Adams Amy: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 26 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:4005. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): It is a great pleasure to take a call on the seventh Budget of this National-led Government that Bill English as our Minister of Finance has led us through. I am very proud that this is a Budget that consolidates the clear approach that we have brought to the Government benches since 2008 and that is recognising that actually you can have it both ways. You can get the Government’s books back in order and deliver better services for our taxpayers and the New Zealanders who need those services.For many years we have seen Governments that just wanted to throw more money at a problem. If it was not working and the spending was not effective let us spend more and that must cure all ills. Actually we cannot afford to do that. We have said for a long time that we need to set the example of what we preach which is to say that families need to be saving and investing and thinking about the future. It would not be credible for us to do that as a Government if we continued to live beyond our means as had become the pattern particularly in the early years of the 2000s. Yep this year we will show a deficit of $684 million but the important thing is that year on year we have been building a platform to get the Government’s books back into surplus. We will be one of the first countries in the developed world post - global financial crisis to do that. That is something we can be incredibly proud of but we have not done it by cutting slashing and burning.Actually in all of the core sectors we can point to real progress where the sector has been encouraged supported and cajoled into delivering better services for New Zealand. Whether you look at health whether you look at education whether you look at law and order the reality is that the numbers now show that New Zealanders are getting far better value for the money that we take from them. We have recognised that for every dollar we take out of the pocket of a hard-working New Zealander we owe that taxpayer the respect of showing that we will spend that money as carefully as we would our own.That is what this Budget to me really talks about. It talks about the fact that we have recognised there are areas of New Zealand and there are families in New Zealand who are doing it pretty tough. We wanted to do more to support those 160000 of the lowest-income families but we did not simply get the cheque book out and add some more numbers on to the spend. We said that we need to do this responsibly and that is about targeting where we put money and where we do not. We did not do it as I said by adding to the deficit. We thought very carefully about what costs were fair to fall where in our society.I think the border processing levy that we passed under urgency on Thursday is a fantastic example of that. Here you have a decision that asks “Should we be taxing all of those lowest-paid families to fund the international travel of foreigners and New Zealanders who can afford international travel?”. My view very simply is no we should not. If we are travelling the cost that we impose on an economy through doing that should fall to us. Ditto the foreigners who come through our airports should be contributing to those costs.I am not going to be taking money out of the pockets of some of those hard-working families who are doing it tough and who certainly could not afford international travel to make them pay for it. It is my cost and I should pay it. Labour thinks that we should tax the poorest families in New Zealand to pay for the travel of wealthy New Zealanders and wealthy foreigners. I do not support that. Targeting that levy to those people who incur the costs—[Interruption] They do not like it when you call them on their hypocrisy but actually that is the reality. They spark up when you highlight the facts. They did not want us to have the costs of that expensive travel falling on those who travel. They wanted it to fall on every taxpayer. I would far rather those costs fall where they should and the spare money can be reinvested in low-income families. That is the difference between us. We ask “Where is our money best spent?”.Let us see how that same approach applies in my own area of broadband. Again we had two options. We could have asked the companies that will profit from the infrastructure to help fund it on a communal basis which is what we have done and what every other party in Parliament supported except of course for Labour or we could have taxed people who actually do not get to make their living off that infrastructure. In our view you target it to those who will get the benefit from the spend. You use the money that you create the surplus spend that you create in the Government finances and put it where it will do the most good.In this Budget that is about reaching out to those children who are living in some of our poorest families supporting them but also with that sending the message that the best path out of hardship and out of poverty is work. The best thing bar none that we can do for those families who are really struggling is to get them into a job. There are many parts to that of course. It means making sure they have the educational standards they need making sure national standards and our National Certificate of Educational Achievement targets are supporting them to have that education making sure our tertiary system is set up to provide pathways and jobs and skill sets that will help them into those jobs making sure that their health is strong enough to support them working making sure there is drug and alcohol counselling in our prisons and making sure our mental health services are strong.Tim Macindoe: Appropriate childcare where it is needed.Hon AMY ADAMS: That is exactly right. If they need support with childcare putting those subsidies up—making them available. All of the parts of this Budget facilitate that approach. The other side of that equation is making sure there are opportunities for them—creating jobs in the regions creating jobs in areas that need them. This is a Government that has already seen the development of hundreds of thousands of new jobs in our term in office. Budget 2015 shows that Treasury modelling is that more new jobs will be created as a result of these settings.We are ensuring people are supported to get back to work that they have the opportunity to work and that they have the skill set and the support in childcare to do that job. That is the path out of hardship. There is no two ways about it. Although we want to support those at the lowest ebb it cannot be into a pattern of dependency. We are not helping anyone if the pattern is one of dependency and teaching them to rely on the State. Self-reliance self-responsibility working for a living is the best thing that any family can do for their fortunes and for their children. This is a Government that will support them.I just want to highlight a couple of the ways the Budget has helped areas like the one that I represent because I think that often when we look at the big packages and the national approach we lose some of the detail of the very real things that this Budget will do in parts of rural and provincial New Zealand like the electorate of Selwyn. I have to comment on the $100 million set aside in this Budget to rebuild the science facilities at Lincoln University which obviously were significantly damaged during the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011.This is the Budget and this is the Government that have set aside $100 million from the proceeds of the mixed-ownership model to make sure that Lincoln University gets back on its feet and I welcome it. As part of the $200 million - plus spending on new school facilities I am very proud that Rolleston in my electorate is already having its third primary school built an integrated Christian school opened another new primary school in planning and a high school on its way. This is the Government that is making that funding happen.I was also delighted to see the announcement in the Budget around the regional research centre recognising that some of the best innovation in this country is not happening in the cities; it is happening in regional and rural New Zealand. Funding that sort of regional research centre will do two things. One it will create jobs and activity in the regions. And two it will show that the Government recognises that some of the most innovative parts of New Zealand are in the regions and that we respect and want to support that and this is a Budget that certainly does that.Finally let me end my contribution talking about the funding in the Budget for the extension of the Ultra-fast Broadband Initiative and the regional broadband initiative. This is a Budget that puts $360 million more into our investment making a total Government investment of over $2 billion. This is the Government that will deliver high-speed high-quality broadband to as many New Zealanders as we possibly can because that is the foundation for all of the services that we need in the future—social cultural economic and Government services. It is the digital highway that will really enable our small towns and our communities to flourish.The extension of the Ultra-fast Broadband Initiative will see another 200000 New Zealanders access absolutely world-leading connectivity infrastructure. I am incredibly excited by that. We are going to see some of the smallest towns in New Zealand get switched on and opened up in a way that we will not have seen since the railways were first rolled out since we took electricity into some of the communities. That is exciting. I am excited by that. I am proud of it. There is a reason that New Zealand is held up internationally in terms of the success of our broadband programme. Around the world you have got companies like Alcatel-Lucent saying New Zealand is a country that has got this right and that this is a model for the rest of the world and this is the Government that enabled it. I am very proud to commend the Budget to the House.