Cosgrove Clayton: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cosgrove Clayton: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2461. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour) 
: 
 Part 1 is a very sad part of this bill the Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill. What we now know is that the National Government aided and abetted by the Minister in the chair Mr Dunne is going to raise revenue of approximately $14 million out of the pockets out of the piggy banks and out of the wallets of approximately 68600 children according to the regulatory impact statement—14 million bucks from 68600 children. These are kids who are doing paper runs and things like that— 
Hon Member 
: Cleaning. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: —cleaning—and delivering the community papers. They will be delivering “Do not vote National” pamphlets at the next election I am sure in the back of the little— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: They will be volunteers. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: They will be volunteers. And you know I just wonder for instance whether Gerry Brownlee ever had a paper run. No sorry; that would be an oxymoron. That would be completely absurd—a paper run! I am told though that Gerry Brownlee had a milk run you know back in the old days when there was full-cream and double-cream milk. But I think very little actually ever got delivered to the front gate.  
Maggie Barry talked about the fact that she believed in recycling. Well I have got to say if ever there was a member who has come into this House who has been recycled with the odd scent of compost swirling around her then my word it is that member. It is the member who sits in select committees and intimidates submitters by asking them how they voted. Well I wonder whether Maggie Barry— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! Pull it back. [ 
Interruption 
] I was not a paper boy—we had courier pigeons. Come back to the bill. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I am sure Mr Chair that you aspired to the sort of pizza delivery type of deal rather than a paper round.  
I just say this to this Government. This is the big idea in the Budget. Take 14 million bucks off a bunch of kids. This is the big strategy lined up alongside flogging assets off and National is trying to hoodwink people by saying “Oh if we buy non - revenue-generating assets that is a good thing is it not?”—until the money runs out of course. So the big idea in the Budget is not to deal with the big issues of taxation. National fails to remind us that it is borrowing $300 million a week so that the top 5 or 10 percent can get the vast majority of the tax cuts. But it is awake enough to take 14 million bucks out of the piggy banks of 68600 young people. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Retrospectively.  
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Retrospectively. Well I say that Mr Dunne is the man who will go down in history as the biggest auctioneer in our history if he votes for asset sales—going going gone. He is now of course the “Uncle Scrooge” of the Parliament”—the “Uncle Scrooge” of the Parliament. What a great legacy Mr Dunne will deliver as he has flip-flopped from party to party. He is as I think the record will show the longest serving revenue Minister in the history of the parliamentary Commonwealth. He has been in more parties and in more coalitions that I have had hot dinners and more than Gerry Brownlee has had hot dinners. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: No; sorry that would be silly. But I say this. I ask Mr Dunne to reflect on the provision in Part 1. Does he really want to go down in history as the man who took 14 million bucks out of the piggy banks of 68600 paper boys delivery people cleaners— 
Maggie Barry 
: More trivia. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: —oh sorry; there is one over there the old turnip in the corner—and paper girls? Does he really want to go down in history—[ 
Interruption 
] Go on gardening leave I say to Ms Barry—go on gardening leave. You will be better at it. It is a better occupation for you I think than intimidating submitters to select committees.  
So Mr Dunne will go down in history as a person who took the money out of the mouths of babes. That will be his legacy to the Parliament—that and helping the Government flog off assets. What does Mr Dunne say to his grandkids? Has he had a conversation with his grandkids and said: “Sorry guys. You know how you were going to do that after-school job? Sorry I’m the revenue Minister and I’m going to sneak around the back and as you get your 45 bucks I’m going to whip out the tax from you before you can slip it into the piggy bank at home.”?  
National is the party of aspiration. Was not this the party that was encouraging entrepreneurship? Well should we not be doing that with our young people? Is it not Miss Bennett who says: “You should get off your backside and get a job.” even though of course the unemployment rate has gone up by 50000 under her wonderful legacy? So National is saying on the one hand “Get a job.” We have 68600 young people working in jobs and for many of them I say in all seriousness it is no longer an after-school job for a bit of pocket money. No—if you are out on Struggle Street battling away thanks to this mob paying higher GST paying the higher charges having lost your job and having been absolutely gutted as a family then the paper boy’s or paper girl’s job or the little bit of cleaning around at the butchers shop is no longer about pocket money. It is actually about helping mum and dad try to make ends meet.  
To the geniuses over there one of whom has poddled off to the back of the vege patch in the garden I say this. Forty-five bucks to some of those people over there may not be a big chunk of dough. Oh no—not to some of them of course.  
Andrew Williams 
: A bottle of wine. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Yes a bottle of wine. Yes and I think a few of them over there have been imbibing tonight. But to a child earning 45 bucks—and every dollar they earn they will have to pay tax on—that is their contribution in many poor families to the family food budget the power bill the rates the rent and all those things. I wonder whether in her sort of blasé way Miss Bennett has actually considered that as she leaves a legacy of 50000-plus people unemployed. How does she balance that against the call for aspiration? Oh do not look at me with dagger eyes Miss Bennett—I know it hurts but they are the facts. There are 50000 people unemployed thanks to that Minister and her inaction. She says: “Get off your backside and get a job.” Of course she has not provided any jobs. In fact she has presided over an administration that has gutted jobs from this country—gutted them. Yet she is prepared to sit there—I do not think she is talking to herself. I presume that might be an unintelligible conversation. She talks to herself. I wonder if she will go out and talk to the young people in her electorate and tell them why she is aiding and abetting this and tell them why they should not believe what she said about aspiration because of course she is going to take their dollars.  
Oh hang on: the balloon has burst. I say this: is she going to go out to her electorate and actually talk about that? Is she actually going to go and talk to her constituents and explain to their mothers and fathers why this is happening? Because as Trevor Mallard said a little while ago those 68600 young people will not want to get paid to deliver pamphlets at the next election—they will volunteer. They will volunteer to deliver “Don’t vote for National” cards into every letterbox in this country. Of course Paula Bennett tries every trick to divert us away from the fact that her legacy is 50000 people on the scrap heap—the lost and lonely—and now you add to that a dash for cash for $14 million.  
Well I just say that she can squawk all she likes and talk about all sorts of things but the problem Paula Bennett has is she cannot walk away from facts and history. She cannot walk away from her own legacy. She cannot walk away from 50000 people on the scrap heap. I just wonder as members go out this weekend to their constituencies in Whanganui and a few other places around there—I wonder if Mr Borrows will front up to the parents whip down to the primary school and see the teachers and tell the kids that their paper round is over and they may as well go home and sit on their backsides because the Government is playing “Uncle Scrooge”.  
Let us come back to it in context. This is not the biggest issue of moment for this economy; nor is it the biggest issue of moment that should be addressed in this Budget. We were looking for a strategy for a plan for anything as are businesses in Auckland and Christchurch and other places. The best they could do in Canterbury—the best Budget announcement down there—is for Mr Brownlee to announce he has spent half the dough— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: We are on Part 1. It has got nothing to do with Canterbury. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Oh yes it has. Oh that is my next speech. Part 1 has a heck of a lot to do with Canterbury because we do have young people down there who do after-school jobs. We do have young people down there who are scraping for it. We do have families down there who are destitute. I beg to differ without challenging your ruling that this has everything to do with Canterbury and the rest of New Zealand. It is a bill that has no ideas in it and no strategy in it. The whole Budget is encapsulated around the odd nickel-and-dime tweak and a bit of spin. It has everything I say to you Mr Chairperson—try visiting there sometime—to do with Canterbury. There are 10000 families down there who will not have the means to carry on for much longer if this Government does not come up with some ideas on how to employ people how to engage people and how to support people and ditch silly little mean-spirited ideas like this in this bill. It is a mean-spirited bill from a mean-spirited Government wrapping it up in austerity. No one believes it.