Duynhoven Harry: Budget Debate 
Duynhoven Harry: Budget Debate 
[Volume:647;Page:16429] 
Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN (Minister for Transport Safety) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to follow the member who spoke before me Te Ururoa Flavell but it is really marvellous to speak in the debate following the Minister of Finance’s ninth Budget. Also it is very interesting for me to follow David Bennett a member of the National Party from Hamilton who was rabbiting on at length earlier this evening. 
I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt. Most MPs come here with a view of wanting to change the world or at the very least of wanting to make the world a better place. Some have a more modest approach; they want only to make New Zealand a better place. That is all very laudable. But when I heard that member’s speech—and I have to say that he is a likeable member and is a guy whom I get on with very well—I was listening for one little piece just one item of National policy. I did not hear even one tiny little bit. All we got was what we have had from all the National speakers in this debate—cliché after cliché and dogma after dogma about tax cuts about how they are supposedly better economic managers and about how New Zealand turns to them in times of crisis. 
Well first we are not in crisis. Second every time this country has got in economic trouble people have turned to Labour. If we go back through our history we see that that is what has happened. If members opposite cannot find it in their hearts to believe that then all they have to do is read their history books. 
All of us believe in some basic bottom lines: security for people in their old age or in ill health the right to a job the right to decent housing and the right to a good education. All of those fundamental things should be backed up by the security of knowing that there will be a safety net if one is unfortunate enough to be injured at work or in some other place. National members simply cannot bring themselves to embrace these things. What is the proof of that? Let us look at the years since 1993 when I returned to Parliament. We had a National Government for 9 years—for 3 of those years I was not here and then we had 6 more years—and in the next 9 years we had a Labour-led Government with various partners helping us to do that job. In those first 9 years under the National Government State housing was sold off. 
Lesley Soper 
: 13500. 
Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN 
: National sold 13000-plus State houses—not to the people who lived in them but to entrepreneurs. What about health care? Do members remember cash registers in the foyer of the local hospital? At my hospital in Taranaki Taranaki Base Hospital a special construction was done to house the cash department where people had to pay for hospital care. That is what the previous National Government did. 
National reckons it is a better economic manager. Well let us look at the way we were. In the mid-1990s in a town such as Waitara for example 60 percent of households got their income from social welfare benefits of various sorts—superannuation the unemployment benefit the domestic purposes benefit the sickness benefit etc. How many people today are registered as unemployed in the town of Waitara? I believe that today it is 54 people. 
Darien Fenton 
: How many? 
Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN 
: Fifty-four people—that is the difference a Labour Government has made. I congratulate Michael Cullen and the Labour senior ministerial team on the work they have done over the years to pull this economy up by the bootstraps. 
In my first 6 years back during those 9 years under National from 1993 to 1999 I spent most of my time as an MP dealing with people who had health cases that were not addressed people who had housing issues that were not addressed or companies asking me how they could get some more work or more orders in order to keep on the core group of people they had. What is my problem today as a Labour MP in the city of New Plymouth? My problem today is getting enough people to do the work; getting enough skilled people with the trades and backgrounds to do the work that needs to be done in our engineering industries our yacht-building industry and all of the things that are keeping Taranaki buoyant. 
We are seeing levels of growth in New Zealand that put us at the top of the OECD. We hear from the Opposition that we are doing terribly badly but we are not. As a country we are doing extremely well. We have the lowest unemployment rates in the developed world. Countries like Germany would love to have a level of unemployment below 4 percent as we have had continuously now for years actually—and in Taranaki it is even lower than that. 
Members opposite say that members on this side of the House have no idea about economics and that we are not business people etc. Well I have good news for them: some of us are. Some of us have had some involvement in business that is for sure. But when we came into Government in 1999 things had been so good under the economic management of National that New Zealand had a partially privatised and thoroughly mucked-up electricity scheme. In transport National had sold off the railways at a fire-sale price to investors who simply asset-stripped it then sold it on to Toll. Each police car had done something like an average of 200000 kilometres and one of the first things that this Government had to do was to buy thousands of new police cars. Ambulances hospitals and schools were all run down and since we have been in Government all of those things have been addressed. 
 Defence was more run down than it has ever been in our history. If we look at defence now we see new ships new aircraft upgraded surveillance aircraft substantial amounts of new equipment armoured personnel carriers fire control systems new radios—even the radios were out of date. They were from the Viet Nam era. What National did in running down New Zealand was an absolute crime yet its members tell us that they are the better economic managers. 
They say to us that tax cuts are the answer. Allowing people to spend their own money their own way is the way to fix it. Let us hear what Mr Key the Leader of the Opposition had to say about that. He said: “Well I think it’s extremely unlikely that our tax cuts actually will be near Labour’s and certainly it is not about what we deliver on one particular day; it is about an ongoing programme and we will be committed to an ongoing programme of personal tax cuts.” That is Mr Key’s flannel; he means “We actually don’t know what we’re going to do.” It is National’s code for “We haven’t got a policy yet.” 
If National had a policy why are we not hearing it? If National after 8½ years in Opposition had a coherent policy why would its members not be telling the public about it right now? National simply cannot decide what to do; that is the problem. There are two wings in the National Party. One is totally free market. The invisible hand of the market as Adam Smith said will provide. The other wing which is the rural end of the National Party says “Hang on a minute. We’ve got to have some common sense some pragmatism and some planning here.” 
Planning is a word that just disappeared from the lexicon in the 1990s. I am very pleased to say that it is back and we can see it most in an area that I am very much involved in and that is transport. This Government has made an enormous investment of $2.7 billion to be spent on roading and public transport in the coming year. That is vastly ahead of what National spent. Actually the public transport component is 1000 percent more than what National spent during its last year in office. But just in that area alone we can see the sorts of issues we have had to address. 
Rail for example was completely run down under the private-enterprise system that National always embraces so much yet it should have delivered an efficient rational and reasonable system providing for our needs according to National. Under private ownership there was an enormous deficit in maintenance and an actual risk in terms of the danger of the network. Of course the taxpayer had to bail out the system and in the end buy it because that was the only way we could guarantee it would become safe modern and at least able to perform its role as part of the infrastructural needs of New Zealand. None of that was going on under National. 
I am delighted that we have put so much money into things like tax cuts for people as well as family support for those with children. We cannot deal with one without the other. National’s challenge is to say how it will deliver this mythical $50 tax cut on average— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: $50-plus. 
Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN 
: —$50-plus—for every taxpayer. But of course National forgets to tell us that John Key will get $90 and ordinary workers at the bottom of the wage heap will get $10 if they are lucky. National is not saying it is going to keep family support. It is not saying how it will fund it; it is not saying where the money will come from. It is simply going to borrow like it always has in the past and put our kids in debt for the future. That is National’s solution.