Little Andrew: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Little Andrew: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2453. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 Today has been a day of fantasyland in this House. This has not been a Budget about New Zealand and its future. This has not been a Budget about growth. This has been a Budget about picking away at the most trivial issues in this country. This is not a Budget for growth and it certainly is not as the last speaker said a Budget for the people. It has been a Budget for a very small number of people but not for the people who are struggling and hurting in this country today. This has not been a Budget to grow the economy.  
Let us recall what the challenges are that we have at the moment. So we have a country where the net Crown debt is about $50 billion. We have a Budget that has a deficit now for the financial year that we are talking about of $9 billion. We are steadily heading towards a net Crown debt of over $70 billion. What do we have? We have the removal of a tax credit for 68000 kids which is going to raise $14 million. It will raise $14 million but the problem is $70 billion big. This is not a Government that is taking this country and this economy seriously. It is a waste of time. We have got a country with the slowest growth ever with wage growth stagnant and with a real economy that simply is not working—and getting smaller. We have a Government whose own projections are showing an economy in crisis. What does the Government want to do? It cuts a tax credit worth $14 million. I think we could have expected better.  
We were entitled to expect the Budget to talk about the people on the street. The  
New Zealand Herald 
—that balanced august piece of journalism in this country—is now reporting that this is a Budget that has either disappointed or not even registered the interest of 70 percent of New Zealanders. That is how this Budget has attracted the attention of New Zealand. It is a Budget that has done nothing by a do-nothing Government. The  
New Zealand Herald  
described it this morning in anticipation as “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” Budget—that great piece of poetry by T S Eliot. It was described that way because that poem describes eking out coffee spoon by coffee spoon. There is another line in that poem that says: 
I grow old … I grow old …  
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled … 
Do I dare to eat a peach?  
This is a Budget about trivialities; this is a Budget about trivialities. This is a Government whose Ministers and whose members could not care about what is happening to people who are struggling who do not get pay increases who are struggling to make ends meet. All the Government is concerned about is taking a bit of extra money off the kids out of their pockets taking their pocket money and making it harder for everyone.  
The Government’s only strategy apart from reducing Government revenue and increasing its debt is to sell off the revenue-generating assets that it owns. It is selling the revenue-generating assets that it owns. Well that is the big strategy. When I look at the practices of the Tory rich—[ 
Interruption 
]  
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member but I would like to refer the members on my right and on my left to Speakers’ ruling 60/5 about interjections. 
ANDREW LITTLE 
: I could barely hear myself speak. The greatest travesty of this Government and there are many of them let us face it but the greatest travesty just today is its reaffirmation of a policy that is about continuing the bankrupt policies for this country. So now it wants to take the great blue-chip revenue-generating assets of the country and it is going to proceed down the path of selling them. The Government has now introduced this new fund that it is going to put them into. So having told the public it is going to sell these assets and pay down some debt now it has a new fund that the sort of best guess of $5 billion or $6 billion or $7 billion is going to go into. We are now going to repaint the schools and upgrade the hospitals. There is not a single revenue-generating asset amongst them. So we will destroy the balance sheet we will lose the revenue and we will be no better off. What a crooked Government. What a crooked thing to tell the people of New Zealand when we are looking for some hope and looking for some vision. This Budget offers neither. It offers nothing else.  
The only other revenue-generating measure the Government has is to increase the price of smokes. It will put the price of smokes up because this is a Government that is about to go up in smoke. It will do that but it will not raise much revenue. Sure people will stop smoking and it might help the health statistics a little bit but it is not going to fix the core problem. This Government does not have an idea about investing in productive activity and investing in the productive investment sector to get real growth to get jobs—high-skilled jobs high-wage jobs—that will make a difference to people and give them a chance to get ahead. The Government is interested in the low-value jobs. It does not mind when foreign direct investment is about simply substituting for investments we have already got and promoting and encouraging low-value jobs.  
Labour is a party that wants to do the opposite—encourage investment and good skilled and high-skilled good jobs and increase the wage base. We do not want to see good New Zealand workers going overseas. This Budget and these measures are about driving more Kiwis offshore. Can we please have a Government that leaves the kids alone and leaves their pocket money alone? When it comes to them being in the classroom leave them with their good quality teachers. Do not jam more kids in the classroom put the teachers under more stress and make it harder for them. That is not going to help anybody. That is not part of the high-wage high-skill economy; that is the old way.  
This is a tired old Government and it is in only its second term. It is a tired old Government with no new ideas but to fleece the kids make it harder for the kids and harder for their families. What a travesty. What a tragedy. [ 
Interruption 
] And they know it—and they know it. Members opposite sit in the back rows and they run out of words because they have no arguments to defend it; they have no arguments to defend it. This is not a great day. They sit there and cheer on the ringmaster but the rest of us know that the joke is on us. They are the clowns and we are meant to laugh but the joke is on the rest of New Zealand. The joke is on the rest of New Zealand because this is a Government that has introduced a zero Budget that will take us nowhere. We are debating a zero bill the Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill like the finance Minister; a zero bill part of a zero Budget that will take us absolutely nowhere and members opposite know it. They know it because the more I remind them of it the louder they get and they hate it.  
Well this is not good and we will debate every measure because it is important that every New Zealander knows—the 70 percent who are disappointed in it or do not even know about it will know—that this Government has gone off them does not care about them will take the money out of their kids’ back pockets will jam more kids in the classrooms take away their teachers reduce the skills of their teachers and we will just wave to more good Kiwis as they go to the airports pay their departure taxes and take the poisoned fruit into Australia because we do not have any biosecurity here; we will wave them goodbye.  
That is the tragedy for New Zealand: a Government that offers no hope no real measures and nothing for the working Kiwi. They are looking hard because the thing about this side of the House is that we rub shoulders with them. They are looking for something better and they are looking to Labour and the parties of the Opposition. They say: “You parties offer us real hope. We don’t want the party of the rich any more taking money out of our kids’ pockets. We don’t want the party of the rich doing down our teachers and jamming more kids in the classrooms. We want something better.” They will get it better. We will have this debate and we will work to make this country a better place where kids can grow up in confidence. They will know that when they do their paper rounds and do the gardening and mow the lawns for the old ladies they will reap the benefits and the rewards of the labour and they will learn what being good citizens is about unlike the members opposite. We will have that debate and we will remind New Zealand that we offer a better chance a better hope and a better country.