Webb DuncanHon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia orana Mr Speaker. Well that last speaker Katie Nimon just rabbited out the usual lines. But I'll tell you what this document is this document is recession by design. This is a Budget of austerity. They say that—[Interruption] You know they can guffaw but the first thing they did was to take the mandate away from the Reserve Bank to consider employment. And what do we have? Rising unemployment. And they complain about the tax base while their own policy erodes it. Taxes are paid by working people and this document reduces the number of working people in New Zealand. The projections are out: we'll see another 26000 people on the dole. That is by design. That is a choice. That Government is choosing to put people out of their jobs. Not just the people in the health sector our Customs officials who protect our borders people in the education sector—not just those people who are working for us but all of the knock-on effects all of the other businesses. We've seen the construction industry is grinding to a halt because the confidence in the economy—under this document—has been gutted so it's no wonder we're seeing falling consents.Now that Government over there—and you heard the language the language of business. They're talking about return on investment" and "getting back to basics"—that is the language of corporate New Zealand. We know already that this document looks after corporate New Zealand. We saw the billions of dollars in tax breaks for landlords. Those billions of dollars have to come from somewhere.We heard Ms Lu talking about working New Zealanders and their wages. This is a Government that saw minimum wage New Zealanders go backwards by giving them a 1.5 percent pay rise in the face of 5 percent inflation. That is a pay cut. That's what this Government is interested in: looking after their mates. That's what we're going to see. This Budget Policy Statement basically outlines a Budget for the few—a Budget for the few.We know that these tax cuts are coming—Nicola Willis has staked her job on it. She said she will deliver the tax cuts that she promised in the election—$9.6 billion of tax cuts is what she promised in the election. And how is she going to do that? Again we heard Nancy Lu talk about borrowing and how much we're borrowing and what the interest costs are. Well these tax cuts—these tax cuts for landlords—are going to be borrowed. There's $8 billion of borrowing coming because of the tax cuts that we're seeing. There is no economist—there is no economist—who says that this is a good idea. It's the wrong time. The idea the suggestion that giving people tax cuts in this economy isn't inflationary is madness. It cuts across everything we know about how the economy works. Where else is the money coming from?We talk about you know being sensible spenders. Well tell that to the people whose disability benefits got cut—that it's prudent to stop the support we're giving to carers. Tell that to the staff in Oranga Tamariki protecting our most vulnerable children who are being laid off their jobs. Tell that to the police who are being told to get out there and crack down and at the same time the people who support them are losing their jobs. Tell that to the health workers who do the scheduling to make sure people can make their appointments and that resources are used as effectively as possible—tell that to those as well. So far 4500 jobs have been slashed—people who look after New Zealanders. That's where the money's—oh there's a few other places the money's coming from of course. The other thing we saw straight out of the gate was tax cuts for tobacco companies. We saw the excise tax frozen—a coalition promise so that the New Zealand First Party could look after big tobacco. That's how they're going to pay for these tax cuts for landlords—with people's lungs. That is shameful. I'm absolutely ashamed that that's part of our Government.So this is a recession by design—saying you're doing one thing with one hand; giving tax cuts and pretending it's not the other hand that's slashing the economy throwing us backwards and throttling the lives of ordinary people those people who have been saving up looking forward to buying a home. Today they were peremptorily told that that helping hand the very helping hand that Nicola Willis criticised the Labour Government for not giving enough money away—they had the rugs being pulled from under their feet. They've been sent backwards. This is a Government which is happy to see people stuck in rentals trying to save but not being given the lift that they need.The suggestion that in some way that's going to Kāinga Ora is fatuous. We've seen what's happened with Kāinga Ora. Already in Christchurch there are builds that we're concerned are going to be put on hold. That is because of the so-called reset of Kāinga Ora. Of course Kāinga Ora has debt—because it costs money to build houses. It's a great thing that we've spent billions of dollars on homes for vulnerable families. To suggest that it's a failure to deliver warm dry social housing is madness. This is a Government that is going to abdicate its responsibility as part of its Budget policy—its Budget policy—of austerity. Fundamentally that's what it is.As for a productive economy—a productive economy where more and more people are out of their jobs where wages are frozen or falling where there's no confidence in the construction industry. Only last night I was talking to a scion of the infrastructure industry who said "There is no confidence." that their projects have been ditched and nothing new has been started. So people are looking elsewhere; they're taking their talent and they're taking their capital and there's going to be a gap in New Zealand. This is exactly what happened last time National was in Government. They turned off the New Zealand economy and all of that top talent left the country. It took the Labour Government a long time along with its apprenticeship programme and a whole lot of capital works—Cameron Brewer: Turn the microphone off.Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —to get it going again. I can hear Cameron Brewer yapping away there. He really should go on a holiday to the Gold Coast. I hear he likes them—google that one.As for a structural deficit of course if you're going to give enormous tax cuts there's going to be a deficit. So what we need to do is actually get back the New Zealand economy to realise that full employment is the best thing we can do for the New Zealand economy that helping people own their own homes is a good idea and to stop gutting critical services in the Public Service under some kind of idea that people who aren't face to face with the New Zealand public aren't doing meaningful productive and important work. The suggestion that there is a back office and front office and the back office is worthless—well firstly the division isn't real. What we've got now—and I know this for a fact—is police officers spending hours of their day answering emails and doing admin. That's something that a person with an entirely different skillset should do. A police officer is trained to do policing not emails and scheduling. So this whole idea that the back office is not worthwhile—it's a trope and it's vile because it undermines the good work that skilled people do to help New Zealanders.So this Government has a Budget policy: recession by design. It's absolutely shameful and I know we're going to see worse next week."