Power Simon: Budget Debate 
Power Simon: Budget Debate 
[Volume:639;Page:9610] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 That was Lynne Pillay who chairs the Justice and Electoral Committee which I have been sitting on from time to time recently when it has been considering the Criminal Justice Reform Bill. The position of chairperson of the Justice and Electoral Committee will be the last entry she has on her political CV because it is going to be pretty much all downhill for that member come November next year. She did a reasonable job in that role but that is pretty much it. That is the end of it for that member. 
As I sat here for the eighth Budget I have listened to—and I acknowledge that there are other members in the House who came in the same intake I did; and this was the eighth Budget we have sat through—I noticed something about the Budget this year particularly. I noticed a diminishing return of enthusiasm by Dr Cullen. He started off in his first Budget full of goodwill and vigour and slowly but surely as each Budget has come along he has got more and more tired and less enthusiastic. If he keeps that up by next year he will deliver the Budget with the same enthusiasm with which the Prime Minister delivers her Prime Minister’s statement at the start of each year—that is with virtually no enthusiasm at all. It is like a chore for the Prime Minister to deliver that statement and delivering the Budget is like a chore for the Minister of Finance. I have been hearing— 
Rodney Hide 
: You should try listening to it. 
SIMON POWER 
: That is right I say to Mr Hide. It is a lot worse having to listen to it. 
I have gone around the country since the Budget and spoken to taxi drivers and hairdressers—though not to hairdressers as often as I used to! They are telling me that this Budget will not save this Government. Those people have had a gutsful of the Labour Party and they have had a gutsful of the Government. They were reserving a bit of judgment pending this Budget—and now it is all over. 
People are saying that the Budget goes nowhere near to delivering what their expectations were. That is because the Labour Party continues to say one thing to the people of New Zealand and do something else. Members should remember that it was the Labour Party—[ 
Interruption 
]—There is Sue Moroney chipping away from the back of the House and the member for Hamilton West is up there chipping away at the back of the House. We know that Helen Clark told Parliament and New Zealand that she was going to put New Zealand back in the top half of the OECD. But we have seen that we have not gone up. We have not gone anywhere near the top half of the OECD. We have not even stayed the same and been ranked 20th in the OECD. We have gone down two places in the OECD rankings to 22nd. 
Labour productivity has more than halved since this Government came to office and my colleague Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith will no doubt talk about that—that is his area of expertise—when he takes a call shortly. What we know is that this Budget has delivered compulsion in an area where people wanted choice. What we know is that the Budget has delivered a blow to those hard-working New Zealanders who do not have much in the way of disposable discretionary income. They are going to have to find the money in a way that is worrying. People like Lynne Pillay who will be shortly out of Parliament say that they are representing those very people who will do worse out of this Budget. I will tell the House what I found most interesting about this Budget. Not unexpectedly— 
Sue Moroney 
: Yes give us your ideas! 
SIMON POWER 
: There is Sue Moroney chipping in again from the back of the House. She is here for the third time in 1½ weeks. 
I was always going to look closely at this Budget to see what it would do in the areas of law and order justice corrections police and the courts. I am happy to tell the House what I found. What I found despite a UMR Insight poll in February and March this year that said the No. 1 issue worrying New Zealanders is violence and crime is that money has been set aside to build a new Supreme Court. Money has been set aside to build a new Supreme Court! There is absolutely no money set aside for new initiatives to stop crime from occurring. There is no new money for rehabilitation and reintegration in our prison system. There is no money to assist those with mental health difficulties in the prison system and there is no money for drug and alcohol rehabilitation. People say the National Party is pledging more money. Actually we are not because that money can be easily found from wasted expenditure currently going on in those votes. 
Russell Fairbrother 
: Which one? 
SIMON POWER 
: I say to Mr Fairbrother that there is $11 million for landscaping four new prisons. That $11 million would have gone a long way towards drug and alcohol rehabilitation rather than planting ferns and pavers outside four new prisons. There is $2 million in bonus payments to senior management at the Department of Corrections. That money could have gone into helping inmates with mental health problems. That is where those sorts of initiatives come from. 
This is a Government that in the Economic and Fiscal Update documents showed a fiscal risk of huge proportions. It is worth just dwelling on that. In 2006 the fiscal risk around capital expenditure for building prisons was forecast to be $209 million. In this Budget delivered last Thursday the same capital expenditure noted as a fiscal risk for the forecast period to 2014—and members should remember that the Budget forecast risk for capital expenditure in corrections was $209 million—was $1.2 billion. The reason for that is that the justice departmental forecasts are hopeless. 
This Government has no idea how many people will be incarcerated in the forecast period. It has no idea how many people will be behind bars over the forecast period. But it is worse than that because in 2006 the fiscal risk identified for the operational part of that vote was approximately $25 million. The operational fiscal impact risk noted in the forecast period in this Budget was $121 million for operational funding. This Government does not have a clue what it will do about the prison population crisis that it did not plan for. The Hon Mark Burton to his credit knows that the Hon Matt Robson did not want to build those prisons and now it is all coming home to roost. Prisoners are being lodged in police cells at $139 a night and that is unacceptable. 
When National said the justice sector needed to be reviewed the Prime Minister said it did not—and now it is being reviewed. When National suggested rolling the Department of Corrections back into the Ministry of Justice Damien O’Connor and the Prime Minister said it was a ridiculous idea and that it would not happen—now it is being investigated by this Government. The Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections says that corruption in our prison system is limited to “a few bad apples”—no more than a handful of prison guards. Then at 5.30 last night we heard that as part of the restructuring of head office an anti-corruption unit is to be set up. 
Rick Barker has thrown his hands up at the courts; the overdue fines are out of control. He does not know what to do. He just keeps saying we are capturing more people at the border while the quantum of fines owing in our court system is skyrocketing into the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. We are seeing crime rates going up violent crime skyrocketing and youth violent crime skyrocketing even higher. And what does the Budget do in all of those areas? What provision does it make to deal with that catastrophe of problems? It puts aside money to build a new Supreme Court. Well time is ticking and the Government’s time is nearly up.