Bradford Sue: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
Bradford Sue: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
[Volume:629;Page:1594] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 This debate over the 2006 Budget Policy Statement gives us a useful opportunity to consider the recent economic history of New Zealand and to look forward to the next financial year and beyond. We are told in this statement that the economy has grown by 25 percent over the last 4 years. But what is this growth all about? Has our economy become more sustainable? Can we call that 25 percent increase a success if it does not translate into greater human well-being or environmental sustainability? Rivers are still being polluted basic health problems among so many of our children continue to increase too many workers are still in insecure jobs with wages too low to sustain either themselves or their families and so much more. We need measures of economic social and environmental success other than a mere growth in GDP. Unless this happens we may well find that we have sacrificed our environment our workforce and our children in order to get up the OECD GDP league table. Moving up the table does not automatically deliver to the environment and to those who are most vulnerable in our society. 
We are still heavily dependent on oil which is driving our negative balance on trade in the current account deficit. Although George Bush himself has acknowledged that the US is addicted to oil in Aotearoa New Zealand we seem to be oblivious to the short-term and long-term effect that oil dependency will have on our country. The year to January has seen the largest trade deficit ever. Nearly half the increase in imports lies in the cost of oil yet we still have no standards for fuel efficiency in vehicles. We are building big new roads faster than ever before in history with cries to build them even faster and with only very modest funds for public transport cycleways or traffic-demand management. We are doing all this despite the real question that we should be facing: how we will afford the fuel to drive in the future at the rate that we drive today. 
The Budget Policy Statement sets policy targets for innovation and productivity but only productivity of labour seems to be considered. What about the productivity of energy which will be less available than labour in the future? We have failed to meet the targets in the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy but there are no Budget measures to address this. 
The biggest risk to our agricultural economy is climate change. It is also a big fiscal risk as we are now liable for the cost of our carbon debts in 2012. Yet there are no policies to deal with this. The climate change policy is a shambles. The carbon tax has been abandoned and we will have to wait a year to see what will be put in its place if anything. 
Rod Oram’s reflections on the second Australia - New Zealand Climate Change and Business Conference in the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 of 26 February was very instructive. Mr Oram’s article begins with the paragraph: “The debate over climate change and the response to it have advanced dramatically over the past year in the rest of the world. In New Zealand they have taken a great leap backwards.” He goes on to say how Governments scientists businesses and environmental lobbyists around the world are making great strides in dealing with climate change and carbon tax issues while New Zealand delegates at the conference had a sorry story to tell. 
We are still waiting for the Minister to tell us how the funding shortfall left by the carbon tax will be met. Will expenditure be cut? If so on what? Will other taxes be raised? If so which ones and how? Today renewable energy is a smaller proportion of total energy than 6 years ago so we are actually going backwards on sustainability. 
Most of the room to move in the forthcoming Budget has already been taken up by the student loan zero-interest package. Of course we support this even though the Government’s policy in this area lags a long way behind our commitment to get rid of the student loan scheme altogether and to allow borrowers to pay off existing loans every year that they work in New Zealand following graduation. 
We also support the Government’s move to extend the Working for Families package tomiddle and high income families. However we have consistently opposed and will continue to condemn the continuation of its policy that denies the same support to the most vulnerable of all families—those on unemployment sickness domestic purposes and other benefits. It is an absolute travesty that those New Zealanders and their children are punished because they are unable to work. We again ask the Government to reconsider its policy in that area and end the systemic discrimination against beneficiaries. 
I also call on Government members to seriously reconsider the Minister for Social Development and Employment’s apparent commitment to going ahead with the abolition of the special benefit and its replacement with the temporary additional support benefit. I doubt that many Labour MPs have seriously come to terms with the fact that once the temporary additional support benefit is implemented and the special benefit no longer exists many people coming on to benefits will be deprived of badly needed income. The temporary additional support benefit removes discretion and is time limited unlike the special benefit which means that in the future tens of thousands of beneficiaries will end up with even less money on which to survive than they have now. That is an outright and drastic benefit cut and I believe that if Labour MPs really understood what those changes will mean they would be urging the Hon David Benson-Pope to take urgent action to reverse his decisions in that area. 
There are however some areas of the Budget that we are looking forward to. Those are the matters addressed in the Labour - Green Party cooperation agreement that was signed as part of the new Government formation process last year. The two key areas the Green Party is expecting Budget support for are the enhanced energy efficiency programme and the Buy Kiwi Made programme. We are also hoping that over this term of Parliament the Government will support building increased capacity for public passenger transport; increasing the number of students eligible for student allowances by increasing parent or income thresholds; further reducing levels of child poverty; increasing overseas development assistance; raising the minimum wage to at least $12 an hour if not more; improving the nutritional environment especially among children; enhancing organics advisory services; improving environmental education; doing more about endangered species conservation; and taking measures to further support the development of the community and voluntary sector. 
I am responsible within the Green Party for the Buy Kiwi Made programme. We are working closely with the Minister for Economic Development’s office and the Ministry of Economic Development itself on this project. I have already met with a number of interested and potential stakeholder groups for the project. There is a great support coming through from businesses trade unions economists and individual firms. 
The main opposition we have encountered so far has been in the pages of last week’s  
National Business Review 
 that paraded three sirens for neo-liberalism to attack the programme. Can I assure the  
National Business Review 
 and its doomsayers that the Buy Kiwi Made programme will not founder on its anti-interventionist rocks but will become a major programme to celebrate the quality tenacity and courage of New Zealand companies and workers to support and promote what is made by in and for New Zealand. 
Buy Kiwi Made has a number of goals. They are: creating awareness of the employment economic environmental and social benefits of buying locally made products and services; building brand loyalty for New Zealand - made products; reducing imports especially of consumption goods; helping to reduce New Zealand’s trade deficit; helping to increase New Zealand’s manufacturing capability; helping to create jobs; and helping to reduce fuel consumption. 
Although in the scheme of things the Buy Kiwi Made project will be a modest exercise the latest balance of payment figures show that it must be all hands to the pump to ensure that this country does not spend more than it earns. Reducing imports is just as important as increasing exports and in the end much more sustainable. Yet for too long import substitution has been a dirty phrase in this country. 
Economists sometimes tell us that to understand a national economy we have to think of it as a household. Well let us do that. What would we think of a household where the parents concrete over half the vege garden grass over the other half and put a cow on it throw away the sewing machine the workshop tools and all the repair kits and then give the kids credit cards with unlimited spending. Yet that is exactly how our economy is being run. No matter how hard the parents work and how much they earn the children continue to run up debt. The household continues to run up deficit after deficit. Then when the parents try to take the credit cards away from the kids they are sued by the World Children Organisation for breaking its rules. Can the Government explain how that makes sense? Can National’s Mr Groser who has helped write some of the World Trade Organisation rules explain the sanity of the situation? 
I look forward to the success of the Buy Kiwi Made project but even more important to it being joined by other Government-Green initiatives that can tackle the rising trade deficit and help us develop the truly sustainable Aotearoa that we will need if we are to survive the environmental and economic crises of the next decade.