Volume 608 Week 25 - Tuesday 20 May 2003 
Volume 608 Week 25 - Tuesday 20 May 2003 
[Volume:608;Page:5815] 
Tuesday 20 May 2003 
Mr Speaker 
 took the Chair at 2 p.m. 
Prayers 
. 
Visitors 
Attorney-General and Minister of Justice of Tonga 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have much pleasure in informing the House that the Hon ’Aisea Taumoepeau Attorney-General and Minister of Justice of the Kingdom of Tonga is present in the gallery. I am sure that members would wish that the Minister be welcomed. 
Committee on Ecology—Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I also have much pleasure in informing the House that members of the Committee on Ecology of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation led by Mr Vladimir Grachev are present in the gallery. I am sure that members would wish that the delegation be welcomed. 
Motions 
Sir Edmund Hillary—50th Anniversary of Ascent of Mount Everest 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 I move  
That this House acknowledge the 50th anniversary on 29 May of the first ascent of Mount Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and congratulate Sir Edmund on this significant achievement and the unique contribution he has made in both New Zealand and Nepal. 
 In speaking briefly to the motion I want to say that at the weekend Sir Edmund and Lady Hillary left for Nepal for celebration of this 50th anniversary of the historic climb. A few weeks ago we honoured Sir Edmund here in this Parliament with a State luncheon. 
For the last 50 years he has been the most famous living New Zealander and has brought great honour to this country through his alpine and other physical achievements and his humanity and practical work in Nepal. Above all he is a great New Zealander. As the House will not be sitting next week on the date of the anniversary it is appropriate to recognise this significant anniversary now and to wish Sir Edmund and Lady Hillary well in their journey to and stay in Nepal. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 The National Party warmly supports the motion moved by the Prime Minister. We appreciate that even in their advanced years Sir Edmund and Lady Hillary have been so willing to share again with New Zealand that magic moment of 50 years ago. They have every best wish of this party and this Parliament through this celebration. 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 On behalf of New Zealand First I am very proud and very privileged to stand here to endorse the Prime Minister’s motion. In 1953 when the climb on Everest was being envisaged I was a young boy back in the UK. I can remember the leader of that party John Hunt coming on television and displaying the equipment that would be used for the ascent of Everest. When Ed Hillary returned I realised just how great an achievement the ascent was knowing the limitations of that equipment. If that was one great achievement probably Sir Edmund’s greatest achievement is being a man of genuine sincerity and humbleness. He is a very great New Zealander and New Zealand First endorses exactly what the Prime Minister said. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 It is appropriate that Parliament take some minutes to mark what is probably the most famous achievement by a person who is definitely the most famous New Zealander. Sir Edmund Hillary is also beloved because his own personal qualities personify what we would like to think are the characteristics of a New Zealander—someone who is humble but is also a doer who has let his deeds rather than his words speak for him. 
 I can confirm that Sir Edmund has always been a fearless person. He went to my old school Auckland Grammar. When I was a third former at that school I decided to climb to the top of the rafters of the third form bike shed which for a third former was an “Everest” climb. It took me some time. I worked my way along the rafters; it was a perilous ascent. When I got to the middle I felt a great sense of achievement. I then thought as we are thinking today that I should mark this occasion. I pulled out my pocket knife thinking I would carve my name into the rafters to show I had been the first to climb to the top of the third form bike shelter. I blew away the dust and realised that someone had carved his name before me. I blew more carefully and read “E. Hillary”. So I am not sure whether Sir Edmund climbed Everest first but he certainly climbed first to the top of the third form bike shed. I thought that that action should be marked today as well. 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Greens are pleased to support the motion. Without doubt Sir Edmund is a great New Zealander. He is respected by all and is an inspiration to us all. I was pleased to have worked with Sir Edmund and Lady June when I was employed by Volunteer Service Abroad and his commitment to the work of the service was appreciated by everyone. He is indeed a man of great humility and strong compassion and a man who has a compelling sense of what humanity should mean to everyone on this planet. 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 United Future also wishes to support with pleasure the motion that has been moved by the Prime Minister. During the 20th century just about every possible achievement that a human being could make was made yet amongst all of those achievements the conquest of Everest stands out as probably the greatest—be it scientific literary or whatever. Getting to the top of that mountain said so much. It was highly appropriate that it was a New Zealander who was first to achieve it. It is doubly appropriate that a man of rugged features simple sincerity a bluff but amiable nature and genuine affection for his fellow human beings in this country and elsewhere in the form of Sir Edmund Hillary was the person to make that climb. 
The Prime Minister made reference to the greatest living New Zealander. I do not think we can ever begin to imagine the inestimable value of Sir Edmund and his contribution to our country. It is certainly appropriate that this Parliament celebrates and recognises this achievement and it is certainly appropriate that all New Zealanders join in the commemorations on 29 May to recognise this seminal event in the foundation and history of our country. 
Motion agreed to. 
Points of Order 
Tabling of Ministerial Documents 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I raise a matter with you because I was expecting a statement from the Government. Last week we were told by the Prime Minister when I raised a question about whether she would table a ministerial document that she would table all of the documents relating to the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2). I was expecting that. I would also like to know from the Prime Minister whether she stands by her view of 23 February when she said to the then Prime Minister Jenny Shipley when she was tabling documents that it should be done by ministerial statement. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is in the hands of the Government. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. We have an interesting situation here. We have an MMP Parliament. Under first past the post the Opposition party was allowed to raise a procedural matter. I am the leader of my party. I had what I took to be a solemn assurance from the Prime Minister that she would table those statements. I stopped asking questions on the basis that they were coming. I think I am entitled to ask the Prime Minister whether she will table them and whether that will be done by ministerial statement—just as she said should be the course for Jenny Shipley. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I say to the member that he is perfectly entitled to raise a point of order and I did not rule him out of order for raising it. I am just saying that the matter of whether that will be responded to is a matter for the Prime Minister not a matter for anyone else. 
Questions to Ministers 
Youth—Development 
1. DARREN HUGHES (NZ Labour—Otaki) 
 to the  
Minister of Youth Affairs 
: What steps has the Government taken to progress youth development? 
Hon JOHN TAMIHERE (Minister of Youth Affairs) 
: 
 It is difficult to be modest. The Government is undertaking a huge range of initiatives to support youth development such as the $56 million plan announced recently by the Prime Minister to get all young people into education training or work by 2007. This Government is focused on taking a positive approach to youth development rather than rehashing the failed policies of the past. 
Darren Hughes 
: Does the Government support the concept of more punitive measures against parents whose children are not in education or training? 
Hon JOHN TAMIHERE 
: Unlike the Leader of the Opposition who is proposing beneficiary bashing under a rehash of the code of social responsibility this Government is looking for real solutions. This year’s Budget announced an additional $8 million for getting students back to school bringing the total package over 5 years to $46 million. This Government is focused on solutions not just slogans. 
Simon Power 
: Has youth development been progressed by denying Government funding to WellTrust which delivers critical services in addressing substance abuse in the wider Wellington region; if so how? 
Hon JOHN TAMIHERE 
: I understand from newspaper reportage that WellTrust is not receiving funding. Apart from that I cannot elaborate any further. 
Craig McNair 
: Is the Minister concerned that measures presumably carried out to address problems facing youth development such as the ramming through of alcohol excise tax earlier this month have prompted such comments as “abuse of democracy” “unethical” and “sticking-plaster measure”; if not why is he not concerned at the general public’s united disapproval of that obviously rushed and impotent legislation? 
Hon JOHN TAMIHERE 
: In answer to the first part of the question no. When we have statistics such as those from the Alcohol Advisory Council that suggest that 94 percent of parents are concerned about teen drinking habits but that only 24 percent of their children are we have a problem. 
Energy Minister—Confidence 
2.  
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does she have confidence in the Minister of Energy; if so why? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Yes because he is a good hard-working and conscientious Minister. 
Hon Bill English 
: In the light of the Minister’s statement today why is the Prime Minister imposing a tax on users of electricity to pay for stand-by generation and is she aware that that tax will mean higher prices for electricity every year? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The Government’s announcements today are predicated on the assumption that the public would rather pay 80c extra a week to have secure power under Labour than have cold showers under National. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: It is early on in the week but I will not have people shouting out like that. I have been told constantly that it is not polite to do so and I agree. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is all very well for you to have a go at the Opposition about responding to the Prime Minister like that— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I never mentioned just the Opposition. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: No? That was clearly the inference that was taken. I have not yet heard you suggest that any Minister was being impolite when giving a response to the House. I suggest strongly that the Prime Minister was impolite—but of course that is her way. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is enough of that. I did actually look at one particular very senior member who interjected and the member was a member of the Government. 
David Benson-Pope 
: Can the Prime Minister please advise the House of the purpose of the announcements made by the Minister of Energy today? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Yes I can. The measures were announced to bring some control into the energy market and to see that in future New Zealand does not face electricity shortages whenever there is a particularly dry year. The market model we inherited has not achieved that. 
Peter Brown 
: Given that in the last 3 years the Government has had to plead with New Zealanders to save power; that the proposed industry governance board did not get any legs; that on occasion prices have gone through the roof; and that generally there has not been sufficient expansion of the generation capacity in this country what has the Minister has actually done that inspires the Prime Minister’s confidence—or is it simply a case of being the best of a bad bunch? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The litany the member has recited would of course point to why there needed to be changes to the model which the Minister has announced today. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Would not a conscientious and hard-working Prime Minister who told Kim Hill on  
Face to Face With Kim Hill 
: “I’m outraged it’s happening” and “I started pushing very hard for action on this in the second half of last year.” and “I put Dr Cullen on the case.” and “I am not satisfied at all that all of us have been put in this position.” have replaced the Minister of Energy? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: No—no more so than she would have prayed for rain. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: There are people who are seeking a very early exit. I have called only the Hon Bill English. 
Hon Bill English 
: Given that the Government has stood in the way of new generation over the last 4 years why does the Prime Minister believe that the imposition of a tax on all electricity users will make it more likely that we will get new generation in the next 4 years? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: The first part of that question cannot be substantiated. It is a sweeping generalisation and it simply is not true. Secondly the Government has taken steps to ensure that a market model can work. The present one does not. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Accepting the Prime Minister’s assurances on television that she knew last year that the energy crisis was going to happen and that the Minister of Energy told us that his modelling—after it had it remodelled—showed it was not going to happen and that the Prime Minister now thinks it is absolutely infuriating that we are in this position I ask this question: why has she not replaced the Minister? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Nothing I have said today or before implies that I knew an energy crisis was about to happen. I knew no such thing. What I knew was that New Zealand was still at risk of dry years because the problems had not been sufficiently addressed in the model and the reason for bringing in a group of Ministers is that a number of minds is always better than one regardless of who the one is. 
Hon Bill English 
: If she is now so concerned about managing dry-year risk why did she not take action after the review of the 2001 electricity shortage when any number of reviews and reports were made to her about steps that needed to be taken to avoid a crisis again? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: As the Minister of Energy advised the House last week the thrust of officials’ advice was that the market would move to correct the situation. I did not accept that which is why we called for more advice. 
Child Poverty—Budget 
3.  
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: What is his response to Child Poverty Action Group’s statement that “the poorest children in New Zealand around 300000 of them do not even get a crumb” from last week’s Budget? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 My response would be that the statement ignored a substantial number of initiatives particularly in the health education and housing areas. 
Sue Bradford 
: Why does the Government continue to discriminate against the children of beneficiaries who receive the unemployment sickness and invalids benefit and accident compensation claimants by not extending the child tax credit to all families who find themselves in identical financial circumstances? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The Government is working on a package of changes in this area which it hopes to be able to announce next year depending upon resources. The possibility of restructuring family support into a single-tier payment is part of that. It would be essential therefore also to introduce other measures into the tax system that would preserve the balance when moving from benefit and into employment. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: Could he reiterate the Government’s social spending priorities? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The Government identified—and I indicated in my speech—assistance to lower and middle income families as a priority for next year’s Budget if the fiscal position permits. 
Katherine Rich 
: Further to Child Poverty Action Group’s statement that “the poorest children in New Zealand do not even get a crumb from last week’s Budget” can he explain what New Zealand’s poorest children hope to gain from the Government’s offer of $34 million to an overseas yacht race? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Yes presumably the same benefits that Mr McCully foresaw when he supported substantial funding for the America’s Cup bid—that is an increased profile for New Zealand overseas in terms of its reputation; increased employment in New Zealand for tourism; increased employment from a future America’s Cup race here; and increased employment from the business of producing materials for America’s Cup yachts here and overseas. We are talking about a business that produced getting on for a billion dollars for New Zealand. 
Dail Jones 
: How can the Minister give these uncaring answers with regard to the 300000 children mentioned in the report bearing in mind that this Government has a surplus of $4 billion and that this Budget was remarkable only for the fact that he taxed old people’s sherry and port drinking? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I assure the member that some young people drink sherry and port as well. I can certainly assure members that my wife did when she was a young person. On the question that the member properly raises he I am sure is aware—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I did not mind one or two interjections but the Minister is getting to the member’s question and I want to hear the answer. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I am perfectly willing to organise a seminar for the member on how accrual accounting works. If he thinks I have $4 billion spare cash he clearly does not understand how accounting works. 
Sue Bradford 
: How can the Government claim it is family friendly when the value of family support has declined by 60 percent since 1986 and this Budget yet again does nothing to address it? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I accept the member’s assertion that this is a very high priority area which is why if there is sufficient headroom in next year’s Budget—and at the moment it looks to be around the $400 million to $500 million mark—increases— 
John Carter 
: Buying votes. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Oh now the member is saying it is buying votes to provide assistance for low and middle income families while his colleague was shedding crocodile tears only a few minutes ago. 
Sue Bradford 
: I seek leave to table a post-Budget briefing paper from the Child Poverty Action Group. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Methamphetamines—Supply 
4.  
Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
 to the  
Associate Minister of Health 
: What is the Government doing to address the increase in the supply and use of methamphetamines? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Associate Minister of Health) 
: 
 This coalition Government is taking a series of significant and urgent actions. The reclassification of methamphetamine as a Class A drug is on track to be enforced by 30 May. The Ministerial Action Group on Alcohol and Drugs is to meet this week to approve an action plan that includes 19 actions and recommendations for combating methamphetamine abuse. The objectives are to reduce supply and demand and to limit the harm associated with this highly dangerous drug. The emphasis is on dealing with drug exploiters who are committing serious criminal offences by making and supplying the drug while also having compassion and treatment facilities for the victims. 
Hon Matt Robson 
: What moves has the Government already made to combat the problem of methamphetamines? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: We have already demonstrated our commitment to addressing methamphetamine use. We need to rehabilitate those who are on the drug and show no tolerance for those who are manufacturing or selling it. This year’s Budget contains $6.6 million over 4 years for an additional two police teams to combat this problem. Last year the police located and closed 140 laboratories and extra resources will make the police even more effective. The Budget also provided $2.55 million for a community action initiative in six rural areas and nine urban centres to reduce the incidence of drug misuse. These initiatives bring together local police and health and other agencies to share intelligence and combat drug misuse in these communities. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Given that the police themselves estimate that one gang dealing in methamphetamines has accumulated assets in excess of $10 million when will the Government demand that such criminals prove their assets were legally obtained and if they cannot that those assets be confiscated? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: The confiscation of assets brought about by criminal activity is an issue that the Government has before it for consideration and the ministerial committee is looking at it. This coalition which has a ministerial committee on drugs and alcohol that meets regularly has progressed this issue further and faster than any actions the National members opposite ever took ever considered or ever adopted when in Government. 
Dave Hereora 
: What is being done to combat the growing use of methamphetamine by Maori? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: Some Maori communities are being severely affected by the abuse of methamphetamine. The coalition Government is willing and able to work in partnership with Maori to combat this evil scourge. Some Maori elders are now talking about putting a rahui or ban on methamphetamine and I will give every support I can to their efforts. Tareha te Moananui the first Maori to speak in this Parliament in 1868 said that in all our efforts all we have to do is to focus on that which is good. He said that the power of good is greater than the power of evil and when an evil issue arises all we have to do is come together to face it and defeat it. Methamphetamine is an evil and the people who manufacture and supply it are in an evil business that has no place in New Zealand. 
Ron Mark 
: Could the Minister tell the House then if his Government is so serious about dealing with drug dealers and showing a no-tolerance approach to the methamphetamine problem firstly why has the Government refused to give any extra funding to allow schools to carry out drug testing for methamphetamine and secondly why has the Government allowed 198 drug dealers to be released into the community under the deferred sentencing provision and on home detention? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: The first information I received on schools wishing to drug test their pupils for methamphetamine was yesterday when I read a report from Kaitaia College. I immediately made a statement that I supported the efforts of the school but I also said that before such examinations or tests could be taken a proper process has to be gone through in order to protect the rights of children at school and their parents. That is what I support and I know that the Government in general supports that as well. 
Judy Turner 
: Will the reclassification of methamphetamine as a class A drug result in suppliers being put out of circulation for longer given the stronger penalties involved; or does he agree with the Green members who say that there is little real difference in the length of sentences handed down to people convicted of class A and class B drug offences? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: It is my view that the strong police action that has been taken to date the reinforcement of police resources to take even stronger action and the reclassification of methamphetamine as a class A drug which carries a sentence of up to 20 years’ imprisonment should actually focus the mind of anyone who thinks he or she will profit from this evil trade. 
Electricity—Future Supply 
5.  
GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam) 
 to the  
Minister of Energy 
: Will the energy industry changes signalled yesterday by the Prime Minister and announced today by relevant Ministers remove the risk of an electricity shortage in the event of a dry year in the future; if so why? 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Energy) 
: 
 Today I announced that the electricity sector will be managed so that demand can be met in a 1-in-60 dry year without the need for a national electricity conservation campaign. The necessary reserve generation capacity is likely to be accrued over the next 3 years. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: If the solution to the dry-year electricity shortages is more generation why does the Minister believe he can get reserve generation in 3 years when a number of generation projects are currently held up by Resource Management Act issues the Conservation Act the unknown cost of Kyoto compliance and a lack of long-term gas contracts—and any additional generation proposals will face the same problems? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: In the course of the next 3 years approximately 700 megawatts of ordinary generation will come to book most of which is already consented. A further 150 megawatts or thereabouts will come on line in June 2004. It is a Contact proposal. That will begin I suspect the portfolio of reserve generation. The Resource Management Act is of course no impediment as the member would assert it is. 
H V Ross Robertson 
: Will the introduction of the 1-in-60 dry-year standard cause power prices to rise; if so why and by how much? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Yes power prices will rise. Why? Because that is what an insurance premium is. By how much? It will rise by less than 0.5c a unit or less than 80c a week for an average household consumer. 
Peter Brown 
: Noting that we have had 2 dry years in the last 3 by stipulating 1-in-60 I ask whether the Minister is sure he has got it right 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: That is a good question. The 1-in-60 dry-year risk profile was chosen from the Davidson commission into the 1992 electricity event and was put in place as a temporary measure because it was thought then that the market would deliver surety beyond that when the market came into being. Today we say that market or no market we need that 1-in-60. The advice is that 1-in-60 would get us through without a public conservation campaign as in 1992 2001 and so far 2003. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: In view of the Government’s statement that the necessary portfolio for reserve generation will be built up within about 3 years are we to conclude that the Government’s response will do nothing for the current crisis this year or indeed very little for the next 2 years; and given that this Government has been in power for almost 4 years why should the public not conclude that the Government has totally failed on the energy issue? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The reserve generation will be built up over the next 3 years so it will begin to be built for next winter—some more the winter after and some more the winter after that. In respect of this year today’s announcements do not alter the winter security issue at all. This year we get to save; this year we get to continue with the plans that have already been announced. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Will the new Electricity Commission be encouraged to contract with large power users to provide secure demand reductions as an alternative to new supply and to be considered on an equal basis as part of dry-year security? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: No the demand side has been explicitly excluded in order that it can play its ordinary role and useful role during ordinary generation times—which is nearly always. 
Gordon Copeland 
: Will the Electricity Commission in addition to the specific measures announced today on reserve generation be asked to minimise dry-year risk through the design of the overall generation mix—for example hydro in high-rainfall areas and wind? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The reserve generation will embrace a variety of fuels—not to overcome rain shortage because all those fuels it will be using will overcome rain shortage—so that in the event that for example as occurred in February there is an outage at the Maui platform non-gas reserve generation can be used as part of the mix. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Given the Minister has told the House today that much of the reserve capacity that will be developed over the next 3 years is already consented to and therefore a proper investment decision on the range of projects has already been made by those developing that generation why is there a need to tax New Zealanders up to $200 million a year by means of this half-cent levy on each unit they consume? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The member I think has misheard me. Let me say the generation he refers to is not reserve generation but substantially ordinary generation. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Read your  
Hansard 
. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: You said “Today”. The reserve generation— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Read your  
Hansard 
 of today. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Please carry on with the answer. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The reserve generation— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I do not think it is acceptable for a Minister to give an answer to a supplementary question about four questions ago and then when put on the spot by having to explain a reasonably substantial tax simply do so by saying: “Well the member didn’t understand what I said.” I am very clear about what he said. The  
Hansard 
 will show it. He should stand by what he said just minutes after he said it. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is a matter of debate. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The reason there needs to be a price increase up to half a cent a unit or up to 80c a week for the average household is that that is the price of the insurance premium. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons 
: Does he think it appropriate for a Minister in charge of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act and the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy to tell New Zealanders in his press release today that with this increase in generation capacity they will never have to save power again? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The important thing for this Government to achieve is to ensure that whilst conservation campaigns hopefully become a thing of the past—except perhaps once every 200 years or similar—energy efficiency campaigns remain unmolested. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Why would any generators choose to invest in more generation capacity for normal-year use when they know that the Energy Commission will be collecting $200 million a year in levies on consumers—a tax on consumers—in order to purchase the capacity they are proposing to invest in? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: I invite the member to read carefully what the Government’s plans are. The whole idea is to ring-fence part of the generation so that it does not compete with ordinary generation in order that the latter will be well built. 
Drought—Farmer Support Lower North Island 
6.  
JILL PETTIS (NZ Labour—Whanganui) 
 to the  
Minister of Agriculture 
: What is the Government doing to support farmers in the lower North Island affected by drought? 
Hon JIM SUTTON (Minister of Agriculture) 
: 
 The Government has agreed to match community contributions up to $11000 to fund lower North Island rural coordinators. The Government has also approved the provision of rural assistance special-needs grants to farmers in affected areas. 
Jill Pettis 
: How is it planned that the funds for rural coordinators will be spent? 
Hon JIM SUTTON 
: The Rural Family Support Trust Manawatu-Rangitikei Federated Farmers and Rural Women New Zealand have developed the Farmers Helping Farmers project. Farmers can ring 0508 DROUGHT to seek support and advice from the trust or obtain help with locating sources of feed. Seminars have been organised to help farmers deal with financial feeding and animal welfare issues. Similar programmes of support are being provided in Tararua Wairarapa and Taranaki. 
Hon David Carter 
: Why is the rural assistance available for only 3 months—that is until the end of August—and does the Minister seriously think the effects of drought are as short lived as that? 
Hon JIM SUTTON 
: Funding is provided until the end of August this time. If there is still a problem and a need consideration to further funding will be given. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Why has the Minister taken this long to act in such a pathetic way? 
Hon JIM SUTTON 
: The first application was received from Federated Farmers on 4 April. The situation was analysed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and I approved the funds on 11 April. 
Children in Care—Prostitution 
7.  
KATHERINE RICH (NZ National) 
 to the  
Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment (CYF) 
: Will she confirm that girls under the care and protection of the Department of Child Youth and Family Services have been working as prostitutes and why is its investigation not complete after 11 days? 
Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
 on behalf of the  
Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment (CYF) 
: No I cannot confirm that. The department is working in close cooperation with the police to identify all the young people reportedly involved and to ensure that they are kept safe while the joint Department of Child Youth and Family Services and police investigation is undertaken and completed. 
Katherine Rich 
: When allegations were made as early as 8 May that girls under the care of the Department of Child Youth and Family Services were prostituting themselves on Christchurch streets how can the Associate Minister be confident that appropriate actions have been taken when as late as 17 May the South Island manager of the department is quoted in the Christchurch  
Press  
as saying: “I don’t know whether they are in our custody or care. Will someone find out and quick.”? 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: My advice from the department is that people did act immediately and that doubt remains as to who is actually involved. The identity of all those young people is not absolutely known to the department or to the police. An investigation is being undertaken and as soon as the facts are ascertained the police will act on them. 
Lynne Pillay 
: What action has been taken to ensure the safety of children and young people allegedly involved in the sex industry? 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: The Department of Child Youth and Family Services advise that the moment its staff were advised of this matter they acted. They worked closely with the police to identify the young people allegedly involved to ensure that those people were closely supervised and placed in secure care as appropriate. Until the joint investigation by the police and the Department of Child Youth and Family Services is being completed it would be unwise to jump to conclusions. 
Barbara Stewart 
: Is the Minister satisfied that the Department of Child Youth and Family Services has the resources to investigate allegations such as those in a timely manner or does he support this Government’s view that the maintenance of a large Budget surplus is more important than our young people’s welfare? 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: I can assure the member that this Government takes its responsibilities very seriously. I am able to advise that the Department of Child Youth and Family Services has a significant increase in its budget baseline for 2003. That is $93 million higher than it was in the year 2000. 
Sue Bradford 
: In the light of the recent revelations about young people in Christchurch working as prostitutes while in the care of the Department of Child Youth and Family Services supposedly can the Minister advise what is happening in Auckland and south Auckland; is the Department of Child Youth and Family Services looking closely at the situation there to ensure that the same thing is not happening? 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: I do not have any specific advice on that matter. However I can assure the member that the moment any allegation of that sort comes to the attention of the department it acts upon it immediately. 
Dr Muriel Newman 
: Why is it that the department and the Minister do not appear to know what has been widely reported in the media and is that not just another example of Government failure? 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: I reject that entirely. The paper is about speculation. The police are conducting an investigation and when they have concluded their investigation we will know with some certainty what has happened. Speculation in the paper is not always reliable. 
Katherine Rich 
: In the light of the Commissioner for Children’s statement regarding the failure of the Department of Child Youth and Family Services to respond to his notification that “My letter has done sweet bugger all and of these dozen or so girls”— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That phrase is not permitted in this House. I know that it was used by the commissioner. That does not make it right in this House. I would like the member to rephrase her question without the use of the word which I do not agree with. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This House spent some time this afternoon recalling the occasion of Sir Edmund Hillary’s triumph on Mount Everest and I would just ask you to reflect for a few moments about the words he broadcast to the world on that day. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Yes and they were never repeated in this Parliament. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This is as good a time as any to raise it and I am a bit sympathetic to the ruling you are making but language changes. If I understood the question correctly—and maybe I could be corrected—and the Commissioner for Children said that and if the phrase is in general use and appears on advertisements for motorcars on television every night I think that the phrase “bugger off” must be now within common parlance. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member might think that. I do not; I have a different point of view. I have a respect for the English language that indicates there is not a need to have to use that sort of phrase in this House. I am sure the member can rephrase the question and I invite her to do so. 
Katherine Rich 
: In the light of the Commissioner for Children’s statement regarding the failure of the Department of Child Youth and Family Services to respond to his notification that his letter had done not much and “of these dozen or so girls who knows which of them might have got some sexually transmitted disease while the investigation takes place?” will he give this House the assurance that those girls are safe and will not spend another night on the streets? 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: I am aware of the comments made by the commissioner. He is entitled to that opinion. However it is not the advice that I have. The advice that I have is that the moment the issue was raised the department acted. I am also assured that the children who are supposed to be in the care of the department are still in its care and I am advised in a safe place. 
Sentencing—Public Expectations 
8.  
RON MARK (NZ First) 
 to the  
Minister of Justice 
: Does he have any concerns that sentencing of offenders is presently not meeting public expectations; if not why? 
Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice) 
 on behalf of the  
Minister of Justice 
: As with any significant new legislation the Government continues to monitor trends under the Sentencing Act to ensure that its implementation accurately reflects Parliament’s intention. 
Ron Mark 
: Can the Minister then assure the House that Ding Yan Zhao an unlicensed Auckland student whose speeding sports car ploughed into a Rangiriri petrol station in February killing a preschooler and critically injuring her father has not been given a deferred sentence and will not get home detention? 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: It would be inappropriate for me to comment on any decision made by a judge as the executive and the judicial arms of Government must be seen to operate independently of each other. 
Tim Barnett 
: Is the Minister satisfied that the Government’s intent in passing the Sentencing Act last year has made a difference in sentencing by the courts? 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: Yes. A key goal of the reform of the sentencing legislation was to impose tougher penalties on those who commit the worst offences. Sentences for the worst offences have been longer under the new law. Minimum non-parole periods of up to 33 years for the worst murders have been imposed. In my lifetime I have never witnessed such tough sentences. 
Marc Alexander 
: Does the Minister agree or disagree that Parole Board decisions that concern the provision of home detention for those given deferred sentences would be better expedited by the discretion of the presiding judge and what does the Minister intend to do to ensure that public safety will not be compromised? 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: The Hon Phil Goff has raised the issue of parole conditions being placed on people where there are deferred sentences. It has been a longstanding part of our law that judges have the discretion to defer sentences. The concern has been raised that conditions may not be imposed upon that. The parties have been asked whether they would consider amendments being made to the Act by way of a Statutes Amendment Bill so that judges do have the power to impose parole conditions on suspended sentences. I regret to advise that three parties National ACT and New Zealand First have declined support for that measure. 
Ron Mark 
: Does the Minister recall advising the House that the responsibility for determining whether a serious offender should be given a deferred sentence and/or home detention rests with judges and the probation service in particular; if so can he tell the House what steps he has taken to ensure that the probation service makes decisions that are reflective of the views of members of the public as indicated in the referendum in 1999? 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: The probation service is part of the Department of Corrections. I do not have a delegation on that matter. If the member wishes to put down a question to the Minister of Corrections I am sure it will be answered. 
Stephen Franks 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I believe that the Minister standing in for the Minister of Justice may have misled the House in his answer to the question about the position of ACT on the proposal. I ask that the Minister check to see whether he needs to correct that position. 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: That was my advice but I will check it immediately. 
Ron Mark 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. In order that the Minister not be embarrassed I advise that he has inadvertently misled the House on the position of New Zealand First and that he has a letter to that very effect. I ask that he be invited to come back to correct his statement. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Minister has indicated that he will do that. 
Supreme Court—Tikanga Maori 
9.  
RICHARD WORTH (NZ National—Epsom) 
 to the  
Associate Minister of Justice 
: What is her response to the New Zealand Bar Association’s comment in relation to the proposed convention that at least one member of the Supreme Court is well versed in tikanga Maori that such a convention would be “dangerous”? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Associate Minister of Justice) 
 on behalf of the 
 Associate Minister of Justice Hon Margaret Wilson 
: I have noted that the proposal for this convention was made by the expert ministerial advisory group which included the Bar Association. 
Richard Worth 
: Is the Minister saying that the convention will be maintained or be abandoned? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: The convention is a proposal from the ministerial advisory group. 
Russell Fairbrother 
: What else did the expert ministerial advisory group say about Supreme Court appointments? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: The expert ministerial advisory group said that the starting point for appointment was legal qualifications and experience and that individual judicial appointments to the Supreme Court should be based on excellent legal skills legal acumen and personal integrity. 
Dail Jones 
: In view of the fact that tikanga Maori is something that is particular to Maori and various parts of Maoridom in New Zealand what discussions has she had with the seven Labour Maori members of Parliament regarding their attitudes to the inclusion of tikanga Maori in the Supreme Court Bill bearing in mind that the Maori submitters to the bill say that that is incapable of being given effect to because of the various differing types of tikanga Maori; or have the views of those seven Labour Maori members changed as a result of their appointments to various ministerial and other positions giving them houses LTDs credit cards and select committee chairmanship? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The question was too long. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I am not aware of any conversations between the Minister and individual members of the Government Maori caucus. The point that has to be made is that the recommendation that came through from the advisory group was there should be a convention that at least one member of the court was well versed in tikanga Maori making it likely that at least one member of the court would be of Maori ancestry. It does not propose that there be a Maori member of the Supreme Court. 
Stephen Franks 
: Is the Minister aware of the Law Society’s concern that the other four judges might feel that they are supposed to kowtow to the chosen one’s version of tikanga Maori; if that view is wrong why did the Minister support the recommendation for one specialised appointment in the first place when the Minister did not support other recommendations of the advisory committee? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Having looked at the submissions of the Law Society and the Bar Association where those issues were raised I see they put it somewhat more eloquently than having to kowtow. In fact they suggested that the most important thing in respect of the Supreme Court was that the court as a whole had a knowledge and understanding of tikanga Maori. 
Nandor Tanczos 
: Does the Minister agree it is particularly important that at least one judge has some expertise in tikanga Maori given that that is one of the grounds to appeal to the Supreme Court in the bill? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: It is important to realise that the recommendation came through and has been supported with regard to the submissions that have been made thus far in the sense that there is a desire to have a wider knowledge within the whole of the Supreme Court on issues relating to tikanga Maori. 
Murray Smith 
: Given the Government’s budgetary commitment of $6.5 million towards education on the treaty and given the Minister’s last answer will the Government commit itself to ensuring that all judges are provided with ongoing education with a goal to them all being well versed in tikanga Maori; if so what active steps will the Government take to achieve that? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is wide of the original question. The Minister may comment briefly. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I think the member has mistaken the role of the Associate Minister of Justice with regard to the Supreme Court Bill and her role as the Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations. 
Richard Worth 
: How does the Associate Minister define tikanga Maori for the purposes of her proposed appointment convention when there is no authoritative pan-Maori view on what constitutes tikanga Maori? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I think I should quote from the document to which the member is referring. This is what the Bar Association actually stated and it did not state that there should be any appointment based on race as was reported in the paper: “Recognition of the importance of tikanga Maori would be better achieved if it were depersonalised so that the attributes of the court in the collective sense are required to reflect a sufficient understanding of tikanga Maori to enable the court to deal expertly with all such issues. It may well be that expertise is from time to time personified in one particular member of the court.” 
Richard Worth 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That is a wholly non-responsive answer to the question. The Minister was asked how she defines tikanga Maori for various purposes. That was not an answer to that question on any basis. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Minister might care to comment on that particular matter. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: It is not my position or my role to define tikanga Maori in response to that particular matter. The point I have made is that under the Supreme Court proposals there is a bill before the Justice and Electoral Committee at the moment—the member is a member of that select committee and has presumably explored those issues with the people who have made submissions on it—and there is also a series of proposals relating to some suggested conventions. 
Land Transport (Street and Unauthorised Drag Racing) Amendment Act 2003—Enforcement 
10.  
MARTIN GALLAGHER (NZ Labour—Hamilton West) 
 to the  
Minister of Police 
: What reports has he received on the enforcement of the Land Transport (Street and Unauthorised Drag Racing) Amendment Act 2003? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 Several police operations have seen 86 boy racer cars impounded nationally with last weekend’s blitz in Auckland resulting in 17 cars being impounded 23 defective vehicles being ordered off the road one stolen car being recovered 42 traffic notices being issued one arrest for pouring diesel on the road and 133 infringement notices being issued. 
Martin Gallagher 
: Has the Minister heard somewhat curious claims that the legislation is “so broad it gives police the power to pick up anyone they don’t like and threaten them”? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: Yes. The legislation targets people who break the law intimidate people pour diesel on the road and drive dangerously. Counties-Manukau police inspector Dave Simpson put it best when he said: “These people take over the roads and the aim is to reclaim those roads on behalf of the people”. That is something this Government really agrees with. 
Nandor Tanczos 
: Does the Minister agree with Judge Edward Ryan that the police already had sufficient powers to confiscate vehicles from boy racers before that legislation was passed; and what proportion of the offences caught in the weekend crackdown in Auckland were against learner and restricted licence provisions rather than breaches of the boy racer legislation? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: The police are delighted with the new legislation because it is curing a problem. I have had people contact the police to say that they can now sleep in their homes over the weekend without having to put up with the noise and that has to be good for ordinary New Zealanders. 
Nandor Tanczos 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You have previously invited Ministers to have another look at how they answer questions. I put it to you that that answer did not even begin to address the question put to the Minister. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No the Minister did address that question. 
Ron Mark 
: Does the Minister have any concerns about a report in the  
Dominion Post  
this morning that stated that no cars had been confiscated in the Wellington area by the police unlike Auckland where there has been quite heavy policing of boy racers; could that possibly be because we are still under-staffed and the police simply do not have the people on the ground to continue to clean up that mess ? 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS 
: I want to tell the member that the Wellington Mayoral Forum formally congratulated the Wellington police on “the excellent work done on progressing solutions to the issue of boy racers.” The police have the numbers and are getting the results and I think everyone should support them. 
Te Mangai Paho—Chief Executive 
11.  
RODNEY HIDE (ACT NZ) 
 to the  
Minister of Maori Affairs 
: Is he confident that Te Mangai Paho’s Chief Executive Mr Trevor Moeke is providing him with well-founded and accurate advice for his replies to written questions; if so why? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA (Minister of Maori Affairs) 
: 
 I am advised by my officials that every effort is made to ensure information provided for written questions is accurate and timely. 
Rodney Hide 
: How then does the Minister square his reply to question for written answer No. 257 in which he stated: “I am advised by my officials that there have been no payments of cash by Maori Sports Casting International ... to any employees of Te Mangai Paho.” with an email dated 15 October 2001 from Maori Sportscasting International to Te Mangai Paho’s radio manager Mr Tame Te Rangi which states: “Your payment for services will be placed into account this day. Hiamoe will have with him on his arrival the petrol vouchers/cash/copies of commentators instructions.”? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: It would appear from what the member is saying that I have not been provided with that full information. I would encourage the member to provide me with that information as I suggested at that time so that I can get to the bottom of any of those discrepancies. I assure him that I will do something about it. 
Mahara Okeroa 
: How many written questions concerning Te Mangai Paho has the Minister of Maori Affairs responded to since 17 February 2003? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: I have responded to over 100 written questions from Mr Hide and 200 from other members. That has cost the taxpayers a lot of resources and a lot of time. 
Katherine Rich 
: Who are the officials who advised the Minister that no cash payments had been made; have they told him yet that they misled him especially since they have released the smoking gun emails under the Official Information Act? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: I remind the member that a plethora of emails roam around the public service. As I said to the other member I would encourage the member to provide me with that information so that I can get to the bottom of any discrepancies. 
Rodney Hide 
: Why should New Zealanders have any faith in the Minister when under his stewardship officials are openly looting taxpayers’ money then lying to him about it? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: Unfounded innuendo and allegations like that need to be substantiated. Again I say to that member to supply me with the information and I will do something about it. 
Katherine Rich 
: Noting that the Minister’s answer to written question No. 257 was wrong how many other answers to written questions are wrong? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: I am aware that two answers were wrong. For the 300-odd questions asked of me we reply immediately and in a correct manner. 
Rodney Hide 
: I seek leave to table the emails where Mr Tame Te Rangi says— 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Rodney Hide 
: I also seek leave to table question No. 257 where the Minister says he was advised there were no cash payments. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Is that the answer to the written answer? 
Rodney Hide 
: Yes. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought. Is there any objection? There is. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I have an issue of some significance with this Minister. If members go through the more than 100 questions I have asked they will see many replies that the Minister had subsequently to admit were false. He said in a subsequent reply that his earlier reply was incorrect because officials had advised him incorrectly. It seems to me that it cannot be the case that Opposition MPs have to keep asking questions and questions in order to get a correct answer. It is up to the Minister to provide correct answers. When the Minister becomes aware that not just one but several replies were false he should come down to this House and explain why. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member is perfectly correct when he says “when the Minister becomes aware”—that is the key issue. If the Minister becomes aware then of course he has to do something about it because that is covered under our Standing Orders. I suggest to the member that that is the key issue. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am not sure that you quite grasped the point Mr Hide is making. I do not recall this situation arising before. What Mr Hide is saying is that what we have had here today is a situation where the Minister has said: “The answer I have given appears to be wrong. I will investigate.” but Mr Hide is also saying that the Minister has given answers to written questions which are given on notice; the answers have been printed; it has then been drawn to the Minister’s attention that they cannot be right; and then he has amended them. I am not sure that is the right procedure. If a Minister has given an answer that answer should stand. If it is wrong I think the Minister should come down to the House make a personal explanation and seek the leave of the House to amend the written answer that has been published. I am surprised that Ministers can give written answers have it drawn to their attention that the answers cannot be right and then decide to have another go at it. That does not seem to be right. What possible regard can Parliament give to answers to written questions which are given on notice if Ministers can give any old answer they like and when it is pointed out that their answer cannot be right simply seek to amend it? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 142/3. If a Minister becomes aware of an incorrect answer in answering a subsequent question it is quite proper to correct it. That happens all the time. However the member has raised an interesting point and I will certainly have a look at it. 
Hon Mark Burton 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is important to make clear that the Minister when he rose started by saying he had been advised. He provided the House with the best information that he had. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is perfectly correct but that does not get over Speaker’s ruling 142/3. I will have a look at this particular issue. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The statement made by the Deputy Leader of the House cannot be allowed to stand. I know that the idea of the Westminster process of ministerial responsibility is being eroded but we are now being told that Ministers have no responsibility for any answer they give. That cannot be correct. The Minister has a duty to make sure that the answer is correct. If he knows he has been giving material that is wrong then I would have thought he would be far more careful about coming to this House and cavalierly giving an answer to see how much the Opposition has found out. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No that was not what the Minister actually ended up saying. My original Speaker’s ruling stands as does the Speaker’s ruling I referred to. But I will look at the issue that the member has raised. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I ask for you to advise the House on this issue. Allusion was made to how many parliamentary questions I have asked of the Minister. The reason I have made so many is that the answers are so often wrong. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. 
Rodney Hide 
: The point of order is this—and I was trying to come to it— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Please come to it then. 
Rodney Hide 
: The Minister’s own officials released an email that contradicts his answers to parliamentary questions. He then came down to this House and said he knows nothing of it. What are we as Opposition MPs supposed to do? Do we have to do every piece of work for the Minister? Surely to heaven if officials are writing and they are getting cash from the very people they are giving the money to put into their accounts that Minister should be fronting up to the House to offer some explanation. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order; it is a debating issue. The member is perfectly entitled to make statements or anything he wishes about it but it has nothing to do with the order of this House. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. In the course of the Minister’s answer today he told the House there were two wrong answers— 
Simon Power 
: Two out of 300. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Two out of 300. So we now know he knows there is another wrong answer there somewhere. Rather than just saying there are two wrong answers and that he will fix it later or will do something to try to amend things later—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have said there are to be no interjections during points of order. The Minister will leave please. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel withdrew from the Chamber. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: If the Minister is able in his address to the House to say that he is aware of two wrong answers—it has already been made clear to the House where the first one was—is it not appropriate for him to tell us right now what he clearly knows to be an incorrect answer? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: All I can say is that corrected answers to written questions are commonplace. The Minister said he had already corrected these particular answers. I take his word when he says that. I call question No. 12 from Paul Adams. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I think you are in an interesting situation. A question has been put down on notice and a Minister has given an answer that is transparently not correct—which I think he has conceded—given that it is contradicted by the email. It would appear to me that this is one of those cases where you in the Chair should allow more questions to be asked without their taking up the Opposition’s quota because the Opposition put down a question with notice and we should have had a proper reply. Basically we have lost two supplementary questions because the Minister has not answered properly and I want to suggest to you that Rodney Hide should be allowed to ask at least one more question and I think Katherine Rich should be allowed to ask at least one more question. We should find out what this Minister really does know about this matter. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Mr Hide sought the call; he still has a question left that he can ask. 
Rodney Hide 
: Have the Minister’s officials advised him of an email dated 17 October 2001 from Te Mangai Paho’s radio manager Mr Tame Te Rangi and written to Hemana Waaka of Maori Sportscasting International which was released to me last week under the Official Information Act and which says amongst other things: “Thanks for the ‘ADVANCE’— I’m surprised at the choice of words! When can I expect the balance?” and would we not expect officials to bring that to his attention if he were in any way a Minister taking responsibility for the money he is dishing out? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: I get thousands of documents. Can I assure that member that I have not been shown the email and I repeat that if members supply me with the information I will talk to the officials. 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I have some real concerns about just where ministerial responsibility is going. We now regularly have the answer both from the Prime Minister and now from this Minister that they see thousands of documents with the implication that they are therefore not responsible for their answers in the House about any of those documents. We experienced that last week when the Opposition produced a document proving the Prime Minister was not correct in her answers. Now we also have a growing trend towards the view that Ministers are not responsible for their answers unless officials give them all the advice. The difficulty is that we cannot tell as an Opposition whether the Minister was given the advice and then misled the House or whether the Minister was not actually given the advice in the first place. 
From Parliament’s point of view it makes no difference what the officials’ behaviour was—the Minister is the only one we can hold responsible. I suggest that part of the standard of accountability that needs to be reinforced in question time is that Ministers are actually responsible for the actions of the Government because if they are going to keep saying that it is the officials as the Prime Minister does and as this Minister is now doing we will have to devise some way of allowing the Opposition to question officials. Otherwise we can use up dozens of questions—and almost certainly have—getting information from Ministers that they are either hiding or as in the last instance blaming the officials for not providing to them. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I want to say that if members have concerns about Ministers they are at liberty to attack them politically in this House and outside it. That is part of our democratic system. Whether the officials are to blame is a matter that can be argued over; it is nothing the Speaker can judge. Of course officials are responsible for the answers they give to select committees when they are up before them at that time. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I now raise a matter I raised with you earlier but in a slightly different form. I do so under Speaker’s ruling 129/6 which allows for further questions. The ACT party now has no further questions. One of the reasons we have ministerial question time is to ensure that there is no corruption in this country. Now we have a situation where an official who we have been assured by the Minister has received no money is in an email not only saying that he has received it—and he thanks the person for it—but asking when he is going to get the balance. I say that is a question that goes to the heart of the integrity of our system and I believe under Speaker’s ruling 129/6 that is a point where the Minister’s reply is completely unsatisfactory. The ruling states: “… the Speaker will call the Minister to order and may permit further supplementary questions …”. I think we have had a completely uncooperative Minister and I believe that Mr Hide and Katherine Rich should be able to ask more questions. The Minister should get a very strong message today that it is not satisfactory on an issue as important as this just to come along and say he is relying on the Opposition to tell him what is going on in his own department. 
Hon Mark Burton 
: The matter is clear. The Minister provided an answer to the question. New information was introduced. The Minister has given his clear undertaking that he—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I said that anyone making a noise was going to go and I ask Mr Nick Smith to leave the Chamber. I am not having interruptions in points of order. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith withdrew from the Chamber. 
Hon Mark Burton 
: The Minister clearly indicated that he was— 
Hon Roger Sowry 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I want to raise an issue regarding your request to our colleague to leave the Chamber and your calling his name out when you did so. When you have disciplined Government members including a Minister leaving the Chamber you have refrained from using their names. As you well know whether a member’s name is used does make quite a difference to people listening to the radio. I would just ask you to be consistent in using names of members on both sides of the House. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I thought I did mention the Hon Lianne Dalziel. 
Hon Mark Burton 
: When the Minister made clear to the House that he had not known about the existence of the document his word must be accepted. All members are honourable members. The Minister has undertaken to look into the matter; I think the matter must rest there. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Let me put it this way. I am left with a situation in which an answer has been given. I will adjudicate in this way: I will allow Mr Rodney Hide to ask one more supplementary question. 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. In dealing with an issue I raised just prior to this discussion you pointed out that officials are responsible for giving answers to select committees. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Yes. 
Hon Bill English 
: Last week or the week before we had a debate on a Privileges Committee report and it was pointed out to yourself that that process can be effective only if Parliament has the strong back-up of the Privileges Committee in dealing with officials who do not answer truthfully at select committee hearings. It is now becoming the place of last resort for Opposition parties to establish what actually happened given that Ministers do not take responsibility. A case in point is the privilege application you have before you right now. On past track record that case could take from 12 to 15 months to be heard and completed and clearly that leaves the Opposition well out of time to enforce the accountability that is owed. So given your remark that if Ministers say that officials were responsible for withholding documents the Opposition can question those officials before select committees we are looking for your reassurance that the Privileges Committee will act expeditiously where it finds that officials did not answer truthfully at select committees. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Speaker is not the judge of the performance of Ministers members or officials. I deal with matters of order not with officials’ answers at committee meetings in that way. Of course as far as I am concerned the Privileges Committee being a very senior committee will judge its proceedings as it sees fit and all parties are represented on it. 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I agree with everything you have said but it did not cover the principal issue I raised which is that the speed of action of the Privileges Committee is critical to the integrity of the process. That is something the Speaker does control as a matter of order and I am seeking your reassurance that if we are to accept answers in the House that officials are responsible for withholding papers—and we accept the responsibility of questioning officials at select committees—we have your support that the Privileges Committee will act expeditiously on complaints about officials who do not answer questions at select committees. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I cannot direct select committees to meet at particular times and places but concerning the issue raised by the member obviously I would hope that the Privileges Committee which is an important committee would deal with things expeditiously. 
Rodney Hide 
: Has the Minister of Maori Affairs set a standard for his officials that they immediately advise him of an email that contradicts his answers in this House—and in this case shows that a private company is putting cash into a civil servant’s account that is funding that private company—before that email is released under the Official Information Act; if he has set such a standard why will heads not roll? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: Can I assure that member that as I said before if he supplies me with the information and there is truth in it then heads will roll. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I call question No. 12. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You have ruled that the Opposition cannot continue questioning this Minister at this time. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I did not. I gave the member an extra question. Please be accurate. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Well if I heard it right you just called question No. 12 which means we do not have the opportunity to question this Minister further. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Please be seated. I gave Mr Hide an extra question. I said that. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: That is fine. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I did. I call question No. 12— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am getting tired; there are too many points of order at question time. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Well with all due respect if the performance from Government Ministers were slightly better and slightly more respectful of this House there might not be so many references to the Standing Orders and attempts by the Opposition to uphold them. That— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Please be seated. I am here to judge issues about the Standing Orders. As far as I am concerned there are too many claims of points of order that are not points of order. Some are legitimate points of order and I always listen to them very carefully but some of them are not. We have a limited time for questions and I think we are at the stage where that limited time has been well and truly exceeded today. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. One of the requirements for a Minister is to answer questions if his answers can be given consistent with the public good. I ask you how it can be consistent with the public good for a Minister to stand in the Chamber and say: “Give me the information which I supplied to you and then I will take some action.” That is the effect of what Mr Horomia is doing today. He is effectively saying: “I supplied you with information about this matter so I know about it but I am not going to take any action until you give it back to me.” If that answer is consistent with the public good then I think we are in severe trouble. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is not as I recall it happening and that I rule. 
Screen Production Industry Taskforce—International Competency 
12.  
PAUL ADAMS (United Future) 
 to the  
Minister for Industry and Regional Development 
: Does he stand by his statement in the report of the Screen Production Industry Taskforce that: “The Government is committed to creating an environment where the Screen Production Industry can grow and flourish in the international marketplace.”? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Minister for Industry and Regional Development) 
: 
 Yes. 
Paul Adams 
: Can we take it that Cloud 9’s decision to move to Australia was a logical response to the Minister’s call for the screen production industry to grow and flourish in the international marketplace; and is that move what he had in mind? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: The Screen Production Industry Taskforce has reported to the Government. The Government is considering its recommendations which are wide and varied. It has provided $110 million in the Budget for responding to the recommendations of the various task forces so the Government is taking it seriously. There will be situations from time to time. In this case Cloud 9 has had a difference with one of our other State agencies Television New Zealand. I have done my best to resolve those matters in so far as Ministers can. But Ministers are prevented quite properly from ordering broadcasters or any other State-owned enterprise to do anything in particular that Ministers might want and I accept that is entirely proper. In this case Cloud 9 has made its decision. However Mr Thompson has indicated he still has business interests here that he wants to pursue. He is a permanent resident of New Zealand and he intends to stay here with his family. We just have to assume that there are irreconcilable differences between Cloud 9 and Television New Zealand and accept it. 
David Parker 
: What are the objectives of the Screen Production Industry Taskforce? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: The coalition Government is committed to working in partnership with the film and television industry and one of its specific goals is to double the turnover of at least 10 New Zealand – based companies over the next 5 years. The task force has delivered its report as I have said. Ministers are now considering its recommendations and I am sure that the Government will give a positive response to this particular task force among others and that the industry will be satisfied with that and has a strong future in this country. 
Sue Kedgley 
: Does the Minister agree with the Screen Production Industry Taskforce report that television producers would have much more incentive to market their programmes and concepts internationally if they were able to retain and exploit their intellectual property rights; and given his commitment to creating this apt environment where the production industry will grow and flourish and so forth will he intervene to help producers in their dispute with TVNZ which is trying to erode producers’ revenue from the sales of their own programmes? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: Anyone who knows my style in Government knows that I have already intervened about as much as I possibly could and as much as the Act would allow. A review of intellectual property protection is recommended in the task force report. The Government knows what that recommendation is. It is considering it at the moment and it will give its response to the industry in a very short time. 
Paul Adams 
: Why did the Minister dole out $1.5 million to a multinational corporation to set up a call centre yet Cloud 9 has never received any money from New Zealand On Air and simply wants the Government to stop TVNZ from contracting only to production companies headed by former employees because getting Government programmes on the State broadcaster is essential to attracting foreign investment? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: One of the criteria for a strategic initiatives grant is that the development—in this case it will produce something like 400 jobs over the next 5 years and $200 million in export earnings—would not take place unless that grant was given. I tell the House that Cloud 9 has never asked for any funding whatever. It has asked for a relationship with Television New Zealand which it deems it has not been able to bring into effect. Government Ministers have done their best to mediate in that matter in so far as they can and they have been unable to do so. Cloud 9 has made its decision and the agencies responsible will have their own explanations of that which the Opposition is invited to pursue. 
Paul Adams 
: Why after Parliament explicitly implemented a charter requiring TVNZ to promote and support independent production houses exactly like Cloud 9 has TVNZ been allowed to commit such a blatant breach of its charter; and will the Minister take this matter up with the Minister of Broadcasting and the Minister for State Owned Enterprises? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: If the member looks at the Television New Zealand legislation he will see that Ministers must not intervene in programming matters and the Ministers in this Government have obeyed that requirement exactly. In terms of the charter the charter does say that TVNZ needs to have a sense of social responsibility by having regard to the interests of the community in which it operates and by endeavouring to accommodate and encourage those interests whenever it is able to do so. I take the point that New Zealand – produced television and film production is part of that responsibility. The Government will have to consider in the immediate following period how that charter is being implemented and do the best we can with it. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Minister’s answer is too long. 
Question No. 8 to Minister 
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister for Courts) 
: 
 I seek leave to table a letter dated 14 May under the signature of Dail Jones and addressed to the Hon Phil Goff concerning a Statutes Amendment Bill in which he says: “We do not support your suggestion of a remand on bail.” which confirms my earlier statement. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought. 
Dail Jones 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I invite him to read it all— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Just a moment. Is there any objection? 
Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I was just going to support Mr Jones in the sense that the Minister has taken a small extract from the letter and it may well be that New Zealand First does not support the mechanism of a Statutes Amendment Bill. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That will be seen if the letter is tabled. The member will be able to judge that. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: To get accuracy particularly for people who are listening I think the member should read the whole letter. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: If the member has read out the information accurately I seek the leave of the House to table the document. Has the member read the letter out accurately? 
Hon Rick Barker 
: It’s an accurate reflection yes. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: He said yes. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister not only said he wanted to table the letter; he then said it substantiated the answer he had given in the House. He is a new Minister and it is his first question so does he really want to make it a breach of privilege matter? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No in fact he should not have said that. The member has said he wants to table a letter. 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. New Zealand First supported an amendment to the Statutes Amendment Bill in question. The Minister has given a totally wrong impression. We support an amendment that makes sure that people stay in prison while a matter is being considered and are not released into the public which is what the Labour Party wants—a Labour Party that is soft on law and order. We support an amendment to the bill. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member knows he cannot say that; that last point is a comment. The member has asked for leave to table a document. Is there any objection? 
PETER BROWN (Senior Whip—NZ First) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I want some clarification before you put that leave. You suggested that the member should read this letter accurately; I am suggesting to you that he should read it fully because to leave chunks out is to distort the accuracy. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No. I refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 113/5 which states: “In seeking leave to table a document members should not only succinctly describe what is in the document but also sufficiently describe the nature of the document to inform members.” Members will be able to examine the document if it is tabled. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Question No. 10 to Minister 
RODNEY HIDE (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister of Maori Affairs asked to see the evidence of the email that was released under the Official Information Act. I took it across to him and as I gave it to him he called out across the front bench that I was a liar. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: This is a matter that happened during question time. The member should have raised it immediately. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: It happened during the last question. You have ruled before that one waits until the question is over. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: My ruling was when the particular question was over. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: It happened during question 12. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I ask the Minister whether he made an unparliamentary comment in which case I ask him to withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Parekura Horomia 
: I withdraw and apologise. I did say that. 
Urgent Debates 
Electricity Industry 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have received applications from the Leader of the Opposition and the Hon Ken Shirley seeking to debate under Standing Order 376 the Government’s announced changes for the electricity industry. This is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility and notwithstanding that the Budget debate is still under way I consider that it does require the immediate attention of the House by way of an urgent debate. I therefore accept the application. As I received the application from the Leader of the Opposition first I call on him to move accordingly. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.  
We have heard today some Government announcements about changes to the electricity industry. Before we debate those changes I want to put the announcements in context. The House should not be misled to the view that these changes deal in any way with the oncoming electricity crisis. [ 
Interruption 
] 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The senior Government whip makes a habit of continuous interjection whenever I am on my feet. I have tolerated that for any number of speeches over recent weeks but I am not willing to tolerate it today. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member said he wants to be heard in silence. He will be. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I did not say that. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member has said that he does not want that sort of interjection. There will not be any more of it. I give him that assurance. I ask the senior Government whip not to interject again during this speech 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I am just making the point that I am not willing to tolerate a continuous stream of interjections. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have stopped him from interjecting. Carry on. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The House should not be misled by this announcement that it has anything to do with this year’s winter crisis with the supply of electricity next winter and probably the winter after that. The reason the Government has made this announcement today is that its mishandling of the electricity crisis has affected its public image so badly that it decided it ought to come up with something to make it look as if it is doing something. 
I have been particularly disappointed in the attitude of the Prime Minister. She has tried to make out that it was only in recent months that this issue has come before the Government at all. That is simply incorrect. Since before the 1999 election the Labour Party has campaigned intensively on the issue of electricity. It was doing deals before the 1999 election in Opposition offices with people involved in the electricity industry. That was followed by a stack of reports and reviews and even policy statements. A Government policy was made before the 2001 electricity crisis. A review was done of that crisis. A subsequent policy statement was made and it was amended according to the views that were taken from the industry throughout the crisis. 
Helen Clark has sat as the chair of a Cabinet that has seen dozens of reports on the electricity industry. So the timing of this announcement is nothing to do with the matter coming to the attention of the Government. It has been before the Government for over 4 years. The timing today is to give the public the misleading impression that the Government is taking some action on the current electricity crisis and that therefore the cold showers the brownouts and the blackouts are someone else’s fault. Well they are not. This Government is responsible for the current electricity crisis and today’s announcement makes not one bit of difference to that responsibility. 
It is unlikely when we look at this announcement that it will make any difference in the future. The announcement today makes a big play of reserve generation. I say to the Minister of Energy who is here today that I hope he has informed his Prime Minister that there is plenty of reserve generation around right now. All over the countryside there is reserve generation—generation not being used generation not turned on. It has been there in previous years. It is still there now even with these high market prices for electricity. Going out and contracting for a bit more actually will not make much difference because it is already there. 
So I invite the Government to tell us whyif there is reserve capacity now it is not being used; whyit is that going out and contracting for more in 2 or 3 years’ time will make any difference at all today. Because it will not. 
Let us get the picture clear. Lake levels are still low and dropping. There is spare generation around the countryside right now that is not being used and we still have the major problem that has afflicted this industry in recent years and will continue to do so despite any announcements today. I am talking about the problem of getting sufficient baseload generation up and going to meet the needs of a growing economy—even if that growth slows down. Perhaps that is the best chance; that it will catch up—that is if the growth slows down. That has always been the issue. 
This Government with a combination of confused policy and endless navel-gazing over what it is going to do with electricity and a strong dose of political correctness has made sure there is not enough new generation coming in the market to keep up with the economy. 
Let us look at this distinction between renewal and non-renewable energy. At the same time as the Government is saying that it will make consumers pay a tax for reserve generation it is actively promoting renewable energy over non-renewal energy—renewable energy being wind and rain. These are much less reliable sources of fuel than the non-renewable energy which is coal. I would not mind betting that the kind of generating capacity the Government is going out to contract for will almost certainly be non-renewable. Because that is the only way that the person who is providing it can guarantee it is there to turn it on in the years when there is not enough rain or wind to meet the demand. 
This is a fundamental policy confusion and it is being perpetuated with these announcements today. The Government has a strong ideological push to favour only renewable energy. The announcement today is actually an announcement that if this worked at all it would be about solving that problem—namely by making sure there is sufficient non-renewable energy available to the New Zealand electricity market. How stupid can one get! Why does the Government not just ditch the ideology? Why not just ditch the political correctness of saying that because we have signed the Kyoto Protocol we cannot burn coal? Why not let both forms of energy develop; make the rules about carbon tax if that is what the Government wants to do; and let the market sort it out? Who is going to pay the price for this stupidity? New Zealand consumers will pay. 
Stephen Franks 
: And New Zealand business. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: And New Zealand businesses households—indeed everybody. What we have seen today is a new tax—“Helen Clark’s energy tax”. It cannot be called anything else. That is what it is. It is a new tax. I hope that United Future will have a harder think about this tax than it had about the Budget. Helen Clark has decided to impose a tax on all electricity users in New Zealand. So all pensioners; all students; all low-income families; all families with children who live on benefits and therefore below the poverty line which is something that people keep telling this Government—in fact everyone who turns on a switch—will pay an energy tax because of the stupidity of the Labour Government. 
We estimate that that tax is around $200 million a year—if we multiply half a cent per unit by the number of units. If people thought the “sherry tax” was controversial wait until pensioners work out the electricity tax! But of course the Government will get tricky. It will say that it is not the Government that is putting the tax on but the Electricity Commission—they are the ones who decided about the tax! 
Dr Lynda Scott 
: Blame the officials. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: It will blame the officials just like the Prime Minister when she said the only reason we had the energy crisis is that officials were too slow with their advice. She said she was outraged by how slow the officials were. She was referring to her trusted offsiders in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet the Ministry of Economic Development and Treasury. I bet they are becoming a bit tired of being blamed for everything—ranging from the Government’s dishonesty to the energy crisis. In this case the responsibility for the tax falls on the Government. It is a tax; a tax on electricity. No one has really thought of it before. We have always had electricity prices that go up and down but no Government has imposed a tax on electricity. 
I cannot help thinking that the announcements today are a solution when the Government has not quite worked out what the problem is. In fact the closer I look at it the more it looks like the Government has pulled together—[ 
Interruption 
] Well it is; it is a solution when the Government has not worked out what the problem is. If the Minister does not know the problem is not a lack of reserve generation. There is plenty of reserve generation. It is just that it is not switched on. 
Pansy Wong 
: Like the Minister. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Like the Minister! The current is not working! 
Hon Paul Swain 
: We’re all switched on over here. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: There is something shorted out particularly with that Minister. It is a tax. There is plenty of reserve generation. I look forward to the debate the Government is going to have with the electricity industry. The reserve generation that contracts through this process will be an overhang on the market. All the time in all the years when there is plenty of fuel there is going to be an overhang on the market and there is going to be a very substantial argument about what price that generating capacity should be switched on at. Is it going to be when the price gets to 10c or 12c or 50c? The investors in future generation are going to need to believe that this Government will not use it for its political convenience. 
In election year business comes along and says: “Look the price has gone up over 15c. You’ve got all this generating capacity sitting there. Why don’t you just switch it on and keep the price down?”. Of course this Government will do it. Otherwise it will be attacked for having all this electricity generation that it refuses to use and that is keeping the price up. Of course the Government will do it. The Electricity Commission legislation will almost certainly have ultimate ministerial control over its decisions. I ask the Minister of Energy to deny that. No he will not. 
I say to investors in the electricity industry that this is a tool that Labour will use to keep electricity prices as low as its political convenience requires. New Zealand consumers will have to pay a tax right across the board to finance it. The Government will go out and say that it is a little tax. Look at the fuss the Government got over the “sherry tax”. That was meant to be a little one—$50 a year if that is what it is; $200 million across the country. Helen Clark has agreed and confirmed her view that a tax on electricity is a good idea. She knows full well that that is putting up electricity prices for the people who she believes support her in particular the pensioners. I invite any MP to say to the next pensioner who comes into his or her electorate office: “Oh don’t worry it’s only $50 a year. Don’t worry it’s only a little bit.” They will not accept that. They feel blamed for the electricity crisis. They feel they are being made to take responsibility for the shortage of energy and now the Government is going to make them pay with a tax. 
Hon Roger Sowry 
: The Prime Minister’s on gas. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
:The Prime Minister says: “Don’t worry I’ve got gas.” I say to the Prime Minister that she should be saving gas because we are running out of that faster than we are running out of electricity. She did not know that. She did not know that we are meant to be saving gas as well as electricity. 
The consumers will pay twice. Look how the Government structured the deal. They pay the tax every year in case there is a dry year and when the dry year comes they have to pay a high price for the new stand-by generation. Why is that? Why should they have to pay a high price for the stand-by generation when they have already paid for it many times over through the “Clark energy tax”? I invite the Minister to tell us that. It is confused policy and more spin than a hydro-powered turbine. 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Energy) 
: 
 That was abysmal. That was absolutely hopeless. That was the most lacklustre performance I have heard even from that member for a very long time. I hoped for better. I hoped that we would get a bit of passion out of the Leader of the Opposition. I hoped that we would have heard something that I could have got my teeth stuck into. Is that the best the Opposition can do? Is that the best the Leader of the Opposition can do? 
What did he say? Can members remember? He has only just said it. Tell me what that member said. What is the National Party position? At the end of that 15 minutes what was National’s clear line? Did the Leader of the Opposition just pass himself in the corridor? If so what did he say? That is what I want to know. Did he say hello to himself as he passed himself in the corridors of power? Did the Leader of the Opposition say “Hi”? 
What did characterise that remarkable lacklustre contribution from that remarkable lacklustre Leader of the Opposition is this. It was a straight parade of prejudice. We saw it all. We saw the National Party decide that renewables are bad and fossils are good; and that Kyoto is bad and polluting is good. We had “good old boy” behaviour which the Leader of the Opposition himself does not believe in. We have had it for weeks. [ 
Interruption 
]We have had it from that member. The member who calls himself the Opposition spokesperson on energy has railed for weeks that the Resource Management Act is the cause of the problem; not the rainfall but the Resource Management Act; not the problems with the Maui reserves but the Resource Management Act. 
Leave aside the fact that since this Government has come to power more than 1300 megawatts has been consented. That is enough consents in the last 3½ years for a total of 8 years. The Resource Management Act is not the problem but the good old boys like to think that it is because they can roll out their prejudices: “We do not care too much about planning. Big boys do not care too much about consultation. Rob Muldoon did not care did he with the National Development Act? Why should we? We are going to roll out the Resource Management Act and beat it up even though it is a red herring; even though it is pure prejudice.” 
We heard stuff from Bill English that said that renewables are not reliable. Well he is right. It does not rain all the time. That is why the New Zealand electricity system is as it is. That is why we have thermal firming. That is why we have a mixture of renewable and thermal in this country. What the Leader of the Opposition seemed to say was that all the reserve generation will be thermal. Put a ring around it. He is absolutely right. But why would he make that comment? Because he thinks that fossil fuel burning is good and that sustainable futures are bad. Why? Because he is a real boy—at least he pretends to be. He does not really believe it but good old boys think that burning fossil fuels is good. 
I will tell members how silly this got. Some members of this House thought that the Government was against burning coal. We even had a television programme about it. Guess what needs to be known about coal? Renewables are cheaper. That is what needs to be known about coal. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: You’ve got to tax them. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: They are not taxed. [ 
Interruption 
] Coal fuel is much more expensive than hydro—tax or no tax. Ken Shirley jumps in by way of interjection to get another prejudice thrown into the debate. It is wrong again. The reason this Government is promoting renewables is that we do believe in a sustainable future. We do believe in making the best use of our resources. We do believe in having a range of electricity generation technology so that we can spread risk. We do believe that the Kyoto Protocol is important because we do believe that this climate is the reason that we have our economy at all. We are intent on playing our part in making sure they do it. 
Real boys do not have to do that—not good old boys. In the first two terms of this Government we will have a total of 1420 megawatts or thereabouts of new generation going in but the National Party wants another 60 out of the conservation estate. It does not want 1420; it wants 1480 and it wants to knock over a whole lot of trees to get the other 60 because that is what real boys do! That prejudice has been around this debate long enough and I for one am heartily sick of it. 
Then there is another strange bit of behaviour that has been going on from the Opposition parties time and again. It goes like this: “Why didn’t you do anything before?” and “You don’t have to do anything anyway.” See how it goes. I shall say it again: “Why didn’t you do it before?” and “You don’t have to do it anyway.” 
Rod Donald 
: Don’t count us in there. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: We certainly do not count the Greens in there. I most certainly do not count the Greens. Those comments are not aimed at New Zealand First either. They are aimed at the National Party and the ACT party: “Why didn’t you do it earlier?” and “You don’t have to do it.” We have had that sort of craziness going for weeks now. “2001 happened didn’t it; why didn’t you respond? The market will fix it; you don’t need to respond. You’ve had enough time to change it; you don’t need to change it.” and so on. We have had that outbreak of silliness for weeks and weeks. 
If I go to the National Party and try to work out whether it would have acted go to its statements and try to work what its real position is I do not get it easily but it seems clear that it would not have intervened. I do know that the National Party would privatise the State-owned enterprises just as it says: “You must send out statements of corporate intent to State-owned enterprises. You must ring them; you must send them out several statements of corporate intent. Send them out one a day. Ring them have them in beat them up send them but sell them. So arrange them organise them manipulate them make them take the losses but sell them.” That is the position the National Party has on State-owned enterprises: “Please make sure that you use your ownership correctly and then make sure that you have no ownership.” That is National’s position on State-owned enterprises. It is very garbled. It is what good old boys do when they want to privatise anything that moves and beat up on anything that it thinks the Government should beat up on. That is real boys getting a bit confused about themselves. 
So what do we do now? We go to the policies of the National Party and the ACT party. We will go to the ACT party first and find a lovely little idea from Ken Shirley on the website about making sure that all householders are forcibly exposed to the spot price which states: “Go to ACT’s energy policy.” We did that and guess what happened? “No matching documents found.” came up on the screen. That meant that the ACT does not have one. The ACT party has no energy policy. 
We then went to the National Party. The National Party is the largest small party in the House. It is bigger than New Zealand First. It is the largest small party in the House and is easily bigger than New Zealand First. One would expect National to have an energy policy. After all New Zealand First has an energy policy and the Greens have an energy policy. One would expect National which is even bigger than New Zealand First to have an energy policy. We went there and it did not have one. Even now it still has not made up an energy policy. 
Then we had the tax stuff from Bill English in his address. His day began with a shrill and strident press statement banged out at about 1 o’clock which is long before he could have understood what the Government was up to. We now know that he still does not. He banged out that shrill and strident press statement. I tell the Leader of the Opposition that he is unhappily the proud owner of a feral word processor. That was bewilderment. It was a series of unrelated statements. It was extremely noisy. It signified little indeed. The Leader of the Opposition should get rid of his feral word processor; the country needs no more of it. 
He came to the House and pulled out the dear old cliché about an electricity tax. He does not believe it himself. He knows enough about economics to know that that is not the right label. He knows that the label is wrong but he decides to use it 46 times or thereabouts in order to make a point and in order to get a bit of attention. That guy needs attention. He needs to be noticed and so he talks about the “Clark tax” the “Hodgson tax” the “electricity tax” and the “Labour tax” or whatever it is. He knows that it is a cross-insurance premium. That is actually what the market was designed to deliver—that is a cross-insurance premium where one generator would go to another generator. The consumer pays for it just like he or she pays for all electricity products. That is what one does when one buys electricity; one pays for it. That is how the market was designed. 
Members should go to last Saturday’s paper. Do they remember Tony Baldwin at the select committee? He was the guy who put through the reforms. Max never did understand them. There was a very interesting article on Tony Baldwin the guy who put through the reforms in the paper. It was quite a good article and pointed out that the market was designed to have cross-insurance premiums. It had a flick at one or two companies for not doing so and that was fair enough. The point is that the cross-insurance premium is what the Electricity Commission will do for the market because the market has failed. The market did not do that. It had long enough. Members cannot accuse me of impatience. Then that option will be taken away from it because it did not do that. 
For Mr English to come to the House and label that a tax when he knows that it is not proves to me that that guy is desperate for attention. What has happened is that New Zealanders as we enter the second winter in three having to save have said that they have had enough. They have said that and we have heard. We have said: “We as a country can have a higher level of security for an insurance premium. Today’s announcements were no more nor less than announcing what that security level will be. A security level will be set at a 1-in-60 dry-year risk and that is the first thing. It was enough to get us through 1992 without conservation; enough to get us through 2001 without a conservation campaign; and so far enough to get us through 2003 without a conservation campaign. That is what the security level will be. 
We also said what we thought the price would be and that would be less than 80c per household per week. One cannot have security for nothing. It is not priceless. However we have designed a system where one can have security for a low price. That is what a good Government should do. It seems that the National Party is intent on relying on the market in its purity and that is all. That suggests to me that the National Party is the cold-showers party. This country says that reputational risk is more important. The idea of future investment for example from our forestry sector is more important. The idea of saying to New Zealanders that the way of life in New Zealand is to have conservation campaigns every 2 or 3 years does not rest well with us. 
I finish by saying to the people of New Zealand that today we broke 6 percent for the first time. I thank and congratulate New Zealanders as they went through the 6 percent mark. I hope they are on the way to 7 percent and then 8 9 and 10. Because the changes we have announced today will not help us in time this winter. This winter we save. From now on we will have more security as a result of this Government’s interventions. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 There speaks the Prince of Darkness— 
King Lear 
 Shakespeare. That is what we have just heard from Minister Hodgson in this Labour Government. We know that Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Hodgson fiddles while New Zealand freezes. That is the recipe for this coming year and the next year and nothing in this Government’s announcement today does anything to address that basic fact. 
This Labour Government has been in office now for nearly 4 long cold years. I invite the Minister to read the briefing papers to the incoming Minister in 1999 that made all the predictions about what needed to be done. That Minister has done absolutely nothing in 4 years. We are in the middle of a crisis and what has the Government done? It has set up another bureaucratic committee—the Electricity Commission—with the power to levy over $200 million a year from New Zealanders. Who believes that that will address the basic problems? I invite this Government to read the briefing papers to the incoming Government that identified the problem but it has done nothing. 
The Government set up the Caygill committee 2 years ago. That committee finally reported last Friday but the Government had already gazumped it. The Caygill committee’s thinking was to have a voluntary regulatory framework and use the market but the Government did not want that. The Prime Minister’s announcement that she would go with the command-control regulatory framework really pulled the plug before that committee could report and we see that in this announcement today. By the Government’s own admission that does not address the problem. In the Government’s own press release at noon today it said it will be 3 years before it can build up the necessary portfolio of reserve generation. I am sorry but that is not good enough. The productive sector is stopping production closing down factories and laying people off. People have to go home to cold houses and cold showers because this Government has absolutely failed to address the predictable energy crisis. 
There are a number of problems in the energy sector. Perhaps the biggest problem is the dominance— 
David Benson-Pope 
: Give us the ACT policy! 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Yet again the Government whip is chirping continuously. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I take the point. We should not have running commentaries. Brief and intelligent interjections are fine. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: If we look at the energy sector in New Zealand we can see that it is not a market-driven sector at all. That is the problem—we need more market and less Government. If we look at generation we see that 70 percent of it is controlled by Government-owned monopolies. What have those monopolies done under this Government? They have further entrenched their monopolies by buying up the consumer base—the energy companies—to match their production. There is no incentive for them to offer attractive contracts to those companies to take hedges against the volatile stock market. They have entrenched their regional monopolies. Is transmission a market? I do not think so—it is 100 percent owned by Government. The domestic consumer uses 40 or 50 percent of the total demand but there are no pricing signals because of our lack of application of new metering technologies. We still have 1930s technology in metering. It is simply not good enough. 
We then look at the broad macro-policies of this Government and the Kyoto Protocol it so enthusiastically rushed in to sign up to. New Zealand is the only country in the Southern Hemisphere that has ratified the Kyoto Protocol. The United States has not— 
Peter Brown 
: Chile? 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: No Chile has not signed up to it. No Southern Hemisphere country has ratified the Kyoto Protocol—that is no annexe one country that has binding commitments. There are plenty of non - annexe one countries that have no obligation to do anything and they are only too happy to sign up. However no annexe one country with commitments and obligations has signed up to that protocol except dear old New Zealand. This Government tripped over itself in its rush to sign up. 
What does it mean? It means that one puts a big tax on coal then confiscates the carbon sequestration right to the forest and nationalises that—that is pinches it off the forest owners. Let me assure the House that the forestry sector of this country is outraged by that. I was at the Forest Research Institute last Friday where all the heads of New Zealand forestry were gathered. They said: “Investment will not take place in this country. Why would people invest in added value processing in New Zealand when they can go offshore? Firstly the Government will confiscate people’s property rights by taking their carbon for growing the trees; secondly it will whack people with a great big tax on processing their added value which would have created jobs here. We would rather invest somewhere else.” That is coming from the big international corporates of the New Zealand forestry sector. 
What does the Government do with that money? It taxes coal and subsidises windmills then says that windmills are far more price-effective than coal. When the Government taxes one and gives the subsidy to the other of course they are! Unfortunately the socialists do not see that. They do not understand the market and how that might work. 
Let us look at hydro. In a recent publication Kerry McDonald the former head of Comalco identified 20000 megawatts of untapped hydro potential development in this country. Of that 10000 megawatts is totally acceptable in an economic sense and stacks up in an environmental sense. We have not had any investment in hydro in this country for over 20 years. This Government is denying access to those who are struggling to try to set it up—like the Arnold River scheme on the West Coast which Mr Damien O’Connor knows all about. It is denying people access to that prime site by getting the Department of Conservation to say: “No you can’t flood that small valley of broom and gorse because that would be unacceptable to this ecologically minded country.” The Government cannot have it both ways. That Arnold River scheme is an excellent proposal. It increases generation from 15 megawatts to 65 megawatts and it makes the West Coast and Nelson self-sufficient. This Government is totally blocking that scheme and that is an outrage. 
We have prime coal reserves in this country but just try to get access to them! The Pike River coal development on the West Coast which is also in Mr Damien O’Connor’s electorate has been struggling to get access from the Department of Conservation for about 8 years. It has been stonewalled every which way it wants to go. What are we doing instead? This year we are to import 600000 tons of coal from Indonesia and Australia to try to get sufficient fuel for the Huntly power station. 
All of those problems were totally predictable. This Government sat on its hands dragged its feet did nothing for 4 years then in a panic in the middle of a crisis has operated in a most inappropriate way. By the Government’s own admission that initiative will not have any effect for 3 years. My prediction is that it will make the problem worse because it does not address the basic problems. We need more competition between generators and retailers and we are not getting that under State monopolies. We need to ensure that our national grid is operating in an optimum way rather than in the interests of a dividend payment from a State-owned enterprise. We need to send clearer pricing signals to consumers amongst other reasons to encourage appropriate energy conservation. That is far better than running an advertisement on television about saving energy. Sending a pricing signal is a far more effective way of getting the message to consumers than engaging in public education although I accept that there is a role for public education. A pricing signal is far more effective; it always has been and always will be. 
King Canute tried to turn back the tide. By signing up to the Kyoto Protocol this Government is trying to change the climate. That is a bizarre and very foolish claim. Those macro-policies and the Government’s total failure to confront the pressing needs of our energy sector and the basic infrastructure of this country will do New Zealand huge damage. 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 Electricity is not a luxury and to have 2 years out of the last 3 where the public and our businesses have been told to save electricity is not acceptable. It indicates that somewhere along the line our political policy is off the tracks by a country mile. New Zealanders are entitled to have electricity at the push of a button whenever they want it and wherever they want it. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: And all for free! 
PETER BROWN 
: No not all for free but all at a reasonable price. 
We have an abundance of sunshine in this country and an abundance of wind. I do not know whether there is an abundance of gas as we have yet to discover it. I suspect that it is in abundance but yet to be tapped into. We have an abundance of coal. We are exporting close to 2 million tonnes of coal a year to places like China Chile India Japan and South Africa and none of them are signed up to the Kyoto Protocol. We are in the daft state of exporting coal to nations that have no obligation to pay a carbon tax or whatever whilst we are prepared to punish ourselves for using coal. We have millions and millions of tonnes of it and we regard it as a second-rate source of power. It just does not make sense. We should be developing coal-fired power stations to suit the needs of New Zealanders. There are 4 million people in this country but on a world scale that is not terribly many. 
 My political party has concerns about the number of immigrants but we have double the concerns when we cannot provide enough power for the current visitors to this country. It affects our businesses our home lives and our tourist industry. Who would want to come to a country as nice as this when one is allowed to have only one light on in a hotel room? It is absolutely ridiculous. In a mild winter we are seeing people turning power off left right and centre. We are being asked to turn off the stand-by switches on our microwaves and televisions. That is the state we have got ourselves into with the power crisis in this country. 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: It keeps you fit. 
PETER BROWN 
: Yes it keeps us fit all right! In the circumstances the Government’s move today to set up the Electricity Commission is a move in the right direction. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: That’s the first bit of positive news! 
PETER BROWN 
: The member is quite amazed. Two years ago when the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Bill went through—and I do not think he would deny this—I told the Minister of Energy that setting up a governance board made up of industry members would not work. One cannot have a competitive environment self-regulating itself. A competitive environment is the exact opposite of a regulated regime. It was ambitious to the point of almost being stupid to expect the industry to regulate itself in any worthwhile manner. We quite welcome the Minister putting in place an Electricity Commission that is independent of the people who participate in the industry. The market will not work in the sense of social deliverance. The market does not have a social conscience nor does it have social responsibilities. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Why does it work for food? 
PETER BROWN 
: It works for food only because there is an abundance of food. But here we are talking about a relative shortage of electricity where it gets— 
Hon Paul Swain 
: It’s Economics 101 and you should tell him that! 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: That’s right! 
PETER BROWN 
: If I might just get this point out: the generation companies have an incentive to withhold producing electricity because the price goes up. They can make more money from a lesser amount of electricity than opening the industry up to unlimited amounts. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: You could have State-owned monopolies. 
PETER BROWN 
: No because there is a lack of controls. As I said at the outset of my contribution electricity is not a luxury. The average New Zealander wants electrical power in abundance—[ 
Interruption 
] A conversation is going on here that is not even involving me and that is hurting my pride somewhat. I do not mind members heckling me but when they are heckling across the alleyway I think it is a little bit much. 
This is a move in the right direction. I accept the Minister’s definition that it is insurance against a 1-year-in-60 drought but we have had 2 years of drought in 3. New Zealand First questions whether 1 year in 60 is the appropriate level of concern. We believe that it should be a good deal less than that. However a half-cent per unit increase in the average electricity bill to 80c a week is the price we will have to pay for that sort of insurance. 
But more should be done. New Zealand First has concerns about both electrical lines companies and gas lines companies. We believe that the Minister should take a good hard look at how they operate how they charge and their stipulated values. There should be some fairly forceful legislation governing their activities. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: More regulation. 
PETER BROWN 
: Yes. We do not believe monopolies should exist in an unregulated environment—that is putting it in a nutshell. When one gets a monopoly in an unregulated environment sooner or later someone pays through the nose. We are conscious of the charges that will fall on old-age pensioners on fixed incomes. We are not ashamed to say that where there is a monopoly basically there should be some regulation. 
We certainly believe that the Kyoto Protocol should be shelved. It is absolutely ridiculous to sign that protocol in these sorts of circumstances. We will be exporting 2 million tonnes of coal to nations that will burn it largely in their power stations. They will not be paying a carbon tax and we will be charging ourselves a carbon tax. It sounds like a Monty Python type of policy. 
We believe that we should look at solar energy. We should be giving tax incentives—favourable fiscal incentives—for people to install solar power in their houses and not just hope that they will do so because they are suffering hardship. We believe that there is a lot of scope—and I am certain the Greens will agree with this—for wind power although we would hate to see those windmill things stuck all over the skyline. That would cause us more visual environmental concern— 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Visual pollution! 
PETER BROWN 
: My colleague calls it visual pollution. There is a limit to what we can do with windmills. They are quite ugly looking things— 
Rod Donald 
: They are relatively benign. 
PETER BROWN 
: Mr Donald can have them stuck in his back garden as his scenic view but I do not want to see any of them near me. 
I should finally come back to coal. There is an argument which I saw on a television programme that one of the biggest disadvantages of coal is that it produces carbon dioxide. Let me tell this House that there is technology that will eliminate carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants. It is fairly costly but the cost is coming down in leaps and bounds. Therefore we should be developing coal-fired power stations which ultimately will not be pumping out carbon dioxide at all. We should also be getting ahead of the act not waiting for that technology to occur. It is better to have a power plant pushing out some carbon dioxide and feeding the public cheap electricity instead of the public pushing it out with open coal or wood-burning fires. 
To summarise the Minister has moved somewhat in the right direction but there is still a long way to go. 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 New Zealand faces two challenges in respect of energy. The first is to get through this winter. The second is to start being a lot smarter about both how we generate and how we use electricity and all forms of energy. This year we see a dry year and the depletion of the Maui gasfield coinciding. Neither of those events is a surprise. The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research warned several years ago that rainfalls were likely to be lower in the future than in the recent past. That is in part due to global climate change and to our collective failure as a nation and as a species to take any action to lower carbon dioxide emissions in the last 15 years. The Greens warned 30 years ago that burning Maui gas to generate electricity wasted two-thirds of the energy value of that gas—one-third electricity two-thirds waste heat. An asset that could have lasted a century has been burnt off in less than one-third of that time. It has warmed the planet needlessly and cooked a few fish in the Waikato River in the process. 
Getting through this winter requires a collective effort to conserve electricity. It needs an extra effort by those who are wealthy and are large energy users to reduce their power consumption so that those with little do not freeze in the dark. Squandering energy through conspicuous consumption is obscene at the best of times and in today’s circumstances it is a crime. Either way it is time for everyone to systematically reduce the energy demand through increased energy efficiency—that is doing more with less for longer. Will today’s announcement achieve that goal? No it will not and we are extremely disappointed in the Government for failing to tackle the essential challenge. 
But we welcome the end of a very expensive 2-year experiment that was bound to fail. New Zealand is the only country in the world that has been trying to run an electricity market with no regulation other than an officially sanctioned cartel. That is the type of silliness that emerged from the 1990s when one was either a central planner or a libertarian and rational debate on economic management in different sectors was largely absent. Max Bradford and the previous National Government have a lot to answer for. One reason the Greens supported the Minister’s legislation in 2001—an attempt to fix up Max Bradford’s “more market” reforms—was that it contained the power to create a Crown board to regulate the industry if self-regulation failed. It has failed and that power is now being used to create the Electricity Commission. 
The electricity sector should operate for the public good. It should operate reliably sustainably and cost effectively. The Government issued a very good energy policy statement in 2000 setting out what it expected from the electricity industry: security of supply the minimising of greenhouse gases the minimising of spills of water from the dams the encouragement of new renewable forms of energy and the encouragement of participation from consumers in the market. We had input into that statement and we support it. What we have lacked so far is anyone who is accountable for whether the system is delivering those outcomes. So we welcome the new board which will have that responsibility. The provision that the Greens put in the 2001 legislation will now start to produce results. 
Every year the Auditor-General and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment must report to Parliament on whether the electricity industry is meeting the requirements of the Government’s policy statement and if not what rules need to be changed so that it will. They will have the benefit of the best international expertise to help with that. From today’s announcement there will be a board that can be held responsible for meeting those goals. The jury is still out on whether the new board will achieve those goals but when the audit reports come in we will have the information to judge that. After the ideology and information vacuum in terms of energy policy since 1987 informed and relatively disinterested advice will be welcome. 
That is the end of the good news. Today’s announcement by the Labour Government will not help us to get through this winter. It will not help the climate and it will not help us to be smarter in using energy. For this winter the only solution is to engage every business every Government department every family every school and every New Zealander in making sensible savings to the extent that we can. For the future we need an economy in which greater energy efficiency is seen as a better alternative to a new power station and in which people and businesses are rewarded for saving every year—not just in a dry year—so we do not need large idle power stations that we pay for but rarely use. Our country needs some dry-year capacity—we acknowledge that—but with the proper investment in renewables and energy efficiency that could be provided from existing plant coupled with demand-side bids from the larger users. 
In simple terms buying the right to turn off a potline at Comalco or the equivalent for 3 months in a 1-in-60 dry-year is the equivalent of buying a new power station that can generate 5 percent more electricity in that dry year—and it is much much cheaper. That is the least that Comalco should be asked to do given that it gets its power for a fraction of what householders have to pay and for less than any other business user. Buying from the demand side would make better economic sense than having resources permanently tied up in a power station and everyone paying higher power prices for it. If the Electricity Governance Board is to tender for dry-year capacity it must call for demand-side bids as well. Hopefully innovative generators will join up with their large users and put in bids that combine some new capacity and some demand-side management. Even that would be better than nothing at all from the demand side. 
Some people seem to think that the problem this winter is that we lack enough power stations. They blame the Resource Management Act the occupational health and safety legislation Maori and whomever else they want to take a swipe at. The facts say otherwise. Since the electricity market began in 1996 New Zealand has built over 1300 megawatts of new capacity. That is 1.3 Huntly power stations. That new capacity generates almost 10000 gigawatt hours or around one-quarter of our total electricity use in an average year. Around 120 megawatts of new wind capacity has been announced in the last couple of weeks and two thermal power stations are just waiting for the gas to allow them to be built. The fundamental problem is that we use what we have so inefficiently. If electricity demand grows at 5 percent a year we will have to double the whole system in 14 years and double it again 14 years later. That is four times our current generating capacity in 28 years from now. That is a path to disaster. That path is as predictable as the Maui gasfield’s depletion was 30 years ago. 
Fortunately there is an alternative. New Zealand can have an economy that develops without using more electricity per capita. Many European countries have done that for years and some New Zealand regions are doing so now. For 30 years the Greens have been promoting a whole host of measures including the direct use of gas for heating rather than gas-fired electricity the insulation of homes water-heaters and refrigeration in industry compact fluorescent lights the direct solar heating of homes and water wind generation of electricity properly sizing industrial motors to their loads and wood-waste - fired boilers in the forestry industry. If the Governments of the 1970s the 1980s and the 1990s had done those things we would not be talking about an energy crisis today and old people would not be worried about freezing in the dark this winter. 
Thanks to the Greens we have the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act an energy efficiency strategy and renewables targets yet the amount that the Government is putting into efficiency and conservation is miniscule—less than 1 percent of the cost of Project Aqua alone and little more than the $7 million largely wasted by the industry governance board led by David Caygill. New Zealand had the opportunity to lead the world yet the answers given in this House at times seem to be that we should dam all the rivers pollute the skies and sacrifice our biosecurity—do anything but turn out the light when one leaves the room. Do people seriously advocate a future in which our precious energy resources continue to be wasted and we build ever more power stations to feed that culture of waste? 
Our children deserve a better legacy than that miserable “business as usual” approach. To borrow a quote from  
The Six Million Dollar Man 
 30 years ago “we have the parts we have the technology” and we can rebuild an energy-efficient sustainable economy. What we have lacked for three decades is the political will to do so. As Labour said in 1972 at around the time that the Maui contracts were signed it is time for a change. That change must be that the Government stops trying to fly on one wing. Instead of excluding demand-side management it must give that more weight than supply-side measures. In fact demand-side management provides both the insurance policy that the Government needs and the means to reduce the possibility of ever needing to make an insurance claim. If Labour will not adopt what 30 years’ experience tells us is the only common-sense solution to this ongoing crisis then it is indeed time for a change. 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 It would be remiss of me to begin without taking a moment to congratulate the Minister of Energy on at long last taking some action on the very urgent problems that face this country in relation to electricity. For some years now we have had an unregulated electricity market and we had piously hoped that an invisible hand would be there to prevent this kind of situation from arising. As Peter Brown pointed out one cannot have a self-governing market that is at one and the same time a competitive market. I am therefore very very pleased that we will at last have a visible hand: somebody who will actually be in charge of this extremely important sector. I therefore congratulate the Minister on the announcement that the Electricity Commission will be established. 
I also believe that the Minister and the Government are right in putting before the people of New Zealand a soundly based and well-thought-through scheme to put aside reserve electricity generation capacity for those years when the rain does not fall and we have extremely dry conditions. It is all very well to criticise that action but we need to come up with a solution by way of an alternative. I think the suggestion that has been put forward by the Government is a sensible one. It is compatible too with the free-market nature of the industry. I think people have thought simplistically that there is only one side to the issue—that we will just build new reserve capacity take it out of the market and set it to one side so that it will be there when required. That is partly valid—it is exactly what the Americans for example have done in relation to their strategic oil reserves. But in fact the issue is far more complex than that. Rod Donald mentioned the demand side and that will also feature in this scheme because as I understand it New Zealanders are being asked to buy an insurance premium to set aside reserve generating capacity. I think that is a very very sensible thing to do. 
However I want to say immediately that my vision of the future of this country is very different from that of the previous speaker Rod Donald of the Green Party. I believe that this country’s social and economic future is heavily dependent on our being able to continue to provide efficient low-cost and reliable energy not only to our households but also to our industries. Every facet of our life—be it cellphones computers or whatever—is dependent on electricity. We simply need the stuff to keep our society functioning and our economy growing. For example we need $3 billion of new investment in the wood processing industry and we cannot process that wood here without a reliable source of energy through electricity. It is therefore a real concern to me—as I know it is to every New Zealander—that we are in this unfortunate crisis right now. 
We can sit here and apportion blame for the crisis and in the eyes of New Zealanders blame will rest first with the Government. New Zealanders do elect Governments to foresee such problems and to solve them in advance yet that clearly has not happened here. Some of course will then point the bone—as happened today—at Genesis Energy and say it should have had its stockpile of coal in place so that we did not have to import the jolly stuff. I am sure that Genesis Energy will point the bone at Solid Energy and say it would not give Genesis Energy the coal at the price it wanted to pay. Putting all that aside the bottom line is that New Zealanders are angry and upset. They are asking how on earth we have got into this situation. 
In every crisis there is a bit of a silver lining to the cloud and in this case the crisis has made people focus on some issues that we have been ignoring. One of them is the reserve electricity generation that we have already mentioned and I am pleased that action has been taken about that. The other thing is just to ask ourselves some big-picture questions. One of those big-picture questions must surely be why it is that in a nation with many lakes and rivers and much hydro capacity we have not for many years been building new hydro schemes. That has not applied just under this present Government; it also extends back to the previous National-led Government and probably to the Government before that. We have put in place a whole lot of self-imposed rules to stop hydro schemes from being developed. 
People have gone to the Department of Conservation with hydro scheme proposals around the Rotorua lakes the Mohaka River the Motu River the Raukokere River the Karamea River the Ngakawau River the Arnold River and the Beaumont area on the Clutha River in Central Otago. Those people have all basically said they had a good scheme that should be allowed to go ahead because it would have fantastic environmental outcomes. They have been consistently told they could not go ahead because the schemes involved the conservation estate. Some people tell me that as many as 38 potential schemes have not gone ahead because of the way in which the Conservation Act has been set up. We need to understand what has caused that problem because it is a systemic problem that has cost this country dearly. 
Instead of taking advantage of the natural resource that we have in hydro electricity we have foolishly put a barrier in the way so that we cannot use our own water. The simple problem is this: under the Conservation Act the Minister of Conservation is set up to be an advocate for conservation values. That is a well-thought-through proper function for a Minister of the Crown to have. Like every other New Zealander I appreciate the wonderful environment that this country has and I do not want to see our conservation estate damaged either. But if the Minister is an advocate we have to ask ourselves whom he advocates to. Normally the function of an advocate is to put a case to a judge who will look at the facts on both sides of an argument and come up with an adjudication that is in the interests of the nation. That is what is lacking under our present system. 
We have no ability to take hydro scheme proposals to an independent judge—be it the Environment Court or a specially appointed arbitrator; it does not matter which it is. We are not able to take those proposals forward and argue through on the one hand the conservation values and on the other hand the need of this nation for efficient low-cost renewable and sustainable electricity. We desperately need to make the very most of this country’s comparative competitive advantages and electricity could and should be one of those for New Zealand. We really have only ourselves to blame for being in this situation. We have to get that right. United Future is therefore calling upon the Government to urgently undertake a review of the Conservation Act and to address the problem to which I am alluding. 
In many of these situations we can have genuine win-win situations. Yes we can have a hydro dam and we can also have a lake that is good for recreation. We can put an island in the lake and make it a sanctuary for birdlife. We can make sure that we put other pieces of land into the conservation estate to compensate for any loss of forests and so on and so forth. That is not really rocket science. 
The other thing that we need to recognise—and I asked the Minister a question about this today but I am not sure that he understood the question—is that the Electricity Commission should also be charged with the task of minimising dry-risk conditions. I believe that that should be one of its basic terms of reference because there are ways of doing that. First of all we have already been told in this House that the forecast is for more rain on the western than on the eastern side of the main divide in the South Island. One therefore does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that we need to develop more hydro capacity on the west which could offset the occurrence of a dry year when it kicks in. The second thing that we are overlooking is wind. New Zealand has enormous wind capacity. Some people estimate that we could have many many thousands of megawatts of wind generation in this country. I heard my colleague Peter Brown talk about visual pollution from windmills—well heck there are plenty of places where we could build them where we would not even see the jolly things. Wind is a free sustainable and renewable energy source. In my view we should have hydro and wind generation at the top of the pile. 
I am not opposed to burning coal to make electricity but it is a non-renewable fuel. It emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and it could well be more expensive than wind or hydro. So what about some common sense and logic? We could have a national goal of saying that we want renewable sustainable low-cost electricity for the future of this nation and all parties of this Parliament could collectively focus on coming up with some answers. I think that would be the only thing that would now mitigate the anger that New Zealanders feel about this matter. 
GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam) 
: 
 Today’s announcements by the Government are nothing more than spin and offer absolutely no solution. Not one person in this country will be spared power cuts if they are needed later this winter as a result of this announcement and not one community will be spared hot water cuts if they are needed later this winter as a result of this announcement. But what we can be certain of is that the coffers of the Government will swell in the next 12 months by some $200 million levied against those shivering consumers. 
It is amazing that we have just broken the Budget debate to talk about this new announcement. The Budget was hailed not only as a somewhat bland document but also as one that did not introduce any new taxes for New Zealanders. Well what have we had in this House in the last couple of weeks? The first thing we had was the sherry tax—the tax levied on those elderly New Zealanders who like to have a glass of sherry in the evenings. That was levied by Helen Clark and her Government against those people. Today we have another $200 million tax levied against consumers of electricity simply so that the Government can hold its head up and say: “How clever we are! We’ve come up with some solution to this 1-in-60-years crisis.” Taxing people for future electricity needs is not an answer. 
Today in the House the Minister of Energy stood up and said that some 1400 megawatts of new generation would come on stream during his time as Minister. If that is the case I think it begs the question: under what conditions were the investment decisions made for those 1400 megawatts of generation to be commissioned? The reality is that those decisions were made in the current environment without any suggestion that there might be some other Government body that would subsidise such investment in the future. 
It seems just incredible to me that the Minister can say that the Government has all these proposals and expects them to come on stream over the next few years but that it needs a bit extra so it is going to make New Zealanders pay over the odds for that extra bit of generation. If in fact we need more generation and if companies have in the current environment committed themselves to it why do we need this new bureaucracy? Why do we need this new tax? Well I think it is just a precursor to a whole range of changes coming into the electricity industry. I think today’s announcements when they are fully published will show in the detail the devil of this decision. It seems to me unrealistic to suggest that a Government can set up a bureaucracy—this new commission for electrical energy—and expect that body somehow to solve all the problems that exist in very unusual circumstances. All that that body can do is tax. That is the power that this authority is given today. 
I am thinking about why no new generation to speak of has come on stream in New Zealand in the last few years. Between 1996 and 1999 some 1250 megawatts of new generation were put in place but since the year 2000 only 166 megawatts of new generation have come on stream and more than 105 of those were from the second tail race at Manapouri which was begun under the previous Government. So we have had massive under-investment in generating capacity at a time when our economy has been growing strongly and the population of the country has been expanding. Who is to blame for that? Well the blame lies squarely with the Government and the policies of the day that have prevented that investment. 
Those policies include allowing the Resource Management Act to become so cumbersome that it now takes years and years and millions of dollars for anyone to get a new generation proposal off the ground. They also include the Conservation Act and the discretion it gives to Ministers who would far rather protect patches of scrubby gorse than allow a development that might make some parts of the country more self-sufficient in hydro-electricity. They have also to do with the commitment this very bad Labour Government has made to the Kyoto Protocol. New Zealand has 1000 years of current energy requirements stored in the ground as coal yet can it be used? It can but only if people are prepared to pay somewhere between $52 and $80 per tonne in Kyoto Protocol tax on top of the cost of extraction and sale. Effectively that commitment doubled the cost of one of New Zealand’s few natural resources. Members can sit there shaking their heads. I would too. Clearly they are incredulous that their Minister could be so stupid as to so quickly sign us up to something that our near neighbours our trading partners—Australia the United States and others—have yet to commit to. 
It is also about the lack of gas supply in this country. We have a dreadful situation looming in 2004. If people think we have problems with hydro storage now they should wait until about this time next year when there will be a real scramble for the remaining Maui gas. It is evident that there is no large gasfield coming on stream before 2006 or 2007 so there will be a period when there is quite considerable constraint on the ability of generators to rely on gas supply and that points to another crisis within perhaps 12 months. These decisions today will make no difference to that whatsoever. 
It is also a little bit concerning that despite the assurances of Helen Clark the Waitangi Tribunal is now taking a rather unhealthy interest in the gas and oil reserves that this country may have. It simply begs the question: if we are already running short of supply in those areas because over a period of years there has not been the sort of exploration that there should have been why would any private company come here to make substantial investments when it would not know what the ultimate cost of extraction would be because it might have to pay some sort of levy or royalty through the decisions of the Waitangi Tribunal? We cannot trust Helen Clark when she says it is not going to happen because she is the same Prime Minister who said there would be no new taxes and who in the last 2 weeks has had us here in the House inflicting new taxes on New Zealanders. 
The way forward for New Zealand is quite clear. There needs to be a commitment to shorten the process of getting resource consent for these projects. Where a national interest like this is involved there is a need for people to be able to go directly to the Environment Court—not in any way to get away from their environmental responsibilities but simply to get a defining hearing much much sooner than would normally be expected. There is also a need to recognise that with so much coal in the ground and with the capacity these days to burn that coal cleanly with emission levels way below World Health Organization standards perhaps it is time for us to say that maybe the Kyoto Protocol is not such a good idea for New Zealand. There is also a need to encourage much more gas and oil exploration in our potential offshore and onshore fields. 
I am disappointed by the Government’s response today. This is a tax grab. It is a headline. It is nothing but spin. New Zealand consumers are going to pay $200 million a year year after year for reserve capacity that will not be in place any sooner than 2007 or 2008 if ever. Then according to the Minister’s own press release these reserves will be withheld from the market until those dry years when they will be released into the market at a higher price. So New Zealanders are being asked to pay twice and anyone who thinks that is a good idea does not deserve a place in this House. New Zealanders can be well disappointed with the way the Government has handled this crisis. It was evident from all the signals last December and January that we were heading for this. The Government did nothing and it has done nothing today. 
Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 The good thing about this debate is that it has now flushed out two “cold shower” parties. The National Party and the ACT party are in a grand “Cold Shower Coalition”. From that supposed spokesperson on energy for the National Party we heard that the way to fix the problem is to fix the Resource Management Act. That was the simple answer. Well let us have a think about this. Which party introduced the Resource Management Act? 
Jill Pettis 
: Ah I think it was National. 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: It was the National Party. That is right. That is indeed right. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Just before the Minister gets too carried away he should realise that the Resource Management Act was the brainchild of Sir Geoffrey Palmer. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: That is a debating issue. 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: It was jointly supported by the National Party and passed under the National Party. That was the point I was about to make. 
The second thing the member forgot to mention on his way through his ramble was that 1300 megawatts of new generation have received resource consent since 2000. That is true. There has been an extra 1300 megawatts since the year 2000 and the reason that they have not come on stream— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: We do these things in a timely fashion and it is timely for me to seek leave of the House to table a parliamentary question answered by the Minister of Energy telling me that fewer than 500 megawatts of new generation have been consented to since the year 2000. 
Document not tabled. 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: The point of the matter is that the member said that if we fix the Resource Management Act everything will be all right; if we fix the Act we will fix this problem. 
One of the galling things for people on the Government side of the House is to be lectured about electricity by National Party members. What an outrage! It is absolutely unbelievable. Let us talk about Max Bradford. Shall we talk about Max Bradford? He was conveniently forgotten when the previous speaker wandered through his musings. What did Max Bradford do? He threw the entire industry into the air and created chaos and confusion. He split lines companies and power companies and forced their sale. He privatised Contact Energy then decided he would pray at the altar of the free market. He said that if all of that were done power prices would come down. Well one did not have to be an economist an engineer or a rocket scientist to work out that power prices went up. What should have come down went up and what was up and should have come down went the other way. It is absolutely outrageous. 
Then of course we had the ACT party—another “cold shower” party. What was the policy of Ken Shirley from the ACT party? There was no policy actually. As the Minister of Energy said if we were to look for the policy response from the ACT party we would find there is nothing there. It is just a hollow shadow. I suppose that when push comes to shove and ACT members have to try to provide an answer it is the market—the market will solve the problem. We have heard some absolute gems from a number of people in the ACT party. We have had Mr Prebble himself saying that if we were to have more market it would solve the problem. This is a direct quote from Mr Prebble: “This regulation will remove the possibility of a market solution while distorting the energy sector further. What is wrong with the energy sector is that there is not enough market.” That is what Mr Prebble said but he forgot to mention that the fact of the matter is the market has failed. The Government gave the energy sector a couple of years to sort itself out because that sector had told it not to worry about regulating it—it would fix the problem. But it has not. Mr Peter Brown is absolutely right when he says that we cannot have a proper organised electricity supply when big generators with confused interests are competing against each other. The problem is that there has been too much market. 
If we ask the New Zealand public whether they would rather have cold showers and a market solution or hot showers under the arrangements that have been announced by the Government today we will learn that the vast majority of people in New Zealand tonight welcome what the Government has done and are saying that finally it has fixed the problem. Those arrangements will cost roughly 80c a week and are not a tax but an insurance policy. That is what people want—they want an insurance policy—and if we are to have an insurance policy for the dry year we have to pay an insurance premium of the order of 80c per week to have security of supply. 
Let us go through some of the provisions because maybe a lot of people have not actually heard them. Listening to some of the speeches that have been made today it is clear to me that a number of people on the Opposition benches have not even bothered to read the statement or the speech. Instead they had a conversation with their keyboards about a week ago and banged out a response to what the Government is doing. There are some really key elements of this initiative that I want to outline. 
The first is that the new Electricity Commission will be established independent of the industry and charged with maintaining security of supply to a 1-in-60 dry-year risk level without public conservation campaigns. This was the point that Gordon Copeland raised. It is precisely one of the terms of reference that the commission will have. It says to the industry that we need some insurance that we need to have it sorted out and resolved that we are not going to rely on the market to deliver it and that we have to have an independent group that determines it and brings it on stream. How will it do that? It will do that by contracting with generators for reserve generation and fuel for use in very dry years. It will mean some planning. One of the things that is appalling about this situation is that there has been a lack of planning. 
The reserve generation—in answer to a couple of comments from the Leader of the Opposition who will not be there for long; one can see that when he makes a speech on energy—will be ring-fenced from the market to ensure that enough ordinary new generation will continue to be built. So the reserve generation is ring-fenced away from the normal generation increases to ensure it is there only in reserve. As I have said the additional cost of the reserve generation overall will be less than half a cent a unit—around 80c a week—and spot price volatility in dry years will be significantly reduced. Some of the manufacturers and the big companies have been coming to us to say that with the market arrangement they have had difficulty in trying to plan and difficulty in trying to get hedge contracts. How can they plan? Electricity spot prices are moving up and down to the point where they cannot plan. 
It is fair to say that the National and ACT parties have no solution. They do not know what they are doing. They are the “cold shower” parties. The public will see today that finally we have a solution. It is to provide reserve capacity and to make sure not only that companies have energy to be able to deliver the growth we need in New Zealand but that ordinary New Zealanders are able to have the lifestyle they have become accustomed to. The public of New Zealand will congratulate the Government on the initiatives it has announced today. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed. 
Budget Debate 
Debate resumed from 15 May on the Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill. 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 When Dr Cullen delivered his 2003 Budget last week he was obviously proud of its modesty and conservatism and unashamed of the fact that he is boasting of a $4 billion surplus and giving millions of dollars to rich men’s yacht races while a third of our country’s children continue to live in poverty.When people like business owners and farmers have a decent surplus that is the time that they are most likely to invest in future production whether it is to improve the fertility of the soil or the stock to expand productivity or to do any number of a range of useful things. People like Dr Cullen would I am sure commend such farmers and business people on their fiscal wisdom in following such strategies. However when we have a directly analogous situation with a large Government surplus what does the Minister do? 
Rather than investing in that part of society that has the greatest need and from which our highest social judicial economic and educational costs derive Labour has seen fit to put off—possibly indefinitely—any real or substantial increase in support for low-income families and children. As Susan St John from the Child Poverty Action Group said in the group’s post-Budget briefing last Friday: “The poorest children in New Zealand—around 300000 of them—do not even get a crumb not even a lick of the ice cream because their parents’ incomes are below these thresholds.” She was referring to the fact that although Dr Cullen increased the thresholds for the abatement of family support that action had no impact at all on the many families who live below the threshold level already. While giving an increase of $34.5 million over 4 years to raise income thresholds for family support the child tax credit and the parental tax credit the actual effect of that increase will be to lift the threshold by less than $500. The movement on thresholds simply equates to forecast inflation for this year and does nothing to address the underlying issue that there have been no inflation adjustments since their inception. 
 As all of us are aware from briefing papers from the Ministry of Social Development to the incoming Government in late 2002 even after one term of a Labour Government 30 percent of New Zealand children are still living in poverty. Research done by the ministry itself and by others also continues to show strong links between poverty and all sorts of other negative outcomes and the effects of poverty continue to cost the New Zealand taxpayer immeasurable amounts each year. It is foolish to save money now for a retirement fund when we will be paying for it later with to name just a few: an ongoing high number of people on the unemployment benefit and all the other benefits that mask unemployment; continuing high rates of truancy now probably caused in many cases by the housing transience that so many poor families suffer; high criminal offending rates; lower productivity due to shortages of skilled and educated workers; and increased hospitalisation of children. Children from the 20 percent of homes in which families bring in the lowest incomes of all are three times more likely to be sick than those from the top 20 percent of homes. 
In the past New Zealand has seen itself as a country that looks after its children. However in recent studies New Zealand falls well below other countries in the provision of financial assistance to families. Even the UK after years of Thatcherism retains to this day a universal child benefit paid at a reasonably high level regardless of family income and the source of that family income. The assistance offered to families by our neighbour Australia also remains more generous than ours with a maximum tax credit of NZ$66 a week for every child under 13 years abating from NZ$32000 up to NZ$83000 when it goes to zero. New Zealand rates are currently $47 a week with abatement starting at $20000. 
In one recent UK study New Zealand was ranked 17th out of 22 countries looked at in terms of Government assistance to children. This is a disgrace and the Green Party believes that there are a number of things this Budget should have contained if this Government really had a serious commitment to ending child poverty and to reducing entrenched social and economic inequities in our country. 
First of all the child tax credit should be extended to all families including beneficiaries. This would cost around $250 million—6 percent of the Budget surplus. Secondly the Green Party would like to see an increased level of family support to reflect actual changes in the cost of living since it was first introduced in 1988. Further the level of the parental income threshold should be raised to reflect the cost of living increases since the payments were introduced and not just that for this year’s cost of living. 
Thirdly we believe that this Budget in a year of surplus should have introduced a universal child benefit. New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world that continues to have targeted rather than universal financial support for children. The Green Party went into last year’s election campaigning for the immediate introduction of a universal child benefit like the old family benefit at a very modest rate of $15 a week for the first child and $10 a week for second and subsequent children. We estimate that this would cost approximately $600 million a year to implement or 15 percent of Dr Cullen’s surplus. To take a quick look at an historical comparison the New Zealand family benefit became fully universal in 1946 and was paid then at a rate of 10/- a week per child. That was equivalent to 1 day’s pay for a labourer. Today on minimum wages that would equate to $61.60 a week per child which makes what the Green Party is asking for look very restrained indeed. After all research shows that a couple with four children need 69 percent more income to have the same standard living as they would without children. Do we want a society without children? 
This Labour Government should be acting now while it can to meet the desperate needs of families with children today especially those who are struggling the hardest no matter what their source of income. Labour should not go on leaving the children of those who have carried the can for the policies of Roger Douglas Ruth Richardson Jim Bolger Jenny Shipley and the rest to go on paying an unimaginable price while the rest of us are able to get on with our lives. 
In saying all of this however I would like to be fair and acknowledge the Labour Government for some of the better initiatives contained in this Budget including for example moves to cut doctors fees for under-18-year-olds accessing primary care organisations; the $55 million over 4 years for early childhood education; the extension of the community internship programme which was originally a Green Party Budget initiative; the commitment to meeting the goals of the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs for 15 to 19-year-olds by the year 2007; increased subsidised childcare hours from 37 to 50 hours per week for low-income parents taking up full-time work; and the building of a somewhat inadequate but welcome additional 318 State houses over 4 years. These are all good measures. 
But even looking at housing the Green Party believes that Dr Cullen and his Government should have considered doing substantially more than is on offer in this Budget. Housing continues to be a crisis issue for families in places like the Auckland region Northland and an increasing number of other localities like the top of the South Island and Dunedin. I was at first delighted to see the $43 million in capital and $26.7 million in operating costs allocated by Dr Cullen for what he called in his Budget presentation third-sector housing. However I was really disappointed subsequent to that to discover that in fact it is the Government’s intention to put most if not all of this extra funding into local Government housing rather than into genuine community housing projects. Ever since arriving in Parliament I have been pressing the Government to engage more constructively and creatively and on a larger scale with third-sector housing providers and it is sad indeed that Labour continues to prefer to put what resources it has into local councils which may simply do another John Banks and sell their social housing off when there is a change of ideology at the top. Genuine third-sector projects have the potential to build homes for families in desperate need right now in places like Auckland and the Hokianga. If nothing else I hope that what crumbs remain from local government’s table will be offered to existing competent third-sector providers now. 
In conclusion I will give a quick quote from Dr Gay Keating Director of the Public Health Association who summarises exactly how I feel about this Budget: “A failure to use this Budget to break the cycles of disadvantage will cost this country in the future through increased health and social welfare costs. What may appear prudent in 2003 may turn out to be an expensive mistake in 10 years.” I sincerely hope that Dr Cullen and Steve Maharey will come good on their oft-repeated promises to provide substantial relief for low-income families in the 2004 Budget but I have to say that the children of the disenfranchised and the disempowered victims of Rogernomics and “Ruthanasia” have waited already for far too long. 
MARTIN GALLAGHER (NZ Labour—Hamilton West) 
: 
 It is a huge pleasure to rise to speak in this Budget debate and to say how really proud I am to be part of this Government. Indeed we have seen the foundations that have been laid over the last three Budgets bedded in. This Budget is about staying on course and maintaining our strong positions in times of significant international uncertainty. It is a Budget for all New Zealanders it is a Budget for my region the Waikato which I proudly represent and it is a Budget for towns like Balclutha—a town which as we are well aware the Leader of the Opposition attempts to represent but his opponent Lesley Soper won both the party vote and the candidate vote in that area. Bill English does not represent even Balclutha and neither does his party. Those members opposite still do not represent Balclutha even given the figures in the latest poll which give them some little glimmer of hope by going all the way up to the huge figure of 28 percent. 
I want to talk a little about this Budget in terms of the Waikato. Under this Government my city has chalked up some significant achievements. We are the home of a significant tertiary education sector. Education is very important for our city. Research is very important and it is said that up to a quarter of New Zealand scientists are domiciled in the central Waikato and Hamilton area. I am very proud that under the leadership of Jim Anderton the relevant Minister we are now getting our Waikato Innovation Park under way. The Prime Minister recently came to turn the first spade of soil for the park. That is a great achievement for our region thanks very much to the assistance that this Government has given. I also take this opportunity to pay tribute to my colleague the member of Parliament for Hamilton East Dianne Yates for her excellent work along with the local people the Business2Hamilton organisation and other people in the Hamilton area who have got the Waikato Innovation Park off the ground. 
 In health Waikato Hospital under this Government is continuing to be a significant tertiary teaching hospital in terms of its excellent partnership with educational institutions—notably the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and Waikato’s Institute of Rural Health. We will be opening a much-needed neurosurgery unit which will cater for the mid – North Island. Just the other week it was with much pleasure and pride that I on behalf of the Minister of Transport Paul Swain opened the next section of the Waikato expressway immediately north of Huntly through to Rangiriri. I can say as a local member that much more work needs to be done. But this Government unlike the Opposition does not just talk about roading; in this Budget round it is spending $1.1 billion on roading. The latest addition to the expressway project is evidence that we are making progress. I also note that education is obviously very significant for Hamilton. We are in our own right as a city a very major provider of tertiary education services. We also have some very significant and well-run secondary schools primary schools and pre-schools. 
I want to talk a little about the Gateway programme initiative—a partnership between secondary schools the business community and the wider community in providing jobs and opportunities to assist young people in their transition from school into work and skilled occupations. I would give a gold-star award to Mr Jennings and his team on the Gateway project at Fraser High School Hamilton and say how delighted I am that two more schools—Fairfield College and Melville High School—will be in that project by 2007. Nationally the Gateway programme will progressively become available to all 1 to 5 decile schools by 2007. It is expected that most will take the opportunity to put senior students into workplaces. For members who are not fully familiar with Gateway the programme prepares young people for the world of work while they are still at school. Senior secondary students get to start work-based qualifications and they learn the disciplines of work. Indeed the current Gateway project in Hamilton has been very very successful. 
The package we have rolled out also expands the popular Modern Apprenticeships scheme which has been a great success in my city. At the end of March there were 240 Modern Apprenticeships in Hamilton and nationally there were over 5000. The number of Modern Apprenticeships across the country will increase by nearly 50 percent to about 7500 places a year by 2006. I commend the leadership of people like Steve Maharey. I also acknowledge the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs and the very positive leadership role being played by local government. The Government’s objective by 2007—and what I want to see and what many people in this country want to see—is that all 15 to 19-year-olds will be engaged in appropriate education training work or other options that will lead to long-term economic independence and well-being. 
I particularly welcome the youth training package because it specifically targets those young people who do not go on to university or polytech and enables them to learn the skills necessary for today’s workforce. I certainly hope that one of the cries that Dianne Yates Nanaia Mahuta and I have received from industry in Hamilton is noted. It is very very important that school careers advisers really make young people aware of the options in the trades and the various opportunities in industry. Indeed to go to university or to polytech important as that is is not necessarily the only way forward in terms of post-secondary school education and opportunity for our young people. I strongly commend industry and business in Hamilton for doing their bit in this area. 
One of the issues I want to pick up on relates to superannuation. I am delighted that as a consequence of the Government’s strong fiscal position we have been able to move to the full contribution rate for the New Zealand Superannuation Fund this year contributing nearly $1.9 billion. It is pretty obvious and is so basic—but unfortunately members of the Opposition do not seem fully to appreciate the fact and even our grandmas can tell us this—that unless we put the money in now future Governments will not have the resources required to ensure certainty and security in retirement. That is a very very significant benchmark of difference between this party and the Opposition parties in this House. I am delighted that this Government is putting money away for future generations. 
There are lots and lots of good things in this Budget— 
Rodney Hide 
: Name one. 
MARTIN GALLAGHER 
:—and as I go around my electorate the reaction is positive. I tell the member that the public’s response to this Budget shows this Government’s polling rate is 50 percent and the rating of the Opposition party that that member represents is hovering at 4 to 6 percent—if he is lucky. I think that is testament enough that this Government has the support. Even the Opposition leader cannot even take Balclutha. Who is the member for Balclutha? It is not Bill English but Lesley Soper the Labour candidate. She won Balclutha in the heart of Bill English’s electorate. That is the degree of traction the degree of support that Opposition parties are getting in this country. They should learn the lessons of this Budget which is a good Budget. They well know when they talk around the country the excellent reception this Budget is getting. 
We are on course. We are tracking steadily. These are uncertain times but we are not going to the mad rightward lurches that would happen if say Mr Brash were either the finance Minister or maybe by the next election the leader of the major Opposition party—I will not say main Opposition party because even the Rt Hon Winston Peters can do much better than Bill English in the preferred Prime Minister rating. I say: “Watch out Bill English because Don Brash is only two points behind you.” That is not much consolation because Bill English is on 7 percent and Don Brash is on 5 percent. 
RODNEY HIDE (ACT NZ) 
: 
 This Labour Government with this Budget has forgotten all about New Zealanders—New Zealanders who work New Zealanders who earn a living— 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: You don’t know anyone. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Judith Tizard calls out that she does not know any and from hearing her speak in this House I think that is true. Judith Tizard does not know anyone who works pays his or her way and pays the taxes that this Budget spends. This Budget is all about Government all about politicians all about their spending and all about their grandiose plans and is nothing about hard-working New Zealanders who are expected to pay for it. 
The ACT party has not forgotten about taxpayers and has not forgotten about voters. We have undertaken the first-ever electronic petition. In this box in front of me full to the top are the responses. They would shock Judith Tizard; and they would shock this Labour Government if it had any care for working New Zealanders. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: What was the petition for? 
RODNEY HIDE 
: The petition is for lower taxes because people want more money in their pockets not in the Government’s coffers. 
I shall read out some of the comments. The first says: “I wouldn’t mind paying the taxes imposed on us by the Government if only the things they spent it on reflected the difficulty I face in raising it.” Here is another comment for the interest of the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues: “All forms of taxation are far too high and act as a real disincentive to business growth and investment in our country.” Here is another one for this Government and Dr Cullen to consider: “Please give us hard-working overworked underpaid stressed employers a break.” Here is another: “I am extremely disappointed that no tax cuts were given to boost the economy and keep it humming.” Finally here is one response out of literally hundreds of responses: “Yes we’re overtaxed. Please do something about this. Our tax money is being spent on vote-gathering PC-type projects instead of building New Zealand’s economy and intellectual-based economy.” 
 In the last 10 years our economy averaged 3.6 percent growth a year and endured the Asian crisis and Helen Clark said at the time that the economy just marked time. If we pick up the Budget we see the Treasury forecast for the economy over the next 10 years is a woeful 2.6 percent average growth rate per year. That is a rate of 1 percent less growth than when the economy according to our Prime Minister was marking time and the policies were failures. We would not mind that sort of failure going ahead if that is the difference in response. 
Where is the money going? It is being frittered away as the petitioners in our survey say on PC projects and policies of reverse racism—policies that get measured not by results not by the help to the poor and downtrodden and not by where we will be in 10 years’ time but simply by how much hard-working taxpayers’ money is thrown at the problem. Civil servants have said to me that the difficulty they have is that they cannot spend the money this Government is throwing at them quickly enough. How is that money being spent? 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: Ha ha! 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Judith Tizard laughs because she thinks it is funny that taxpayers’ money gets spent in this way. Here is an example of how it is spent. I have a photograph of the Hon Dover Samuels with Hemana Waaka at a Labour Party party before the election. We have a photograph of them having a few drinks. Each of those drinks was paid for by the taxpayer; hard-working people paid for those drinks. Here is a photograph of a speaker at a function with the Hon John Tamihere and Hemana Waaka. Where did the money for that come from? It came from hard-working taxpayers whom the Labour Party once used to say it represented. A $10000 grant was given and $5400 of that was spent on a booze-up for the Labour Party for John Tamihere and for Dover Samuels during the election campaign. We understand now that not only was the Hemana Waaka - Maori Sportscasting International handout paying for that function but it was paying for Mr Tame Te Rangi to be flown around New Zealand and to Australia to watch sporting matches. There is nothing wrong with that but who was paying for it? It was the taxpayers of New Zealand. What was Mr Tame Te Rangi’s role in all of this? He was the man overseeing the money being paid to Maori Sportscasting International. We have a Minister of Maori Affairs and a Prime Minister who think that that is an everyday occurrence. Why? Because we have policies of reverse racism when money is thrown at Maori problems without care or concern. 
I want to read an answer that the Minister of Maori Affairs gave to a written question of mine: “I am advised by my officials that there have been no payments of cash by Maori Sportscasting International to any employees of Te Mangai Paho.” So he was saying that it was just Maori Sportscasting International that paid for Mr Tame Te Rangi to watch the game. Let me read an email released by Te Mangai Paho. It is from Hemana Waaka’s email address to Mr Tame Te Rangi and is dated 15 October 2001. Members should remember that this email is to a senior civil servant of this Government. The email concluded: “Your payment for services will be placed into account this day.” 
Opposition Member 
: Corruption! 
RODNEY HIDE 
: That is corruption and I understand the payment was put into his TAB account so it could not be traced. The email stated further: “Hiamoe will have with him on his arrival the petrol vouchers/cash/copies of commentators and instructions.” Mr Tame Te Rangi’s job is being the radio manager at Te Mangai Paho. This was his response in brief: “What is included in the ‘cash’ that Hiamoe will have?”. Oh they have gone silent now have they not? Then he said: “Thanks for the ‘advance’. I am surprised at the choice of words! When can I expect the balance?”. 
Minister Parekura Horomia has known about this issue since the beginning of February when I first raised it with him. What has he done? Nothing! What little energy he has he is expending on protecting thieves and liars because that is what has happened in this case. This Government is taking hard-earned taxpayers’ money bundling it up in the millions and sending it to every which way cause with no abandon. This is just one example amongst many of where that money is ending up. 
Do we see this issue addressed in the Budget? Do we see a care for hard-working families and for hard-working workers? Do we think that Michael Joseph Savage would tolerate this? Do we think that Norman Kirk would tolerate this? Did we ever think that any Government would tolerate this at any stage? Well we have one such Government. It is Helen Clark’s Government and this case is all OK because it is for “Maori”. I say that the policies of spend and waste and the policies of reverse racism should come to an immediate end. I do not know how members of this Government can get up in good conscience and speak on this Budget. We are against it. 
I seek the leave of the House to table in summary form the comments that we have received on our petition concerning this Budget and on the need for tax cuts for every worker in New Zealand. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There is. 
LYNNE PILLAY (NZ Labour—Waitakere) 
: 
 I am very proud of this Government’s achievements and I am very proud of this year’s Budget. This is a Budget that is forward-thinking. This is a Budget that builds on a series of initiatives in health education housing law and order and employment. This is a Budget that invests in our future and this is a Budget that delivers to New Zealanders. At 4.4 percent our growth rate is one of the highest in the OECD. However this year we as a nation have faced much turmoil and uncertainty such as the war in Iraq and the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic. The prediction is that growth will drop back to 2.2 percent next year then rebound to 3.2 percent the following year. It is still well above the OECD average. 
Let us look at this Budget and what it means for the people I represent—the people of Waitakere. In Waitakere there are waiting lists for State houses. Our Government’s restoration of income-related rents has made a State house an affordable place to live again. I ask members to compare that with the harsh market rents of the previous National Government. Sadly that Government’s agenda was about flogging off State houses at a shocking rate—13500 in the 1990s taking opportunities and housing away from those who most need it. 
 In this Budget the Government has committed to the purchase of another 318 State houses over and above the 2393 already planned. That is good for Waitakere and good for New Zealand. Waitakere is one of our country’s fastest-growing younger cities. It is innovative and vibrant. We are investing in our young people. We are boosting funding to great organisations like Youthline. We are investing big time in combating youth suicide and drug abuse. We are increasing funding for two specialist police teams to bust methamphetamine labs—$6.6 million to fight one of the biggest threats to the health well-being and safety of communities like Waitakere. I welcome in Waitakere the reinstatement of community constables in both Titirangi and Glen Eden. Cops in the street and on the beat! 
We are investing in families through the newly established Families Commission promoting positive parenting. Under this Budget parenting support family-violence programmes and improved community-based services will receive an additional $42.5 million. Young people need a good start in life. This is a Government that recognises that. The boost in early childhood funding will benefit our hard-working families both parents and children by a whopping extra $55 million over the next 4 years. Waitakere schools have been winners. Operational funding increases and boosts in teacher numbers will ease workload and staffing pressures. They will make our great Waitakere schools even greater. I commend this Government for its investment in the Gateway programme in schools. Waitakere has a number of schools already engaged in the Gateway programme. This is a real success story—a major success story—for our young people. By 2007 no less than nine secondary schools in Waitakere City will be part of that programme. 
It is great to be in Government. It is so fantastic to talk to our young people. We are MPs who get out and talk to the people in our electorates. That is why we win our seats. However it is fantastic to talk to our young people their parents and their teachers and to hear the results. Our kids are getting experience while at school. They are entering jobs that they know they like and know they want because they have been given the opportunity to learn about them and try them while they are at school. The same rate of success has been seen over and over in the Modern Apprenticeships scheme. There were so many botch-ups by the Opposition when it was in Government but scrapping the Apprenticeship Act had to be the worst. That ruthless silly silly action cost this country big time. We lost untold skills that we needed so much in our manufacturing industries and just as important so many of our young people lost their hopes and aspirations for their future. But we have fixed that. That hope has been restored. The Modern Apprenticeships scheme is growing and thriving. In Waitakere over a third of young people on that scheme are involved in the boat-building industry. I know that the $56 million package to get all 15 to 19-year-olds into education training and work and the $84 million over 4 years that is committed to the Industry Training Fund which our Government established will be celebrated by young people their parents teachers business and manufacturing in Waitakere. 
Our community is getting healthier. Waitakere is leading the charge with private health organisations. Two public health organisations serve most of our electorate. From 1 October they will be able to charge low fees to all patients under 18. That will be extended in the next year with the aim of 40 percent of the population receiving low-cost primary health care by the end of 2004. Beat that! This Government has spent more on health than ever before—20 percent of our funding. We are spending it wisely. We know that primary health care is an investment not a cost. Waitakere City is rich in its people and its myriad of cultures. To attend a citizenship ceremony in Waitakere City is a real buzz. It is always entertaining and always inclusive. We recognise the importance of all citizens having the ability to reach their full potential. 
I commend organisations in my electorate: tangata whenua Waitakere Multicultural Society the Waitakere Indian Association Pacific Forum  
Now 
 Waipareira Trust and many many more who work together to make sure that all our cultures feel welcomed and valued. I am pleased that we have committed over $20 million to assist migrants and refugees into settlement and employment. Those policies are paying off. I am heartened that Waitakere has played its part in beating unemployment. We are up there—down from 2792 in 2000 to 2226 in 2003. Those achievements do not happen by chance and they certainly do not trickle down. They happen because funding and policies were in place to make them happen. This is a Government with a good heart. This is a Budget that is smart responsible and forward thinking and so is this Government. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (NZ National) 
: 
 New Zealanders have the right to expect that a Government will put in place a framework and policies that will increase the chances of a prosperous lifestyle for them all. This Budget does nothing to give confidence in that regard—nothing at all. The previous speaker can recite her little speech in the way that she has and make things sound all rosy pie but the future is not rosy pie. Unless the Government can guarantee sustainable long-term growth for this country we will not be able to afford the kinds of things that New Zealanders have grown accustomed to having such as good access to decent health services a decent education system continuing employment prospects—job prospects—and good growth prospects that will encourage businesses to stay here and invest more money thereby providing more jobs and wealth creation. This Budget does nothing for any of those prospects. And the pity about it is that this Government continually boasts about what it is doing for Maori when in fact the reality is the reverse of that. 
As far as Maori are concerned this Budget fails to deliver. In contrast to the 2000 Budget when this Government rolled out the red carpet—so to speak—with all the ribbons and bells on closing the gaps for Maori the 2003 Budget carefully avoids any particular focus on Maori. Of course there is a reason for that. Clearly Labour is looking to send a message to its core voters and to address growing public anxiety over its handling of Maori issues. If members look through Dr Cullen’s Budget delivery this year they will be lucky to find the word Maori mentioned more than three times. Maori will probably not be impressed by this Budget but even more than that the Maori electorate MPs who sit on the Government side of the House will be even less impressed by this Budget. 
None of the initiatives announced in this no-growth Budget will necessarily improve the lives long term of ordinary Maori families who are struggling to live their daily lives. My bet is that not even the Government’s own Maori electorate MPs are impressed by that. Why is that? It is because over the last 3 years those MPs have had to sit and watch while millions of dollars went into the mainstream only to be soaked up by the bureaucracy and with the benefits to Maori being impossible to assess because Ministers and chief executives refused to be audited. 
Edwin Perry 
: That’s right! 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: Absolutely that is right! I can tell from the body language of the Maori MPs on the Government side of the House that they will be absolutely disappointed and probably angry that the millions of dollars that went out in the closing the gaps programme particularly to mainstream agencies have been soaked up mostly by the bureaucracy and that nobody is able to tell us what the value of that has been for Maori . 
Adding to the frustration of the Maori electorate MPs is that while they have seen an allocation in Vote Maori Affairs each year for Te Puni Kokiri to play the sheriff and to try to pin the big agencies and their chief executives down in the vote this year they have also seen other parts of the vote like policy development and brokerage and facilitation—true development activities—lose some of their allocation. The part of the vote that does have an increase is in the area of State-sector performance. In other words there will be more money for Te Puni Kokiri to act out the farce of playing the sheriff to big-spending agencies that refuse to be tied down. 
That was confirmed recently by the release of official information papers that basically showed that the task of monitoring the big agencies is beyond Te Puni Kokiri. In my view it should not have that role anyway. If the Government is serious about closing the gaps while continuing to dole out money to big agencies like social welfare and others then the monitoring of those agencies should perhaps come from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. It should not be left to Te Puni Kokiri which has great difficulty in trying to pin those chief executives down. It has recently been confirmed that although millions of dollars have been sucked up by those agencies the value of that for Maori cannot be assessed. That is an unsatisfactory state of affairs. If we were to take the Government seriously—and it is actually time that Maori did start to take the Government seriously—then one has to ask why it has allowed that situation to happen with all that money going out and nobody but nobody being able to assess its effectiveness. It is an absolute waste of taxpayers’ funds and this Government ought to be ashamed of itself. 
I want to make some comments about the treaty claims process. The Government has made much of its $6.5 million in new funding for a treaty information programme. There is no doubt that there will be agencies and members of the public out there who may appreciate that. But what New Zealanders want most of all—Maori included—is to have the historical grievances concluded and put behind us. If members look at the Budget for this year and look at the appropriations in Vote Courts for the Waitangi Tribunal they will see that there is absolutely no new funding for it. There is no boost of funding for the Waitangi Tribunal which is actually the key to having settlements concluded. It is time that this Government learnt that no matter how eagerly Maori might want to conclude a settlement the thing they want most is to have their day in court and to be able to go to negotiations armed with findings and recommendations from the Waitangi Tribunal. If members look at the Budget they will see that there is nothing in there to enable the Waitangi Tribunal to gear up its activities in that area. 
The Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations has set a 2-year time frame for the reaching of an agreement between the Government and the 100-plus claims involving the central North Island forestry and there is an expectation that the tribunal will move in tandem with that negotiations process. I ask the Minister to explain how the tribunal is to do that and at the same time to continue with the work that it is currently doing and has been doing in the past. My bet is that in the 48 hours following the release of the Budget tribunal officials and executives probably had to huddle themselves away and work out what they will have to put on the back burner in terms of hearing days doing research writing reports and making recommendations. They would have had to cut back on their forward schedule in order to accommodate the Minister’s time frame of 2 years for those 100-plus claims. That shows the Minister’s ignorance about the value that Maori place on having their claims go through the Waitangi Tribunal. 
On the face of it $6.5 million for a treaty information programme looks worthwhile. I understand that there is an intention that there will be the publication of treaty booklets and pamphlets already in circulation but there will also be a lot more seminars and workshops on increasing the understanding of the treaty. That will not necessarily benefit the New Zealand public. I guess we could take from it that there is a lot of money in there for some consultants—increasing the gravy train—but no money whatsoever to allow the key organisation the tribunal to increase its core activities. That is a total failure on the part of this Government. This is a Budget that the Maori members on the Government side of the House will probably want to hang their heads in shame about—and so they should. If they are to make their representation of their electorates mean anything then they should make the Government deliver in a much better way than it has been delivering in the past 3 years. This Budget does not do that. 
Sitting suspended from 5.58 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (NZ Labour—Napier) 
: 
 Uncertainty swirls around us. It is time for the sound management of the economy. The Budget delivered by the Hon Dr Michael Cullen delivers just that prescription. It is a prescription for certainty and for confidence. Internationally we have war terrorism and disease and the global economy is not performing well. Those concerns affect everybody in my electorate of Napier. I know that because every weekend I doorknock. I know what my electorate is saying so I know the sort of Budget it wants. It has the very Budget it had hoped for. This is also the Budget that the editorial writer in  
Hawke’s Bay Today 
 wanted when writing on the eve of the Budget. I quote: “Good times have given the Government the luxury of being able to press ahead with its social charter—that is after all what it was elected to do.” What is that social charter? It is concerned with equity among people in health and in education and with strength from diversity—diversity of people and of lifestyles. 
But no the anticipation of that writer that there would be a big spend-up was not fulfilled because there is drought across the country. That affects our Hawke’s Bay economy. Unpredictable frosts and frost patterns affect our wine producers. Returns to dairy farmers are affected by falling milk prices and a rise in the value of the New Zealand dollar. We have a power crisis created by a second very dry winter. That crisis has revealed the flawed planning that gave this Labour Government an electricity generation and distribution model that needs change. We have an unexpected set-back in what we can draw from our gasfields. We have an abundance of coal but not the technology to use it environmentally wisely. Those are the uncertainties that each person in the Napier electorate has playing on his or her mind and that the editorial writer must have had in mind when he stated “the certainty that wealth needs to be created before it can be shared.” 
But there is also plenty of really good news. The growth rate of our economy is strong as is that in Hawke’s Bay. New Zealanders are returning to live in New Zealand. Well-qualified migrants are choosing to make New Zealand their home and the place to raise a new generation of Kiwis. To those people Hawke’s Bay is seen as a slice of heaven. The demand in Napier for existing housing stock is phenomenal. Prices are unheard of and people are buying houses almost sight unseen. To get a new house built is even more difficult. In fact a senior bank officer said to me yesterday that he was forced to confirm a finance deal or otherwise there would have been a wait for 14 months before the builder could return to that site. 
There is business confidence in Hawke’s Bay—business confidence to market products and to take risks and business confidence to retain the asset of land. That was no better demonstrated than by Kim Crawford Wines in my electorate of Napier. Just this week that winery announced the sale for $18 million of the brand Kim Crawford Wines. It has sold the intellectual property in the brand and kept the land and the assets. An overseas wine distributor has bought the brand for $18 million. That is a demonstration of faith in the economy of the Napier electorate. Unemployment figures fluctuate but are lower than for a long long time. Napier is a great place for those looking for work. 
In Napier we have innovative educational establishments. The Eastern Institute of Technology is rapidly becoming a flagship in the tertiary education field. Our secondary schools offer variety and excellence. Our primary schools are centres of innovative educational and management ideas and our young people are being helped by the Gateway programme by increased operational funding and by the availability of more teachers in this coming year. 
In Napier we receive health services that are determined to keep us fit and well. We have a sports foundation that is the highlight surely of the Sport and Recreation New Zealand programme. It is headed by an innovative leader in Colin Stone. It is pulling all the sports together and they are performing well in the new stadium which is a model of intercity cooperation and was built recently in Taradale. But when medical disaster does strike in Hawke’s Bay we have the health system to cope with that. Hawke’s Bay had the first severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) patient in New Zealand. The record of dealing with that patient has been described by those who know including the Ministry of Health as exemplary. Our services were up to that crisis and our specialists were able to cope with it. The board is now led by a chief executive officer who loves his job. He recognises that it may well be more expensive to have someone on a waiting list than to get the surgery done. From discussions with that chief executive officer I would expect our waiting list to be reduced to one-third of its current size over the next 6 months. 
Napier is a community of small businesses which have previously had to run to the same rules as multimillion-dollar and multinational businesses. That problem is addressed in this Budget. Assistance with payroll and employee administration will make small-business operation less stressful. I speak as someone who has run small businesses for something like 30-odd years employing up to five or six staff. Removing the difficulty of meeting large provisional tax payments will enable the small-business owner to plan and to manage cash flows like any household budget—that is with regular outflows of cash in line with the pattern of money coming into the business. That is what this Budget provides for the smaller business people. 
Napier’s own Dr Michael Cullen as the Minister of Finance has set the finances of this country into a pattern of certainty and stability. The job for the rest of us in Napier who claim some leadership role is to make sure that the pattern delivers to each family individual student invalid and business. Dr Cullen has given us the tools to build a strong economy. I will remind members of what those tools are. They are the tools of youth development because surely the future of this country is in our young people. 
Firstly the Gateway programme enables senior secondary school students to begin work-based qualifications and to learn the disciplines of work. Last year it was available in two schools in Napier—Colenso High School and Tamatea High School. This year it has been extended to five further secondary schools in Napier and the pattern is now established from that developed in Napier and other centres so that eventually all decile 1 to decile 5 secondary schools in New Zealand will take part in the Gateway programme. That augurs well for our young people. Secondly there are the Modern Apprenticeships. At the end of March this year there were 132 Modern Apprenticeships in Napier and 5012 nationally. The target of 7500 Modern Apprenticeships by 2006 should be met. The aim of the mayor’s task force on jobs for all 15 to 19-year-olds to be engaged in appropriate education training work or other options that will lead to long-term economic independence and well-being will be met. 
Those targets of youth development the Gateway programme and Modern Apprenticeships are important because many of our young folk going through school these days have faced the urge to become academic to go to university and polytechnics when to many of those children and youth the real benefit is not in academic pursuits but in exercising their bodies and using manual skills to contribute to our country in a very practical way. The sooner that we move away from the academic cringe of feeling that if one uses one’s hands and body to earn an honest dollar one is somehow an inferior citizen the better it will be. This Labour Government is introducing that kind of equity in the workforce. 
But education cannot get by without funding and I am pleased to say that in Napier this Budget will release almost $300000 in additional operating funding. I am on the board of trustees of a secondary school in Napier and I know how important that increase in money will be. Boards of trustees are run by everyday mums and dads who have to face their own problems and then give their time voluntarily to run the schools. 
Peter Brown 
: Has the member ever got his hands dirty? 
RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER 
: As well as that—what that member may have lacked is good teaching—19 additional teachers will be made available to Napier schools in this next financial year. That is a prescription for success and is a prescription for the social charter spoken about by the editorial in  
Hawke’s Bay Today 
 on the eve of the Budget. That prescription will lead this country forward with valuable young people who have a place to fit in and who can find their place in the world. That is why John Roughan writing in the  
New Zealand Herald  
in the weekend was able to say that the established superannuation fund “is still there and Cullen is now salting away the tax surpluses to build a fund that might relieve my kids of some of the cost of paying for the retired baby boom. National true to form promises to abolish it.” 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: United Future members have split their speeches so I will give the next member the bell at 4 minutes. 
BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) 
: 
 The Government has included some useful educational initiatives in the 2003 Budget. United Future recognises them and wishes to uphold them today but we are also aware that some budgeted moves could well be counter-productive and even harmful to New Zealand as they take their course. 
On the one hand there has been some real help for students and learners to achieve at the very early levels of education particularly among Maori and poorer households. For example one-third of the Maori students who left school last year had no qualifications. There is certainly a need for extra help in that realm and I believe this Budget is a good step forward. So is training for young people and the industry training investment programmes that the Government has announced. Yet on the other hand at the finishing level of education for many students—that is the tertiary sector—there lurks a recipe for trouble that I want to look at a little tonight. In particular I am referring to what may be called a “time bomb”: the triennial fee maxima of $3900 each year for arts students and above that for other students. Both the concept and the amount could shoot the Government in the foot. 
The fee maxima idea is hailed as the best deal to give certainty to students and their families to the taxpayer and to the institutions providing the tertiary learning. United Future asks whether it is. To me it looks like a bit of a return to the sad old days of Muldoonism when all prices were fixed. It is United Future’s belief that what is good for the gander is not necessarily good for the goose in that arena. The students—that is the learners—the taxpayer and certainly the providers of all tertiary learning are I believe on a collision course. Conflicting interests abound. I will show members what I mean by that. 
Fact No. 1 is that New Zealand University Students Association representatives desire a long-term goal they state of a well-funded tertiary sector with no fees and no debt. I along with thousands of other New Zealanders am flabbergasted at that type of economic logic having been taught by the higher institutions in New Zealand. I am not convinced that young students who have had most things free in life to date would deny that they have been supported at great cost by their parents—or even by themselves. The State students must remember is not Mum or Dad or the family. To condone such practices is to not prepare our youth to enter the real world where nothing is free. Everything costs someone something. 
Fact No. 2 is that last year New Zealand taxpayers paid around $10500 for every tertiary student who was being educated. It cost them a fortune in my terms. That was only 70 percent of the direct cost of educating those students who number over 500000. Do the ever-shrinking numbers of taxpayers want to pay more this year and as we can see every year hereafter? Of course every family would be excited if its son or daughter did not have to pay fees but that very same family would have to pay for that lack of fees through higher taxes. It is nothing other than a “smoke and mirrors” job; the taxpayer always picks up the tab. Will taxpayers want their already closed chequebook to be prised open for yet more taxation? 
What will the Government do when the heat becomes white hot this year? The first shots have already been fired by the student unions and the universities since the Budget was announced last Thursday afternoon. Will the Minister and the Tertiary Education Commission seriously consider some long-term implications of the fee maxima policy on students and their families on the cash-strapped providers and certainly on the overcharged taxpayer? 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 We have a $4 billion surplus: $11600000 is earmarked for the arts $45 million for sport and recreation and $28 million for a yacht race but what is going to crime and the causes of crime? We are disappointed that at-risk children in high-risk families have for the most part missed out in the Government’s Budget. Early childhood intervention is surely one of the key strategies in lowering the rates of crime and child abuse in this country and in breaking the cycle of crime later on. The Action for Children and Youth Aotearoa report produced in August 2002 concluded that New Zealand is failing to protect children from violence and falling below United Nations requirements for meeting their needs. Family violence costs this country an average of $1.2 billion per year. That figure is conservative and does not include the emotional costs to children and the family. In other words non-intervention quite simply costs us more—up to 19 times more by some calculations—than effective early intervention by non-governmental organisations like the Family Help Trust. The allocation of $600000 to better resource Project Early—a Christchurch intervention programme for children—and to seed it in parallel schemes in Auckland is to be applauded and welcomed. It is about time! 
But why is this Government putting $17 million in operating and $22 million in capital resources into looking at establishing a Supreme Court that neither the public nor the legal profession has asked for when it has only put $2 million into victim support organisations? Members should not get me wrong. That $2 million is absolutely essential to help restructure victim support so that its delivery of services reaches the same high standards right throughout the country and enables the establishment of a more efficient and seamless district structure comprising 14 districts so that all volunteers get the requisite training and supports and that the Victims Rights Act is clearly understood and deliverable. But more needs to be done. 
An additional 50 Auckland-based police for which the Budget sets aside funding is wholly inadequate when what is needed is about 1500 police nationwide—a figure that would be comparable to the successful New York initiative which saw the rates of murder violent crimes and burglaries plummet. Where is the allocation of funds to neighbourhood support schemes so that innocent New Zealanders are empowered to help protect themselves? Surely that is one of the key objectives in empowering communities to take charge of their streets and their lives. It would be a bridge between the police the judicial arm and the people of this country. 
I am gratified that $10 million has been tagged to fund two specialist police teams to deal with a scourge of methamphetamine laboratories organised crime and terrorism. Money to fund a specialist DNA collection team is to be equally applauded and $2.6 million additional funding over 4 years for the youth suicide prevention strategy targeting families in which suicide has occurred or been attempted is to be congratulated. I question whether it is enough but it is in the right direction. 
I cannot help but feel that overall the Budget has favoured what we do with offenders rather than what we do with victims of crime. Offenders are still the focal point. Without raising another red cent from the taxpayers of New Zealand and the bleeding pockets of hard-working New Zealanders we could raise between $270 and $300 million if our prison system was as fiscally efficient as the privately run Auckland remand prison. 
 With what we save we could look at better funding for victims restoration—including restitution as well—and more and better equipped police. Our police right now do not have radio systems that are encrypted—why not? We have to equip them if we expect them to do the right job. As far as law and order issues are concerned the Budget points its nose in the right direction but the feet are not quite moving fast enough. We could and we must do better. 
DAVID PARKER (NZ Labour—Otago) 
: 
 Budget time is the time when we get to look at the Government’s accounts and reflect on whether the Government is managing the economy and its finances wisely. This year we are in the happy position of being able to report a $4 billion surplus before capital obligations. Those capital obligations include $1.8 billion being put into the Superannuation Fund in order to sustainably fund superannuation well into the future. That has been achieved leaving a surplus of $1.4 billion after those adjustments are made and that is after substantial extra money going where taxpayers want to see that money focused. 
Health is getting an extra $737 million which is an increase in funding of 9 percent—a very real increase that is well above inflation. Education is getting another $481 million which is a 6 percent increase and which is again ahead of inflation. Enterprise industry and regional development support are getting an increase of $76 million which is off a fairly low base and which represents a 43 percent increase in funding. That has been done in an economic climate where our economy is growing at amongst the fastest rate in the OECD with 4 percent growth. Unemployment is very low despite our labour force participation rate being at an all-time high. At around 5 percent it is again one of the lowest in the OECD. Our Crown debt levels are at the lowest since Treasury began collecting data in 1971. When the accounts were taken over from National by the Labour-led Government gross debt was at 36.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Over the next year or two it will go down to 23 percent of GDP which is a substantial decrease. Net debt will drop even further to 14 percent of GDP. 
Against that background one wonders what Dr Brash and the National Party would be saying. I looked with some interest at what Dr Brash was reported as saying in the  
Dominion Post 
 last Thursday 15 May. I was intrigued by this quote: “Growth is too low to narrow the large gap in the living standards between New Zealand and Australia that emerged during the 1970s and 1980s.” I thought my goodness it is strange for Dr Brash to forget about the decade that we have had since then. Maybe there is a reason for that selective quoting of statistics. So I got out the figures and they make for interesting reading. In 1980 New Zealand was ranked 18th on per capita GDP in the OECD countries and Australia was 10th. The decade of the 1980s was mainly Labour-led. In that decade New Zealand dropped back one placing from 18th to 19th while the Australians dropped back six places. It seems to me that Labour did not do a bad job compared with Australia back in that decade. Then I looked at the next decade and I wondered why Dr Brash had not mentioned it. From 1990 – 2000 it was the National decade in which National effected its “wonderful” fundamentalist policy that is still so favoured by Dr Brash and Mr Hide—or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as some of us like to refer to them. In that decade New Zealand started at 19th and dropped back one place to 20th. In the same period Australia went from 16th up to 12th—they went up four places and we went back one. It is no wonder Dr Brash does not refer to that decade—it is the decade of incompetence. 
In most overseas countries the ideology of fundamentalist neo-classical economics is seen as flawed. Our own New Zealand experience of the adverse human and economic consequences of the austere misguided neo-classical fundamentalism was one of the reasons that I became active in the Labour Party and one of the reasons Dr Brash became active in the National Party; because he still believes in it. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: The only good thing you have done is kick Gavan Herlihy out. 
DAVID PARKER 
: That is a very kind comment from the member. National and ACT’s continued obsession with austerity and neo-classical fundamentalist monetary policy no matter what the economic and social cost relied upon a simplistic economic model that was altogether too narrow to make common sense. But have they moved on? No they have not. 
Peter Brown 
: Have you? 
DAVID PARKER 
: Yes Labour has moved on and that is why the member has seen the economy improve and why the country is in such a healthy Budget position. But have National and ACT moved on? No—never. They cling to the purity of their simplistic neo-classical views. They still think that issues of distribution and efficiency can be separated. They do not care if there is a great disparity between the income and wealth of the haves and the have-nots. They say it does not matter. They say that the economy performs just as well even with those disparities. Well we disagree. Our philosophy is that social cohesiveness and equality of opportunity are important to economic prosperity and to personal security. We think the failed neo-classical policies that widened the gap between wealth and income in New Zealand undermined security and threatened the economy to the detriment of us all. We say that their policies—which Dr Brash would return us to tomorrow—were one of the main reasons behind the poor performance of the New Zealand economy compared with Australia. 
I reiterate that that poor performance was in the decade between 1990 and 2000 when National was in Government and that is the reason that we went backwards as compared with Australia. That is also the reason we are now going forward as compared with the rest of the world. We recognised that mistake and we are changing it. What did we inherit when the Labour Government first got back in? We inherited those austere policies and the consequences of them. We had virtually no apprentices. This Budget increases the funding for the Modern Apprenticeships scheme. We had a youth suicide rate that was very high because of the hopelessness with which young people entering the workforce viewed their prospects. I think that was a major part of the hopelessness of youth at the time. This Budget funds a policy that over the next few years will see everyone of school-leaving age either moving into employment or moving into post-school education. Those young people will have hope and we will have a better and more skilled workforce. 
We had superannuation that was increasingly under threat as to its sustainability. After the last few Budgets we have a long-term sustainable superannuation position largely because of the contributions that will be made this year and in the future of about $1.8 billion which will go to help fund future superannuation. 
Peter Brown 
: Where are you going to invest all that? 
DAVID PARKER 
: We invest in people. Where will the Superannuation Fund invest? The Superannuation Fund will invest in a range of investments in New Zealand and overseas so as to protect the fund for the future and to sustain superannuation for our superannuitants. 
Notwithstanding the healthy surplus we have managed to find an extra $167 million to fund an additional 774 teachers in our schools which is over and above those required for roll growth. As I have said we have reduced debt we have funded Modern Apprenticeships and we have funded training for everyone 15-19 years of age—as long as they are in further training or education and not on the dole. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: You’re on page 7. 
DAVID PARKER 
: I am on page 7 am I? It is true that I have lost my page. In closing I reinforce my encouragement to listeners to think again about the selective quoting of statistics that Dr Brash would visit upon us in quoting the statistics from the 1970s and 1980s but ignoring the 1990s when it all went so horribly wrong. 
MIKE WARD (Green) 
: 
 As I go about this place and meet and listen to Government members I must confess that I find most of them pretty decent human beings whom I suspect care as much about the future of this country as I do. 
Ian Ewen-Street 
: Except for Doug Woolerton. 
MIKE WARD 
: Even Doug Woolerton—but he is not in the Government. As I listened to Dr Cullen’s Budget statement there were hints that yes indeed this Government might be taking seriously the idea of a 100 percent pure New Zealand—looking after those things that if not pure New Zealand at least make us unique. The $15.2 million for heritage protection may well help to keep intact features like Hamilton’s Hayes Paddock that stunning reminder of old Labour’s State housing initiatives from those who would destroy the integrity of the whole by removing houses and replacing them with structures that are less sympathetic. 
The Prime Minister’s personal passion for the arts is commendable. I have just been to the launch of the overseas initiatives and heard her speak about some of the wonderful things that are happening in the arts—and they do indeed owe a great deal to her personal enthusiasm as well as to the funding. Although I am not aware of the detail of how the additional dollars budgeted for sport and fitness will be spent in the light of the Hon Trevor Mallard’s response to my question about measures to improve the exercise habits of New Zealand youngsters I remain hopeful that at least some will be targeted to achieve heightened levels of youthful activity. 
If the Government really wanted to strengthen the 100 percent pure New Zealand image and provide real opportunities for all New Zealanders it would be far more generously inclined towards initiatives that encourage New Zealanders to support New Zealand businesses and New Zealand products. Mr Len Cook the former chief statistician is quoted in last week’s  
Listener 
 as saying: “The Tourism Board’s 100 percent pure is stunning. It would be wonderful if that became the whole brand of New Zealand.” 
Peter Brown 
: That’s why he lives and works in London. 
MIKE WARD 
: Indeed he does. Although much has been made by others of the purity of the New Zealand environment our huge waste problem and our over-dependence on chemicals in our production and processing of food I want to talk about the products that fill our shop shelves and Kiwi shopping baskets. They are not 100 percent pure New Zealand. Although some suggest there are some things we cannot or do not make an examination of our history would suggest that those things are relatively few. We are a food-producing country but the levels of imports on our supermarket shelves are a disappointing testament to our collective willingness to undermine the employment opportunities of our children our neighbours our friends and ourselves by buying those imports when alongside them are New Zealand equivalents that are frequently as cheap and cheaper. 
But it is not only food and jobs that cry out for a greater commitment to support local manufacturers. The overseas products may well be those of sweatshops and lax environmental standards—shortcomings we may well ignore when they occur somewhere else but would result in an outrage if the products were New Zealand – made products and the social and environmental degradation happened here. All too often the manufactured imports are cheaper—and for a reason: they are disposable. They are not made to last; they are made to throw away to join the other 80 million kilograms of rubbish New Zealanders throw away every week. New Zealanders deserve better than the cheap throwaway. 
The Government appears unwilling to dig too deeply into its surplus to support local business so I had to look to existing spending beyond the paltry $1.84 million targeted at small business. I looked at the $73 million intended for Trade New Zealand to improve our trading prospects. Our balance of payment deficit over many years is an issue but there is another obvious line of attack that the Government could mount. Reducing the level of imports by spending even a modest proportion of the Trade New Zealand $73 million to support Business New Zealand’s “buy local” campaign could begin to change New Zealanders’ mindset. New Zealanders valuing New Zealand - made and New Zealanders buying quality is a marketing campaign that should be child’s play in a country that has totally transformed the smoking habits of millions of New Zealanders and made drink-drivers once the object of sympathy into persona non grata. 
Is this inconsistent with the Government’s policies? I would not have thought so. Yet in the past almost nothing has gone into supporting the concept of New Zealand – made. Are we saying one should never buy foreign? Are we saying one must always buy New Zealand – made? No that is not what the Green Party is saying. The Green Party is saying that it makes sense to spend our money in places where it can find its way back into our own pockets and where it supports people in our community to live well and to enjoy life. 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 This year’s food safety budget is underspent by approximately $5 million. Ordinarily a Budget underspend would be cause for great celebration and rejoicing but when one considers the parlous state of food safety in New Zealand I find the underspend frankly cause for alarm. The Food Safety Authority we remember is an agency that does virtually no monitoring or testing of the vast amount of produce that is imported into New Zealand or of any food that is produced here in New Zealand. Yet when we look at the accounts much of the underspending occurred in the critical area of monitoring of our food supply—an area where the agency is notoriously weak and we do not have even the most rudimentary programme in place. 
Let us take the simple issue of campylobacter just as an example. New Zealand has the highest rate of campylobacter poisoning of any Western country. It is about twice the rate of similar countries and it is growing by about 25 percent every single year. Last year more than 12000 New Zealanders became ill as a result of campylobacter poisoning and about 500 ended up in hospital. We know that most campylobacter poisoning comes from eating chicken meat and that four out of every five fresh chickens sold in New Zealand are contaminated with either campylobacter or salmonella. 
What is our Food Safety Authority doing about this intolerable level of contamination? Where is our national strategy to clean up poultry rearing and processing plants and food outlets and to halve campylobacter rates within 5 years as Britain has pledged to do? The answer is that there are no such programmes in New Zealand—I should say no such national strategies because there is probably some little programme sequestered somewhere in the authority. 
Another vital food safety issue is the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in our food chain. A recent survey of data from 100 poultry farms all around New Zealand has found an extraordinary 50 percent of them contaminated with the antibiotic-resistant bacteria VRE—Vancomycin-resistant enterococci. One would think that this would be a cause for alarm and treated as a serious food safety concern particularly as if these antibiotic-resistant bacteria were to transfer their resistance to methicillin-resistant  
Staphylococcus aureus 
 prevalent around New Zealand we would have a national health scare that would make Sars look like a dress rehearsal and this has already happened. But astonishingly we have no programmes in New Zealand to estimate the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the food chain or to randomly test chicken meat. 
I put forward a Budget bid to do this last year and was told there was no money in the Budget for this work. That was the previous Government so I have to say it is galling to say the least that not only is this work still not being done but there is $5 billion languishing around in the Budget that could have been spent on that important study. 
Now in a positive light I am relieved that the Food Safety Authority will finally look at imports and regulations around the domestic food supply but I am completely mystified as to why the agency was vehemently opposed to country-of-origin labelling when it is explicitly required in its terms of reference to support consumer choice through accurate and meaningful labelling. Two recent consumer surveys have found that 70 to 80 percent of consumers want to know where their food comes from but officials are arguing that there is no interest in country-of-origin labelling here in New Zealand. This is absolutely preposterous and very mystifying. 
I turn to Vote Health. We are pleased that there has been a significant investment in primary health-care. We support the concept of public primary health-care organisations and multidisciplinary teams of health-care professionals working together. Unfortunately we have seen no evidence to date of these multidisciplinary teams in the primary health-care organisations. Pharmacists and complementary health-care professionals are clamouring to be included in these teams but so far they have been shut out. We are also concerned at the way the primary health-care organisations are being implemented on a geographical basis and the impact on medical practices that miss out on the higher subsidies. Already we have medical practices facing ruin as patients are lured to clinics that are able to access subsidies and therefore charge reduced fees. Surely it is not the Government’s intention to see medical practices shut down around New Zealand. 
DAVE HEREORA (NZ Labour) 
: 
 I would like to start off with a positive statement—that this year’s Budget reflects the needs of the majority of New Zealanders. I extend to my colleagues confidence in the growing reputation that the Government continues to manifest as a sound manager of the country’s finances. New Zealanders are supportive of the Government and the media commentators are catching up with that fact. The Budget may be easy to attack but it is hard to argue with the numbers: that in the year just gone growth in the New Zealand economy as we know it was at a rate of 4.4 percent—amongst the fastest growing in the OECD. 
The Government has made a decision to save the surplus and let us be very clear what that surplus represents. This Government has delivered a $4 billion surplus as the international economy comes under attack from war and disease and although international influences may see a negative drop in the growth rate to 2.2 percent this rate is expected to rebound in the following year to a rate of 3.2 percent. Future services will be sufficient to maintain infrastructural investment including dealing with the infrastructure deficit we inherited and it will meet our debt targets and finance contributions to the Superannuation Fund. Gross debt as a proportion of the gross domestic product (GDP) is at its lowest level since Treasury began collecting data in 1971. 
The Government is securing a reputation that is not flashy or flighty. There are no surprises; it is just plain old common sense. It is back-to-basics sound management of the national coffers and that is not hard. 
The ordinary Kiwi out there understands the effect of GDP unlike Mr Muldoon did or the Business Round Table which squabbles about how business has suffered and forecasts doom and gloom for the next decade. I intend breaking the provisions of the Budget down to demonstrate how they will assist iwi hapu and whanau and how they will address the disparity at the lower end of the socio-economic pit where Maori are. Let us be very clear why that is and why Maori are at its lower end. The origins came from the lack of vision of previous Governments and their lack of willingness to make substantial change to that socio-economic climate. That attitude continues. 
I want to mention an article in the  
National Business Review  
of 9 May headed “Labour’s treaty rights talk takes a wrong turn”. The assertion that Maori have superior rights under the treaty “opens an area that is vastly more contentious than the settlement of land grievances.” The article continues to say that the issue “is already creating opportunities for the Opposition. National’s Bill English insists there should be ‘one standard of citizenship for all’ ”. He describes the separate Maori seats as an example of special treatment for Maori that needs to be ended and says that the Opposition’s task is to strip away the veneer that the treaty is a living document which somehow moves with a predestined life of its own and beyond the purview of political accountability. The article also suggests that the primacy of Parliament needs to be reassessed over a set of principles that have never been tested at the ballot box before. 
Well “never been tested”—my eye! I think that that is a load of garbage. Why do members think the Maori seats returned to Labour en masse? I say that the Opposition is using Maori issues to justify its existence and I extend a challenge to Maori members in the Opposition. I want them to take a call and I would like to know from them whether they support that position and whether they support stripping away the very veneer of the treaty as a living document. It would be interesting to hear their responses. 
Over recent weeks we have been subjected to a continual barrage from the Opposition benches of claims we are spoon-feeding Maori and creating a two-tier society and a short-sighted attempt to introduce the option of abolishing the Maori seats. To go further yesterday’s announcement from the Opposition in today’s  
Dominion Post  
headed “ ‘Punitive’ truancy plan sparks anger” is again targeted at penalising parents on benefits which we know will hit Maori families. There is a method to that madness. It is specifically targeted to introduce another way to penalise Maori and to keep Maori in that low socio-economic pit. The recent  
Marae 
 DigiPoll shows impressive support for this Government and 68 percent are satisfied with the Government’s performance and support the Government’s policies and directions. 
I must say that that is impressive. The treaty programme announced in the Budget with its allocation of $6.5 million has the purpose of raising public knowledge of the treaty. I reiterate that it is to raise public knowledge; it is not designed to create a two-tiered society. It is to do the complete opposite and make the information accessible to the public to explore other options and to improve the information available—bearing in mind that the target audience is the general public and not just Maori. 
The key feature over the coming 4 years is the allocation of $1 million to develop iwi radio. That is about fostering confidence—the confidence to manifest the very essence that allows a culture to survive: the promotion of the language te reo. It will allow it to evolve as our nation evolves. Again the target audience is the community not just Maori. There will be an injection of $4.4 million into education to inform and to develop policy on how better to engage whanau to aid the development of teachers in te reo and tikanga Maori and to uplift the quality of te reo used by teachers in mainstream schools. Those provisions are all designed to lift achievement among Maori. The target audience again is not just Maori; it is whanau. 
In health there are provisions reducing prescription fees to a maximum of $3 for all children aged between 6 and 17 years and enrolled in interim primary health organisations and for patients of all ages enrolled in access primary health organisations and extending the health-line services so that New Zealanders will have access to a 24-hour health information and advice telephone service from next year. The target audience again is all New Zealanders. 
The success of the health-line over the last 3 years has been significant. We need only to go out into communities to appreciate how well the programme is regarded. The health-line improves the health and well being of New Zealanders by directing consumers to the right care at the right place at the right time. 
The challenge of youth unemployment is being tackled head-on as is youth training. There is a $56 million package to get all 15 to 19-year-olds into education training work or other options by 2007. A range of different training options will be made available including expanding the Gateway and Modern Apprenticeships programmes as well as providing specialised support from Work and Income. The Gateway programme prepares young people for the world of work while they are still at school. Senior secondary students on the programme are able to start work-based qualifications and they learn the disciplines of work. Nationally the Gateway programme will progressively expand to all decile 1 to 5 schools taking in 12000 students a year by 2007. 
In my area of south Auckland the Budget package also extends the popular Modern Apprenticeships scheme which has been a great success in the Papakura region. At the end of March there were 40 modern apprentices in our region. Last September there were 25 in Papakura and nationally there were 5000 in March. The number of modern apprenticeships will now increase by 50 percent to 7500 places a year by 2006. Papakura employers and educators need to ensure they do their utmost to secure as many of these extra modern apprentices as possible to assist our young people and to keep our local economy growing. These initiatives and others in the youth training package mean that the Government will meet the goal it agreed with the Mayors Task Force for Jobs by 2007. All 15 to 19-year-olds will be engaged in appropriate education training work or other options which will lead to long-term economic independence and well being. I welcome this youth training package because it specifically targets those young people who do not go to university or polytech and enables them to learn the skills necessary for today’s workforce. 
At the other end in education I too like my colleague spend time on the local primary school board of trustees and often we are seeking funding on that board to deal with pre-school entrants. There is the need for special assistance to teach pre-schoolers the very basics—and that is the ABC colours and numbers. That is becoming familiar and ongoing. I am very pleased that the Government will assist in that situation in pre-school with an extra $55 million over 4 years to increase participation in and the quality of early childhood education. 
I want to finish on a positive note. It was not very long ago that the business sector lacked confidence in this Labour-led coalition to manage our finances. That view has certainly changed. In fact it has changed so much that the lack of confidence has switched to now being directed to the National Party. The Government is proving to be fiscally prudent. That is a whole-of-Government approach that is what inspires confidence and that is why this Government is so sound. 
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) 
: 
 I am always fascinated by what the Minister of Finance calls accrual accounting. He often accuses members on this side of the House— 
Rodney Hide 
: Do they have it in Hamilton? 
R DOUG WOOLERTON 
: I do not know whether they do; the people in Hamilton are very practical. In the Waikato they are even more practical. Dr Cullen says that people on this side of the House do not understand accrual accounting. I will tell members what we do not understand—that is Dr Cullen going around the country lauding the fact that he has a $4 billion surplus. All over the place he is saying what a wonderful Treasurer he is to achieve a $4 billion surplus. But when we asked what it is to be spent on that surplus in the speech he gave became $1.36 billion. A couple of billion dollars has disappeared. I do not know whether that is a lot of money. It seems like a heck of a lot to a person from the Waikato. It is a lot of money in the Waikato. Anyway that has gone on other things. 
Then we look at this $1.36 billion and ask what the Budget gives to people like my brother just out of Hamilton who is beavering away barely making a living with his 1000 cows. He is a solid worker like all the Woolertons. He is a good man. He asked me: “Doug what am I going to get out of this Budget? Are we the people who really make this country go going to get some incentives?”. I answered: “No.” He asked me why. I said that the reason is that Dr Cullen says he does not know whether he has a surplus. I cannot understand that. I would have thought that a man versed in the deep dark mysteries of accrual accounting would know whether he had a surplus. But evidently Dr Cullen does not know that so I cannot satisfy my brother in answer to his questions. 
That is the problem that the good average Kiwi cannot get around: what is this person talking about? The Government either has a surplus or it does not. If it does have a surplus then it can get on and do things for our population and get some growth going in this country. 
I searched all through this Budget. I worked into the small hours through page after page. I had a heck of a job and had to get my wife to nudge me to keep me awake half the time. But I read it. I was looking for a reference to agriculture. My colleague Shane Ardern from the King Country would understand this. I was searching through this Budget to see what the Government will do for our main income earners. 
Shane Ardern 
: What did you find? 
R DOUG WOOLERTON 
: Nothing. I found all sorts of things that the Government is going to spend the money on but I found nothing for agriculture. But hang on the next morning I was up at 4.50 a.m. to go over the Budget again. I will tell members what I found. I found that the Government was to spend some more money in the area of biosecurity. Loosely I suppose one could say that that might be a help to the farmers but actually it will not be; it is something that affects all New Zealanders. I gave him a bit of kudos for that. Then I found something else. Shane Ardern will be interested to hear this. Market access and the negotiations surrounding Doha were referred to. The Government put a couple of bob in there. But more than a couple of bob will be needed because our Minister for Trade Negotiations is never here. Next time I think we will ask that Shane Ardern go with him to keep an eye on what he is doing because from where I sit he is not making much difference to trade access. It is not making much difference to trade access when the Americans put up a farm bill worth trillions of dollars in subsidies to its farmers to the detriment of the farmers in this country. 
We in this country are surviving on a consumption-led economy. That is why we need all the immigrants who are coming in. We need them to bring the money in with them because we are surviving on consumption. We are not putting the money into where it should be which is production. And that in the main in this country—and I am sorry if people do not like it—comes from farms forestry and fisheries. 
BILL GUDGEON (NZ First) 
: 
 If a person is forced to remain dependent upon others essentially he or she is their slave because he or she is subject to their control. Economic freedom lies at the base of all liberties. A person’s property is his or her life. It is what he or she spends. A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious but it cannot survive non-reason within it. An enemy at the gate is less formidable for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the unreasonable moves amongst those within the gates freely. His whispers rustling through all the alleys are heard in the very halls of government itself. He speaks in the accent familiar to those victims. He wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of people. 
This country is dependent on foreign capital flows to maintain its standard of living. As every year ticks by and we do not look any closer to ever managing to turn it round our credit line as a nation withers. We assume that this is a society in which there is not too much poverty or too much trouble and in which most people can get away to the beach. Well hello—wake up New Zealand! Many of us it seems are still demanding an easy way out believing that the world owes us a living and still seeking a free lunch. 
Why is it that four out of every 10 schools has a teacher shortage? Has the Government put a band-aid over a wound that needs a bandage and serious first aid? Why is there a constant change of the following: first assessment philosophy and practice; second seriously overworked teachers; third too much administration for senior teachers and staff so that leadership in the classroom from these people is reduced; and fourth lack of motivation by some students because many good job options do not exist—for example trade apprenticeships? Our undeveloping nation is increasingly unable to employ us house us care for us and give us the lifestyle we aspire to. Former third nations such as Singapore Hong Kong Malaysia and others are not catching up to us; they are roaring past us. 
In the area of law and order our police are becoming the laughing stock of the criminal world. There are to be 50 more police for Auckland. That is hardly a joke I say to Mr Hawkins. What makes it worse is that we allow criminals into the community while their applications for home detention are being processed. This Budget is on the side of the criminals. 
Our people are dying because of the health system. We have practically run out of outlet means to generate the power that consumers demand and pay for. We know that the means such as coal are there to do this. 
Our education system fails us. We have practically no Defence Force to assist the free nations for the defence of our freedom. This Government has told our Vietnam veterans that they did not fight in Agent Orange – spread areas which is not true. This will be proved by a former commander of 161 Battery with whom I served in Malaysia and Borneo and it will cost. 
We have been budgeted into being a Third World nation because of the policies of this Government. How can this Government sit back and watch our rail system deteriorate? How can this Government not pay our servicemen and servicewomen the same rate as the Australian service people are paid who served in the same theatre of East Timor with the same expectations and results? How can this Government say we have a surplus when this country is struggling in the social services area? The roads railways hospitals schools and all the rest of the infrastructure we built were a great cost over the decades. They are in decay. The welfare State has collapsed on itself. It has not only become unaffordable; it is increasingly not meeting our basic needs despite the endless millions of dollars being poured into it. 
All this tells us that the fiscal policies that have been put into place by the Government have been terribly wrong. The world is leaving us behind. We are becoming increasingly impoverished and we will end up languishing at the end of the Earth. 
Jill Pettis 
: Oh for goodness’ sake! 
BILL GUDGEON 
: The member should just listen; she might learn something. The policy of building the economy with borrowed money to stimulate short-term growth is both pointless and damaging. As the leader of the New Zealand First said the balance of payments is plunging deeper into deficit. We need to repay our debt as quickly as possible. We should get out of deficit and live within our means by encouraging a viable economy. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Immigration) 
: 
 I congratulate the Minister of Finance on introducing a responsible Budget. It is responsible because it acknowledges that there are external matters the impact of which we cannot fully predict: international terrorism conflict disease and economic stagnation in many of the world’s most important economies. There are local factors like drought the impact that the severe acute respiratory syndrome has had on tourism and the prospect of a dry winter. All of these call for a responsible approach so that we can withstand the impacts of these external and internal factors. 
This Budget is a responsible Budget because it invests in the growth and innovation framework. It is a responsible Budget because it prioritises health and education in terms of investing in the social fabric of society—the health and well-being of all New Zealanders. 
I want to focus my comments in this Budget debate for 2003 on the immigration aspects of the Budget. This Budget shows this Government’s commitment to migrants by ensuring that the benefits are shared by all. Just 3½ years ago I inherited an immigration portfolio that was focused solely on the numbers of people coming into the country. This Government said from the outset that it does not matter how many people come to New Zealand under immigration policy; it is what happens to them after they arrive in New Zealand that matters. Successful settlement outcomes benefit the migrants and benefit New Zealand. Everything we have done over the past 3½ years has been about improving the prospects for new migrants as well as minimising the failures which impose a considerable cost on New Zealand as a whole. There are people who like to pretend that there is no cost imposed on the New Zealand taxpayer when there are failures but I can assure this House that there is an incredible cost and one that I am determined to reduce. 
When I became Minister I coined a phrase. I said there were people in this country who had residence who could not get work and there were people in this country who had work who could not get residence. This Government’s approach to developing settlement programmes has been about addressing the former of these—people in this country who have already got residence and cannot get a job. I am amazed that the National Party finds that situation acceptable but I guess it was its policy that brought it about. The work-to-residence policy including the talent visa has been about addressing the latter—people who can get work in New Zealand well-paid work but cannot get residence. Our approach is about addressing that issue. 
The settlement programmes are growing. They have been incredibly successful. For example the Auckland chamber of commerce successfully matched over 300 skilled migrants with skilled work in its first year of operating the “New Kiwis” website. What a fantastic partnership between the public sector and the private sector working together to make a difference for skilled migrants! The talent visa accredited employers programme has seen 125 employers accredited in the past year and 250 talent visas issued since it was established. That is a tremendous record of achievement in just 1 year of operation when there was nothing like it in place before we took office. 
There is no question that this Government has made a real difference to immigration policy but we are not ones to rest on our laurels. For over a year now I have signalled the need for New Zealand to shift from being a passive recipient of immigration applications to being an active recruiter of the skills and the talent we need. In fact the National Government set up a very good programme before it left office in 1999 and that was a research programme—the longitudinal study of migrants in New Zealand—to establish what made for successful settlement of migrants to New Zealand. We are using the information that that survey is giving us to know what we should be looking for in terms of successful settlement outcomes and we are also looking at how we can improve the outcomes for those who take residence here. 
The skilled business stream of the New Zealand Immigration Programme is where we need new migrants to hit the ground running when they arrive in New Zealand. It is no good that they sit back and cannot participate in either society or the economy. That is not what the skilled business stream of migration is for. If migrants can hit the ground running then it is good for New Zealand it is good for the migrant and it is an absolute win-win. This year’s Budget contains within it funding for the infrastructure to enable this to occur. This funding will allow the Immigration Service more actively to match skilled migrants with actual real opportunities real jobs here in New Zealand and that will mean they will be able to contribute to and participate in New Zealand’s society and the economy sooner. 
It will also enable us to recruit in parts of the world where we have not had a real presence in the past and we will be able actively to recruit those already living working or studying in New Zealand. Close to 40 percent of all applications for residence are lodged on shore. Clearly those who have already been here—living here working here studying here—for 2 or 3 years have already begun well and truly to establish themselves to be well settled in this country. The outcomes for those who are already living and working here are exponentially greater than for those who have never even visited New Zealand in their entire life. 
The reason that settlement outcomes are poorer for those who have never been here is really about expectations. Unmet expectations are the key driver of poor settlement outcomes. People need realistic expectations before they move halfway around the world. I want to quote from a letter written to the Prime Minister a few weeks ago. It is from an Indian professional engineer who had come to New Zealand on a job search visa. His visa expires in September but after his multiple job rejections he has already booked his ticket home. He can be here until September but he has booked his ticket home. He speaks of meeting other Indians and says that 95 percent of those whom he has met are working in menial jobs well below their level of qualification. In fact he describes in the letter people actually saying they have had to underplay their qualifications and their skills in order to get forecourt attendant jobs at the local service station. He says: “In my case I am almost ruined. I left my class 1 engineer post in India and I have already spent about half a million rupees. Even I had to ask my son in the UK to send some money meant for his studies.” What he says is that he as a new migrant is prepared to take a step down the ladder but he is not prepared to go to the bottom of the ladder and start all over again. 
What this Budget signals for immigration is that we no longer want to invite people to come to New Zealand under the general skills category when we know they are destined to fail. We want to provide potential migrants with a realistic assessment of their prospects in New Zealand. We want to match skilled migrants with skilled job opportunities. We want migrants to know what they need in order to gain skilled employment and if that means meeting professional registration requirements undertaking further study or improving their English ability prior to gaining residence then that is the right approach. We know from the bitter experience of the doctors the information technology specialists and the scientists driving taxis whom we have all met that it is not good enough to tell people that they are qualified for skilled migration but not qualified for skilled work in New Zealand. 
In the role of Minister of Immigration I do have to accept that there are those who seek to abuse the system and this Budget addresses that issue as well. We are putting in $19.82 million to strengthen the present immigration capability for intelligence providing more resources for the investigation and prosecution of immigration fraud. 
PANSY WONG (NZ National) 
: 
 I think the public would have been confused when they heard the Minister of Immigration talking about how to stop abuse of the system. But on the same hand this is the Minister who gave a work permit to a patient receiving dialysis treatment. That person cannot even work. [ 
Interruption 
] I tell that member to take a call and not hold back now. Members on the Labour benches have suddenly woken up. They should take a call. This Minister of Immigration will also be remembered for losing a court case. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Order! 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I draw your attention to this point. The senior Government whip continued to shout abuse after you had called for order. I do think there should be a bit of a pull-up of that member who is the senior Government whip. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I have called for order. 
PANSY WONG 
: I hope the senior Government whip from down south learns some manners in the parliamentary debating chamber. If he would like to take a call he is most welcome to speak in his own time. 
This Minister of Immigration will also be remembered for losing a court case. After claiming that the Labour Government was not bothered about the number of immigrants suddenly on 11 November 2002 she announced an increase in the difficulty of the English language test and all sorts of things which incited the association of immigration consultants to take a court case. This is also the Minister of Immigration who says she cannot take the criticism from students queuing overnight to get their student permits so she removes the same-day service of granting them permits. 
Let us not be distracted. I want to come back to the Budget that was delivered last Thursday. Last Thursday after the Minister of Finance had delivered his Budget speech I got in a taxi to go all the way to Auckland airport. The taxi-driver was lamenting why he should bother working 10 hours a day to make ends meet. He does not feel positive about his future and his family’s future. He wants Michael Cullen to explain why he was boasting about having a $4 billion surplus. The Government does not earn money. Guess where the Government’s revenue comes from? Let us look at this information. Forty-four percent of Government revenue comes from salary and wage earners—like the taxi-driver I was talking about—company tax makes up 11 percent GST 24 percent and other taxes 14 percent. Ninety-three percent of Government revenue comes from taxes. How dare the Minister of Finance stand in this House and boast about making a surplus when taxi-drivers and other hard-working New Zealanders are being overtaxed to produce that $4 billion surplus! [ 
Interruption 
] The Minister of Immigration has had her say. If she would just listen she might learn a few things. 
The Minister of Finance shamelessly held up the carrot of tax relief next year in his own words“maybe for low-income earners”. Why next year? Why not this year? Are we too cynical in suggesting that election year is coming closer? It is not the Minister of Finance’s surplus; it is the surplus of hard-working New Zealanders who are being taxed too much. The taxi-driver got progressively even more upset when he also found out that 36 percent of the tax collected goes to social welfare. He was not too sure how long he wanted to carry on working instead of simply giving up and going on the dole. That is what is so criminal about this Labour Budget. The Government is taxing hard-working New Zealanders and keeping the surplus for an election year bribe. 
In 1999 Labour promised no new taxes. Since then we have had three extraordinary urgency parliamentary sessions to pass additional taxes on cigarettes alcohol and petrol. It gets even better. All the people outside Auckland blamed Aucklanders for the petrol tax but Aucklanders still have not seen any relief in terms of the traffic jams there. Young people recently were blamed as being the reason for the Labour Government imposing an excise tax on alcohol but I have yet to see young people staggering down Courtenay Place with bottles of cream sherry in their hands. I sat in on some of the Primary Production Committee’s sessions when it heard submissions on the Wine Bill. One submitter after another was asking the Labour members to explain why the wine industry was not consulted on the latest tax grab when the Hon Jim Anderton had written to the industry and promised consultation. Can we trust Labour Ministers whenever they say they will not raise taxes? In effect the Labour Government seems to have got into a habit of binge-taxing hard-working New Zealanders because it actually believes that it can spend taxpayers’ money better than taxpayers can. 
Let us look at one of the many examples of Labour’s binge-spending of taxpayers’ money. This particular project that I am going to share with the public is known as “What’s in a name?”. Apparently the Government through New Zealand Way Ltd paid $1 million for the domain name www.newzealand.com. So I asked some questions of the Minister. It appears that this $1 million debacle came about without even the exercise of a simple cost and benefit feasibility study having been done prior to that purchase on behalf of the New Zealand taxpayers. Worse still we are not even clear whether there was full and accurate understanding of what was actually being purchased and in what circumstances. 
Initially the Government could not understand why the domain name www.newzealand.com had to be purchased at all because it believed that the name “New Zealand” was a trademark that belonged to the New Zealand Government. As a result of this fiasco the Government took the US company Virtual Countries to the World Intellectual Property Organization claiming that its use of the domain name www.newzealand.com was a trademark violation. The Minister of Tourism now admits that this disgraceful blunder cost the taxpayers $3500—all because the Government has yet to join the technological revolution. What happened to the Labour policy of economic transformation? Funnily the Government does not even understand there is a major difference between a trademark and a domain name. A domain name is simply a web-based address while a trademark is a name a symbol or a device used to identify a product that has been legally registered as such and the use of which is therefore restricted to the owner or manufacturer. That is despite the fact that last year Labour passed legislation regulating trademarks and patents. So the Government does not understand what a trademark is or the difference between a trademark and a domain name. 
Perhaps as a result of this embarrassing international faux pas the Government went on to spend $1 million on purchasing this disputed domain name. I ask this question: before the Minister spent $1 million did he bother to seek some advice? Do members know what happened? The Minister asked for some advice. Guess what the advice was? It was that the Internet is a valuable marketing and communication tool. Imagine! One would be hard-pushed to find anyone disputing that claim but with this domain having a $1 million price tag I thought that one could expect a few probing questions from the Minister on behalf of the New Zealand public. 
David Benson-Pope 
: Turn the dialysis machine off. 
PANSY WONG 
: The senior Government whip is piping up again. The Opposition does ask questions unlike that Labour lot. We are getting very concerned. I learnt the latest: all Labour members apart from five seem to hold some sort of position—yet they have not even learnt to ask a few probing questions. Those lazy Labour members of Parliament leave all the tough questions to be asked by the Opposition. 
Before the Minister of Finance stands in this House ever again to boast of a surplus he should read his own tax statements. He does not earn those surpluses; he overtaxes hard-working New Zealanders. 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA (Minister of Maori Affairs) 
:  
Mr Speaker mihi kau ana ki a koe i roto i te Turu ra i a ratau e rongo ake ano ki te korero nei ki nga mema o te Whare Miere nei tena koe. 
[An interpretation in English was given to the House.] 
[ 
Special greetings to you Mr Speaker in the Chair and also to those listening in to this debate by members of this Parliament 
.] 
This Budget continues the work this Government has done in supporting the Maori of tomorrow. In my maiden speech to the House I said that the future for Maori is about acknowledging who we are and determining where we want to go. My opinion remains the same. This is a good Budget for Maori. It builds on the back of previous Budgets and it has been informed by this Government getting out and talking to Maori kanohi ki te kanohi—face to face. We have been to 14 regions we have talked to hundreds of Maori and especially we have listened to them and we have come back to try to translate into sensible policy what they have requested and asked for. 
This Government has responded to the call from Maori that participation and achievement in education is a key issue driving the success of the Maori of tomorrow. Our demographics tell us quite clearly that our age profile bulges in the 14-16 year age band. It is a huge number of people and the interesting thing is that it is totally opposite to the non-Maori demographic band. As an Associate Minister of Education I am proud of the extra funding in the Budget that will see a teacher-student ratio of 1:20. In real terms that means an additional 155 teachers in Maori immersion education so that we can ensure that our reo the language of the tangata whenua the first nation people of this country is preserved. There are a whole lot of issues in relation to our education. We want to help whanau support their children’s learning. That is critical. We want to move on from just being the lay people and the manual labourers which at times the labour market has forced us to be. There needs to be work to improve the professional development of teachers in te reo Maori and literacy programmes in all primary schools. 
This Budget will also deliver funding to develop a framework for best teaching practice for students from diverse backgrounds especially Maori. The question needs to be answered: whose framework and who has managed and orchestrated Maoris’ non-participation in education forums at all levels? In short this Government is determined not just to lift educational achievement but to ensure that cultural participation is recognised and preserved and most of all to ensure that we head off on the economic trail that we want very much to be part of and that I can say we were part of in the early days. It is fascinating that in treaty claims and historical summaries in this country what generally is focused on are all the negative issues and the connotations are that all we did was bash up and get bashed. There were partnerships at the turn of the 20th century where we were in control of a whole lot of economic situations but they were either flogged off or taken away. [ 
Interruption 
] We want all New Zealanders to have the chance to reach their full potential even members of the Opposition. It is important that they reach their full potential. Some of them will fill up the gap a lot more with their size than other people will. 
It is important to appreciate and say that we are clear about closing the distance between non-Maori and Maori achievement. Maori have been clear that another key area for this Government is training and employment. Too many young Maori are leaving structured learning early without or with few qualifications. This Government has announced major initiatives that will assist Maori school-leavers to gain the basic skills they need to contribute to building the economy of the nation. If we want to be free and continually preach—[ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I refer the member to Speaker’s rulings 51/5 (1) and (2). 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: If we want to be clear and honest about preaching equity and if we are not just to worry about it overseas let us practice it in our own backyard. Let us stop this racist scratching. Let us ensure that we recognise the culture of this country. Let us make sure that on the way to collective nationhood which Maori want everybody participates and the majority do not incessantly and unnecessarily bully people who are striving to achieve. [ 
Interruption 
] Too many young Maori are leaving structured learning early. Those who have placed themselves in the fraternity of those who practise legalese and earn a lot of income off the backs of Maori and have been employed on the backs of Maori need to think again. 
Maori school-leavers need to gain the basic skills they need to contribute to building the economy and to learn the fundamentals of business. They should not just learn about these pyramid games and all this nonsensical false building that goes on in the economy. We have got better at it. We do understand it. We do understand the fundamentals. Maori have assets that they want to make sure are played in the economy. 
The expansion of the Gateway programme increasing the number in the Modern Apprenticeships scheme and additional funding to help early school-leavers get further educational training and employment all contribute to the Government’s goal of having all 15 to 19-year-olds involved in education training or work by 2007—Maori Pakeha immigrants the whole lot. This Government continues to recognise that jobs and training play a key part in accelerating Maori development. The labour market is a fascinating thing. It is an area that with vibrant business creates jobs. Under the last Government over a period of time— 
Richard Worth 
: The last Government was Labour. 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: The Government before that. The unemployment rate was running at 22 to 18 percent for Maori people. This Government has taken it down to 10 percent and across the range it is down 5 percent. That is one of the best unemployment rates that this country has seen in 32 years. Shame on those people who kept us out of the labour market! To change the attitudes of employers and job seekers we will assist Maori job seekers to join the Modern Apprenticeships scheme. Like I said the unemployment rate has trended down. [ 
Interruption 
] I am not too sure what the response to that is— 
Hon Dover Samuels 
: That member’s never worked in his life. 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: That is right; some people have never worked in their life. They have pretended to turn up to work at 9 o’clock and have finished at 4 o’clock. 
The Government has also recognised that Maori are bringing their own ideas and assets to development in this country. It is critical to understand that. Let me remind members that Maori are partners in one of the biggest fishing companies in this world. Te Ohu Kai Moana has presented the allocation model to the Minister of Fisheries. There is still a long way to go but progress continues to be made. I was fascinated to see the other week at the mussel factory in Blenheim that of the people there about one-third are Maori one-third are Pakeha and one-third are other people. So Maori are doing a lot for this country’s economy. 
Steps forward continue to be made in other treaty settlements this year. Deeds of settlement have been signed with Ngati Awa and Ngati Ruanui. The Government has passed legislation such as the recent Maori Purposes Bill to speed up the process by which treaty claims are reported. I expect that further progress will be made in that area over the next few months. 
Alongside improving economic and employment outcomes whanau development is important to us. Family collectivity is important. It is about working from the bottom up about whanau hapu and iwi development but it is also about getting a stake in the top end—managing our businesses owning our own businesses and determining what is good for us. The Government has a role to aid and abet and support the progress of Maori people but Maori people are more than able now to determine what they want to do how they want to do it and when they want to do it. 
This Government continues to recognise that it is important for Maori to have the opportunity to interact with the Maori language and culture in the 21st century. There are certainly claims of historical redress and we are putting a lot of effort into working through that. Contemporary issues are starting to come out and we will take time to work on them so that fairness is perceived. 
There is extra funding for radio stations throughout the country. The funding is for the professional development of iwi radio staff governance training in te reo Maori and management and planning skills. 
RICHARD WORTH (NZ National—Epsom) 
: 
 It was good to hear a number of the comments made by the previous speaker in connection with advancing the cause of Maori. I am glad he did that because too often Government members are quick to criticise Maori for underachievement. We all know how important it is that positive signals are given by Parliament to all sectors of the community to advance all people regardless of their ethnicity. 
The issue I would like to speak about tonight in the context of this bill is the funding that is being provided for the establishment of the new Supreme Court. I start by saying that even for those who have a fair knowledge of numbers the Budget is not a particularly comprehensible document. Just to take an example the executive summary document issued in relation to the Budget provides some detail about the funding required for this new court. When one looks at the narrative explanation of that funding one sees it is not particularly meaningful. The executive summary at page 14 has a list under the heading “maintaining a fair justice system for all”. It begins: “$17 million operating and $22 million capital to establish the Supreme Court of New Zealand”. When one looks at those numbers more closely it is apparent that the $17 million operating money is a payment to be spread over 4 years of varying amounts in each year. That $17 million of 4-year appropriations has in year 1 a $3.9 million operating cost. 
The reason for speaking about this aspect of the Budget is that we are looking at an area of identified profligate waste. There is no need at all to spend this amount or any part of it in seeking to establish a new Supreme Court. The original cost estimates contained in the Cabinet policy committee material had estimated annual operating costs of the new court at $5.2 million and the estimated capital cost of constructing new premises excluding land at $10 million to $11 million. Why are we spending that money? Could that money not be better put to other initiatives that would bring greater benefits to New Zealand? I suggest that the answer to that is self-evident. Instead we are confronted with legislation that seeks to establish a new appellate court—a domestic court—as the final court in New Zealand and to do away with long-established links with the Privy Council. It is an ideologically driven position. There is no move for that change from the major user groups. 
Who are the major user groups? Quite clearly they include Maori. We have had submissions from the Federation of Maori Authorities from individual Maori and from iwi groups all to say there is no case for this change. Mita Ririnui is attempting to interject to ask a question. Let me explain to him because although I have already stated the point he may not have understood it. The point is simply that the Budget has a significant appropriation to establish the Supreme Court when there is no valid reason for the expenditure of those reasonably significant sums of money. 
In the Justice and Electoral Committee we have listened and Mr Ririnui has listened albeit with exhausting and tiring patience to a raft of arguments that have touched on the future of this new court and the plans for the removal of the Privy Council. We have heard arguments on issues relating to access to jurisdiction. It is the Attorney-General’s proud boast that this Government is strong on access to justice issues. That is absolute nonsense. I say that because there have been swingeing fee hikes that have denied to civil litigants on a number of occasions the opportunity of accessing the courts and now under the guise of cost saving or nationalism there is a proposal to do away with the Privy Council. 
There has been no rational argument presented to the select committee sitting in judgment on the Supreme Court Bill for the abolition of that court. In fact the arguments run as Mr Ririnui would know the other way completely. We have heard an argument—in fact Mr Ririnui propounds it—that as a matter of national identity we should no longer defer to an overseas jurisdiction. The reality is that many overseas jurisdictions themselves defer to those jurisdictions. We ourselves have lines to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations. The United Kingdom has lines of access from its highest courts into the European Court of Justice and into the European Court of Human Rights. 
When we look at the justification for this budgeted expenditure we see it is also the case that there have been startling reversals by our highest court the Privy Council of decisions made by the Court of Appeal. In fact in a period of 2002 when there were 10 cases decided seven of them were reversed. Some of the criticism made by the law lords sitting in the Privy Council has been nothing short of alarming. In one such case  
Taito v the Queen 
 the Court of Appeal was criticised for applying a procedure of no legal validity “contrary to fundamental conceptions of fairness and justice” so as to dispose of appeals from poor people in that their appeals were dismissed without a hearing while wealthy people were granted a chance to argue in open court. 
In another decision  
Dymocks  
v  
Todd 
 the New Zealand courts were chided for “leaving out of account factual matters of great importance” and the Court of Appeal was encouraged to keep an open mind on the important issue of whether the common law would imply an obligation of good faith into a contract as the civil law of Europe often does. 
Finally in a case  
Harley 
 v  
McDonald 
 the Privy Council set aside an award of costs against a barrister who had vigorously represented a difficult client for the reason that she had not been given a fair hearing. It said that the Court of Appeal showed a “fundamental defect in its reasoning”. 
If it is right that this Government prides itself on prudential financial management then I ask why this money is being wasted in setting up a new court against the wishes of Maori and against the wishes of the other major user groups. It probably comes down to a wish by the Attorney-General to advance a cause that she fervently believes in—that is the cause of republicanism. In the decision to make these changes many of us see one of the steps along the way to that outcome. Why is it that the taxpayers of New Zealand should pay an indulgence fee to meet aspirations that the Attorney-General has? I suggest we should not do that. From National’s perspective we would seek that that link be retained; we would seek that the Privy Council become a leave court; we would seek that its jurisdiction be extended; and finally we would seek that this money not be spent. 
STEVE CHADWICK (NZ Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 After listening to Opposition members with their rather quaint stance of clinging to the wreckage of the past with the Privy Council and not embracing new change that New Zealanders are looking forward to I want to come back to the world of the Budget. I am proud of this certain and solid Budget and I am very proud of the Labour-led coalition Government that supports the way that we as a team—a team with great leadership—will make it happen. I do not believe that over the last week United Future has felt very compromised in being associated with us as a coalition partner that is on a pathway paved with support for education and health while demonstrating that we can also very soundly manage the country’s finances—and the country’s finances are in a very sound position. 
I went into politics to promote the focus on the family as the cornerstone of communities—communities that are built up to feel proud of their achievements that care for each other both locally and nationally and that stand tall on the world stage. This rebuilding cannot take place without healthy children and parents a sense of hope and certainty a vision for the future armed with skills education and training and a tolerance to participating in growing civil society. 
The Opposition labels this Budget as socialist rhetoric. It has not twigged that this is a 10-year journey that the country embarked upon 4 years ago—three Budgets ago—and that this Budget is the stuff of a long-term Government. It is about staying on course and maintaining our strong position in times certainly of great uncertainty. This is not a Budget of soft and pappy throwaways that gladden the hearts of a select few. There is something in this Budget for every individual family voluntary organisation local authority small business and company. Overseas investors and visitors are eyeing us up as a place in which they wish to invest and contribute. 
Rotorua as an electorate has responded very positively in the media from a principal in a very high achieving boys high school saying that the targeted funding for keeping kids fit and engaged in sport is absolutely great to the chair of our chamber of commerce commending the support and focus on small business development and also the extra funding that has been very cleverly put in this Budget for finding overseas markets. Even the chair of the New Zealand Medical Association who resides in Rotorua liked the further funding to support the primary health strategy implementation—and that association had not been that enthusiastic about that future. The chair of our district health board Stewart Edward welcomed the certainty in the package. The population-based funding increase of $36 million puts us on track to deliver deficit elimination by 2004. The local police even went to the newspaper to say that they support the $6.6 million funding for the team approach to crack down on local methamphetamine laboratories. We in Rotorua are ashamed to say that we are well aware of laboratories in our community. We found out about one on Friday because we noticed a massive increase in the power bill of one of our local houses in the community. So we are probably contributing to our power target as well now that that has been found and will be dealt with. 
I was very positively received at the jewel in our crown in Rotorua when last Friday the New Zealand Forest Research Institute Ltd launched its biomaterials vision. This is a futures glimpse on what science and research can deliver from wood products in the next 25 years. It will advance the widespread utilisation of renewable materials and products from plants for economic environmental and social returns. It is great to hear a Crown research institute talking about social returns. This will be a world supported by energy producing cells from pulp production instead of fossil fuel biodegradable plastics that can be made from the waste stream an environmentally sustainable world of building materials and cosmetics and products that we have not even dreamed of all developed from biomaterials. The New Zealand Forest Research Institute Ltd a Crown research institute has grabbed the collaborative model and attracted partners from the international field of research industry Industry New Zealand the Foundation for Research Science and Technology and venture capital funders. It thanked us on Friday for the $140 million Government support for research and development over the next 4 years. This will go some way towards helping it to achieve its vision. That was the response from our local leaders. 
I have noted other areas that underpin my key areas of interest. Vote Health emerges as the big winner with 20 percent of the funding cake. The vote increases to $9.6 billion this year. This is unprecedented support. This is the sort of cake—more like a carrot cake than a spongy pud—that nurtures the sector. It is logical. If we are to avoid burgeoning hospital costs we have to go along this route. It targets healthy lifestyles and wellness. This is a vision we set out to achieve with our primary health strategy 2 years ago. This strategy receives a further $165 million this year. The ingredients of our healthy cake are bound together by population-based funding to boards that will ensure a redistribution and a fair share of funding will go to communities based on health need and it is generous toward product development. Funding support this year was announced for 40 more doctors in training and increased support for the rural sector is a solid start towards workforce rebuilding—something that the Opposition took no care of for 9 years and now we are having to catch up. 
Access to affordable care will see low doctors’ fees for patients who are less than 18 years old enrolment in interim public health organisations from October of this year and a reduction in prescription fees to a maximum of $3 for all children in these schemes and there are 40 of them. Access schemes which are those primary health organisations in the areas of highest need will ensure that patients of all ages pay a limit on prescription fees. This is supported by another new initiative called Care Plus. It is being piloted from January in 2004 and will cater for many older people with very poor health as well as those people who are under 65 years and require very high levels of coordination in terms of their care. We will see projects being developed such as the Bumps and Falls Prevention project in Rotorua. This is a combined project with the Accident Compensation Corporation Merck Sharp and Dohme the senior citizens unit within the Department of Social Services and Employment and general practitioners all working together such as they have never done before. 
 All health workers will applaud the $22.1 million funding going towards accident prevention and treatment and focusing on rehabilitation and district health boards. Boards will see some major bricks-and-mortar capital projects advanced with $656 million going towards hospital buildings across the land. There will be new hospitals in Wellington Kenepuru Nelson-Marlborough and Southland; the hospital in Auckland will be completed along with ambulatory services; and there are a number of smaller projects. A national capital committee is being established to ensure that we spend wisely on buildings in the health sector in order to get the very best for our money. 
Richard Worth 
: This is capital? 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: That is in the Budget this year. Young people are at last recognised as needing funding to support their resilience and to develop services around them. We are getting more money for a residential health unit in Christchurch focusing on drug and alcohol rehabilitation and $13.2 million will be used to combat youth suicide and drug and alcohol abuse. This is a wonderful Budget for the young people in our country. 
BRIAN CONNELL (NZ National—Rakaia) 
: 
 My first observation is that this Budget has not provided an economic road map for the people of New Zealand. This Government has clearly abandoned its objective of getting New Zealand into the top half of the OECD and by implication it has no growth goal. The outlook is bleak. Treasury is forecasting 2.2 percent growth over the next 10 years and that is a generous interpretation. The good times have gone. This Government has been lucky. We should be clear about that. The three stars—low dollar low interest rates and high commodity prices—all came into alignment but those good times have now gone. What I was looking for in this Budget was some direction to give me some confidence that the Government knew how to manage in the tough times not just in the easy times. Having said that I point out even in the best of times all we could achieve was 4 percent. We pat ourselves on the back and say that is good. I say it is not good enough. That 4 percent was not really our own doing. It had more to do with the disasters in other people’s economies such as mad cow disease droughts and something this Government would understand very well—foot-and-mouth disease. Forecasting a $4 billion surplus is something the Government is wearing like a badge of honour. I say we are simply overtaxed. What we need to do is stimulate growth. What is wrong with this country? Over the last 10 years we have seen the standard of living worsen in New Zealand by about 30 percent compared with that of Australia. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: Who was in for most of that time? 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: It does not matter who was in Government for most of that time. The fact remains that there is now a 30 percent gap in the standard of living between us and Australia. A person earning the average wage in New Zealand could go to Australia and be better off by $200 per week. That is an indictment on this country. It is an absolute indictment. What is wrong with us? If the Wallabies beat us there is a post-mortem but when we take a thrashing economically we just say that that is our lot. I have bigger aspirations than that for this country. If this country is to have its children stay at home and call New Zealand their country we have to address those issues. Members should not be fooled by the Government’s rhetoric of net migration figures. We should be looking at the skills that are leaving this country. If we compare the skills that are coming here with the ones that are going members will find that we have a desperate concern. 
We need growth. If members’ eyes glaze over when we talk about growth then they should unglaze them because there is direct correlation between our standards of health and education and our crime rate. But reducing tax is not enough. What we need to do is remove the impediments to growth: red tape the Accident Compensation Corporation the Occupational Safety and Health Service labour laws and of course the Resource Management Act. What did “Blackout Pete” give us when we wanted to do something about the energy crisis? He gave us another tax. That is very helpful is it not? We had another tax the other day on sherry and now we have a tax on electricity generation. This Government has an insatiable appetite for tax. Unbelievably this Budget was silent on electricity generation. It was silent on infrastructure development Auckland roading and forestry infrastructure. Why does the Government not give back to the forestry industry the carbon credits it stole so that the industry can do something about its infrastructure requirements? We are forecasting that we will have a wall of wood to go to the market yet it escapes the Government that unless we invest in infrastructure it will just not get there. 
The biggest black mark of this Budget is that it did not have the courage to do the right thing and reduce welfare expenditure and that is killing us. It is sucking the lifeblood out of this country. It is the biggest social failure in our history. We now have multigenerational beneficiaries and multigenerational State housing tenants. It might interest members to know that in 1973 there were 30000 beneficiaries in this country. Today there are nearly 400000 working-age people receiving some form of benefit in this country. That is a 12-fold increase and the population has not even doubled. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: What would you do about it then? 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: I would reduce our welfare expenditure. That is what I am trying to get through to you if you would listen and shut up. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member must not use the word “you”. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: I apologise. I was just thinking out loud. The city of Christchurch would not be able to house the number of people on benefits in this country. That is how acute the problem has become. We now have 1 in 4 working age Kiwis on a benefit. Let us have a look at the domestic purposes benefit. Thaddeus McCarthy when he recommended it in 1973 said: “I anticipate that we will have 20000 people on it max.” Of course we now have 120000 people on it and of that 120000 16000 are women who will not even name the father of their child. This Government tolerates that type of dishonesty. I say to the members opposite that this country cannot afford that type of dishonesty. Where will the people of New Zealand go to get direction on honesty? They cannot come to this Government because dishonesty is endemic in it. Let us have a look at some of its clangers. Minister Hawkins had no record of receiving a letter telling him about leaky homes. Minister Horomia is misleading the House at the moment about the misuse of taxpayers’ funds. Minister Carter misled the House about the Hobson Dam site and the Prime Minister misled the House over some clauses in the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2). She is pleading that she was unconscious for the last 2 years. Well I agree with that! What about this clanger from Michael Cullen: “Telling the truth does not mean that what you are saying is correct.” What a clanger that was. All that dishonesty caused me to pen a little ditty which goes like this: 
George Washington couldn’t tell a lie Richard Nixon couldn’t tell the truth Helen Clark can’t tell the difference And Michael Cullen doesn’t think there’s a difference. 
The Budget has not escaped that insipid political correctness that has snuck into this country over the last 20 years. Because Michael Cullen is a servant of the politically correct people he has spent $6.5 million so that we can get better acquainted with the Treaty of Waitangi—instead of spending money on the tens of thousands of people out there who need heart surgery or surgery for their ailments or on those people who we have to send to Australia for cancer treatments. 
 How insipid is that? What sort of spin is that? It is nothing but indoctrination. The people who are listening would be excused for thinking that the Treaty of Waitangi is a complex document. “Here it is—this is the Treaty of Waitangi and we are going to spend $6.5 million learning this.” It is an indictment. It is the sort of expenditure that we expect from this Government in terms of boat races and we will probably get a “Sovereign Yachts result”. What about bureaucracy? This is how he will deal with bureaucracy: he will put an advisory board in place. That says so much about Michael Cullen. That really helps small business owners does it not? They could not sleep last week when they heard that. There will be an adviser to the adviser to the adviser to the Minister—that is really going to help! When Michael Cullen was asked to take on the job of Minister of Finance the Government members put him to a test. They interviewed him and said this to him: “Minister what is two plus two?” He looked back and said: “Whatever you want it to be.” and that sums up this Budget. 
HELEN DUNCAN (NZ Labour) 
: 
 This is the fourth Budget presented by the Minister of Finance Dr Michael Cullen and it continues the fine tradition established by his previous three Budgets. This Budget is built on the strong foundation he has laid and it ensures that even in a very difficult global environment our country can maintain its strong position. This Budget is not only about providing fiscal certainty in an uncertain world but also about providing balanced policies—policies that demonstrate that this is a Government that keeps its word unlike a lot of previous Governments. They are policies that are not afraid to invest in the future of Aotearoa-New Zealand. They ensure that our economic growth rate which is currently one of the strongest in the OECD is maintained. They provide for surpluses to be used to ensure the long-term fiscal stability of this nation. 
This is a Government that keeps its word. More New Zealanders are now in work than ever before. Since December 1999 there has been an increase of 132000 in the number of New Zealanders in paid employment—that is keeping our word. We are reducing the cost of primary health care: 34 primary health organisations have been established throughout the country providing high-quality lower-cost integrated health care to 40 percent of the New Zealand population—that is keeping our word. This Government has made superannuation more secure by establishing the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to help to meet the cost of supporting baby boomers in their retirement. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I do not want to interrupt the member but either she is speaking very loudly or the microphones are very loud because there is an echo. The member is either too close to the microphone or it is too loud. I am trying to help the member and not trying to interfere. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The point is well made. Perhaps the person who does the audio in the House can take note. 
HELEN DUNCAN 
: Or perhaps some of the people on the other side who are shouting out inanities might stop then I could speak a little more quietly. 
This Government has made superannuation more secure by establishing the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to help meet the costs of supporting baby boomers in their retirement—that is keeping our word. We are extending the Gateway initiative in our secondary schools so that the pupils and businesses involved in that scheme can benefit from work-based learning—that is keeping our word. As of 31 March 2003 over 5000 young New Zealanders have taken up Modern Apprenticeships and we are well on track to meet our 6000 target by December 2003 and that is keeping our word. 
This Government is working to improve the sustainability of our infrastructure in transport energy water and technology. We are prepared to make the investment that will pay off for the New Zealanders of the future. We have established the Tertiary Education Commission to steer development in the tertiary sector. We have put in place the growth and innovation strategy that will strengthen our Government’s capacity to grow. 
What Budget 2003 shows our nation is an integrated whole-of-Government approach to lifting our sustainable growth rate and improving life for all New Zealanders. This Budget offers certainty and stability amidst a threatening confused and insecure world environment. It reinforces the reputation of this Labour-led Government for fiscal prudence and economic pragmatism. The Government accounts are in excellent shape and if events unfold in line with Budget forecasts there should be room in next year’s Budget for sustainable new initiatives that will particularly be aimed at assisting low and middle-income families to smooth the transition from welfare to work. 
We are exceeding all of our fiscal targets. Our economic growth at 4.4 percent is one of the strongest in the OECD. Although negative international influences will probably see that growth dropping back to around 2.2 percent next year growth is then expected to rebound in the following year and will still be above the OECD average. That is a not bad sort of a record to have. The big bogey “inflation” which has been targeted over many years by some who shall remain nameless is expected to ease back to below 2 percent in both 2004 and 2005. The economic outlook is very good. 
It is interesting that a lot of Opposition speakers have gone on and on about the surplus. Although Dr Cullen has said that the paper surplus is just over $4 billion when one includes the revaluations and accounting changes it gets about two-thirds lower than that. It is prudent to ensure that those surpluses are sustainable before they are spent. This Government believes that future surpluses will be sufficient to maintain our infrastructural investment which is something that was not done in the previous 9 years so there is a lot to catch up with. We have to deal with the infrastructural deficit we inherited but we think that future surpluses will enable us to do that meet our debt targets and finance the contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. All in all the economic picture is looking pretty rosy which should not surprise anybody because traditionally in New Zealand history Labour Governments have repaid debt got the economy on a good footing and put New Zealand in a better financial situation. 
I just want to spend a little time talking about something very dear to my heart and that is education. Education like health has been a winner in this Budget. Educating for a successful innovative economy is a crucial theme of Budget 2003. If I can paraphrase Peter Fraser—and I know he would have liked this Budget—education is about the development of each individual to his or her full potential and about the pursuit of values that cannot just be expressed in monetary terms although I do not expect anybody sitting on the opposite side of the House to realise that. Total education funding rises by $393 million to $8.2 billion for the 2003-2004 year and further increases are provided for the other policies that start early next year. 
One of our first priorities is to reduce the inequalities in educational achievement that beset our country. We want to make sure that every New Zealander can reach his or her full potential regardless of background. We will start by putting a lot of money into early childhood education because that is where it all starts. If we can get the children of New Zealand off to a really good start with a really good early childhood education system that good start will show up through the primary years the secondary years and—as research shows—even through to tertiary education. So a lot of money will be spent on early childhood education most of it going into making sure that there is access to early childhood education for children who currently do not have it. Money will go to the developing centres fund and there will be capital funding to implement new centres. There will be extra grants to continue our commitment to assisting the upgrade of staffing qualifications in the early childhood sector. Education is a winner in this Budget and New Zealand will be the winner because of it. 
DIANNE YATES (NZ Labour—Hamilton East) 
: 
 Health education housing and jobs—at every election that has been my mantra. That is what Labour stands for that is what people expect of Labour and that is what we see in this Budget. Money is going into health education housing and jobs. 
As the member for Hamilton East I am particularly pleased that money is going into health. We have a total rise in health spending of $711 million next year to $9.6 billion. As my colleague Helen Duncan has said extra money is going into education. We have 774 teachers going into early childhood primary and secondary education. We can say “x billion” “x million” and so on but people cannot generally conceive of what those billions or millions mean. They do however understand 774 teachers. In my electorate they understand that they are getting 13.5 more teachers and as my electorate has seven secondary schools they are particularly pleased about it because they also know that teachers want non-contact hours in which to prepare and work. Those extra teachers will help out in our schools making class sizes smaller and allowing teachers to improve their skills and have more preparation time. So in education we have extra funding—close to $167 million over 4 years—to provide those 774 primary and secondary teaching positions. 
As I have said one of the consequences of that will be the introduction of a 1:20 teacher-student ratio for students learning te reo Maori bringing an extra 155 full-time teacher equivalents nationwide. The improved ratio applies to Maori students who are taught in Maori and more than 12.5 hours per week at Year 11. That is particularly important in my electorate. 
I have heard people on the other side of the House scoffing at the amount of money going into Treaty education. The feedback I have had from the Hamilton East electorate is that people are particularly pleased about that and are saying it is long overdue. Treaty education is something that we have to do in each generation. When we had a Labour Government in the 1970s we had a good deal of Treaty education but it has been neglected. Certainly the Leader of the Opposition should be one of the first to enrol for one of the courses so that he will learn a little more about the Treaty. I think many of his colleagues would benefit from some of that training as well. 
Money is also going into youth training. There is a package of initiatives worth $56 million for the 15 to 19-year-olds involved in education and training. There are leaving-age packages going into Gateway programmes. In Hamilton we have a particularly good Gateway programme which is enabling young people to move from schools into jobs. We also have the Modern Apprenticeships training scheme which is a most popular programme particularly with young people and parents. I hope that we will be able to get more publicity out about that programme. In my electorate in particular we have many young people on that apprenticeship scheme and I am pleased to say we had the Apprentice of the Year as well. 
Having worked on the weathertightness of buildings inquiry I can say that one of the major demands that came out of that inquiry was that we have qualified apprentices going particularly into the building trade but into other trades as well. People ask why we did not have those trained people and I can say it is because of 10 years of National Party ignorance and neglect of our young people. That has bounced back on us. I heard a whack at the Government from the other side over weathertightness. It was Mr George Chapman of the National Party the chair of the Building Industry Authority in 1998 who received the first letter from Prendos about a problem with building in this country—and he did sweet nothing about it. I will not accept that George Hawkins and other people in the Labour Government should accept the responsibility for that problem a large part of which was due to lack of training and lack of apprentices. 
We are addressing that problem as quickly as we can. We are introducing regionally based programmes across the country which target early school leavers. There are youth training programmes and I am particularly pleased about the $85 million over 4 years that is going into industry training which will train people on the job. That is particularly important and very popular with both employers and young people. 
So there is a good deal going into health and education but let us look at the third one—housing. In my electorate 90 State houses were built in the last year or acquired by Housing New Zealand. That Opposition sold 13000 State houses and that is why we have people on waiting lists trying to get into State housing. I thank the Minister that over 3000 State houses will be built to cope with that and to build up existing stock. That represents many people. We hear New Zealanders say that their parents had a State house and that that gave them a start in life. Many of those who are now heading our universities and some of our major organisations in this country are people whose families had stability because they had State houses. 
When we brought in income-related rents and the acquisition of State houses I had feedback from our local schools that families were more stable and that their kids were staying longer at school and getting better results. That is because of the State housing scheme and the fact that we are now building houses as fast as we can build them. At this stage I particularly want to thank Mark Gosche who has been Minister of Housing for the work he has done and for his devotion to his job—despite his personal difficulties and the great trauma his family has had. I think everyone in the House can thank the Minister for the work he has done while he was Minister of Housing. We owe him a great debt and I think this House also expresses its sympathy for his wife and the situation his family is in at this present time. 
We have looked at education health housing and jobs. They are the four pillars of any Labour Government and are the things that the people of this country look to from a Labour Government. They are what Michael Cullen has delivered in this Budget. We all know the international situation—people in this country do not have to be told. We know of the wars affecting this country. We know what is happening with oil shortages. We know what is happening with the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic and its effect on tourism. Everybody in this country knows that and they know that this is a realistic Budget that looks at New Zealand as it is situated in the world at the present time. 
Coming from the Hamilton East electorate where at least a third of the electorate is in some way involved with one of our nine research institutes I am particularly pleased about the additional $140 million that is going into research science and technology. That is particularly important not only to our primary industries to our biotechnology and to the value added to those primary industries but also to the creation of jobs. The money that has gone into such things as the Innovation Park in Hamilton which will create 2500 jobs is particularly pleasing and we look forward to further such developments occurring throughout New Zealand. In the electorate of Hamilton East in particular we are extremely grateful for that money. 
We are also grateful for the money that will go there not only through Pete Hodgson the Minister of Research Science and Technology and through Technology New Zealand but also through our Progressive partner Jim Anderton in his roles as Minister for Economic Development and Minister for Industry and Regional Development. At last we will have money going into regional development. For 9 years we had a National Government that purported to support rural New Zealand that purported to support the regions and it let our regions run down. I am very pleased that this Budget and this Government are supporting regional development in New Zealand and those of us who live south of the Bombay hills. I am pleased that it is supporting the development of New Zealand as New Zealand and not just Auckland. 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 Helen Duncan one of the Labour members who preceded both the previous speaker and myself made a speech based on the slogan “We’re keeping our word”. There is nothing original in this Labour Party. That was the National Party theme song in 1978. What a dull boring bunch Labour Party members are. 
Hon Member 
: And you would know. 
DAIL JONES 
: I would know. We kept our word and we were re-elected in 1981. How boring Helen Duncan is! How boring Michael Cullen is! 
Ron Mark 
: She’s a Nat. 
DAIL JONES 
: Well maybe she is a Nat in disguise but there is nothing original on the part of that Labour Party. Of course in thinking about keeping our word I note there is a novel way of doing that in the Labour Party. I heard Lynne Pillay’s speech. She said that in 2007 there would be seven secondary schools in Waitakere City. I started to think then to count and I worked out that currently we have Rutherford High School Kelston Boys High School and Kelston Girls High School—those two I think in the new Waitakere City—Henderson High School Green Bay High School Massey High School which makes six and Waitakere College. That is seven. We have seven colleges there now. She is going to keep her word—there will still be seven in 2007! What a wonderful election campaign—we will have seven secondary schools in 2007 and we have seven now. 
That indicates of course that that Waitakere member has no idea about Waitakere. She probably does not know where it begins or where it ends unlike those of us who have worked in Waitakere in one way or another since 1975—as I have done spending nine of those years as a constituency MP. The situation so far as schools are concerned is that Waitakere is one of the fastest growing areas in New Zealand and we need not one but probably two more secondary schools there. Massey High School’s roll now is about 2300 and it gets $2 million in overseas students fees. That situation in Waitakere City is a disgrace on the education scene at the moment and the member has totally disgraced herself in so far as her discussion about being a constituency member.  
I have asked the Minister of Education what he is doing about a new school in Waitakere City. All members will recall how he told his officials not to tell me what was going on and then I ended up with the entire file which told me the situation about the lack of progress over another secondary school in Waitakere City. I hope I am right about those seven schools. Kelston Boys High School and Kelston Girls High School I think are on the boundary but it seems to me that currently there are seven schools in Waitakere City. 
Mrs Pillay also said that this Labour Government was going to provide State housing for people in Waitakere City and we all know why that is necessary. It is because of all the immigrants coming into that city and New Zealanders are missing out. The waiting lists are full of immigrants who slot in on the lower levels of the State housing points system and State houses are being built in Waitakere City and given to new immigrants. The Hobsonville housing—all those houses taken up by the Air Force—will be taken up now by immigrants. 
Jill Pettis 
: Where was that member born? 
DAIL JONES 
: I have never had a State house. When I came to New Zealand I could not believe that someone would give a family a State house. My mother could not believe that education was free and insisted that I went to a school where we paid. The State has not paid for my housing or for my education other than—and I am very grateful for it—my university education which I believe I have put to good use. I have worked since 1961—43 years non-stop. I think if all New Zealanders set that sort of record we would be doing very well. I hope that answers Ms Pettis’ question. 
Another example of the sleight of hand of this Labour Party when it says: “We’re keeping our word” is exemplified in our sherry and port tax. That Minister Jim Anderton— 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: You mean the students’ drink. 
DAIL JONES 
: It is when students go up to the bar after the game and say: “The sherries are on me”; “Pass the port”; “We’ll all pass the port.” after a game of rugby. 
John Carter 
: “Have a madeira m’dear”. 
DAIL JONES 
: “Have a madeira m’dear” and “a madeira for you m’dear” for all the girlfriends! Port sherry and madeira—the students love them. 
The “Keeping Our Word” scenario has been brought up and in that respect I share what Jim Anderton told the wine industry. I quote from a statement put out by the industry: “To make matters worse this ill-conceived policy was rushed through without consultation—consultation the industry was promised in writing on more than one occasion by the Hon Jim Anderton in February of this year. It is a serious injustice that this promise was not kept.” So Jim Anderton does not keep his word and this Government does not kept its word when that word is required to be kept. 
Again from a Waitakere City and west Auckland viewpoint generations of wine growers will be put to the wall as a result of this Labour Party’s policy and Lynne Pillay does not care. Really she does not even know. Let us be frank about it: she does not know how many high schools are in the area. She does not know any of the wine growers and she does not know the problems associated with generations of “Dallie” wine growers in general if we can say that word—Croatians who have made a substantial contribution to New Zealand by working all their lives as gumdiggers and then by coming down into the west of Auckland as workers. They have their port stored and their sherry stored—it takes 2 to 5 years and more to store sherry. Now they may as well pour it down the drain. All their capital has been destroyed in a stroke by Jim Anderton. 
This Labour Party Government if it wants to can rush legislation through the House with no trouble at all. It can keep us here until 10 past 5 in the morning. The leader of New Zealand First and myself were here at 10 past 5 one morning fighting that port and sherry bill. We know who our supporters are and we know the support we get on this issue for that product one way or another. We were here fighting away and that morning the vote was: 13 New Zealand First 10 National and three ACT. We were here fighting for our supporters— 
John Carter 
: No nine for National. 
DAIL JONES 
: Sorry. One of them was not conscious. Was one of them not conscious? 
John Carter 
: We can’t remember! 
DAIL JONES 
: Oh they cannot remember. We are here to support the people who vote for us the people who are being ripped off and attacked by this Labour Party. They are people in the last years of their life who like a port or sherry. This Labour Party does not like older people and I do not know why. 
In respect of young people we heard earlier today that the Child Poverty Action Group is concerned that 300000 young New Zealand children have not been helped by this Budget. Labour members should take the opportunity to read that report. 
Debate interrupted. 
The House adjourned at 10 p.m.