Cunliffe David: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 28 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10464. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): It is great to have an opportunity to take a call in this Budget debate. It is great to have the opportunity to speak in Parliament on behalf of so many of our countrymen and women who cannot speak for themselves. Under National New Zealand is going backwards. At the last election John Key promised 170000 new jobs. It sounded great but the reality has been all too different. Here is the Minister for Economic Development wandering in for the jobs machine finally showing up in the Budget debate. He knows that the unemployment statistics are that there are 146000 people still out of work. We say to New Zealanders that we on the Opposition benches are here in this debate for you. We are here for you.What we have over there is a Government that is not governing for all the people of New Zealand. It is for the rich not the poor and arguably for the old not the young. The game that has been played here in this Budget is plain for all to see. It is a tight Budget that lacks strategy and that has zero vision. What it does have is a fig leaf of social policy like food in schools done at a trivial pathetic scale that is nothing morethan public relations spin. It is bad for New Zealanders it is bad for New Zealand it is bad social policy and it is also bad economics. It is bad because the Government and the Minister of Finance seem to be unfixably confused about what their job actually is in a Budget.Labour knows about running surpluses. We ran nine surpluses out of nine. National has not run one yet—has not run one fiscal surplus yet. It is just absolutely craving to run one. But you know what? Although we would run one too it is not the right question. The question here is not about balancing the Government’s books at the expense of New Zealanders’ books; it should be about growing the pie for the whole country about getting those New Zealanders who are out of work back in jobs and about giving hope to the 270000 New Zealand children growing up in poverty not about tokenism Minister—not tokenism.National has put all its political credentials its hope for the 2014 election on one magical number: reaching fiscal surplus. It cannot do even that right. It is a bogus surplus. It does not come within $1 billion of breaking even and here are the simple facts why. The surplus is not wafer-thin; it comes only from massaging the numbers to an extent that I have never seen in my time in Parliament because if the Government did not do that it would have to admit failure in the one goal that it set itself. For example over $1 billion more than is needed is being collected from ACC levies. Officials advised the Government to give the $1 billion back. It is keeping $700 million and giving $300 million back to New Zealanders and without that $700 million we would not be within a bull’s roar of breaking even. The Government is collecting an extra $900 million in petrol tax from people’s pockets. That is a tax increase on everyday New Zealanders who cannot afford it but without it there is no surplus.But here is the really interesting stuff. On page 30 of the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update are the revenue forecasts. I have to read those as revenue spokesman for Labour. They are very interesting because in the year in which the Government is so desperate to reach surplus we see a sudden spike of $400 million in something called tax loss offsets which appear from nowhere and are never seen again—only in that 1 year when the Government thinks it is going to make a $75 million surplus. That is swamped by this magic $400 million piece of fairy dust that appears from nowhere and disappears again. Well is that the only magic in the revenue figures? I am afraid not. Employees’ compensation jumps from an increase of $500 million to $1.1 billion. Guess what! This is in the year in which the Government is desperate to make surplus. And then it tails off again. Corporate profits rise from $300 million to $1.1 billion and then drop again to only $200 million. The point is that if all of these extraordinary coincidences—these funny-money rubber numbers—did not all occur simultaneously there would be no surplus.Andrew Little: It’s boom bust.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Yes it is boom and bust as my colleague says. It actually belongs in the fiction section of the library. Then the next job was to go back to the estimates of appropriations for the Inland Revenue Department. As most New Zealanders will be aware the Government has committed itself to spending between $1 billion and $1.5 billion on the Inland Revenue Department’s computer system rebuild. That is very interesting. How much is in the Budget documents for the Inland Revenue Department’s computer system? Zero zip nil nada nothing. How could that be? Is it because it is capital not operating spend? No because there is no line here for the operating costs for the interest on that capital. The Government has just left it out. How could it forget to include a $1 billion liability? Here we are not talking about Peter Dunne—he is a billion and a half dollar liability. It had to add $500 million of fluxbecause it does not know whether it can get the project over the line. Because the Government could not quantify it because it was so horrific it thought it had an excuse to leave it out all together and then claim that it has a $75 million surplus. The viewers will see Ministers in the front row nattering to each other. That is a sign of extreme nervousness: people who hardly talk to each other the rivals for John Key’s job pretending to be civil because they know that what the Opposition is saying is true. They know that there is no surplus in this Budget. It is a creation of magic accounting worthy of Merrill Lynch by coincidence.Refusing to lower excessive ACC levies kicking out forecast expenditure from $1.2 billion forecast down to $1 billion even magicking another $200 million towards the surplus that does not exist—yet another condition that if they did not all occur simultaneously would not get the Government over that line. You know when the Government is really desperate when warring Ministers have to call backbenchers to the front row to make them feel better because they cannot stand the heat in the House they cannot stand the argument they cannot stand the truth. They know that they are condemned by their own Budget documents. They know that there is a magic $400 million fillip at just the right time once only in history in the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update. They know that they are holding on to $1 billion worth of ACC levies. They know that they have been manipulating the books.It is time for a whole new approach—Hon Judith Collins: Ha ha!Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —because the world is changing. Oh Judith Collins thinks that is about her. Well she has been taking advice from Simon Lusk apparently the bagman of the ugly right. Poor old Aaron Gilmore got hit by a freight train and it was not Steven Joyce’s face on it; it was somebody else’s. We will let the public decide. The nervous laughter from the Government benches continues.In behind here we have got two views of the economy. We have got a merchant banker’s view. They think that it is all about the financial economy. And we have got the Labour Party view which has grown up in working New Zealand and which knows that it is about getting the economic engine running and people back in jobs—real jobs with real industries based on real strategy not one-off transactions that are dependent on busting the law or selling it off to foreign movie moguls or casinos. New Zealanders deserve better than that.It is my pleasure to also be fisheries spokesperson for Labour. I have just been to a very interesting presentation on the launch today of Seafood New Zealand. It has a game plan to grow that industry and we think we can back it. But that is based on real work real jobs sustainable use of resources and building towards a much better future. It is not a one-off pokie transaction that Mr Joyce prides himself on. That will be his career high—playing second fiddle to a gambler in order to sell the law for a bunch of pokie machines. Welcome to the big time Minister. Was that all worth it? Is that the best you could do?Where is the strategy in this Budget? I end where I started. It is not good for people it is not good for the economy and the numbers do not stack up.