Mallard Trevor: Budget Debate 
Mallard Trevor: Budget Debate 
[Volume:673;Page:19258] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 That speech was made by the former New Zealand First member for Northern Maori the former Mauri Pacific member for Te Tai Tokerau and now the National Party candidate—he has failed three times—for Te Atatu. He said he did the hard yards. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: That’s right. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: That member has never done hard yards in his life. He has never done hard yards. The hardest job he has ever done is lifting his arm to put on his Dirty Dog sunglasses. He uses his drinking action to put on his glasses—lifting his arm a little bit further than his mouth. That is the hardest work he has ever done in his life. 
He complained about rates in west Auckland. They could have gone down if Rodney Hide had got the legislation right. If the legislation that Tau Henare voted for worked it would have been all right for his constituents. What did we hear? The member did not even bother reading the legislation he voted for much less doing anything about it or making representations. 
I want to make a few points about the Budget. The first is that frankly it is disappointing. I thought that in Bill English’s third attempt—or is it his fourth attempt; I cannot remember whether it was Birch or English who did the last one for the last National Government—he would present something with some sort of plan in it. But unfortunately this Budget had nothing that looked like a plan whatsoever. It was ad hoc. It had a number of arrangements in it that would not be allowed under a prudent Minister of Finance like for example Dr Cullen. Even Bill Birch would not have put together the sorts of arrangements that Bill English has put together and called a Budget. For example I refer to the inclusion in this Budget of the sale of the State-owned enterprises over a 4-year period. I refer to the absence of money for the overseas advisers who apparently the Minister is lining up to sell the State-owned enterprises to the Chinese—lining up to work as consultants on it. I refer to the money that the Minister is proposing go to Featherston Street—about $300 million—to be spent on selling those State-owned enterprises. I refer to the lack of dividends from the State-owned enterprises. When we sell something the dividend flow stops and that should be taken into account. We cannot take in the money from the receipts as the Minister has done without showing the cost of the sales and the dividends forgone but that is what he has done. 
Bill Birch would not have fudged the figures as to the borrowing. Almost certainly Bill Birch would not have borrowed more than was necessary at a particular time. Bill Birch would not have speculated using Kiwi workers’ jobs on a change in interest rates. Bill English is borrowing today because he thinks he knows better than the people in Tokyo Berlin Geneva and New York what is going to happen to international interest rates. We know that Bill English has sitting beside him someone who played around quite a lot in the foreign exchange market and might know quite a lot about short-term positions but the message we have always had since the time of Muldoon is that one does not gamble in the foreign exchange and interest rate markets. That is what this Minister has done. I do not know how much higher the New Zealand dollar is as a result of that. I do not know whether it is 1c 2c or 5c but there is a view that each of those cents is worth at least 10000 jobs to Kiwis. I want to know why that Minister is keeping the exchange rate artificially high in the way that he is costing Kiwis jobs. He said and the Prime Minister said right at the beginning of their time in Government that their priority was giving Kiwis jobs. 
In the same way I ask why he and his Associate Minister of Finance Steven Joyce are prepared to idly stand by and watch New Zealand jobs be transferred from the Hillside workshops to China. Why do they not take into account the cost to New Zealand of that? Why do they not take into account the number of Kiwis who are made unemployed? Why do they not take into account the tax that would be paid in New Zealand if those jobs were here? Why do they not take into account the apprenticeships that would be created in New Zealand if those jobs were here and the training was done? That Minister and Steven Joyce specifically told the KiwiRail board not to take those things into account but to take—and I am an accountant—a narrow accounting view rather than an economic or socio-economic view of the value of that work. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: He was a teacher. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Actually the taxpayer pays more I say to Mr Henare—the taxpayer pays more. As well as paying for the railway wagons we do not get the tax we do not get the apprentices and we pay unemployment benefits to the people who are dismissed. We pay more as a result of sending those jobs to China but that is something that Tau Henare and Bill English support. It is something they support and I think that is very very sad. 
Having said that this Budget does not even do the job the National members said it would do. They said they would attack the deficit and they said they would close the gap but what does this legislation do? It funds a $16.7 billion deficit. The Minister has got it up to a record level and he has got it to that level because he has managed to do what I thought was probably economically impossible: he has attempted to stimulate the economy with massive tax reductions aimed at people like the Prime Minister who get a tax drop of over $1000 but at the same time he has run the economy down. Normally the perceived wisdom is that if one gives tax cuts the economy will be stimulated. What that Minister has managed to do is at the same time give tax cuts and deflate the economy—to have the sort of growth that is almost unprecedented at the moment within the OECD. One has to go to places like Spain Greece or Iceland to find a country that has a plan that is so bad that it is deflating in this way. 
We know now from feedback that has come that there is a certain amount of boredom on the part of the Prime Minister that he is feeling particularly— 
Hon Maryan Street 
: Tired of the job. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: He is feeling a bit tired and a bit emotionally strained by it. There have been a few hard decisions to make. Even on this side we thought we would get some sort of leadership from a Budget that had a plan in it. We have seen nothing of that. We have heard irrigation schemes announced but not put into the Budget. We have had Telecom subsidies— 
Jo Goodhew 
: $35 million is in there. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Oh $35 million of the $400 million is in there. I thank the member very much. She has just told us that $365 million of hidden subsidy to farmers is not in the Budget. I thank the member for making that clear. 
What the Labour Party stands for is a fair Budget. People should pay their tax and bludgers at both ends will be hit when there is a Labour Government. Beneficiaries who blatantly bludge will be hit and I make it clear that the bludgers like the “Prime Bludger”—the leader of the National Party the person who got a $1000 a week tax cut the sort of person who hides his income in trusts— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member but his time has expired.