Gosche Mark: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Gosche Mark: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:21281] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 A couple of things came out of the Budget last week that I should comment on. One of them was something that is an absolute rarity—it is as rare as National Party members in this House getting up to speak. It was the emergence of a National Party piece of policy. Paul Adams and I got to hear it first-hand on Friday in Auckland. What was it? It was the National Party’s policy on helping the disability providers—the people who care for people with disabilities in New Zealand. What was it? It was from its spokesperson Sandra Goudie and she said this: “We’re going to help the disability provider employers. We are going to take penal rates off the workers in that sector who work on public holidays.” Who are they? They are the people who go into the homes on public holidays and look after the elderly and those with disabilities. To help the sector Sandra Goudie has promised that the National Party will repeal the Holidays Act and take away penal rates from those hard-working low-paid New Zealand workers most of whom do it for love not for money. 
That is the National Party’s policy that we heard last week. What a doozy! National members will go out on the hustings and tell those workers that the way to solve the shortage of the workforce in the disability sector is to whack the workers over the head and take some money off them. Well contrast that with the policy of this Government. We have put money into that sector badly needed money so that those workers can in fact be trained so that they can be paid more and so they can go into the homes of the elderly and the disabled and work and get recognition for that work. But National Party members true to form say: “Nah we’re not having that.” Low-paid New Zealand workers—some of the lowest-paid hardest-working people in this country who look after the elderly and the disabled—are to be punished to pay for the tax cuts for the rich! 
Well what does one expect of the National Party when one looks back at its track record? Remember the tax cuts of the 1990s? How were they funded? National sold 13000 State houses—that is how it funded the tax cuts—after it had already sold the railways. Of course this Government has had to buy the railways back because that was an absolute failure as we saw our railway system stripped away and the money was ripped off by the people whom the Government sold it to. That left us with an enormous burden on the roads because our rail system was not doing its bit. 
I suppose to fund the next round of tax cuts if Dr Brash ever gets his way National has not much that it could sell but he said he will sell Kiwibank. That will be great for the low-paid medium-income New Zealanders who are lining up at that bank to take advantage of the lower interest rates that no other bank would actually offer! Through the home ownership scheme this Government is in fact helping more and more people into home ownership through the mortgage insurance scheme which is another good feature of this Budget as is also the KiwiSaver scheme that will put $10000 into the pockets of hard-working Kiwi families so that they can buy their first home. That scheme will be delivered through the likes of Kiwibank that Dr Brash wants to sell. 
Let us look a little deeper because to cut the tax from 39c down to 30c which National said it would do and the company tax down from 33c to 30c will cost about $2 billion and not one single low-paid or medium-income family will see a cent as a result of that because they do not pay the top tax rate of 39c nor do they pay company tax. But $2 billion will be down the tubes gone and cannot be spent on health and it cannot be spent on education. As Dr Cullen said one will get a tax policy but it is actually a cut in health a cut in education a cut in defence and a cut in law and order. 
 But hang on. Let us see what National has promised to spend if it ever gets a chance to be the Government again—well $2 billion on cutting tax for the wealthy and for the companies and it wants to spend $4.5 billion on transport over the next 10 years. that is pretty miserable but nevertheless it is new spending. It has promised to build the Waikato expressway. It has promised $120 million for Northland roads $110 million for Tauranga and so on and so forth. Wherever National members visit they promise to spend. 
But there is a hidden issue. How will they fund that? They will have toll roads. What is a toll? It is a tax. So Dr Brash is going to say that the wealthy can have a tax cut and the companies can have a tax cut but all those other fellows will have to pay to build the new roads by paying tolls. How will they manage that? That is what we want to know. They will also have to pay more for education for their kids and for tertiary education for their older kids. 
Everybody knows what happened in the 1990s as a result of taxes being cut. There was not any money to supply our education system with what it needed. Labour has put millions and millions into bringing back to some sort of reality the spending on schools the spending on tertiary education and the spending on health. National members would also be opposed—and we know they are—to the half a billion dollars that this Government has stumped up with to pay nurses. The most highly rated profession in this country is nursing. It is not politicians it is not the police but nurses. This Government recognises that we cannot afford to import nurses to work in our hospitals while we export our trained nurses to the rest of the world so that they can earn a decent living. So that half a billion dollars cannot happen if there is a tax cut and if all that money is spent on roads—as the National Party said it would do. 
Then there is the $4 billion they have said they will spend on defence so that we can be equal to Australia. They have committed to spending $722 million a year on law and order. Members will remember that National is going to abolish parole. When they do that they will have to build more prisons. They cannot just have the prisoners wandering around in the paddock. They will have to build more prisons and at $220 million each they will have to build a lot of prisons when they abolish parole. 
Where will that money come from? That is what the country wants to know. Where is Dr Brash who prides himself on being an economist and a miserable one at that? He put up interest rates year after year so that New Zealanders could not afford to buy a house. Rates of homeownership plummeted to record lows as a result of his regime of interest rates. Dr Brash is saying that his party if it is ever elected to Government will help low to medium income families. Well let us hear how he will give them a tax cut and spend the extra $4 billion which Labour has in its Budget for health. How will he keep the promise to elderly New Zealanders who have seen this Budget take away asset testing or the first steps towards it? Where will he find the extra $18 million that is going into home-based care situations which I have talked about? Sandra Goudie has said that those workers do not deserve that and she will take their penal rates off them. 
What about the $71 million for residential aged-care that this Budget stumped up with? What about the $297 million to lift quality in tertiary education? In this Budget there is $45 million for industry and trade training to make up for the fact that last time National was in Government it did away with trade training and apprenticeships. So now we have nobody to build our roads our hospitals our schools and all the infrastructure this country is crying out for. 
It is not voodoo economics; it is something worse when a party can tell people it will give them a tax cut but it will not tell them how much when or whether they will get it but it will still be asking people to vote for it and trust it. That is what the National Party will say. That is what we know National will say. But we want the hard questions put to them by our media and by the public. How can we have all the things we have now in health education defence and law and order and have a tax cut too and how can they afford to do that when they have already promised to spend more and more on roading transport law and order etc.? It just does not add up and any person who scrutinises National’s voodoo economics will see right through it—and through Dr Brash and his colleagues. 
At least Sandra Goudie was honest enough to come up with a stupid dumb ignorant policy—that was better than none at all—when she said that the lowest-paid the most caring workers in this country. will lose their penal rates on weekends and holidays and that will be the one piece of party policy that we can guarantee National will deliver on if it is ever allowed to. That is how it will fund its tax cuts. They will take it from the lowest paid.