Hughes Darren: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Hughes Darren: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:660;Page:8967] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 That speech by Steven Joyce was probably the best example of an eloquent description of what the Government would like to do. The problem is that it is not doing any of it. I thought that the most revealing part of Mr Joyce’s speech was when he talked about the speech that the Prime Minister “read out”. The reason he said that is—everyone knows that Steven Joyce is kind of a Voldemort figure of the Government—he wrote it. He was so disappointed that his eloquent words which were tabled were not the same ones that were read out by the Prime Minister when he gave his speech. Normally parliamentary convention requires that a Minister or member who has given the preceding speech stays to listen to the person speaking afterwards. But I invite Mr Joyce to go back to his office now because I think that what happened in question time today means that Anne Tolley will be gone by Easter and he will be Minister of Education as well. So I take no objection to his departure. He is a busy man with a big Government to run. He should go and read all about that portfolio because that will be his next one. 
The next thing we have to deal with is the fact that in the Prime Minister’s statement this Government has failed on its own election promises. This might be National members’ new policy agenda but it is not what they campaigned on at the last election. The member for West Coast - Tasman did not go around the communities of the West Coast telling them that GST would go up. Did he do that? 
Chris Auchinvole 
: The ah member for West Coast - Tasman— 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: He said “um”. Normally he has so much to say but when it comes to whether he fronted up at community meetings and said: “Please vote for me it is time for a change. I would like GST to go up.” that was not quite the campaign strategy he adopted and neither was it adopted by all those other members. No one knows what the member for Wairarapa would have said; he is not really one for the party line if I can put it that way. He may well have said that GST should go up but none of the others did. 
The other key difference in what the Prime Minister has told the country is that at the last general election National said that there would be tax cuts for every New Zealander. What was very clear about last Tuesday is that there will no longer be tax cuts for every New Zealander; there will be tax cuts for only some people in our country which is a direct change from the approach that National took when it was campaigning at the last election. Will it be a tax cut for people on low middle and average incomes? Will it be a tax cut for people on high incomes? I think so given what Mr Joyce the Associate Minister of Finance was saying. Apparently we are being strangled in this country by having a top tax rate of 38c. Well a lot of countries would love to have 38c as their top income tax rate. I ask Mr Burns what the top rate in Australia is; he says it is 48c. The UK is about to have a 50p top tax rate. But apparently in New Zealand the biggest issue is getting the top rate down even if people who earn average incomes pay more of their money across to the Government in order for that to occur. 
The one thing that no Government speaker has been able to explain to any of us yet is how this can be a tax package where there are no losers. How will there be no losers? If every single person ends up paying exactly the same level of income tax after the Budget as he or she is paying before the Budget then how can this be so? Of course not a single Government speaker has told us how it will be possible. By definition if some people pay less tax and the whole package will result in the same amount of revenue being paid to the Government then there must be some people who will pay more tax. 
I will tell members who those people will be. They will be the people whom no Government has ever been able to help out in a meaningful way by way of changes to the tax system—that is single people or couples whose children have already left home or who have no children. They make up the vast bulk of taxpayers in New Zealand. They are people who have done a good job of raising their kids who have now left. They are middle-income people who always feel that they fall between two stools when it comes to Government assistance. They cannot receive a tax cut to compensate them for GST. 
Despite the fact that the Government gets the majority of calls in this debate and that those members all get to speak for 10 minutes none of them—and I have listened carefully—have been able to explain to us how we can have equitable changes which the Prime Minister said when he launched the Tax Working Group report was the aim of the whole process. [ 
Interruption 
] Mr Auchinvole says that it will all be revealed. I do not think that he is on the Government strategy committee. I have a feeling that he might have just missed out on membership when it comes to the ninth floor strategy committee. I suspect that he does not know and that none of the other Government speakers know. 
The other problem is that a 20 percent increase in GST will hit our pensioners. Our pensioners know that there is not a single increase the Government can make by way of a CPI adjustment on 1 April that will put them in a better position because the CPI adjustment that Government speakers have been referring to takes place after the year in question. Pensioners have to go through the whole year paying higher prices. In Kapiti and Horowhenua the power prices have gone up just in the last week. It will be plus 5 percent on the power bill and plus 15 percent GST that our older citizens are paying. There is no way of compensating them for those changes for a full year. The Government does not even know its own mechanism for supporting people in that respect. 
What I loved most about the Prime Minister’s statement was how proud of it National members were on Tuesday. Of course members on the other side of the House have an enormous degree of sycophancy so they have kept the pride; the reasons for it have just changed. When National members started to speak in the debate on Tuesday they all said: “This is an amazing plan. It’s got 9000 words.” That was the end of the debate basically because they said that they had been getting all of this criticism about the fact that there was no plan for jobs and they had the Job Summit which was not going to be a talkfest—now it does not even meet the test for a talkfest let alone a job summit—but they thought that if they could say how many words were in the Prime Minister’s statement then that would make people think that National has a plan for the year. 
That all started to fall apart during the course of the week because on Tuesday the Prime Minister said that GST would go up to 15 percent. That was the direction he was boldly taking New Zealand in. By Friday on  
Morning Report 
 he had said that the Government had not decided that yet that Cabinet had not signed up to it and that if the Maori Party did not want it then the Government would not do it either because he did not want the Government to fall over. He was not at all quite sure what was going to happen. Then obviously a bit of steel was put into the spine by Mr Joyce and Mr English over the weekend and now this week the tax rise by way of GST is back on. 
But nowhere is there a better example of the fact that the Government can never stick to tough positions than on the foreshore and seabed issue. After Waitangi Day on the Monday the Prime Minister said in the way that he does that we have all moved on together now because mud does not get thrown at people at Waitangi. That is the definition of nationhood apparently but that is a speech for another day. The big definition for Mr Key was that he has found an “elegant solution” to the foreshore and seabed issue. On Tuesday Government members were all going to come together and support it. In the Prime Minister’s statement he described the Foreshore and Seabed Act as a “weeping sore” on the nation’s conscience. By Thursday Mrs Turia had said that the elegant solution about the “public domain”—those words are familiar—was not going to be a goer. So by Friday Mr Key was saying: “Oh well if no one agrees we will just keep with the current legislation.” This is the legislation that was a weeping sore on the country’s soul on Tuesday. 
In terms of strong leadership we know that the Prime Minister does not like criticism. He had a good year in the opinion polls last year no one can deny that. This year has been a bit tougher. It has been a bit scratchier out of the starting gates this year and I think that this week’s performance—particularly yesterday’s performance at question time—shows how brittle the Prime Minister is when it comes to criticism. When everyone does not like him he does not get all that happy. When columnists on the right wing of politics say that National is not going far enough to implement a National agenda and when the Maori Party does not like things we find that National members cut and run from the position. 
In fact at one point last week the Maori Party held the power of veto over whether there would be a rise in GST. The party of 58 members was saying to the party of five members—even though I am pretty sure that National will have ACT’s votes locked up on tax cuts for the upper income earners in this country—that it would have that power of veto. As soon as the Maori Party realised that it had that power of veto it did not want it which is sort of the opposite of tino rangatiratanga in a sense. Those members were given the power and they said no they did not want that to happen at all. 
So far we have seen from the National - Maori Party - ACT Government a week where those members have been sloppy they have been slippery and everything has been a shambles. It is coming through so clearly because Government members’ own election manifesto is disintegrating in front of us. We now have a tax plan that is focused on only some New Zealanders not on all people. The Government will cut adrift the average-income earners in New Zealand so that they pay higher GST. Mr Goff gave the example of the Prime Minister in one of those scenarios getting a $500 a week tax cut although the people working in this building who give us key support would get only 35c a week in tax cuts. We know that the minimum wage has moved by only 25c an hour this year which is an absolute disgrace and that the cost of living for all families is going up right at the moment. I have not even had time to talk about tertiary students who spend 100 percent of what they get. Of course they cannot possibly be compensated through all of this. 
I will finish by touching on the issue of what is happening out in the community where all the words that are said in here count and where the rubber really hits the road. I am absolutely shocked that Tony Ryall who dances and prances around telling us that he will fix the health system is overseeing some of the most massive cuts in community-based health all across the country. In my area of Horowhenua and Kapiti as Winnie Laban knows there are massive cuts to home support for older people. People have been rung up and told on the phone that up to 75 percent of their home care is being cut and the Government refuses to step in and do anything about it. In Levin we opened a $16 million hospital just 2½ years ago. It was a hospital that I campaigned very very hard to achieve for the people of Horowhenua. The National Government wants to rip out the 24 hospital beds in that centre—24 beds. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: How many would be left? 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: There would be zero beds left for assessment treatment and rehabilitation for our older people. How can that be sooner better and more convenient health care for the people who have to travel to Palmerston North? 
The statement from the Prime Minister shows what the real priorities of the National Government are. Those members want to look after their supporters only. When the heat comes on they cannot stick to their principles because in the end it is about popularity not principle.