Young Jonathan: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeYoung Jonathan: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 04 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10664. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am very pleased to stand and speak on this debate on Budget 2013 a Budget that keeps us on course in a consistent and a steady way. I recall the comments of the chief executive of the Tātua dairy company who said that consistent is good predictability is even better. I think that we have produced a Budget that certainly the business community and consequently I think families and industry around this country can rely on. I think that has been par for the course under Bill English our finance Minister who over this last number of years has enabled this country to be seen as a standout country amongst many economies around the world because of our solid track record and where we are going with this economy. We are right on track. We are delivering what we said we would.I think that today is a very hard day for the Opposition which is having to throw up all sorts of objections and criticisms when we know that so many things are going right. It is to do with the leadership the vision the stability and the safe pair of hands that we have in our Minister of Finance as well as our Cabinet colleagues.We have the lowest mortgage rates since 1965 after-tax wages have increased 22 percent since September 2008 and we know the cost of living increases have been their lowest since 1999. This is good news for New Zealanders. It is not just statistics and information coming out from the Government benches; this is what Statistics New Zealand says. Just over a month ago it reported that grocery food prices for the year ended April 2013 decreased—that means they went backwards went down became more affordable for New Zealanders—in the last year. Fresh milk went down 7.4 percent. I can remember that before the last election in the Commerce Committee there was such a hue and cry for an inquiry on the price of milk because everybody thought it was out of control and that we were paying huge international prices. We know that even just this last week Fonterra has announced a record payout for farmers and yet we see in the last 12 months that the price of milk has come down. That is I think the response of a good economy that is tracking along nicely. We also know that cheese went down 7.8 percent. Butter is down 23 percent. Meat poultry and fish are down 6.7 percent. There were a couple of things that went up: avocados went up 48 percent. So when you go to the shop to buy your avocados sorry. It was such a small production in 2012 compared with a bumper season in 2011.This is all good news for New Zealanders. This Budget is sensible and it is solid. It is what New Zealanders want right now. We do not want big sweeping and novel ideas like capital gains taxes and wholesale electricity monopolies. We do not want all of that stuff that those people are throwing up there because they are desperate. They are trying everything they can to attract the attention of New Zealanders. It is voodoo politics. They are hoodwinking people when we have got it right for 5 years now getting it right all the time for New Zealanders.Labour believes that it can enhance competitive power pricing by becoming the monopolistic buyer of wholesale electricity in the country. Pull the other leg. Come on. We are wide awake to that. The only people who are doing that are people who are moving away from monopolistic purchasing into a market-driven economy. Those members know that but they will not say it. It is a daft idea and we do welcome all their daft ideas because they just go to prove how solid and sensible this Budget and this Government are for the sake of all New Zealanders. Colin Espiner—who as I said in my last speech is no friend of the Government—says: “This is Third World funny-money stuff.” TheNew Zealand Heraldreferred to it as a 1930s command economy solution. We need to understand that we live in a society where when we get thebalance right around competition it brings through all the benefits of not only better innovation but better pricing for New Zealanders.I think that this is what the Government is doing in this Budget. We are responsibly managing the Government’s books. We are building a more competitive and productive economy and we are delivering better public services.Andrew Little: What about households?JONATHAN YOUNG: We are doing a lot in the housing space. It is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. It is steak on the plate while you wait and that is so good. We are delivering better public services. We are rebuilding Christchurch. We are building the foundations for future success. We need to understand that this is something that we need to build into the economic DNA of this country. It takes time. It takes time to get things right because it took 9 whole years to get it wrong—we know that. We know what a stuff-up they made of this economy and we know the hard work that we have put in place the hard thinking and the hard yards and it is starting to pay off. There was 3 percent economic growth this last year. It is far above the growth of the UK America Australia and the European Union of course. It is better than all those economies and all those nations that we look up to. They are looking up to us now because we have got it right and this Budget is doing a great job.We are increasing education investment. We are not just aiding people we are enabling people. There is a difference there. There is something there. We are putting tools in the hands of people so that they can have choices. They can be predetermined in their life because we are ensuring that they are getting education where it is really needed. We are pouring more and more money into early childhood education to ensure that those young kids are getting their foot on the first rung of education early on so that they are not struggling and trying to climb up later on. We are putting more and more money into tertiary education and more and more emphasis on and accountability into tertiary education. This is so that our young people—and not just young people but all New Zealanders—who go through these educational programmes can have their foot on the ladder of employment in a very successful way. They are coming out of our high schools with National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 in far greater proportions and numbers. We are seeing already that this is shifting. Already we are seeing some great responses. We know all the controversy and criticism that we have narrowed education. But we have not. We have a broad base on our education.What we are getting right is the fundamentals. We are getting the foundations right so that people can go into tertiary education with really good linguistic skills and abilities and so that they have really good numeric skills and abilities. These are the foundations for future learning and we have got to have them right. We cannot keep seeing our polytechs having to do level 1 and level 2 courses. They need to be doing levels 3 4 5 and 6. We need to make sure that our secondary schools are getting all the fundamentals right and they depend on the primary schools to get that right. So we have this complete pathway of learning and every single step on this pathway has to be strong and fit for purpose and has to be achieving for our young people. We cannot have one part of this system falling over because it is like a domino effect.We are getting it right. We are putting the money where it really counts. We are investing in education. We are investing in innovation. We are investing in all these areas that in time to come even as we see it now progressively we will see more and more. We are seeing New Zealanders succeed. This is incredibly important for this nation. We are just a small nation of 4.4 million competing in a huge world market of talent. We have got to maximise our talent. We are innovators we are dreamers we are thinkers and we are inventors. And when we have our education strong and robustwhen we have fewer people needing Government support and more people bringing resources to Government and to their communities what we are going to see is a nation with its head up. We are going to see a nation that forges ahead and we are going to see a nation that internationally economically and educationally will continue to forge ahead. We are going to take those high places of achievement and we are going to earn them. This Budget is very much a part of that long-term future for the future success of all New Zealanders. Thank you.