Jones Shane: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Jones Shane: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 20 May 2010. Volume:663;Page:11182. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 The previous speaker Mr Gilmore makes Paul Quinn sound and look clever. The previous speaker Mr Gilmore shares the name of a bikie from Wanganui who is known as Shagger and that was the nature of his contribution to this debate in the budgetary session. Mr Mallard has suggested that he is not actually to be referred to in that fashion because he resembles the janitor and that is why the nature of his speech and the volume of Paul Quinn’s noise show that every Kiwi knows this Budget will put the cost of living up. There is all the brouhaha about the Budget; it will pass and in October November December when interest rates are up at 9 percent or 10 percent property developers will realise that they have been given a “get out of jail free” card and rents will rise and that is when people will come to us. As day follows night the cost of living is definitely going to go up. 
This Budget was designed by the Prime Minister the “Prince of Parnell” to create a caste society—a society where if people have wealth either inherited or from protected areas of the economy then their mobility and their kids’ prospects are protected but that is not the vast majority of New Zealanders. This is not a Budget that will advance social mobility. A society that is riddled with the absence of social mobility breeds resentment. It breeds fear and society does not like being told to shut up and not be envious. That is the view of someone who is embedding a caste-like structure in our economy and forcing people to eke out an existence; in the absence of collective investment they do not have the opportunity to advance. 
The Aussies have a vision that 40 percent of their workforce will be either tertiary or advanced post-secondary qualified. Nothing in this Budget advances those people as shown by Victoria University’s need to cut university spaces. I ask members to point out to me one single page that narrows the gap between our country and Aussie. There is not one single page. The entire Budget rests on the assumption that the only lever this Government has at its disposal to effect economic development is taxation. That is exactly the recipe used by Bill Birch and indeed goes back to Ruth Richardson. What sort of economic growth or closing of disparities did we see during that period of time? We saw a worsening. 
This Budget has an assumption that if we give more money to people who are already wealthy somehow it will unleash a level of dynamism. That will not happen. In that sense this Budget will not narrow the gap—this is the test the Government set for itself. It has said “New Zealand judge us on how we can narrow the gap of the Tasman Sea between Aotearoa and Aussie.” It fails in every measurable form. 
It needs to be said that when we change the tax system and move it more to consumption there are some valid arguments in public policy as to why that would be done. But why would we do it in order to enrich a tiny narrow caste of people who already exercise an inordinate amount of power through their vested interests? All it does is deepen the roots of their ascendancy; it is almost as if a group of aristocrats have seized control of the fiscal levers and are enriching themselves. So it will take a while for the average family to work it out but as day follows night come 2011 when families go to buy the basic necessities they will find that they are more expensive rents will have gone up and those who are trying to encourage nieces nephews and children to buy a house will feel that 10 percent interest rate. They can look forward to that. It will hurt the people who are currently silent not the lobbyists who toppled this Government from the property sector. If they did not like the depreciation changes it is no wonder that the Government is afraid to take a capital gains tax to them. The lobbyists have triumphed. 
There was an invitation on this side of the House at our most senior level to have an open discussion but we learnt the lesson after we made a similar response to the emissions trading scheme—we did not want anything—that we cannot rely on the integrity. We made a similar request that if it was going to effect a substantial change and look at both income and capital we were willing to talk. There was not a single response. The lobbyists have conquered this Government. 
Where are those lobbyists coming from? They are coming from a narrow range of people. There are a host of other advocates and we will hear about them. Where are the interventions to change the structure and the nature of our wealth generation? We all know that we have soil we have water we have climate we have fibre we have food we have fish and we have agriculture. But other than the filching of Jim Anderton’s scheme and its anaemic current example reflected in the Government’s research and development policies nothing in this Budget moves our wealth up from commodity production into value added. It is probably the case that the Government does not know how to do it. The reason it does not know how to do it is that it is listening to a narrow group who feel that far too much has been done for everyone but their narrow interest. That is not a recipe for advancing a prosperous or cohesive society. 
In 2011 there will be a very simple choice to be made. The choice will be made for those of us who unashamedly believe in and want to harness the power of collective power not atomise individual base approaches to human welfare. That is what this is based on and we will have that debate and we will show that the vast majority of New Zealanders who have been caught in a wage economy for way too long will not vote for the effects or the architects of this Budget. There will be people who are willing to give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt—we accept that. He will get the benefit of the doubt but that doubt will be eclipsed by poverty. We should look at the statistics of the children and the grandchildren in the vulnerable parts of society where people’s ability to pay their way goes right down. That is the first point. 
The second point is to look at the institutions that are designed to enable future generations of New Zealand to do better than their parents and grandparents—they are being starved. We should look at the shape and the form of the firms that currently earn our export earnings and at how many of them have been given a recipe for a step change in collaboration with the Government. None of them have. There is a forlorn belief that by exclusively pulling on the levers of the Inland Revenue Department a whole new entrepreneurial flow of wealth will be unleashed. 
Not only did the Prime Minister break the GST promise but he has sent garden-variety hard-working Kiwi families out of the workforce—because they will not be able to put the mokopuna into early childhood education; but in addition to that broken promise it reflects a narrow quite frightening focus on the caste defined by the amount of money one can deny others enjoying just to enrich oneself. That is why this Budget after all the puffery has passed will be seen as having driven up poverty in New Zealand. Kia ora tatou.