Fairbrother Russell: Budget Debate 
Fairbrother Russell: Budget Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:21058] 
RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (Labour—Napier) 
: 
 I am lucky enough in my electorate of Napier to have an organisation called the Sensible Sentencing Trust. It has spawned another organisation called the Red Raincoat NZ Trust which has similar but different aims. The Sensible Sentencing Trust has been active in the marketplace for about 4 years. It encourages public support to drive up the length of sentencing of criminals the level of sentence and how people are dealt with in prison. Much of what the trust says is extreme but the general message it seeks to impart is well received by the public at large. 
Among Sensible Sentencing Trust members is a realisation that we can push sentencing only so far before we have to deal with the real cause of the problem—namely the causes of crime. Garth McVicar who has put so much of his time effort and own money into the trust is realising that his efforts must be directed toward trying to prevent crime—perhaps even more strongly than the efforts to punish those who commit crime. For that I laud him and give him what encouragement I can. 
Running alongside that trust is a new trust called the Red Raincoat NZ Trust the name of which stems from the garment that young Teresa Cormack was wearing on her 6th birthday—the day of her last trip to school. The aim of that trust follows that of a similar sort of trust in Australia—it works to try to personalise the support that victims get. The aim is to deal with victims of serious crime educate them and get them past their own totally consuming grief into a position where they can empathise with others who are in a similarly aggrieved situation. The trust aims to provide support and perhaps counselling to help victims through that terrible trauma. Both those trusts are very very worthwhile in aim and whilst they attract a lot of controversy in my view they have had considerable success—certainly the Sensible Sentencing Trust has—in increasing the length of sentences. I hope they can continue so that their work as to the causes of crime may be equally successful. 
The irony however is that in the same week the Budget was announced I received a letter from Garth McVicar on behalf of the Sensible Sentencing Trust. That followed an approach I had from the originators of the Red Raincoat NZ Trust. I imagine that every MP received the same letter from the Sensible Sentencing Trust. The letter asked for help in determining whether the trust should continue. The workload it has assumed is getting too large for the few volunteers who have run it so enthusiastically and well for the last 4 years. The letter hinted—and I do not suggest improperly; in fact quite properly—for advice as to what income or support streams it could access so that its work could continue. Of course the letter was really asking whether the Government could provide any assistance to enable the Sensible Sentencing Trust to continue. The approach of the Red Raincoat NZ Trust was similar. 
That takes me to the quandary of this current debate which is highlighted in terms of tax cuts. Many people who have been advocating the work of the Sensible Sentencing Trust appear to be from parties that are at the same time urging wholesale tax cuts as though this Government was one of the overspenders in the history of the nation and was bringing about financial ruin. I find that quite strange because requests for Government assistance come from wide and afar and from both serious and less-serious organisations. I would not at all hesitate to put the Sensible Sentencing Trust and the Red Raincoat NZ Trust into the category of very serious well-meaning and successful organisations. If there was an income stream from the Government that I could attach them to I would certainly help to do that. But to do that I would then meet the outcry from those people in this House who stand up and support the trusts on the law and order issue but who at the same time want tax cuts. 
This is the quandary I find myself faced with: do I go to Garth McVicar and say that no I think that tax cuts will be the popular thing and I therefore cannot support him or do I say that I will stand in the face of the cry for tax cuts made by people who have made some political name by supporting his trust? Those people are advocating tax cuts but equally they do not seem to give their own help to Mr McVicar’s trust and he has had to come to the Government cap in hand for money. Do I say that the Government will support him in the face of that cry for greater tax cuts? 
It takes me to a greater issue—that of looking at the records of Government spending as against gross domestic product. If we are in a situation whereby we require tax cuts—the cries for them being so urgent—it must be because the Government’s spending has got out of control. That would seem to be the basis of the argument from the National Party which is running around making such useless but derogatory statements as that it would reduce the number of pen-pushers. It does not identify which pen-pushers—unless they are the pen-pushers who support National’s research unit. But we do not know about that. It also perhaps might mean the people who sit in this House and waste valuable time because if one stopped and worked out how much per minute it cost to run this place one would absolutely tear one’s hair out at the amount of time wasted on a lot of words with no content. It has been at my displeasure to listen to much of this Budget debate and we have heard name-calling invective ridicule and very little substantive argument. 
We were wondering what this tax-cut argument was really about so I looked for some criteria we could assess it against. My research seems to suggest—and I stand corrected if someone can find research better than mine; I do not claim to be an economist—that in terms of percentage of gross domestic product this Government is spending no more than the National Government of 9 years during the 1990s spent and I do not see any record of its spending any more than any other previous Governments. So in relation to those now saying that the Government is spending too much money and that we need to reduce Government spending so we can afford tax cuts I ask whether they are saying that their Government during the 1990s was totally useless misaligned and wasteful or whether it is just that the empty barrels that make a lot of noise are choosing to pick a bogeyman that will appeal to people in the street. 
Hawke’s Bay is a very popular place to live in and Napier is the most popular but what has been witnessed in Napier is a real housing frenzy. The only people to profit have been real estate agents as house prices have been driven up. We have seen people with smaller families move to larger houses so that they have more space than they need. They have bought electronic equipment and two or three cars and taken holidays that are not necessary—that their forebears and even the generation before them never had. But the need is for still more money as we consume more than we can afford. As people buy flasher and bigger houses and bigger sections for smaller families we find that those with lots of money are putting up fences with security gates controlled by buttons from inside out of some imagined fear that people are going to raid them and find a lot of money in their safes. That is in the face of decreasing crime. 
The larger part of my electorate however is the part I travel every week as I door-knock where people on modest incomes live in modest houses. Those people are already receiving $60 a week from 1 April this year from the Government’s targeted tax cuts. They are receiving $60 a week more and within 2 years—that is by 1 April 2007—that amount will go up to $100 per week. They are people not chasing bigger houses for smaller families not chasing European cars to get to the shopping centre and not driving 4-wheel drives to go and park in car parks. Those families do an honest day’s work for an honest wage send their children to State-run schools budget carefully and provide their children with responsible ambitions. They live in houses with low fences relate to their neighbours like the community in which they live and are quite pleased with their modest accomplishments. 
I find as I walk around the neighbourhood that they are thankful for the extra $60 a week in the pay packet that this Government has provided. So when some in my electorate cry for tax cuts I say yes we are giving tax cuts but our tax cuts are targeted. They are targeted towards those in the community who need them. They are targeted towards the decent people who do not have delusions of grandeur and who do not want to copy the lifestyles of the rich and famous. All they want to do is build families on solid honest family values where mum and dad like each other and like each of their children and where their children accept responsibility and do chores without expecting to be paid for that. Those children go to school and achieve good or modest success and attendance grades and they take part in extracurricular activities for no reward except a sense of personal achievement. 
In my electorate as I move around it every weekend—and I wish I could do it during the week too but I am down here unfortunately—I meet those really decent people where a sense of personal responsibility is the value they most espouse. They accept the money they are getting from this Government which is already $60 a week and which will be increasing within 2 years to $100 a week.