O'Connor Damien: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 22 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18277. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): Today the Parliamentary Library had a promotion of agricultural industries. As we walked into Bellamy’s I could not help but borrow this iconic symbol the sheep to raise in this House today. This country was built off the back of the proud sheep. Wool was worth the value of gold in the 1950s and is still a core part of one of our biggest industries the meat industry. But the sheep unfortunately is not the brightest of animals. Like the National Party it has this terrible tendency to follow its leader blindly. When the leader is an international money trader it is little wonder that that party fails to come up with any vision or any long-term plan for the future of the New Zealand economy.Can I say that this is a Budget of wasted opportunities and nowhere is that more apparent than in the meat industry itself. Can I say that the Budget fails to do anything to drive down our overvalued New Zealand dollar. It fails to do anything to curb ever-increasing interest rates and bank profits which continue to climb. The Budget desperately manipulates figures to come up with a so-called surplus. The social and economic deficit in this Budget will become apparent over the next few years.From a rural perspective the jobs we desperately need are still in many ways linked to our proud sheep. But thankfully we are a little more intelligent than National. What we are seeing in the sheep industry is that carcases are now being exported to China. We seedryland areas being converted into dairy. We see that pasture-fed protein is now changing to grain-fed protein. That is a lost opportunity because the Minister for Primary Industries in the Government continues to be a sheep instead of becoming the shepherd. It is about time Minister Guy became the shepherd and gave some guidance to an industry where thousands of workers up and down this country are fearful of their jobs because of the declining meat industry.Communities are at risk. Thousands of Māori workers and thousands of other Kiwis up and down New Zealand who have kept our country going are now at risk because of the declining industry and the fact that that Government did nothing. The Government threw money at the meat industry; it offered no guidance. Its Primary Growth Partnership grant system in the Budget has allocated the best part of $350 million to the meat industry with little or no accountability. The Auditor-General is investigating that now and I look forward to the outcome of that. The Primary Growth Partnership grants are an insult to every taxpayer because the Government is giving money to its mates and pretending that it is going to do something to revive the meat industry and give security to those workers up and down this country.This country desperately needs a Labour Government with vision a Labour Government—Hon Tau Henare: Ha ha!Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Mr Henare would do well to go and read not Labour Party propaganda or wisdom but theNew Zealand FarmersWeekly of this week. Labour’s monetary policy is sound. Until we sort out our monetary policy no export industry can have security and no export industry can invest in the way it needs to and know that it will get a fair return. If I can quote from the wisdom of theNew Zealand FarmersWeekly it said that the dollar “is 5-15% higher than is justified by the country’s earning potential.” and is costing us $9 billion a year in export earnings. That would pay off a lot of this debt of $56 billion. In summary can I quote that “Labour’s plan is not perfect.”—we do not claim that—“But it should reduce dependence on foreign lenders and their expensive money and push the currency down to more export-friendly levels. And for that it deserves farmers’ backing.” The reason the National Government will not intervene is because it is led by a money trader and that Government like this thing here is a bunch of sheep and will take this country down the gurgler unless we change the Government and put Labour in power.