the House—a confident Budget for a confident nation.I want to be charitable after listening to the last two speakers. Rajen Prasad said that this will be his last Budget so I will resist the opportunity the challenge or the temptation to do anything but wish him well in his many many years ahead. But can I say that we need to be optimistic in this House. We need to focus on the good things that happen in New Zealand. We need to be fair and reasonable and when we are in Opposition we do not just have to oppose absolutely everything. What must it be like after 6 years in Opposition to feel that everything is wrong with this country and that the members opposite are right all of the time? Well let us wait and see.For two elections in a row New Zealanders have had a choice and those New Zealanders decided that they did want a brighter future and they did want to choose a New Zealand that was heading in the right direction. What they have been saying to us through the media on the airwaves as they call the radio stations and in our electorate seats is that this is a confident Budget for a confident nation. And when the members opposite stop talking and listen to New Zealanders they will actually see what it is that New Zealanders are interested in.Let us contrast—not just our speeches and how aspirational we are compared with members opposite—the Budget delivered by Bill English in New Zealand last week with the one that was delivered in Australia the very same week. But before we do let us remember 3 or 4 years ago when these very members who have been quite vocal in this House were saying: “Why aren’t you the National Government more like they are in Australia?”. They asked why we were not more like—and they used the term—the Lucky Country Australia where all of those New Zealanders were going. Well guess what? They were leaving under the Labour Government and yes when we inherited such a mess from the Labour Government after 9 years they continued to go. But we have not heard now have we or last week from the Labour Opposition: “Why aren’t you more like Australia?”.Can I say to New Zealanders that when they face the choice on 20 September of this year of who will govern them if they choose a Green-Labour Government coalition then they will get the wish that the Labour Party has asked for: they will be much more like Australia in this country than we are today. The reason for that is that in Australiapeople are facing very difficult times. In Australia the Government has made cuts. It has cut its welfare it has cut its Public Service and it has increased taxes. It has got a special deficit tax. After all of those changes and all of those cuts the costs going up when people go to the doctor across the board it is going to have a NZ$32 billion deficit in this next year—a NZ$32 billion deficit.That may be all right for members opposite in the Labour Party and the Greens. Maybe they think that that is OK but I am not sure that is the feeling in Australia right now. How come we are not hearing from them now about why we are not more like the Lucky Country? Compare that with the job that Bill English has done and the hard work that New Zealanders have done over this last 5 years on what we must recognise as being a very difficult time for New Zealanders—a deep recession.As one of the members opposite always says it has been the worst this and the worst that over 50 years. Well there was a very steep recession a global financial crisis a challenge in Christchurch because of the earthquakes and we have a modest surplus coming to New Zealand—$372 million. It is a very modest surplus but that is so much better than the deficits that were forecast by Treasury when we took over the Government benches and so very different from what is happening in Australia.There is a forecast of a growth rate of between 2 and 4 percent over the next 4 years—one of the first countries in the Western World not only to get back to surplus but to have sustainable levels of growth which will help grow the economy and grow incomes for New Zealanders. It is such a great difference between our two countries.This was a Budget focused on growth jobs and prosperity. But it was not just about the economy. There was much more to it than this and I think this is what hurts the Opposition the most: we are helping children and helping families. There is a $500 million investment in children and families in New Zealand. There are free general practitioner visits and free prescriptions for all children under the age of 13. I think that is an excellent policy and I congratulate Bill English and Tony Ryall on making this possible. Without the hard work the dedication and the caution around Government spending over the last 5 years it would not have been possible to do this with a Budget surplus. There are free general practitioner visits and free prescriptions for every child in New Zealand under the age of 13. There is 4 weeks’ extra paid parental leave extended to caregivers and other parents. That will be welcomed by parents and the other caregivers of children in New Zealand.There is an increase in the parental tax credit of $70 a week bringing it to $220 per week. There is $155 million extra going into early childhood education. More money is being spent on early childhood education every year under this Government than in any year before and guess what the taxpayers—mums and dads and their children—are starting to see a return on this investment in children: $155 million extra in early childhood education. Members opposite reject that and do not support it.There is $33 million extra to support vulnerable children—$33 million extra to support vulnerable children—to create eight new Children’s Teams. I won the seat in my electorate of Rotorua 6 years ago. I was re-elected 3 years ago and I will work very hard for every single vote there this year. We had a Children’s Team delivered to us 2 years ago. It empowers the community and all of those groups to come together to focus on those vulnerable children to put them first and to make their lives better. Already we are starting to see the community growing coming together and working through that. So we have that in Rotorua already. It started a few years ago. We have worked hard it is starting to work well and now we are able to use those things that we have learnt and that were demonstrated and roll them out to eight other parts of the country at a cost of $33 million. Members opposite would say it was a cost; on this side of the House we see it as an investment of $33 million into vulnerable children to make theirlives better. Well done to Tony Ryall and the rest of the team for excellent work around helping children and around families.The other thing I wanted to talk about—because if one listened to only the Opposition one would think that there was no work done here at all—is health. What more have we done in health? All of those statistics all of that extra money I mentioned that we spent around families we get to do that and we also can run a modest surplus this year—so different from Australia. “Better sooner more convenient care”—there has never been a time when that statement was truer. There is $110 million extra for elective surgery. That is knees and hips—knees and hips for New Zealanders. They are getting operations.When I became the member of Parliament for Rotorua 6 years ago a number of complaints in the community were that people were not getting their operations. They were not being treated by hospitals they were being put on waiting lists and then they were receiving letters saying they had been knocked off the waiting list. The Labour Government at the time said they were doing a great job not by delivering operations but by knocking people off waiting lists. Well now there are more operations every year in Rotorua and in other parts of the country than ever before.There is $112 million for disability support $96 million for increased home-based support care $90 million for free general practitioner visits $40 million in additional support for the elderly $33 million for faster cancer treatment $20 million to help fight rheumatic fever and $6 million for cochlear implants for children.This is the Budget of a caring Government—a Government that has worked hard over 5 years to move New Zealand out of recession to get us back on track to back New Zealanders and to get us back to a modest surplus which will grow in the years ahead. This is a Government that has worked hard with New Zealanders to deliver for New Zealanders and I think it could not be a better Budget coming into an election.I say this to you that if the members opposite want to revert and be like Australia or other countries then they should keep making the pledges they are making in the Labour Party and the Green Party about how they can just spend money on anything they want with no accountability. The public saw that over 9 years. They did not like it. They rejected it. We will make a case as a confident Government. We have got a confident Budget for a confident country. This will be a very good year to go to an election. This is a caring Budget. It is a caring country. It is a caring Government. I commend this Budget to the House.CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): The Budget provides the opportunity for the Government to outline its priorities and to talk about what its plan and its vision are. We saw that last Thursday and it is fair to say that like for many New Zealanders for this side of the House it was pretty underwhelming. But let us imagine.Let us imagine that every New Zealander woke up and they were in a home that was warm and dry and they could afford that home. Imagine what that would be like. Imagine that they had the security of knowing that the community they were living in was one they could put roots down in and participate in. Being part of a community—imagine that. Imagine that the children in the house went to the local school and remained there until it was time to move to the next stage in their world-class education. Imagine what that would be like.Imagine there was enough room in the house in the home and that that was a healthy place where no one was at risk of getting Third World diseases. Imagine that increasing numbers of New Zealanders were able to own their own homes. That is right—own their own homes. It was not that long ago that that was the Kiwi dream.Imagine that all adults who were in jobs were earning a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Remember that? That used to be part of the Kiwi dream too—a fair day’s pay fora fair day’s work. Imagine that they worked hard that they could get ahead and that they could improve their family’s standard of living.Imagine that all of the children living in this country had enough to eat. Imagine that all of the children in this country had the opportunity to develop to their full potential and to get ahead irrespective of their backgrounds and their families’ economic situations. Imagine that Budget 2014 had given New Zealanders hope that that was the sort of society we live in. But it is not.Once upon a time that was New Zealand but not any more—not under this National Government. Now we know that New Zealand is becoming less equal. These are the real figures in this Budget the things that underline this Budget. There are 285000 children living in poverty—a national disgrace. The cost of the tax cuts that National gave to the rich is $1.2 billion and now we cannot fund health and education sufficiently to keep up with cost increases and population growth. There are 42000 more people unemployed now than when National came into office and 46 percent of our people did not get a pay increase last year. Those are the sorts of figures underlying the Budget and those are the figures that impact on people and on families and in the end that is what matters.We need Budgets and an economy that delivers for people—all people not just some. Those are the sorts of priorities and the sorts of plans that could have been in Budget 2014 but not of course under a National Government.We also know that fairer societies are more successful societies. There is a body of evidence now that shows that we all benefit from people having a fair go and from all kids having a great start in life and getting ahead. We all benefit from that. The social costs of not doing that—imprisonment mental health issues and all of those things; the opposite side of that—the information about that is there. It is irresponsible to ignore that sort of information. Kiwis are worried about this.A recent poll showed that 75 percent of New Zealanders believe that New Zealand is becoming less equal and Bill English in the House the other day just sort of dismissed that saying: “They’re wrong. Obviously they’re wrong.” Well that is actually not the reality out there on the doorsteps. When I talk to people they are concerned about inequality. They are not just the people doing it tough themselves. Lots of decent New Zealanders who are doing OK are worried about other people. That is the sort of society we still have in this country.The Government ignores all of that and recent statistics including the census. The Government tried to dispute the census figures as well. Every time any information is put out in this House the Government ducks and dives. It disputes the figures and says they are not reputable. Even the New Zealand census showed that there are now twoAucklands: an Auckland for the rich and an Auckland for the rest. The Government says the census is wrong as well. Well tell that to the people inMāngere andŌtāhuhu whose incomes have actually dropped by 19 percent. Tell them that the census is wrong.In the Maungakiekie electorate in Auckland where I work we have got the richest and poorest Aucklanders living in one electorate. Housing is one of the big issues. Housing is a real indicator in the inequality argument. I talk to people about a range of different housing issues such as the difficulty that people are facing getting maintenance done on their State houses because the Government is extracting more money from Housing New Zealand. People have contacted me about the fact that there are State houses sitting empty while there are people desperately needing a home. There are people being evicted as a result of reviewable tenancies and elderly people worried that they are going to be evicted. There are people who just have no sense any more that they will ever be able to afford to buy a home.Access to affordable housing is vital. It is vital for people because they need shelter but it is much more than that. It is about a home it is about being part of a community and it is about good health and educational outcomes. So I know that this will be a really significant issue in this election and I know that across the other side of the House people know that as well. You know—sorry Mr Deputy Speaker. The Government knows—Dr Rajen Prasad: But he knows.CAROL BEAUMONT: —including the Deputy Speaker—that there is a real vulnerability on the housing issue because it is so clear.Members opposite are so out of touch on this issue. I still cannot believe that the member of Parliament for Maungakiekie the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga felt that a deposit of $130000—that is right $130000—is not out of reach for most people. Well that is just ridiculous. It is just ridiculous on the sorts of wages that people are earning to save $130000. That is so out of touch.On the poverty issue it is really interesting to see how much members opposite want to deny the issue of poverty and want to dispute what is going on with wages. Low wages in this country are a disgrace. People work hard and they cannot get ahead. Forty-six percent of them did not get a pay increase last year. Well prices certainly continued to go up last year. So this Budget did not deliver on those issues.Throughout New Zealand we see intergenerational inequality—young people burdened with student debt who have no sense of ever being able to afford to buy a home. We see inequality faced by women—single-income families beneficiary families and working families headed by women; Māori and Pacific women. The lowest-paid people in this country are Pasifika women earning little more than the minimum wage doing important work like aged care. That Government opposite intervened in the court case where they are trying to get wage justice. This is what is going on out there.Labour offers a different vision. Labour offers a vision where wages will be sufficient for people to have a decent standard of living and where there is a plan for economic development with decent jobs and decent wages. If you look at the Budget where was any information or any ideas about developing our economy to provide that sort of work? There is an absence of any thinking. There is a lack of ambition about moving forward lifting the standards in this country and lifting the sort of economic performance that we have in this country.So we want to make sure that there are decent jobs and enough jobs. Let us aspire to full employment. Let us aspire to lifting wages. Labour will lift wages. Labour will lift the minimum wage. Labour will promote the living wage. Labour will have fair labour laws where workers will be able to negotiate a decent pay increase unlike the sorts of attacks that they will face under National if it is returned in the election. So people have hope and change the Government.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am advised this is a split call—5 minutes Scott Simpson.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is interesting to follow that member Carol Beaumont who is a relatively recent retread arrival in the Labour caucus on the same night that Shane Jones should give his valedictory speech. Shane Jones is leaving the Labour Party caucus for a brighter future a more optimistic future and a more inspirational and aspirational future than could ever be provided by the Labour Party caucus. It was no good that member Carol Beaumont coming to this House tonight and speaking in the Budget debate and actually doing nothing more than reading her Labour list ranking speech—snarky whiney negative and offering no hope no vision no inspiration and no aspiration for hard-working New Zealanders.So here we stand. The nation is just 121 days out from a general election—121 days out from the election. There are only 18 House sitting days before this the 50th Parliament of New Zealand rises. Last week we had Bill English the very competent Minister of Finance in this John Key - led National Government administration present his sixth Budget to the nation and what a good Budget it was. We are back in black—back in black—with a modest but very workable surplus of $372 million. Four months out from the election who could ever have thought that that was possible without the hard work dedication and fiscal prudence of Bill English and this National team? Back in 2008 when John Key Bill English and the National team were first elected the country was in crisis. It was in turmoil. It was on the brink of financial disaster and it was the careful prudent management of Bill English and John Key that saw us return to an even keel and got us back on the right track.Last weekend I had many conversations with hard-working Kiwi people Kiwi voters and Kiwi constituents in the Coromandel electorate which I have the great pleasure to represent. What they were telling me was that this was a very good Budget. The feedback was excellent. That is quite unusual for a Budget because often people are not engaged with a Budget. Often people just let it wash over them but this time people did get the message. They understand that this is a caring National Government that has Kiwi families at the very heart of its policies—that we care that we understand and that we know it has been tough for so many New Zealanders over these last 6 years. We have now got away from the profligate spending of the Labour Government where the answer to everything was simply to throw more money at it.I am proud to rise in support of Bill English’s Budget which is clearly and very definitely focused on families at the heart of everything it contains. It is decent hard-working New Zealand families that are the focus of the Budget and they deserve it so to be. We had the worst global financial crisis since the 1930s. That is just one of the measures that Bill English and this team have had to contend with. Then of course we had Christchurch to contend with. We have done I think a very good job. I think New Zealanders in 121 days will realise that as well.I want to just mention one particular aspect of the Budget that is very near and dear to my heart and near and dear to the hearts of all people in the Coromandel—that is the $26.5 million that has been allocated to further the fight against kauri dieback disease. One-third of New Zealand’s remnant kauri stand in my electorate so it was a disaster of epic proportions when a couple of months ago the announcement came that kauri dieback had been found in the Coromandel. This new $26.5 million of investment by the Government into fighting kauri dieback will mean that over 100 kilometres of new tracks can be laid 5 kilometres of new boardwalks can be constructed and an extra 300 hygiene stations can be created.This Budget is a good Budget. In 121 days New Zealanders will be faced with a stark decision. That will be a decision to stick with John Key Bill English and this National Government on the course of solid fiscal management that they have embarked upon and are getting real results with or to put it all at risk with a Labour-Greens-Mana coalition. I know which way New Zealanders are going to vote in 121 days. I commend this Budget to the House.PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): I would like to thank my distinguished colleague from the Coromandel Scott Simpson for yielding in this split call. It is an enormous pleasure an honour and a privilege to rise and speak in favour of this Government’s sixth Budget delivered by our very prudent Minister of Finance the Hon Bill English. When looking through the departmental estimates it is fantastic to see such a large amount of investment going into the things that really matter to NewZealand and the areas that make a real difference in people’s lives—not just the pet projects and reckless expenditure that the side opposite seems to prefer.I have been knocking on doors in the Wellington Central electorate over the last weekend and I have to say that the feedback on this Budget has been overwhelmingly positive. The $500 million package for children and families in particular has been popular among the voters in Wellington. That is expanding the eligibility and duration for paid parental leave adding to the parental tax credit and giving further access to early childhood education. The free doctors visits and free prescriptions for children under the age of 13 especially have been extremely popular.Another area of investment that is of direct relevance to the good people of the capital is the Government’s support of the film-making industry. The newly restructuredScreen Production Grant offers an incentive of a 30 percent grant to attract international productions with an additional 5 percent available for productions that offer significant economic benefits. A 40 percent grant is available for local New Zealand productions and the range of productions that now qualify for this grant has been considerably expanded. This has been very well received also.Gisella Carr the Chief Executive of Film New Zealand said that “the increased incentive is very welcome as is the Government’s recognition that attracting film and television production into New Zealand has significant wider benefits for New Zealand including most recently in our tourism sector.” With three moreAvatar films to be fully realised in Wellington pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy I think the proof is in the pudding with this particular policy.We have also heard that business owners are breathing a sigh of relief that the Government has remained prudent in this Budget. The Wellington Employers’ Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive RaewynBleakley has said that a “restrained Budget is exactly what this country needs to cement-in the economic gains of the past few years”. She went on to comment that the Budget does not appear to be a “vote-winning lolly scramble”. That is a very positive thing and it will build on the platform of a return to strong and sustainable growth adding that “The prospect of more jobs higher wages and even tax cuts further down the track will be welcomed across the economy.” Also the managing director ofXero a fine Wellington-based firm said that the initiatives in the Budget that have specifically delivered for business were most welcome outlining the research and development tax credits and the hand back of considerable ACC levies—half a billion dollars’ worth—as most welcome initiatives.To me it is also good news that this Government’s sensible management of the economy has given the private sector the confidence to go forward and make sensible investment decisions and I for one especially welcome the news this week that we have heard a 2500 - seating capacity convention centre and a 5-star hotel are being considered for Wellington by private entrepreneurs and investors. This is something that will happen only when a Government provides an environment conducive to the private sector taking these opportunities and risks.I also welcome the investment this Budget makes in boosting trade supporting exporters defending the realm and helping our Pacific neighbours with their aid programmes. Today we heard in media reports the Hon Shane Jones say that he has no regrets about leaving an incompetent and debilitated muddle that is today’s Labour Party and coming over here to join the Government waka. There was nothing in the Hon Shane Jones’ very eloquent valedictory speech that suggested that that is anything but the truth. I want to say to the Hon Shane Jones as someone who left the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to enter Parliament to someone who is making the journey in the opposite direction: “Welcome aboardJonesy.” I am sure the member will find this waka to be more seaworthy to be a lot quicker across the water and to have a muchmore competent captain and with nowhere as many drips and leaks as his former vessel.We on this side of the House look forward to working with the most talented and sensible member of the Opposition.Tākina te hoe kia rite—let us wield the paddles together. In doing so let us achieve great things for economic development at home and in our wider region. I absolutely unreservedly commend this Budget to the House and to the people of New Zealand.BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I am very pleased to take a call on behalf of New Zealand First. It would be very easy to be lulled into a false sense of security listening to some of the speeches from that side of the House and seeing the generous dollop of money that was put into the health area in the latest Budget. In New Zealand First we particularly liked some of the health initiatives that received funding. We liked the free health care for all children aged under 13. That has been one of our policies for many many years so we were pleased to see it come into fruition. We also liked the fact that children are going to get two cochlear implants. We all need two ears to hear rather than one. So there were some very positive initiatives in health.However once again this Government has neglected the very important area of aged care in its Budget. We all know that the need is increasing at a steady rate and that when people go into a rest home their needs are far greater than they ever have been because they stay at home for as long as they possibly can. We like them to do that too. But there was absolutely nothing that actually looks at funding for aged-care services and employees. The Budget was totally silent on anything and everything that actually applies to this particular group. No strategy was visible apart from ignoring the problem. I was looking for “faster better sooner” action in this particular area and I know that the Minister of Revenue the Hon Todd McClay was talking about that previously.Hon Todd McClay: Yes.BARBARA STEWART: See we do listen on this side of the House.Working in a rest home is not an easy job; rather the reverse. I would say that most of us here in this House could not and would not want to work in this particular area. Fortunately there are people who can and who do and who like to work in this area caring for our seniors. Aged-care workers provide a great service while battling and scrimping to survive on the minimum wage which has been completely overlooked by this Government. One can earn more money in a supermarket packing shelves than what one can earn in the rest home industry. These hard workers have a very demanding job looking after our elderly whether it is in a rest home or even in the person’s own home.We rely on these people to carry out this job yet the Government basically ignores them as if they do not matter. We all know that costs are rising right throughout New Zealand society. Pressure is building and aged-care workers need to get a bigger slice of the pie than they get now. These people have been to our Health Committee. Of course we have got all parties represented on the select committee including Government members but really we are not listening to what these workers are saying. There were as I said earlier a number of good health care initiatives in the Budget but the failure to address the district health board funding at the levels required to maintain the service in this particular sector is disappointing and it is going to result in increased pressure on staff across the whole sector.The bottom line—and we all know it—is that our country is facing an ageing population and we need the facilities and the workers to help cope with this. The number of aged-care facilities the number of beds and the number of staff are all going to need to increase to cope with the demand that we have upon us. The 2010 GrantThornton aged residential care services review predicted that by 2026 between 12000 and 20000 new residents would require aged residential care—not a little number.The Government clearly needs to quantify the impending demand for elderly care. But what do we see? Basically this has been trivialised because the valuable occupation of aged care is being ignored. Aged-care staff carry out a whole range of tasks—some of them are seriously unpleasant—and they are woefully underpaid for them. The fact that a person can receive a better wage stacking shelves at the supermarket shows just how much value the Government places on this particular sector. It is absolutely disgraceful. The Government must set appropriate staffing levels and remuneration for aged-care workers to acknowledge their vital work and ensure the safety and care of those people working in the sector. The subsidy paid for the elderly in care should also increase. New Zealand First believes that it needs to increase as recommended in a 2008 report and then be adjusted to meet the annual rate of inflation. That is only fair.So what do we have? The Government is primarily to blame for the low wages and pay inequalities in the aged residential care sector. New Zealand First took action in 2005 to improve workers’ wages after a PricewaterhouseCoopers report showed that the sector was seriously underfunded by about 20 percent—a percentage that has only ever increased over the years. As part of New Zealand First’s confidence and supply agreement with the Labour Government in 2005 we boosted funding by $850 million over two Budgets. Post-2008 National took its eye off the ball and it did not inflation-adjust the increase we worked so hard to get. That has led to the situation today where Government workers are paid about 16 percent more than private providers doing similar work in residential aged-care facilities and in home-based community support.This Government needed to front up to ensure fair uniform funding for the aged-care sector which provides a valuable yet totally unappreciated service. And did it? No it did not. The Government needed to include money in the Budget to ensure that our older age group is adequately cared for and living in conditions that we would be happy to live in ourselves or for our parents or our grandparents to live in. People have sent me photos that show that some of the facilities are disgraceful. A student flat would be far better than some of the conditions that elderly residents are living in. By paying the staff a minimum wage reducing bed numbers and not keeping standards at a premium we are never going to see any improvement in this area. The Government is going to be completely caught out if it does not address adequate funding of this area now. The Budget was totally lacking in this area and the silence was absolutely deafening.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable Minister Simon—Hon Simon Bridges: You’d better give me my last name Mr Assistant Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): —Bridges.Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): I know there are other Simons in the House but that was the most pregnant pause I have ever heard. What is it? “Politeness is contagious” and I thought you had forgotten my name there. But enough about that.Look it is great to follow Barbara Stewart. She is a great woman. I know that if it was up to her New Zealand First would be supporting National after the election should it be in a position to do so. I know that she has been trying to seek peace between Brendan Horan and Winston Peters and she is disgusted by the nastiness going on between them right now. I know as I say that she is a good person with a good heart who if she was not a member of Parliament for New Zealand First would be voting National.What a great Budget we have seen in the last few days a Budget where Bill English and the Prime Minister came to this House and laid it all out for New Zealanders. Howwell received—I agree with Scott Simpson—that Budget was. We are now managing a growing economy. After Rajen Prasad’s party left us with a decade of deficits through good stewardship day after day we are now back in black and that means that we are able to put families at the heart of this Budget. All of the things that Rajen Prasad did in the Families Commission all of those things pale in comparison with the way that we are now through responsible stewardship able to show families a dividend of growth.The contrast between the Rt Hon John Key and his speech to this House on the Budget and that of David Cunliffe and the Labour Party—boy I tell you what. You saw in David Cunliffe a gentleman who was not sure whether to say: “Well we’re unhappy because you’ve stolen our two or three good ideas.” or “Actually this is terrible and not left wing enough.” He could not work out which was his position. I understand that because this is a Budget for our times that New Zealanders are very very happy with. They are glad to see us back in surplus and putting families at the heart of the Budget.I said that Mr Cunliffe was unhappy because we have stolen Labour’s ideas. Well actually no. Paid parental leave—let us look at that. We have always said—I am not sure what Rajen Prasad is doing; I will come back to him—that paid parental leave is something that when circumstances permit we want to do something about and now we are in a position to do that. But unlike the Labour Party and unlike the Green Party it is a considered responsible package which reaches more people who deserve it. As I said in my speech on Budget night we have done the hard policy work to come up with that thoughtful package.I know in terms of stealing ideas that now that Rajen Prasad and Darien Fenton are leaving this place—and maybe you as well Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson—the ideas factory of the Labour Party has gone. The ideas factory of the Labour Party has gone. Where is it going to get its big ideas from? It might have to go to Dr Clark. His great idea was banning Facebook and we know how popular that was. But that is the position.Darien Fenton: Don’t be so nasty Simon. It’s beneath you. You know you love me really.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I will be sorry to see Darien Fenton go. I will miss our little flirtations across the House at question time. I always send a guilty text to my wife afterwards telling her I love her but there you have it.Then of course in that alternation that David Cunliffe had between not being sure about what to say—“You stole our good ideas.” versus that whole sort of “Look it’s terrible and not left wing enough.”—we get the wacky press release from David Shearer today about home insulation. I do not know what others think. I have to contend with David Shearer’s press releases from time to time. From his radio appearances after those press releases I just wonder whether he has read them. I just wonder whether he has read them because the radio appearances do not seem to bear any sort of resemblance to them. But in this one he says: “The Budget has confirmed that National has virtually abandoned its programme of insulating cold and damp homes across New Zealand”.Well Mr Shearer I know it was a stressful time for you last year at Budget time but we invested an additional $100 million over 3 years in home insulation across this country. That means that we are now in a position where we have insulated over 250000 homes including 112000 low-income homes and that means that by the time we have finished the end of our Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart and Warm Up New Zealand: Healthy Homes programmes we will have insulated some $447 million worth of taxpayer-funded insulated homes or nearly 300000 homes. And that is not good enough for Mr Shearer. He thinks we should have done them all. Well I just ask Dr Clark who is writing notes on this to tell me how much a policy of doing every house which seems to be what Mr Shearer is saying will cost this country. On this sideof the House we know that it is managing a growing economy responsibly that allows us to give the dividends back to families and to do the business for New Zealanders. This is a responsible Government working for the people of New Zealand to deliver the things that we know they want.Was it not a great families package? Fundamentally when you think about the families package and the Budget in total what does it all sort of mean? Well I say let us actually look at the contrast with Australia. If you want to know what a Labour-Greens Government in New Zealand would look like then look at the Australian Budget. When Howard left office in 2007 there was no public debt. Leave it to the Labor-Greens and what a legacy they left Tony Abbott and Mr Hockey to deal with. That is the kind of David Shearer thinking we have had on home insulation today. Do not worry about the money just promise to do them all. Do not worry about balancing the books just say you will do it and worry about the money at another time. But we on this side of the House through our responsible management have been able to deliver for families. I am really proud to be part of a team that has through good management invested more in families. Really the fact that families are the first to get the dividends and the benefits from this growing economy that we are managing is something of a real pleasure.Paid parental leave is something that I have had an involvement in. To see us spending $172 million on that is fantastic for New Zealanders. It is about more and more. More entitlement—we are moving in two affordable steps from 14 to 18 weeks—and more eligibility. We are widening it so that caregivers other than parents some 800 families more will receive it on that criteria and people in less regular work will also receive more—Carol Beaumont: When will that happen?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: This is not to mention our having done the policy work that that member over there never did on flexibility of the paid parental leave scheme so that women primarily get the real benefits of going back to work attachment to work and so on. Just extending the length of paid parental leave in the way that Labour would want to do well frankly that is lazy because it exacerbates the disparities. Actually we have seen from academics in pre-Budget commentary that more important than the length of entitlement is the targeting and that is what we are doing. We are effecting a more modern and diverse set of family arrangements and workplace arrangements. [Interruption]They do not like it because it is true. I know Mr Assistant Speaker that you are about to wind my time up but I just want to say in fairness to the members opposite who are retiring and to one or two of them who should be retiring—not looking at anyone in particular Ruth Dyson—that they were the brains factory of the Labour Party. As they leave I do not know who is going to do Labour’s thinking but on this side we have done it on paid parental leave. We are seeing caregivers other than parents going to get paid parental leave as well as grandparents who are working and meet the criteria and so on and so forth and people in less regular work getting it and there is the increased flexibility. This is a Government that is responsibly managing the finances of this country as they grow and putting families first. We should all be proud of that and celebrate that as a country.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Just before I call the next member can I just remind members to have a look at Speakers’ ruling 60/5 which states that interjections are out of order unless they are rare reasonable relevant and restrained—and if at all possible witty—and running commentaries are definitely out of order and members must wait for their opportunity to make a speech. That is from Speakers Statham and Barnard in 1923 and 1936.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): On the topic of retirement I was actually in Tauranga not so long ago. The view was expressed to me by members of the electorate there that they will be very glad when that member Simon Bridges retires. A number of people said that to me. It was not just people who had heard about his conversations about the Bradford reforms as to why power prices were still so high where he said “Well after 15 years they just need a bit more time to bed in.” It was not that comment that they were complaining about; it was his more recent gaffes.What that member forgets though of course is that people matter—people matter. He asks how much insulating houses would cost—how much it would cost. He is always looking for the cost of everything and he understands the value of nothing—absolutely nothing. Saving lives is of no consequence. The news I have for that member is that insulating homes is actually likely to save costs in our health system. There is plenty of academic research out of the University of Otago—an absolutely tip-top university with an international reputation—that proves that investment in healthy housing saves health costs many times over down the line. That member would do well to read some of that research especially with his portfolio responsibilities. But I do not intend to dwell too long on him because when he does retire and Rachel Jones takes over his seat—the excellent excellent Labour candidate whom we have in Tauranga Rachel Jones—we will see some really good policy from that part of the country. He is not universally disliked. [Interruption] No no. In fact I heard Michael Woodhouse claiming him as his second cousin just the other day. So there are a few fans out there. There are a few fans.I rise to speak about this Budget here. Mr Cunliffe has moved a motion for a vote of no confidence in the Government which says: “I move That all words after ‘that’ be omitted and replaced with: ‘this House has no confidence in a Government that has failed to put people first; that has widened gaps where too many of our children grow up in poverty; that has failed to provide enough good jobs and has lowered incomes; a Government that has no vision for our nation’s long-term wellbeing but is mired in politics as usual.’ ” That does sum it up. That does sum it up. Mr Cunliffe has hit the nail on the head. This is a “fudge-it Budget”. It is a Budget that has fudged its way into surplus. It has got a finance Minister behind it who has been dotting thei’s and crossing thet’s shifting things this way and that in order to make sure that his vanity is preserved in a Budget that just crosses the line.Of course we forget too often that Labour produced nine surpluses in its 9 years in Government and this is this Government’s very first surplus in 6 years. It got there of course by keeping ACC levies $120 million higher than they needed to be by disguising $375 million worth of New Zealand Transport Agency spending as a zero-interest loan and by spending $560 million less on local infrastructure for the Canterbury rebuild than it did last year. There is a bunch more fudges in there. We know there were soft loans to local councils and iwi that are listed as a specific fiscal risk by Treasury. We know that its KiwiSaver auto-enrolment scheme which cost up to $290 million was pushed out for as long as it remains a threat to the Government’s constructed surplus. We know there are caregiver employment conditions that loom as a cost to the Government—back-pay relating to equal pay claims and the Minimum Wage Act. All of these things are swept under the carpet because a surplus was all that this Government had its eyes on because it had never ever had one before.This is a Government with the worst economic record in 50 years. You can see why it was so desperate to get there. But it was at the expense of vision. Labour would have got there but we would have got there with a vision for the future. That is the difference between this side of the House and that side. It had no plan. It is widening the gap between rich and poor it is watching the situation get worse it is watching fewer andfewer New Zealanders get their first home and those members are content to sit there accept their salaries and do nothing. The Labour Government will be more hands-on. We will bring down power prices with our NZ Power plan. We will make sure there are new houses on the market. We will bring in pro-growth tax reform in the form of a capital gains tax. We have a vision for a New Zealand with better jobs and with more jobs.Today I want to take a bit of time to speak about another crazy thing that is wedged in this Budget document and that is the cuts that the Government is hoping to make to the poison helpline. The 0800 POISON helpline is set to be merged under the Government’s current plan into a combined helpline withHealthlineQuitline the Alcohol Drug Helpline the National Depression Initiative problem gambling support and so on. This is an emergency service. Seconds count. When a child is unconscious lying on the floor convulsing or frothing at the mouth and a parent picks up the phone and dials 0800 POISON they are expecting to have expert help. There are toxicologists on the line immediately and they are able to sort the problem. Those who have called the line have been surveyed and 90 percent of them said that if they had not got through on the 0800 POISON line they would have gone straight to accident and emergency. You cannot blame them but seconds count. The paramedics and the ambulance would be ringing the 0800 POISON line as well. This is the line that this Government is proposing to roll in with other lines. That could cost lives. It could cost lives. The National Poisons Centre has operated successfully out of Dunedin for 50 years. It is trusted across the country and it should not be rolled into one line.The database that supports it is updated constantly with product formulas and brand names that are unique to New Zealand. The people who answer the phones are expert toxicologists who update the database. They know their stuff like the back of their hand. They also know New Zealand place names. They know how far you are from a hospital. In one of the proposals being looked at one of the prospective tenders is fromMedibank an Australian company. It is right now having conversations with the otherhelplines in what looks like a deal behind closed doors to take over the service. Again we are seeing these jobs go off to Australia for a closed-door deal that looks remarkably like the Skycity deal where there was one provider that had the inside running that had the information on the service and that was looking to bring things together to deliver a service on behalf of the Government.You have got to ask why. You have got to ask what is going on there because it makes no sense. The poison helpline answers 80 percent of its calls within 20 seconds. Nowhere else in the world has a poison helpline been integrated as far as we know with otherhelplines. It is against the World Health Organization’s best practice guidelines. Why on earth would we go down that track? We do not want to move into the Third World in respect of the emergency services we provide. Why is the Minister of Health taking us down that track? I have got an online petition. You can sign up. It is linked to the Labour Party website. It has already surpassed our 2500 signature target in 2 days. It is gaining signatures rapidly because New Zealanders are worried about their children. They are worried about the child who swallows some unidentified pills or takes something out of the garden shed and who is lying there unconscious. They know and they trust that that number on the packet—that 0800 POISON number—will be answered by an expert and that they will get immediate help. Why the Government would want to do without that I do not know.This Government seems content to select the New Zealand services that will get cut across the public sector and to let the services provided for every New Zealander run down whilst the richest 10 percent—the wealthiest 10 percent—get tax breaks and those in middle New Zealand struggle. They struggle. Forty-six percent of middle NewZealanders did not get a wage rise last year. This is a Government that is content to say that we have got a rock star economy. It says that we have got a rock star economy. Well those gains are not being shared and New Zealanders are starting to say “What’s going on here? Where is Mr Key’s ambition?”. Well it turns out that that ambition is for the wealthiest New Zealanders and for them to take home more and more and more. Many of the wealthiest New Zealanders are quite happy to share and I bet that many of the wealthiest New Zealanders will be keen to see the poison helpline stay as well.The Government needs to answer some questions about the poison helpline. The onus of proof is on the Government. How will the service be improved by having triage and critical seconds wasted while a desperate parent is on the line trying to explain what is going on? How will less money be spent if you bring inMedibank or another provider over the top? The service is nearly half subsidised by the University of Otago. It will not want to take the risk of producing a data bank where it is open to litigation when the line is run by another provider. Well it would be nuts to do so. Why on earth is the Government proposing to go against World Health Organization best-practice guidelines? Why on earth is it wanting to do that? Why is it wanting to make New Zealand an outlier by doing away with a world-class service? Where is the transparency in this process?I urge New Zealand citizens to go to the labour.org.nz website and sign the petition to save the 0800 POISON number. It is a world-class service. It needs to be preserved. Questions need to be answered by the Minister of Health. In these supplementary estimates money is swishing around in relation to thesehelplines. The Minister needs to take a call and explain why the Government is doing this to New Zealanders.TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): I am very proud to be associated with this Government. I would be proud to vote for it tomorrow and I am proudly promoting it in the Hamilton West electorate. There have been some very fine contributions to this debate from members on this side of the House including from members of our supply and confidence partners. I thank them for highlighting the important aspects of a Budget that is delivering in areas that matter to New Zealanders. This is a Government that is getting the job done.Nearly 6 years ago New Zealanders voted for change. The recession was already biting. The previous Government had squandered the best economic conditions of a generation. Labour was spending like drunken sailors without securing the revenue to fund its commitments. It had encouraged an explosion in bureaucracy while overseeing a major decline in the delivery of public services. Treasury was predicting that the incoming Government would face at least a decade of deficits. So that is why New Zealanders voted for change. They knew that the next few years would be difficult. They were prepared to back a Government that promised to get its own finances under control while protecting the vulnerable from the sharp edges of the recession and that is what we have done.One only needs to look at many of the countries with which we like to compare ourselves and those with which we trade—the United Kingdom the United States of America Spain Portugal Greece India and the list goes on—to appreciate the staggering accomplishments of the John Key - led administration and especially our excellent Minister of Finance the Hon Bill English. As we saw last week the pain and the cuts are now really biting across the Tasman as the new Australian Government attempts to rescue that country from the ravages and the irresponsibility of the former Labor-Greens Government. What a grim warning that is to all New Zealanders to not put it all at risk on this side of the Tasman when they go to the polls on 20 September this year.Earlier this evening I heard some of the Hon Nick Smith’s contribution to this debate. He quite rightly made the point that New Zealand’s level of debt would have reached bankruptcy levels if the former Labour Government’s reckless fiscal mismanagement had continued beyond 2008. So I say to the member for Dunedin North David Clark who barracks across the House regularly about this Government’s economic record that he knows and more important his constituents in Dunedin North know that this Government has rescued the country and its finances from the worst Labour Government they have ever seen.I am very proud of our achievements in getting the books back into surplus within 5 years not least because the previous Government delighted in spending all the money it had and plenty it did not have when it was clear that it was headed for electoral oblivion. Achieving that feat of a surplus in half the time that Treasury predicted to the incoming Government it would take was commendable in itself. But given that no one knew then what devastation lay ahead for the people of Canterbury and the city of Christchurch it is nothing short of remarkable. As others have noted in this debate getting back into surplus is important because it gives the Government and New Zealanders generally choices. It means that we can start planning for future debt repayments and contributions to the Superannuation Fund. I and others on this side of the House are determined to achieve both of those goals in order to ensure that our children and their children are not saddled with an impossible burden that would encourage many who could to leave our shores and cause living standards to plummet for those who would have to stay behind.It has been utterly disingenuous to hear members opposite crying crocodile tears in this debate about our country’s indebtedness while every reasonable person knows that those same members who were here during the 9 long years of the Clark administration are responsible for it. Had the voters not intervened as decisively as they did in 2008 the debt projections now would be astronomical. In the critical areas of managing the Crown’s finances this is a Government that is getting the job done. When it comes to delivering better public services which is a major responsibility of any Government and one of the clear priorities of this one some demanding targets have been set and met right across the board and again we are getting the job done.In the time remaining I want to focus on some recent announcements that have been warmly welcomed in Hamilton and elsewhere I am sure. Prior to Budget day we heard about the terrific initiatives to deal with this worrying problem of rheumatic fever. This is an issue that we thought had been dealt with a generation ago and now it has come back. It is striking at communities right around the country. We have to deal with it and we have put measures in place to ensure that it can be dealt with. We have seen the new measures for children who need cochlear implants. Again this is something that those living in the deaf community have been calling forfor a long time. Because of our responsible fiscal management we are now in a position to deal with it. I look forward to seeing people in my area and elsewhere being able to take advantage of this terrific initiative. These were the things that people were talking to me about when I was in Rotorua a couple of weeks ago and last weekend in Hamilton at the Women’s Lifestyle Expo. It is the sort of thing that matters to families.So of course the next thing is to look at how the Budget delivered for our families and our children. I was pleased to hear Barbara Stewart my colleague from the Waikato region acknowledging the importance of the free doctors visits for children under 13. I am sure that this is something that is warmly welcomed across the House. I am sure that we are all pleased to see that it is being delivered. It is part of a $500 million package of measures to support children and families and $90 million of that is being spent on those free doctors visits. There will be $171.8 million allocated to increase paid parentalleave to 18 weeks by 2016. We have heard a lot about that issue in recent times. I am proud to be part of a Government that is delivering on it.There is the $42.3 million measure to increase the parental tax credit. That was something introduced by National back in 1999. It helps families with newborn children who are not on a benefit and who are not receiving paid parental leave.Darien Fenton: Say something original. Stop reading your research notes.TIM MACINDOE: To the member who is chirping at the moment I would remind her that many of those people are the ones who used to be called “Mike Moore’s battlers” and the “Kiwi battlers”. The Labour Party fought for them but it does not any more. Now it is National that is delivering.There is a substantial increase to early childhood education. We are seeing results with far more children being enrolled in early childhood education. That will benefit them for a lifetime. We have more than doubled expenditure on early childhood education while we have been in office. As the Minister for Social Development talked about earlier this evening that vital $33 million package to help vulnerable children includes eight new children’s teams around the country. I hope and expect to see something in the Waikato to identify and work with our at-risk children. We are getting the job done in really important ways.Could I close just by paying a tribute to budget advisory services right around the country.Dr Cam Calder: More money.TIM MACINDOE: In Hamilton the Hamilton Budgeting Advisory Trust is one of those budgeting services doing tremendous work as my colleague Dr Calder is noting with financially vulnerable members of our community. I meet regularly with that wonderful team in my city of Hamilton. I am full of admiration for the work they do. It is practical it is compassionate and it is making a real difference for families.Dr Cam Calder: Effective.TIM MACINDOE: It is as Dr Calder says effective. There is so much I would like to be able to speak about but I am pleased with that $22 million package for the budget advisory services. I am proud of this Budget. I return to my theme. This is a Government that is getting the job done and I will be proud to campaign on it right through to 20 September.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Just before I call the next speaker this is to advise the House that this is a split call. The first one will be the honourable member Gareth Hughes and he will get the bell with 1 minute to go.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker.Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. I know that I am not the oldest member in the House tonight but I know that Budgets are not what they were once upon a time when all New Zealanders would tune in on the wireless and hear the news coming out of Wellington to find out how it affected them their family and their community. They are sort of more muted affairs now but they still have a huge impact on our national economy and on households. I think that Budget 2014 is a great time to take stock of how our national economy is doing but more important to take stock of how that national economy is working for all New Zealanders.Budget 2014 was all about the surplus. Bill English has over 5 years made this the only measure of success. It was a test so important that he would have sold off the energy assets and juggled the numbers in the books just to achieve it which is exactly what we saw happen. This was always going to be the surplus Budget and although we celebrate the increase in free doctors visits for 5 to 13-year-olds and the small extra funding for things like computers in homes which are some good little initiatives we also acknowledge that the Greens would have got us to surplus too. In fact in the lastelection we were the only party that took a net fiscal position to the electors of New Zealand that would have seen a Green Government paying down more debt. So achieving a surplus was good but as economists like to say about surpluses—and it is important to point out that economists are also like weather forecasts in that they are often wrong. You know it is the only field where you can win a Nobel Prize disproving the truth of someone before you. It is an area where the Treasury analysts and the economists focus just on the numbers. Well what we also have to focus on are the real people.This year while people were maybe reading about the surplus in the newspapers we also saw that people were struggling. I was visiting them in Wellington in the soup kitchen on Monday. We see them sleeping in cars in Canterbury. We see numerous families to a home in South Auckland. When we talk about the surplus in the Budget what does it mean? An economy that works for all New Zealanders. Right now internationally what we see is that the richest 1 percent have 16 percent of the wealth yet the bottom half have only 5 percent of the wealth. Right now in National’s New Zealand 290000 Kiwi kids are growing up in poverty. It is a travesty that in this land of ours which feeds and exports food for 20 million people our kids are still going to school without food in their bellies. At a time when business confidence is up we have got to ask ourselves whether the economy is working for all New Zealanders when we look back and we reflect that we work some of the longest hours for some of the lowest wages and pay some of the highest costs of living in the developed world.As Russel Norman pointed out in his Budget speech the legacy of this National Government will be 30 percent of children living in poverty a 50 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions and debt—mountains and mountains of debt. When John Key took that seat in 2008 our net Government debt was around $16 billion. Since then it has increased to over $61 billion. The interest is being paid by all of us—by our future generations and our kids. At a time when Bill English is focusing on the Budget surplus this election we will be pointing out the other surpluses—the surpluses of poverty of inequality and of pollution. The only thing that this Government cannot point to is a surplus in housing or housing ideas and solutions.In the 20 September lead-up we are quite happy to be talking about the surplus of inequality and of poverty but we are also going to be talking about the deficit—the deficit of ideas of innovation and of leadership which are the things our country is crying out for. Our Budget shows the critical challenges and problems facing New Zealand into the future. Depending on raw logs and milk exports around the world is not a credible economic strategy. The taxpayer subsidies for the Choruses theTīwai Points theAnadarkos and theSkycities may help the Cabinet club mates but it is not helping those real families who are sleeping in cars or where there are many families to a home.Our economy is more simplified and more dependent on raw commodity exports than ever. What it is time for is thinking of a future Budget a Budget that has a surplus of hope; a Budget that presses Ctrl-Alt-Delete on National’s failed economic agenda for the 1 percent and reboots to a richer New Zealand; a Budget that has a surplus of clean energy building a clean energy economy and an internet economy which thrives and brings in IT businesses to New Zealand with a second internet cable; and a Budget that ditches the Government Communications and Security Bureau Act and the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act. So this election while National is offering a deficit of ideas and a surplus of pollution and inequality we will be offering a surplus of hope real leadership a clean economy and an innovative economy protecting our environment and lifting our kids out of poverty. Kia ora.Colin King: Mr Speaker—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Steffan Browning. It is not a race Mr King.STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I note in this Budget in the vote for primary industries that there seems to be very little extra for biosecurity and yet consistently we have new incursions in New Zealand of pests that are costing us hundreds of millions of dollars. I will point out that through these recent years there have been pests that we will recognise by name like western flowerthrips guava moths—[Interruption]—the National Party varroa mite lettuce aphids tomato and potatopsyllid. It has cost a huge amount to our horticultural industry already. There is theHadda beetle which the Government gave up on eradicating and varroa mite which it gave up on eradicating.The Greens have a different vision. This Budget has no vision for primary industries that we can see in there at all. There is cost-cutting all over the place and minimal increases in any area at all. We would have smart green agriculture and we would be preserving the future for our farming families. We would be using organics more and more. We would be concerned about climate change in a real way and in having resilience in our farming systems—diverse farming systems. Biosecurity is integral to that. It is integral even to agriculture and horticulture as we see it right now today in this country.TheHadda beetle which the Government gave up on in 2010 is expected to cost New Zealand $100 million over 20 years. Yes the cost of eradication was going to be expensive—$200 million over 4 years and that was why the Government came to that conclusion—because it let it inin the first place and then did not nip it in the bud. The painted apple moth cost the Government $65 million and I suppose that that was a bit of a fright. Varroa mite cost $20 million and then that eradication was aborted. Then there are the other ones that have been given up on like Dutch elm disease potato spindle tuberviroid a leaf miner in eucalyptus and the lettuce aphid as I have mentioned before. The fruit fly incursion has been jumped on quite quickly.However what are these pests doing getting in in the first place? The systems are letting us down in terms of what is getting in. I had a look in the Budget to see where I could find the figures for an increase in border control and I could not find any. There is a limited increase—a very limited increase—in some money around biosecurity but when you put it into real terms there is no real increase at all.If fruit fly really got going it would cost $800 million in the Bay of Plenty in the first year. But there is something else I want to put to members which is that eradicating foot-and-mouth would cost $8 billion in the first year if that got in here. This time last year the Auditor-General said that we are not foot-and-mouth disease ready; we are not prepared. Then on April Fool’s Day this year the Government came out—yes on April Fool’s Day; 1 April 2014—and through the Ministry for Primary Industries said: “We reckon we’re ready.”I do not believe that the country is ready because at the same time the Government has let a particular strain ofTheileriaorientalis or Ikeda go loose and even today in our newsroom we hear that the big movement of cattle is about to be undertaken and the Government is saying: “Look farmers try to make sure you don’t share it around.” This should have been nipped in the bud and it could have been nipped in the bud if the Government had used the system it has got National Animal Identification and Tracing and proved that we are foot-and-mouth ready. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): This is just to advise the House that we have a split call.COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura): It was certainly a blue-letter day for all provinces in New Zealand on 15 May because of the consistent reliable and good management of this nation’s economy. Low interest rates can never be undervaluedwhen you are in the primary industry nor can low inflation be minimised. Those are the two evils that were left as a legacy from the Labour-Greens Government. In fact when we look at it 2014 is a very good time for the provinces. It is a very good time for theKaikōura electorate. I am proud to say that this Friday we will turn the sod on our third new hospital in 6 years. So the provinces are certainly being looked after well by this Government.Hon Simon Bridges: Only three?COLIN KING: Only three. However it is all good news from there and it gets better.When you look across at the Australian economy one gets a very clear understanding of what a Labour-Greens Government leaves as a legacy. What did we see as a legacy from the last Labour Government? We hear a lot about it. Labour’s last Budget left this nation with a $4 billion deficit. The last Labour Budget left this nation with a $4 billion deficit and deficits for the next decade. So from that point of view it was pretty good to be on this side of the House seeing Bill English as the Minister of Finance give his sixth Budget and having the country back in the black.One of the standout points was the $500 million that put families at the very heart of this Budget. When we stop and look at that it means that effectively 400000 New Zealanders will benefit from that family package. I am very proud to see that we have been able to do that. You get to that space economically only when you have good fiscal management. So 400000 people—how is it going to be dished up? There is $171 million to boost the paid parental leave scheme. That is excellent. There is $42.3 million as far as the parental tax credit is concerned. That is something that National introduced way back in 1999 and it has increased it by effectively 50 percent to $220 a week and extended it to 10 weeks to really balance the equation with regard to parental leave.Then there is the crowning glory of that Budget—the $90 million to enable general practitioners to offer free medical visits and free prescriptions. Can you believe it? There will be free medical attention and free prescriptions for people under the age of 13. That has got to be something that we can all be very proud of. It shows you that families are at the very heart of this Government—families. There is $155.7 million to make sure that we keep working towards those goals of getting 98 percent—98 percent—early childhood education participation by our youngsters. Then of course we have got to lookat the Ministry of Social Development. It has really got to grips with some of the very challenging situations that we see and is trying to bridge those gaps that obviously from time to time appear with the eight extra Children’s Teams which will really start focusing on that. It is my expectation that we will have one of those in Blenheim because we are ready and willing to go.This Government has really set Marlborough up. It has setKaikōura up. It has set North Canterbury up. We are in particularly good shape and we have got to thank Bill English and the National-led Government for that under the stellar leadership of John Key. There is a lot more I could say about this Budget but time has got away on me and I must yield to my fellow member. I look forward to his speech. Thank you.ALFRED NGARO (National): Kia orana Mr Assistant Speaker. This is a Budget that is back in black. If we were to say that the Budget is red we would know that that is a Budget in debt. We know that the country knows that if it has a Government that is red and green it will have a Budget in debt. I see my colleague Mr Kris Faafoi over there. As I listened to his speech about the Budget I noticed that he used interesting words. He used theatrical words. I do realise that he did train in journalism but I think what he did not tell the House the audience out there and the nation is that he actually got an A+ for creative writing. That is right. He got that for creative writing. So theseare the words that he used. He used the word “disgraceful”. He said these words: “It was disgraceful. It was disgusting. What sort of Budget was this?”.He went even further. He decided to give an example of a chemist from his electorate Mana. He took his beloved leader David Cunliffe—and he needed to do this because it is well known that the community does not know him. That is right. It was on the news. People asked: “Who is David Cunliffe?”. So he is doing his job. He is winning brownie points. He is taking his leader out so that the community will know him. He went out. Then he gave this theatrical story about this chemist and how he saw the prescriptions on the shelf waiting to be picked up. He said: “How disgraceful that that has happened.” With his theatrical skills and his creative writing he told a wonderful story. But when you looked in the eyes of that member you knew that he was not sincere. Why was he not sincere? I will tell you why. If he had read the Budget like everyone reads the Budget he would know that this is what we are doing for health. Free drop-ins for sore throat clinics will expand the target for dealing with rheumatic fever to 90000 children. There is $90 million in the Budget allocated to funding doctors visits for under-13s making them free.That is our voice but how about we take it from the people out there in the community? This has got to hurt because this is a little bit of evidence. There was an interview that was done on 16 May by Martin Johnston that says this: “A child health expert has hailed the policy to extend free GP visits [as] restoring justice for children”—restoring justice for children. That expert was Diana Lennon the Auckland University professor of population health of children and youth. She expects the Government’s $30 million a year policy a surprise announcement in the Budget will lead to better management of skin infections by removing the medical clinic cost barrier faced by many families. That is even the families down in Mana and it is even the families who will pick up a prescription at the chemist that Mr Faafoi talked about.But let us go a bit further. Why? Because those members like to bang the drum about poverty. They like to talk about South Auckland. I am not sure whether Mr Hughes has actually been there. They like to talk about people sleeping in cars. But this is what is also coming. It is from Dr Nikki Turner of the Child Poverty Action Group. This is what she says: “It’s really important for families. It takes the pressure off them about the cost of visiting their GP. It’s important for the people who have to sit at home and wonder whether they should take their sick kids to the doctor or not. It’s got to be part of a bigger picture…”. We know that this Budget is delivering for families and for those in need.I want to say this. There is all this talk about poverty. There is all this talk about the fact of children in need. But I want to say to those members to stop using the people and their circumstances to make them feel good because that is what we are hearing out there. The communities inMāngere—that is South Auckland Mr Hughes OK? In the South Auckland communities that I work with the people who come and knock on my door are faced with two things. It is either choice or circumstance. This Budget and the way that we are working as a Government does this—it is truth and love. In other words here is the truth and here is the reality that we want to face but it is not with callousness or carelessness but instead it is with love. We applaud this Budget. Thank you.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Tonight there are thousands of people throughout New Zealand either watching Parliament TV or listening to Parliament on the radio. I acknowledge what my Green colleague said before that once upon a time there would have been hundreds and hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders tuned in tonight to this debate to listen to the important Budget discussion. That is not to say that the discussion is not important. It is to say though that the powerof Parliament to communicate to our country has changed. I think that is something important for us to reflect upon tonight. Parliament TV is almost 7 years old and it is a really important institution in our country. I hope that this Government is not going to try to destroy it as it has destroyed public broadcasting in this country.This is supposed to be an honest debate. Unfortunately it does not feel like an honest debate from listening to some of the comments and the speeches tonight from the other side of the House. This Budget is being framed by this Government as being a Budget about jobs and a growing economy. I have just got off the phone tonight from a call from one of the 101 workers in South Otago who were made redundant yesterday. This person is part of a group of 180 people who have been made redundant in the last month from a forest industry enterprise in South Otago that has four different plants spread across four different towns—Mosgiel Milburn Milton and Balclutha. This worker told me tonight: “It sucks. It sucks what’s happening to us.” He has been working in that plant for 12 years. He is a good honest solid working person just like the many hundreds and thousands of good solid working people who have lost their jobs in regional New Zealand under this Government. This is through no fault of his own and in an industry that should be expanding growing and thriving rather than contracting and putting people in regional New Zealand out of work.This person told me tonight that he does not know where his future lies. He has got three children. They are settled in schools. He may need to leave town to find a job somewhere else. I would like Government members to get up and tell me tonight what the future is for him and the other people in that industry. I would also like the list member for Dunedin to speak out and stick up for his city and his region and say where the job growth is going to come from in that region. We have just seen 180 jobs lost from South Otago in the last month. If that is the sign of a Government that is focused on growth and jobs then it is a fairy tale. It is a fairy tale; it is an absolute fairy tale.One of the important things to note in this debate though is that under a Labour Government the forest industry and the forest-processing industry will be a priority because we actually have a plan for that industry as we do for a number of industries. I have not seen a plan for any industries under this Government. There is rhetoric—there is lots of rhetoric. But when it comes to an actual plan for industry development and growth and actual jobs where is it? Under a Labour Government however the forestry industry and the forest-processing industry will be a priority.In a region such as Otago and Southland this makes a huge difference. Our region contains 11.8 percent of New Zealand’s forest plantations which is by far the largest area in the South Island and it is the second-largest in the country. But of the $4.5 billion per annum that that industry is worth half of those exports are raw logs that are being processed offshore. That is why we are seeing 180 jobs go—the latest set of jobs. Since 2013 40 sawmills have closed resulting in the loss of 1700 jobs across the country so I do not think we have seen the last of the demise of this industry in this country under this Government. Under a Labour Government it would be very different.I would also like to address the rhetoric that has been spouted on the other side of the House that this is a Budget that is focused on health. Well when you look beneath the surface this actually represents a cut and it certainly does represent a cut in our region. There is a 2.3 percent cut in real terms; that is what this Budget means in health funding. When Tony Ryall the Minister of Health hyped up the Budget saying it was the biggest funding of the health sector to date he neglected to admit that when you take into account demographic and population changes which any responsible Government would do it put a massive extra strain on the health sector and district health boards.In the Southern District Health Board area which is the whole of Otago and Southland as I understand it from looking at the Budget figures it is going backwards. It is a 0.2 percent cut and it is going to mean extra strain on the staffing which is already under stress; on the services being provided to the community; on primary health care; on the numbers of people who are being referred by their specialists to be getting operations and are not actually ending up on waiting lists; and pressure on the Dunedin Hospital which is well out of date for being upgraded and replaced—extra strain essentially on the whole of the health service throughout that whole region. Again I say to the list member for Dunedin sitting across the House who is very busy doing his work that this is actually a critical area for him to address and certainly one that he will be held accountable for in Dunedin.I would also like to reinforce my support for the petition that my Dunedin colleague David Clark has put out there tonight to keep the National Poisons Centre phone line going. All you have to do is go to the Labour Party website—which is labour.org.nz and it is right on the front page; really easy to connect to—and sign that petition. That is the poison phone line that you ring if you know someone who has been taking the psychoactive substances and is suffering the health effects of that. As I understand it because I have stood in this House on numerous occasions the numbers of people reporting effects from those substances have increased extraordinarily in the past months. To axe that poison phone line would be disastrous an absolute backward step and it is gobsmacking to understand why that would actually happen.This is a Budget that takes us backwards. It is a Budget of inequality. It is a Budget that is not focusing on regional job growth. It is a Budget that is taking us backwards in terms of our health care. It is not a Budget that any Government could be proud of.DAVID CLENDON (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. There is an old saying that no good deed goes unpunished and I suspect that that phrase would resonate with the New Zealand police force at the moment which has performed in an exemplary manner in recent times in the last several years. The reward is to see its budget cut yet again. For the fourth or fifth year in a row our police force is being asked to do more with less. It seems a perverse reward for an organisation that has done everything this Government has asked of it. It has done a great deal of what the New Zealand population has asked of it. It continues to be forward-looking and to be creative in its use of resources and the reward is to suffer a budget cut. I cannot understand the logic or the reasoning behind that.We understand that Minister Tolley is only one Minister in Cabinet. I believe that that Minister has done some good things in her portfolios of policing and corrections but nevertheless in the police force and in fact across the justice sector collectively there has been a significant cut in the available resources. That is a very strange decision made by this Government.I give credit and I acknowledge recently retired Commissioner Marshall whom I believe did an excellent job of changing the culture of the police force. He was an admirable officer. He did an extremely good job of changing the culture of the New Zealand Police and that is an extremely brave ambition. It is an extremely ambitious objective—to change the culture of an organisation to which change does not come easily or naturally.I believe that initiatives like Prevention First and the neighbourhood policing units are strategies and techniques that resonate with New Zealanders. To some extent that is back to the future. Crime prevention is the best way to deal with crime and to avoid it happening. We know that. The Prevention First strategy has been very effective. We have seen a reduction in some offending. We cannot entirely take credit for that; it is aninternational phenomenon some of it related to demographics to science to hard security around premises and so on.But the fact is that the police have actually risen to the occasion. They have changed their strategy. They have changed their tactics. They have changed their way of operating in ways that have been beneficial and that have served to make our society and community safer. The reward is that this Budget has taken money away from them and insisted that yet again they must look to take cuts. You can cut fat. You can cut flesh. The police are now being asked to cut to the bone. That is perverse and it is going to have very unfortunate outcomes.The president of the Police Association who is not a fellow given to extreme language or rhetoric has said that there is an increasing risk of operational failures and that fear of crime will quickly return when the police cannot respond or do not get a response right. The police have demonstrated that they can make New Zealanders feel safer and that they can contribute to reducing crime.The peculiar logic that I am endeavouring to understand from this Government is to say that because they have succeeded we will take money away from them. What it is overlooking is the fact that the Prevention First strategy and the neighbourhood policing units are people-intensive strategies. Yes we know that the police are using new technologies and they are using them very well. They are using electronics they are using cellphones they are using GPS systems and they are usingiPads to reduce the amount of time that officers spend bent over word processors at police stations rather than being out there providing a face-to-face service to New Zealanders.These are very people-intensive strategies. We know that the task of the neighbourhood police unit for example is to create units of officers— a sergeant and a number of constables—who will know who the troubled people are in their community. They will know where the hot spots are in their community. That takes time and commitment and it requires good morale.We heard and I recall very well Commissioner Marshall talking about the extent to which a generation ago or even a decade ago young police officers in particular built their morale from the excitement and the thrill of the chase—charging around in cars catching people chasing offenders down a road and arresting them. That is how they built their morale. Modern policing the sort of policing that our police force now aspires to do is a hard grind. It lacks some of that adrenalin-fuelled interest and excitement because the police are seeking to prevent crime and you do that by building relationships within a community by talking to the youth and by understanding where the pressure points are in a community. That is people-intensive. It demands a great deal of time. That is where these Budget cuts are going to show most badly.I recall having conversations with district commanders with senior police officers and with officers on the beat who all agreed that good police morale is critical to the success of the Prevention First strategy and of the forward-looking—shall I say—modern policing approach rather than simply putting men and women in cars to go out and chase burglars and offenders of other sorts. They need to actually engage with the community. As I said it is a back to the future approach where we actually treat police officers as pillars of our community and respect them as such. That respect comes through because they engage with the community with the troubled people with those who are damaged with the youths and with the offenders.To the extent that their budget is being cut what sort of a message is that sending to those very hard-working men and women? For those men and women with a significant commitment to a safe community to limiting harm done on the roads and to limiting offending the message is very clearly that actually this Government does not value those people or the enormous commitment and the very difficult and demanding tasksthat they undertake on a daily basis. The cuts to their budget are saying: “Look you’ve done really well and we expect you to do more with a great deal less.” That is a very perverse message to send.I look forward to a time personally when we can cut the police budgets. I certainly look forward to a time when we can cut the corrections budgets because we will have less offending. That time is not now. This Government’s budgeting is the Budget of parsimony. It is cost cutting. It is penny-pinching in the service of this illusory surplus which the Government would have New Zealanders believe it has generated.This is a very very dangerous and foolish place to cut costs—the front-line people who are out there on a daily basis keeping our communities safe reducing offending and looking to provide service on the roads. The people who serve our communities in a very difficult and dangerous way are getting the message that actually their work is not respected and it is not valued because the dollars are not being provided for them to do that job. The reason they have succeeded is that they have found efficiencies. For at least 5 years and even longer than that the police have learnt to do more with less. They have used technology in a very intelligent way. They have sought to maximise the amount of good work that every individual officer can do in their 8-hour shift their 10-hour shift or their 12-hour shift. And their perverse reward is to be told: “Well actually we respect and value you so much we’re going to make you do even more with even less.”This is not the time to be parsimonious. This is not the time to cut costs or cut corners in terms of policing. Nor is it the time to be reducing the funding available to the justice sector more generally. There has been a very good analysis done byJustSpeak and I recommend Government members read it through.JustSpeak is the youth arm of Rethinking Crime and Punishment—young people with a commitment to peaceful and safe communities and to natural justice being done.JustSpeak has highlighted very well that we have seen over the last several years a chipping away at the funding available. A justice system can work only if it is properly resourced.We have seen the debacle of the endeavour to put the courts in a more efficient place. TheeBench has failed badly. The management of that project has fallen over. That is unfortunate because we know that our courts are overstretched. Justice delayed is justice denied and we are not seeing the efficiency and the streamlining in the court system that this Government promised. It stood up and said it would make the courts work better and it has failed to do that.We have seen ongoing cuts to legal aid. The most vulnerable the least well-off and the people most likely to offend and most likely to be offended against are the people who are going to continue to suffer because of short-term penny-pinching and as I have said because of very misguided perverse decisions that are made that because some parts of the justice sector are succeeding we will therefore reduce their funding. We will therefore take money away from them and make it even harder for them to achieve the outcomes that we all aspire for them to achieve.I give thanks and I do offer our respects to the police force and those hard-working people in the justice sector. We look forward to a time when their activities will be properly rewarded and resourced. Kia ora.Debate interrupted.The House adjourned at 10 p.m.