English Bill; Carter DavidRt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Prime Minister): It was interesting to see the Leader of the Opposition reading off an iPad. I think he logged on to the wrong part of the Labour website because that was Mike Moore's speech from the 1993 Budget. I know that because I heard it. On a sunny day in New Zealand when hundreds of young New Zealanders this week have taken up their first ever apprenticeship when exporters are looking forward to opening new markets behind the trade agreements that have been negotiated when innovators are finding the capital to start their online business—on a sunny day here comes the Labour Party like a cold wet wind and rain because that is how it thinks New Zealand is. Well it is not. It is a confident country going ahead with real momentum and more confidence about its place in the world than it has had for a long long time.The Labour Party is more like a kind of tattered old red phone box watching the traffic go by wishing the world would stop and wind backwards so it would become relevant. But I have to tell the Labour Party that the phone is off the hook. The phone is not going to ring. The traffic is only going to speed up and get faster and the Labour Party after 9 long years of Opposition is like its policies: worse than when it started.This is a Budget that represents and presents to New Zealand looking out ahead one of the best opportunities in a couple of generations to build the benefits of sustained growth. It could be delivered only by a National Government and I will tell you why: it is because we are confident about New Zealand. The Opposition parties simply are not. They do not believe in our families and our communities and our businesses. We are confident about New Zealand about the growing assurance of its place in the world. We are confident about our increasingly respected economic performance growing faster and more sustainably than most of our peer countries if not all of them. We are confident about the courage and the hope and the aspirations of so many New Zealanders who in the last few weeks and months have got off benefit and whose children therefore are among the 50000 fewer who are in welfare-dependent households.We are confident about the young women who get on with starting their online business selling to the world in a way that probably should not happen in theory but in practice they are making it happen every day. We are confident that our primary production sector can deal with the environmental challenges that will help to reinforce our clean green" brand around the world and drive up the value of our products.We are confident because we are going forward. For the next 5 years 3 percent growth is in the forecasts—3 percent growth for the next 5 years. We have under 5 percent unemployment the lowest numbers of people on benefit in 20 years the highest proportion of New Zealanders in work ever—ever—and rising surpluses and falling Government debt. This is better than the good old days. This is better than the good old days particularly because so many people have work and particularly because the economy consistently keeps delivering not just lots of new jobs but more than we expect. Of course the Opposition parties sneer at it. The person who got off benefit and took a job at the rest home—that is low productivity. Apparently we would be better off without that and instead have high productivity. Well that person will not get to be high productivity until they get their first job. The thousands of young New Zealanders who have gone into apprenticeships—more than ever; better than the good old days—yes they are low productivity. I agree. If you are 17 and you have just gotten on to the building site in the biggest construction boom this country has seen in two generations yes you are low productivity but I want to say to that apprentice: "Girl we're proud of you."The other reason this could be done only by a National-led Government is the political stability that this Government represents. I want to acknowledge the Māori Party United Future and the ACT Party. We have some hard-edged discussions but over a period of time we have been able to create ways of looking ahead making decisions and getting things done that are good for New Zealand that represent a higher common purpose despite our sometimes quite divergent views. I want to pay respect to the integrity and the transparency and the honesty that those parties bring to this stable Government.This year New Zealand gets to think about the alternative. I am looking forward to it: a Labour-Green Government led by Winston Peters. We know that because he is going around telling everybody but for good reason—for good reason. There has not been a leader of the major Opposition party that has polled fourth as preferred Prime Minister. And I have been wondering—[Interruption] It is not a matter of what the public thinks about it or what we think about it; it is what Andrew Little's own party thinks about it.I have been watching the performance of two of the best-educated smartest apparently most dynamic politicians of the left in the last generation Ms Ardern and Grant Robertson and it has been pretty poor. It has been pretty poor. They are not trying. Surely they are better than this—surely. But the plot is unfolding because the wise head of the Labour Party the balanced wise considered Annette King—they dispatched her and now they look like nothing more than two happy undertakers the double-crewed ambulance that is going to wheel off the leader of the Labour Party.That is why Winston Peters feels like he is on a roll: he is watching the Labour Party sink under the weight of its own mediocrity inertia and irrelevance. [Interruption] Well if the Labour members want to make themselves relevant they should work out how to vote for at least parts of this Budget. Are they going to vote for 1125 more police staff? No no they will not. Are they going to vote for double-crewing ambulances? No not now. Are they going to vote for 20 to 30 percent pay increases for the minimum-wage rest home and home-care workers? No they are not. Are they going to vote for building 34000 houses? No. What they are going to do apparently—we have spent a bit of time on this—is build four times as many houses with less money than we have allocated on land which they do not own. So that will work! So that will work! And that is actually before I have got to the announcements made today.I want to congratulate the Minister of Finance on the announcements made today. We have worked closely together on all the other Budgets and it is fantastic to see Steven Joyce delivering a Budget that seizes the opportunities. And it is different now. We have a lot more positive choices but the same discipline and that is where Steven Joyce understands absolutely how Government runs how the economy runs and where the money can and should be spent. And actually it is harder to manage surpluses than deficits. As a finance Minister I could just say no; he has to find 53 ways of saying yes and today he has managed to find them. I want to acknowledge his huge effort.Today 1.3 million families will be on average from 1 April next week $26 a week better off.Carmel Sepuloni: Next year.Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Next year—I agree. The lowest-income 150000 families will be on average $36 a week better off. In addition to that on 1 April next year 750000 superannuitants will get a bigger increase than they expected couples will get an extra $13 a week and singles will get $8 extra a week. Why? Because after-tax incomes are higher. That is why you do not listen to anything the Opposition says about after-tax incomes. They are higher. That is how superannuitants got twice the rate of inflation increases over the last 4 or 5 years. The other reason is that you have a Government that can run all the expenditure it needs to run and have lower taxes. That is why. That is the only way you get those sorts of increases.Let us look at the impact that a strong and growing economy can have for a family say since 2014: free doctors visits for under-13s. Let us think about Josie in Lower Hutt. Her older children are now more likely to achieve NCEA—actually particularly if they are Māori or Pasifika where the rates have gone up from the low fifties to the mid-seventies. There has been around a 40 percent increase in the number of those children who achieved NCEA level 2. If she was on a benefit—1 April last year—there is $25 a week extra for every beneficiary household with children. Her chances of getting work are greatly increased because of 200000 new jobs over the last 3 years. Let us say she got a job in the rest home at the minimum wage which has gone up every year and she now faces the prospect of a 20 to 30 percent wage increase and a path to qualification and skill levels in the growing aged-care industry. When she did that her children became some of those 50000 fewer children from a benefit-dependent household. If she had more children and was paying higher rent particularly if she had very high rent in Lower Hutt the benefits of the accommodation supplement could be $50 $60 or $70 a week.In this Budget Steven Joyce has made sure that those with the highest housing costs get the biggest benefit. It is that simple. One figure he did not mention is the OECD measure of low income—that is households below 50 percent of the median income. Today we have made announcements that mean that from 1 April next year there will be 50000 fewer children under that threshold—by 1 April. This amounts to about a 30 percent reduction in that measure of child poverty although there are many other measures; that is just one. The families benefit from that.A whole lot of other people are going to benefit as well because one of the big debates in this election campaign is going to be between those who think that spending money shows you care which is the Opposition and those who think you show you care by changing lives. That is us. It is that basic. We heard it in the Leader of the Opposition's speech. Here is the difference. The National-led Government wants—Carmel Sepuloni: Kids in cars doing homework. Yeah that's a life-changing thing to happen!Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: —no listen to this carefully—by 2021 to have a 25 percent reduction in the rate of hospitalisations of children for preventable conditions. We all know that is a huge challenge. We are learning how to take it on from the rheumatic fever project with the thousands of kids who turn up with respiratory diseases cellulitis asthma—all things that are avoidable. What does Labour want? Labour wants a demographically adjusted Consumers Price Index - adjusted real increase with the technology factor and the population bit for more money. That is what it wants. We want healthier children; Labour wants more money.In education we want to deal individually with the kids who need more help to get over the line. Labour just wants more money. [Interruption] That is right—you are right. You are right. Sometimes it is not more money; the other one is a review—a review. So "Mental health is a really big issue I have had 9 years to think about it and I thought: 'We'll have a review.' " That is how the fifteenth Labour health spokesperson justifies Labour's policy.It is the same with serious crime. What I am very pleased about in this Budget is as a result of the tools we are using—called social investment—we are getting into very granular understandings of not just who has got a low income but exactly what types of other issues trap them there. One big motivation for that is that when you have got a growing economy you want everyone to be able to get on that bus. The fact is that even with some of our households—even if they have more income it still will not change the toxic mix of offending welfare dependency and family violence that traps them where they are.We are unashamedly addressing the hard core of New Zealand's longest-run social problems and in this Budget there are 14 initiatives that do that. I want to pay tribute to public servants who I know find it difficult to fit the model. It creates a lot of tension and sometimes a bit of frustration but we are making some progress because what is the point of having a Government if it cannot deal with the most complex the most vulnerable and those who under Labour's model of mass funding run by their union mates get forgotten as they did under the last Labour Government?So as Steven Joyce said the only reason we can have these conversations is that we have got a strong economic plan that is underlying a strong economy. If we can have 3 percent growth for 5 years that would give New Zealand one of the longest periods of 3 percent growth it has had for a long time. In that context we can achieve things in the next 5 years we could not have even thought of 5 years ago. We can achieve more in our markets more in our innovation more in our growth of employment more in our infrastructure where we are making a huge investment and more for the most vulnerable New Zealanders who of course want to come along for the ride. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Would members please resume their seats."