Collins Judith: Budget Debate 
Collins Judith: Budget Debate 
[Volume:663;Page:11337] 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 I do not know where the previous speaker Iain Lees-Galloway has been spending his time because certainly where I spend my time in Papakura people are very happy. In fact they are extraordinarily happy that we have such a fantastic Government. I have to say this Budget is the best I have ever remembered. It is certainly the best Budget I have seen in my 8 years in Parliament which frankly is not saying much—apart from last year’s Budget which was pretty good too. But this is a Budget of aspiration it is a Budget that is fair and it is a Budget that starts to give people back more of their own money so they can make decisions. The member who has just resumed his seat asked what is happening in health. I can tell him what is happening. We have an awful lot of elective surgery going on. 
Hon Member 
: Cuts. 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS 
: The only cuts going on are the surgery cuts because people are actually getting their surgery nowadays. In the area served by the Counties Manukau District Health Board—in my region—we now have the most fantastic amount of elective surgery and an awful lot of that has to do with the leadership the Hon Tony Ryall is showing in the health sector. He is demanding that we get the surgery that the front-line services get the support they need and that we have fewer and fewer reports—unlike under the last Labour Government; it used to talk about how it was going to help health so it had a lot of reports. That is about all the health sector got. It did not get the surgery but it got the reports. An awful lot of money was invested into all sorts of long-winded reports that nobody read but it made Labour feel as though it was helping someone. It was helping its mates not the people who paid the bills. 
This Budget delivers the most extensive rework and readjustment of the tax system that anybody can remember in 45 years. It is the most fantastic rejig of the system. In the run-up to this Budget Labour members spent all their time saying that the Government would just give tax cuts to the rich. Nobody remembered to tell Labour that the really rich people in this country do not pay much tax. They certainly never paid at the top end of the tax system. I recall seeing an article just the other day from Sam Morgan a very rich New Zealander who skited that he did not pay any tax. That was of course under the previous regime. He will certainly be paying a little bit more GST now and that is one way of getting the tax. One person in Papakura who wrote to me was upset with the Budget and said he was not going to vote National any more. The reason is that he has 10 residential properties that he leases out. He is obviously affected by the Working for Families rort that we sorted out. He is not going to vote for us any more because he would rather vote for some other party that will let him rort the Working for Families system. I think we can probably do without the vote from someone like that. I think we would be very proud to be a party that actually starts to even up the tax system because if there was ever a rort it was that sort of rort where people could have multiple residential properties and then turn round and claim a Working for Families tax credit. That system was supposed to be set up to help hard-working Kiwis with young children trying to get ahead. Instead it was being rorted by people like that and frankly he knows what he can do. 
Labour members have been talking about lots of slogans tonight. I heard the previous speaker talk about personal abuse and then he delivered a whole lot of personal abuse at my colleagues on this side. I have to say that is not a very good thing for a new member in this House to learn. It is much better to stick to the issues. We are seeing some very sensible Government spending. Every big Government department has to look at how it spends it money and that is not just for my departments of corrections police and veterans affairs. We all have to do that and there is a reason: other than in forestry money really does not grow on trees. Someone has to pay for Government spending it all has to be paid by taxpayers and they should be able to know that we are spending their money wisely in their best interests and in the very best way we can. There will always be circumstances where we think we need to trial something and see how that works. It may not work out but it is very important that everybody in the Public Service is focused on trying to get the best value for taxpayers and understands that although the Budget helps to deliver this money none of it comes unless we have the taxpayer paying it. That is why we need the economy to grow. 
When we look at the growth measures in the Budget we see the work on research science and development and the huge input into trying to grow our science sector. For years and years we saw big input into the arts and I think that was probably a good thing but unfortunately there was not the same emphasis on the science sector. A country like New Zealand and an economy like ours built on agriculture and all the other things that spin off from that should have been investing better in the sciences yet for years we were not. That is being turned round under this Budget. What we are seeing as well is some extremely good work in social development—getting people back into work making sure that it is worth people’s while to work. That is one of the great things about the tax cuts. They are not just for the rich not at all like Labour said they were going to be but actually right across the spectrum so that every working New Zealander will have a chance to save some more money and have an incentive to earn some more money. Many of us know of instances where people have said that there is no point going for a higher-paying job because they would lose their Working for Families credit or it would all go in tax because they would shift into a higher tax rate. Under this Budget we have lots of police officers corrections officers and nurses now getting a reasonable tax rate rather than being called “the rich” because they earn over $70000 and therefore having to pay that extraordinarily high rate of tax that Labour thought we should have—the envy tax. We think it is very important to trust Kiwis give them back some more of their money let them keep it and then let them make decisions. No wonder people could not save under the previous Government their money was all going in tax. Was the Government saving then? No. An awful lot of low-value high-paid spending was going on. 
It is extremely important that we always keep a focus on what is productive. I will talk a little bit about an innovation in corrections that my colleague the Hon Dr Pita Sharples is bringing in. It is the Whare Oranga Ake which is all about looking at rehabilitation and reintegration particularly in a Maori context. Obviously there will be a focus on trying to deal with the massive recidivism that we have in our prisons particularly with regard to Maori offending. That is important because if we could start to bring Maori offending down to the same levels as the rest of the community we would not need all the prisons we currently have. That is one of the things we are trying to do here. Unfortunately Labour and particularly the Hon Clayton Cosgrove called it a separate Maori justice system when it is not that at all. What it is actually doing is trying to look at what might work. Dr Sharples has funding under this Budget—and I am very proud to be able to support him in that—to start two of those units so we can see whether they can make a positive difference. If they are a positive force I hope that all parties in this House will see the value of that innovation. 
We are continuing with our commitment to have 600 extra police by the end of next year. We now have about 350 extra police on the beat in front-line roles since we became the Government. Many of those have gone into the Counties-Manukau area. Last year my opponent Mr Cosgrove said that having extra police in Counties-Manukau was an ill-thought-out scheme. He should go and tell that to the people of Counties-Manukau. I quite enjoy going around Manurewa Papakura and other areas in Counties-Manukau in my patch and saying to people when they talk about how they feel so much safer now that Labour members would not agree with that because they did not think we should be able to have 300 extra police on the beat in Counties-Manukau. It is making a huge difference and I am extremely pleased with the way in which the police have taken up the challenge as well to modernise the way they do policing to look at alternative dispute resolution and to trial different ways of doing things. They have that extra support in terms of people but also in terms of the almost $200 million extra that we gave them in last year’s Budget—which by the way has been characterised by Labour as a $20 million loss; only Labour maths could do that. They are doing some very innovative work. I am extraordinarily proud of the work that they and the Department of Corrections are doing. The Department of Veterans Affairs is a great little organisation which is working very well with the Ministry of Defence. I am very pleased with that. 
We have also by the way—I will just finish on this—kept the Serious Fraud Office which the previous Labour Government was going to get rid of. It had legislation about to go through its third reading before thankfully the people of New Zealand voted in a National-led Government.