Woods MeganDr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Thank you to the myth-busting" Minister who can also lead the choir in the singalong for that contribution. If that is a Government that is brimming with ideas not tired and full of energy then we are in trouble. That is exactly what this Government is: it is tired it is out of ideas and it has no fresh approaches. On this side of the House we are brimming with ideas we have got fresh approaches and we are ready to lead this country with an eye to the future and not looking backwards which is what our current Government is doing. And no more did we see that than in the Budget that was delivered last week. It was a Budget that completely failed to fill the gaps in the deficits that National has created after 9 years in Government. It was a Budget that was an irresponsible election bribe which has exposed the Government for exactly what it is: a Government that has run out of ideas.We cannot afford the election bribe that National has put on the table not if we want to address the deficits that exist in our country and not if we are unprepared to put up with the state of many of our social services in this country. It is not something that we can afford. My colleague Damien O'Connor put this very simply when he said this is a Budget that increases inequality and that is exactly what it does. The Government on the other side has tried to assuage itself by saying that it does the opposite but this is not the case.This is a Budget that means that families in my electorate of Wigram and families all over this country are having to dig deeper into their pockets when they want to take their family to the doctor. It means they are having to dig deeper when the school stationery bills come home. It means that if their children need specialist mental health services a huge number of them are not getting seen within the 3-week period. This is a Budget that leaves a huge deficit for us and for our country.What National tries to say is that its tax package is going to help these families. But let us unpick this because this Budget is unravelling. If you look at how it is that that support is being delivered to families it is through raising the accommodation supplement. We have said: "Fine. We will do it." It is "short-termism" and it is not addressing the problems that exist in terms of the housing crisis in this city but given that this Government has failed to address the housing crisis for 9 long years yes it is something that we will adopt in the short term. It is not in any way a structural addressing of the housing crisis. We have also said in terms of the increase to Working for Families that we have always been a fan of Working for Families. We have never called it "communism by stealth" unlike the Government's history with this programme. This is a targeted way to deliver money to those in need. We have said we will accept something like that.But let us not kid ourselves about the tax cuts. I get somewhere between $20 and $30 a week more in my pocket. The person who cleans my office on the minimum wage gets $1 a week more. How is this fair? How is this addressing inequality in this country? That person who is getting only $1 more a week is also going to have to pay more to go to the doctor. That person is also going to have to pay more potentially for their children's school stationery bill. This is not what our vision for New Zealand is. This is not the kind of New Zealand that we want to see.It is cynical electioneering that does nothing to address the shortfalls in health. So let us have a look at health. I think it was some time ago that we came up with the figure—the Hon Annette King—Hon Annette King: About 2 years ago.Dr MEGAN WOODS: —about 2 years ago—had that $1.7 billion figure calculated by Infometrics. That number will have grown. Did this Budget seek to address that shortfall in funding? No it did not. Let us have a look. The mental health funding that we heard about in question time today was touted as if this was the largesse of the Government that was doing so well. One it is too little too late—what the Government is doing. The money that it has now put into it is not going to address the size of the problem we have. It has been fudged together in the last weeks in response to Government pressure.We had the Minister of Finance who was answering questions on behalf of the Prime Minister who could not even answer the very simple question about what is going to be covered off with that contingency funding. The Minister had no idea. This is the man who stood up and delivered the Budget and said he had the answers. He had no idea because his Government has no plan. It is short-term political opportunism which means it has thrown that package together prior to the Budget.Of the Government's $50 million announcement for mental health services let us not kid ourselves; $25 million of this is coming from the district health boards (DHBs) themselves. Half of that expenditure is the Government saying to DHBs: "Don't spend more money on hip operations. Don't spend more money on knee operations. Don't spend more money on what people on waiting lists are waiting to achieve. We are going to put it inside the mental health ring-fence."I have seen this happen in Canterbury where I come from. We have a Government that has for 6 long years woefully neglected the mental health needs and the health needs of a group of people who have been through a natural disaster. In Canterbury our DHB is having to use the money that it would otherwise use for hip and knee replacements to fund mental health services which cannot cope.This is the vision that the Government now has for the whole country. So I can tell you that if you need your hip replacing if you need your knee replacing then your DHB is going to have to push you further down the list because the Government has decided it will not do anything to address the mental health crisis. What it will do is give its members and me a $20- to $30-a-week tax cut. Most New Zealanders whom I speak to think that the money would be better spent. I want to know that when an 8-year-old expresses suicidal tendencies they can be seen sooner than in 12 weeks' time. I have principals in my Wigram electorate telling me constantly that this is the kind of time frame we are looking at. It simply is not acceptable. It certainly is not something that I want a $20 tax cut in preference to. I want to know that we have a functioning mental health system.And then let us look at education. So the Government has given schools an extra $140 million in operational funding over 4 years so they can keep the lights on. Excellent! Pay their bills and make up for last year's funding freeze. But the Budget does not provide schools with the funding they need. Only $60.5 million of new funding will be for schools' operational grants. Any electorate MP who goes around and visits their local schools will have heard time and time again the stories of the pressure that is being put on the operations grant. Not only have schools had a freeze on their operations grant but if they want to pay for the teacher-aides whom they need for their kids they are also having to dip into that operations grant. It is this freeze on the operations grant that means parents are having to shell out up to $200 for the school stationery bill having to pay for the whiteboard markers and the photocopy paper and the tissues for the classroom because the schools simply do not have the operational money to put behind them.That is this Government's vision for this country. It is tired it is out of ideas and it is "short-termism" with no eye to the future. It is not a Government that thinks: "How do we address the big issues of our day like climate change? How is it that we can have functioning social services in our country a functioning health system an education system that is going to set us up for the future and make sure we are ready for the 21st century and a country where we do not think it is acceptable that someone has to raise their child in a car?".This is this Government's vision for the future—20 bucks a week for someone who earns as much as Government members in this House do versus having a country that can address those issues that we simply must get to terms with. This is not a Budget we will vote for. This is not a Budget that serves the people of New Zealand well. It is a Budget that is short-term and something that has absolutely no vision."