Seymour David: Budget Statement — Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Budget Statement — Budget Debate[Sitting date: 26 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11353. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I proudly rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of this Budget because I want to keep Bill English as the Minister of Finance. Why? It is because Bill English is pretty good but also because the alternative is terrible and the people I represent are terrified of the idea that Grant Robertson would become the Minister of Finance and introduce $2.7 billion of new expenditure and a 45 percent tax rate from $70000 and up. That means that on your marginal dollar you are spending 45 percent on income tax. If you spend any of that then on anything that is left you pay GST. If you work for a company or buy from a company there is a company tax component to that. Under a Labour-led Government people would be spending more than half of their marginal income on taxes. Well that is a very good reason to keep Bill English and the National-led Government on this side of the House and those guys on that side of the House.It gets worse because New Zealand has a “Donald Trump movement”. It consists of the Labour Party of New Zealand First and of the Green Party because have you noticed that whenever any issue involving foreigners—particularly wealthy and successful ones—enters the public arena for a debate they all do their bananas. Their positions on anything to do with any foreigner are absolutely interchangeable whether it is the Green Party which used to stand up for the environment; whether it is Labour which used to have a proud liberal free-trading tradition; or whether it is New Zealand First for which there has never really been any hope with international matters to start with. So it is important to keep the Opposition members out of Government because they would raise taxes and because they are congenitally xenophobic.But it is also important because they are out of touch. I have listened to the speeches from the Opposition members tonight and their speeches appear to be about another country not about one of the top five fastest-growing economies in the OECD not about a country where more people think the country is going in the right direction than in any of our Anglosphere peers and not about a country that has record-breaking employment and record-breaking industrial records in just about every sector of the economy. The Opposition members would love it if New Zealand was as bad as they say it is but the problem for them is that it is not. They are like many Oppositions: when they hear some bad news about the country they say: “Christ it was even worse than we hoped for.” The problem for them is that it very seldom is that bad in New Zealand. They are out of touch.There is more good news in this Budget. Partnership schools kura hourua—there is funding for another seven of these schools which are transforming kids’ lives for the better. The Opposition would like to tell you there is no demand for these schools. Well just this year we had 26 organisations apply through a rigorous process to run more partnership schools kura hourua. While I am at it I would like to thank our coalition partner the Māori Party for its staunch support of this policy because of what it is doing for Māori. I would like to thank my colleagues in the National Government for their support of this policy. We are seeing 100 percent pass rates for university entrance for 100 percent Māori cohorts.This is a policy that is a success. You just have to ask yourself whether the Opposition is really so worried that a small number of students for now at a small number of schools for now are going to fail or is it terrified that this policy is going to grow and grow and eventually become the leading type of school in New Zealand and transform many more kids’ lives for the better. The Opposition is not scared of this policy failing; it is worried it is going to succeed because I think that partnership schools are going to go from strength to strength and transform more and more Kiwi kids’ lives for the better. I just want to salute the principals the sponsors the students and the parents who have bravely gone into this new model of education despite all of the criticism they cop from some of the most negative people in New Zealand to actually make a difference in the way that education is done in this country.Those are the good things in this Budget. The bad things are mostly things that were not in it. The most important thing that was not in this Budget is tax relief. Who would have thought that we voted out Helen Clark and Michael Cullen the spendthrift Labour Government of 9 years that had this country going into recession before the rest of the world—at least Labour helped New Zealand lead the world on something—only to elect a National-led Government that taxes you like a Labour Government? Eight Budgets in a row with no tax relief but for 1 year. We have had no tax relief since 2010 and the best the Government can say to us is āpōpō āpōpō āpōpō as they say in Māori—tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow. It shows the priorities of this Government that there is always extra money for Steven Joyce’s corporate welfare—$700 million to flutter around the country and get lots of new photo ops for the Government—but when it comes to the people who get up in the morning get to work work hard earn the money and actually pay the bills it is āpōpō āpōpō āpōpō. Tax cuts are always tomorrow.Well the ACT Party says that tax relief for the people who actually do the work and pay the bills should be the priority of a centre-right Government otherwise what is the point in voting out Labour just to get a National Government that taxes you just as hard? This Budget could have very easily raised the top tax bracket in which you pay the top income tax rate from $70000 to $100000 because the Prime Minister has admitted that very soon half of taxpayers will be in the top tax bracket. To borrow a phrase from Michael Cullen these are not “rich pricks”; these are middle New Zealanders who are working hard and getting pushed by inflation into the top tax bracket in greater and greater numbers every year. That is the biggest problem with this Budget: there is no tax relief even on the horizon for the people who earn the money and pay the bills. And it shows this Government’s priorities—that it is more interested in increasing spending on corporate welfare than it is in actually cutting taxes for the people who earn the money in the first place.One thing that is in the Budget that I think is very regrettable is the tobacco tax increase. If I thought that increasing tobacco taxes was going to improve the welfare of the poorest New Zealanders then I would be here wholeheartedly supporting it but the reality is the average smoker is very poor highly likely to be Māori smokes 10.6 cigarettes a day and pays $2600 in taxes on those cigarettes. Today’s Budget announcement is that that is going to rise to $3800 a year. Increasing taxes has not successfully reduced smoking rates. In the past 5 years we have doubled smoking taxes and we have reduced the rate of smoking from 16.3 percent to 15 percent. That is simply not good enough. What we could have done is legalise electronic cigarettes tax-free and what that would have achieved would mean that people who choose to smoke at the moment could have got a $2600—soon to be a $3800—tax cut in some of the poorest households in New Zealand. It is a great shame that we did not do that.The biggest thing that is not in the Budget is a sensible discussion about the sustainability of national superannuation. My generation knows there is no way we are going to get national superannuation at 65 as far off as that may be. However what really grates is that under the current Government—and the Opposition which frankly has been gutless on this issue—we are not even allowed to have a discussion about how that adjustment is going to happen as we go from five taxpayers per superannuitant down to only two taxpayers per superannuitant. All we ask for is a conversation about how that transition will occur so that younger generations can actually plan and see what their retirement will look like. At the moment the Government has its head in the sand.So it is a good Budget a competent Budget and a very good Budget when you compare it with the alternative. It is a fabulous announcement that we will have more revolutionary partnership schools kura hourua but it is sad that we will not have tax cuts that we are actually going to tax some of the poorest households in New Zealand harder through tobacco taxes and that we cannot have a grown-up conversation about the sustainability of national superannuation.With all of that I support this Budget and I commend it to the House. Thank you.