Hughes Darren: Taxation (Personal Tax Cuts Annual Rates and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Hughes Darren: Taxation (Personal Tax Cuts Annual Rates and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16343] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Deputy Leader of the House) 
: 
 I am pleased to rise in support of the third reading of this bill which clearly sets out the plan for the future that the Helen Clark Labour-led Government has starting with a 3-year tax programme going forward starting on 1 October this year. It is a significant package that the Minister of Finance has outlined to the House. There is one thing I have been thinking about though as we have been debating this issue of tax cuts over the past day. It is that after the last general election Labour came to office with some very clear priorities to try to change New Zealand for the better. We said we wanted to make KiwiSaver a priority in this term. We said we wanted to make a priority of lowering the cost of going to the doctor and of picking up prescriptions for ordinary people in our country. We said we wanted to take the interest off student loans for our young people starting out so that they had the best start in life. We also said we wanted our babies—our young 3 and 4-year-olds—to get 20 free hours of early childhood education and that has been the biggest single expansion in the public education system in many many decades. They were the priorities that Labour brought to the Treasury benches. They were the priorities we campaigned on wrote in our manifesto and have delivered through this term of Parliament. 
If we look through the Labour Party manifesto we will not find this bill anywhere in it. The Labour Party did not campaign on a programme of personal tax cuts. But today we have brought to Parliament a bill that delivers in that area on top of all the other things we have said to the people of this country that we would achieve for them and with them—together. I am proud of that. I am proud we have kept our word on those key social issues and on top of that we bring a tax cut programme to Parliament. 
National members throughout the debate have not got that simple point. They are obsessed with one policy and one policy only. None of it fits together there is no theme and there is no philosophy. There is nothing to tell us what it is they want to do. All they want to do is cut taxes for no obvious reason and no plan has been put forward for it. We heard Dr Smith say that New Zealanders need the freedom to spend their own money as though somehow the National Party does not plan to charge any taxes at all. 
If tax is so terrible if it is much better for people to spend their own money and not have Governments in the way let us have no taxes. But of course that is not National’s policy. If we take National’s argument and expand it through it is just a different shade of Labour’s policy. We will have different income thresholds cutting in and National might have a different rate here and there but it will still take money off hard-working New Zealanders and spend it on their behalf. As a Government it would still take out about a third of the economy and spend it. These debates that National members are having are absolutely academic puerile and silly in trying to argue in that regard. 
Labour is putting in a tax cut plan that will cost $10.6 billion over 3 years. That is about the size of the education budget. This Labour-led Government is taking about the same amount that we spend on education for our kids and our young people starting out and returning it to New Zealanders by way of tax cuts. This is a significant tax cut package on top of those key social and economic justice issues that Labour campaigned on and has worked on with other parties in this Parliament in order to achieve. 
National members were asked many times what their plan would be. Mr Woolerton from New Zealand First made an excellent point. The Government has put up its programme and it has been voted on by Parliament. Why does the Opposition not put up the mirror of that so that we can have a proper debate on it? 
Hon Dover Samuels 
: It’s timing! 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: The Hon Dover Samuels says that timing is the problem. We had to put up with Nick Smith the Opposition front-bench strategist sitting in Parliament yesterday and screaming at the top of his voice “Cynical! Cynical!”. He said that the whole thing was just cynical. Yet National members say that the reason they cannot tell us about their plan is simply timing. Let us have a little bit of honesty in this debate. 
There is another thing we need to hear about from National members. The only savings they were able to identify were things like closing one or two embassies and not running one or two arts programmes. They found an arts programme somewhere that they did not like costing $600000 or $700000 and they tried to say they would have tax cuts on the back of that. It is not as simple as that. The people of this country deserve a proper campaign where two sides put their arguments together and fight it hammer and tongs on the facts not on the kind of silliness we heard from the Opposition in that regard. National members cannot say they are not going to have an embassy in Sweden and that that will deliver a massive tax cut bigger than what Labour has done. 
Finally the area that I think we have not spent enough time talking about is the fantastic win in the Budget and in this particular bill for New Zealand superannuitants. On 1 April this year married superannuitants received an extra $27 a fortnight in their pension pay packet and single people received $17. That happened last month on 1 April. That is money already in the bank for our old people. But now on top of that through this Budget an extra $45 a fortnight will go to married couples and $23 a fortnight extra will go to single people. That is about a $73 and a $40-a-fortnight increase to our pensioners this year alone on top of KiwiSaver on top of interest-free student loans on top of 20 free hours of early childhood education and on top of lower doctors’ fees and prescription charges. This is a balanced programme from a party leading a Government that has a plan for the future that cares about ordinary people and that will be honest with them until the very last day because we know what we can do working together with the community to make our country a better place for our people. This bill includes everybody and I am proud to put the vote of the people of Otaki behind its third reading.