Sio Su'a William: Budget Debate 
Sio Su'a William: Budget Debate 
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SU’A WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Mangere) 
: 
 I congratulate the previous speaker Steven Joyce because he is the first speaker on the Government benches whom I have heard actually try to address the Budget. Every other speaker I have heard in this House deviated from the Budget and had difficulty standing in front of this House to speak about the Budget. Those words are all very fine and nice. Balancing the books—how do we do that when we are in debt and the Government continues to cut off the only means of revenue coming into the nation? How can we save when we are making it difficult for people to save more? They have to pay double to save the same amount of money. I ask that member: in terms of infrastructure in terms of the things he has outlined how does that translate to high-paying jobs for the unemployed? How does that translate to lower food prices? How does that translate to lower power prices? How does that translate to reducing the poverty that we see is now worse than ever before under this Government? 
Government members have struggled in the past few days to defend their Budget because in the words of Dr Pita Sharples the other night it is a “black” Budget. Others have said it is an indefensible Budget. I am one to say that this is a Budget that runs in the same kind of pattern as the Budgets of 2009 and 2010. Let us go back to the 2009 Budget. What did we hear? We heard it was going to be a mana-enhancing Budget it was going to be a step change and that it would somehow move our economy on to the road of recovery. What we got was cuts cuts cuts—cuts to education cuts to health the undermining of KiwiSaver the undermining of the Cullen fund and unemployment at 6 percent in the first Budget of this Government. In Budget 2010 we heard of a tax switch—a tax cut that would be financially neutral and no one would be worse off. Is that not what we heard in this House? Well $9 billion of tax cuts went to the top 10 percent of earners. Those on $150000 a year were the ones who were better off. The rest of us were worse off by $18 - plus for the next 3 years. The rest of us ended up paying GST at 15 percent. There were more cuts to education more cuts to health the public sector lost 2000 jobs and the rate of unemployment went up from 6 percent in 2009 to 7 percent in 2010. 
Today we heard the Prime Minister John Key say that it is the private sector that creates jobs and the Government’s role is to facilitate that. We totally agree. The private sector should create jobs. It has a role to play in creating jobs. The Government has a role to create jobs. My colleague Jacinda Ardern asked which of the many initiatives Government members have been prancing about promoting will create the 177000 jobs the Government says it will create but Mr Key could not answer that simple question. He could not answer. Why? In theory it all sounds nice. We give money to big business we give money to the private sector and they will then reinvest it in the economy and jobs will be created. Have they been able to do that? I ask the public: has this Government been able to do that? No it has not. 
Let us look at what we can measure National’s performance on since it has come into power. If we look just at jobs that have been created the last time National was in Government was in the 1990s. In 1991 under a National Government we had the highest unemployment rate in the history of New Zealand at 11.2 percent. In December 2007 under a Labour Government we had the lowest unemployment rate at 3.5 percent. When Labour left office that is where the rate of unemployment was at—3.5 percent. In 2009 after National’s first Budget there was 6 percent unemployment. 
H V Ross Robertson 
: How much? 
SU’A WILLIAM SIO 
: It was 6 percent unemployment. In 2010 it was 7 percent unemployment. In 2011 unemployment still hovers at almost 7 percent. That is the Government’s record and we can measure that. Under this Government 271000 people so far are without jobs and the number continues to climb. The Government does not even have a plan for full employment. According to the Government’s measures it predicts that we will continue to have unemployment at 4 percent up to the year 2025. That is why I ask how this Budget translates into creating real sustainable and high-earning jobs. It does not. 
Not only do we have high unemployment under this Government but we also have debt. Labour takes that seriously. Why does Labour take it seriously? It is because under Labour we brought down Government debt to zero. In fact it was a surplus at 7.6 percent to GDP. Today under the John Key - led Government we now have debt that is projected to reach $16 billion in a matter of weeks—$16 billion in a matter of weeks. We are paying this debt at $380 million per week according to the Government. Those are the Government’s figures. But despite the efforts of this Government to point to Christchurch and the rebuilding of Christchurch as if somehow this is to blame for our debt the rebuilding of Christchurch is only 10 percent of the debt. Now we know that Bill English has borrowed $100 million extra but did not bother to let anyone else know about it and it is not needed right now. Not only do we have a huge red hole created by English and Key creating this debt but this Government has cut significant funds in this Budget again from KiwiSaver from Working for Families from education and from health. Not only are we borrowing billions of dollars but we have cut off our source of revenue generation. We are also cutting out millions of dollars in core fundamental things that this country really needs. We are in a red hole and the reason is mismanagement of the economy by this Government and the huge tax cuts that the Government gave to big business and their mates. Not a single job has been created if we look at those unemployment figures doubling since National has come into power. 
Some commentators have said recently that there is a small feeling of business confidence but they also say that despite that confidence it has not translated to major investment they say would come and to job creation they keep saying would come. Well business should feel somewhat confident. We have put in taxpayers’ money to failed finance companies and even shored up AMI Insurance for $500 million. But none of that work has translated into investment into this country and job creation. Instead what we are seeing is businesses putting up their prices and they took that lead from when this Government raised GST to 15 percent. Food prices school uniform costs electricity costs early childhood education and petrol prices—the cost of living is rising faster than wages. Since 2009 prices have risen by more than 6 percent. Since 2008 the cost of a cup of milk has risen by more than 20 percent. Power prices have risen by more than 10 percent and wages have increased by only 1.9 percent. 
I will finish by saying that on Sunday the community of Auckland gathered to celebrate the 49th anniversary of Samoa becoming independent. The Rev. Tanielu Le Mamea gave a saying to the leaders who were present: “E afua mai mauga faamanuiaga ose Atunu’u po’o se aiga.” If I were to translate that he said that the villages and families are fed with water that flows from the mountains. If I were to say that the mountains are this Government or the leadership of our nation and the water is this Budget then if the water flows from the leadership and it is nice and clean the families nations and communities are happy and healthy. But when the water flows and it is dirty and murky and the children have to drink that kind of water or bathe in that kind of water what we can expect to see is many communities and many families being sick. At the end of this winter that will be the gift of this Government in its Budget 2011—a lot of sick and poor families.