Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:640;Page:10164] 
Supplementary Estimates 
Imprest Supply Debate 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 I move  
That the Appropriation (2006/07 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2007/08) Bill be now read a second time 
. The Labour-led Government welcomes the chance at this time to debate its record and the alternatives put up by the Opposition across a broad range of issues. It welcomes particularly debating them at this time when John Key’s cocky crowing of only a week or two ago that there would be a National Party landslide is already turning to dust in his mouth. 
We also want to talk particularly about what is happening this coming Sunday 1 July. This is the day when KiwiSaver the new scheme to enable all New Zealanders in employment to save begins; the day that 20 hours’ free early childhood education begins; the day that sees extensions to paid parental leave; and the day that sees the new primary health care strategy have its final roll-out for 25 to 44-year-olds. This is a Government of energy and ideas that is delivering to the people; it is not a bunch of clapped-out past-it recycled 1990s front-bench people with no single new idea among them. The contest is between a Prime Minister of substance and a Leader of the Opposition whose full shallowness has yet to be completely explored. Indeed for political speleologists this will be a very interesting year or so as we explore the shallowness of the Leader of the Opposition. 
KiwiSaver is the most important macroeconomic reform in this country for something like 20 years. It is a scheme that offers security to individual New Zealanders a scheme that builds upon personal responsibility a scheme that will build personal wealth across the New Zealand population—not just a property owning democracy such as National used to stand for in the 1950s—and a scheme that will build national economic sovereignty and stronger capital markets. With that set looking pretty much like a royal flush if it were a poker hand it is not surprising that the members opposite who have about an 8-high nothing in their hand say they are opposed to it. This is a scheme that is good for Kiwis good for business and good for New Zealand. 
It comes on top of the fact that this Government restored the level of New Zealand superannuation as its first action in office then built the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to ensure that we could afford New Zealand superannuation from age 65 as a universal payment for the indefinite future. And what does National do and say? In 1999 when Mr English was in Government National cut New Zealand superannuation to pay for tax cuts. Members should remember that linkage. Secondly in 2000 National opposed creating the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. 
In 2005 National opposed “KiwiSaver Mark I” and this year it voted against the improved “KiwiSaver Mark II” and the tax credits that will go into the individual funds of Kiwis in the KiwiSaver scheme. When John Key was asked about “KiwiSaver Mark II” he said: “Oh no there are no guarantees over ‘KiwiSaver Mark II’.” So let the message go clearly out to the public: when Mr Key sidles up to them loving to be liked and liking to be loved and wanting to say anything to impress they should remember that he said there are no guarantees about “KiwiSaver Mark II”. Only a Labour-led Government can guarantee KiwiSaver being locked in place. As only Labour could guarantee the New Zealand Superannuation Fund in 2002 and as only Labour could guarantee 4 weeks’ annual leave in 2005 in 2008 only Labour can guarantee the improved KiwiSaver scheme staying in place. 
I come now to 20 hours’ free quality affordable early childhood education the biggest single improvement in quality early childhood education in New Zealand’s history for decades and decades. Mr English says that National opposes the 20 hours free policy. It cannot be clearer than that: National opposes the 20 hours free policy. And Mr Key of course said: “We want these young kids to be able to have 20 free hours. We want them to be able to go to school.” Well they can go to school already; that is not a problem. In New Zealand children have been able to do that for a rather large length of time. I think that since 1877 basically children in New Zealand have been able to go to school; school here has been compulsory free and secular. We want to make sure that Kiwis get the best start in life and get not just childcare but quality education as early in life as possible. 
Paula Bennett 
: Is it free? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: What Paula Bennett wants to do is to give them a tax cut. “Never mind the quality feel the width.” says Paula Bennett and she is talking about early childhood education at that point. 
We then come to paid parental leave. National has opposed paid parental leave at every point along the way. It is now taken up by 80 percent of eligible women and after the extension last year to the self-employed it is available to nearly 90 percent of all women in paid employment. Employers support paid parental leave yet National continues to oppose every extension to paid parental leave that a Labour-led Government puts into place. 
I come to doctors’ fees and prescription charges in the primary health care strategy. They are finally being rolled out on 1 July. That means that all Kiwis will have access to cheaper doctors’ visits and to lower-priced prescription medicines on the approved list. National has opposed that policy at almost every point during its roll-out. In the 2005 election National promised not to proceed with the roll-out to groups that at that point were not covered and it still refuses to state clearly that it will keep that roll-out. It prefers to see “more timely measures” as it puts it to free up money for spending elsewhere in terms of tax cuts. 
This debate is not just about the good things this Labour Government is doing on 1 July—on Sunday—and is rolling out from that point on. This debate comes about at a good time because of the ever-growing list of contradictions between the two leaders of the National Party. No wonder that when Mr Key left the country he remembered Sunbeam the cat but forgot Mr English the somewhat badly behaved dog when it comes to policy issues in the National Party. When trying to explain these differences—in one of those wonderful phrases that all politicians come to regret just as they have uttered them—Mr English put it this way: “John articulates a confident and aspirational view about the future and I focus on putting together the numbers and the programme.” In other words: “He’s the pretty face and I’m the brains. He’s the pretty face who the public will like because they know I’m not a pretty face but I’m the brains who will look after him.” Well when Mr English is putting together the numbers one has to worry. Members should look at his track record on putting together the numbers in the National caucus itself; he has twice lost in terms of those numbers over the last couple of years or so. 
But on issue after issue the leaders disagree. There is a fundamental difference between them on fiscal policy. Mr English is more conservative than I am. I mean I like putting money in the top of the piggy bank but he does not have a little hole underneath to take anything out at any point when it is needed. He is a true Treasury official when it comes to that. Mr Key believes that we should gear up the country more that we should borrow billions of dollars more and that we should have a big spend-up. Mr English does not believe in bribing people with their own money; Mr Key believes in bribing people with their children’s and their grandchildren’s money. He believes in borrowing so that they can pay it back to pay for tax cuts and large spending now. 
They disagree over monetary policy. Mr English favours high interest rates; Mr Key says that high interest rates are unnecessary and that we should not have had them. There they disagree again. Mr Key says that we can have big tax cuts now; Mr English says that now is not the right time for giving out extensive tax cuts. [ 
Interruption 
] Members opposite would do better to ask Colin King the shearer from Kaikoura how to settle these differences between them. Mr Key says that we should cut out some of the Working for Families package to pay for tax cuts; Mr English says that there is no way that National would do that. On a fundamental issue of public policy they disagree publicly yet again. Mr Key believes that there should be a review of monetary policy; Mr English says there is nothing wrong with current monetary policy at all—it just should be faster harder and nastier. 
This is an Opposition that cannot get its two leaders to agree on a single important point about economic and financial policy. One cannot win an election on that basis. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 The response of the Prime Minister today over the issue of standards in the police sums up the moral bankruptcy at the heart of the Labour Government. The people who run the police courses say that the standard of recruits is dropping. The police wrote an internal report which said that the standard of police recruits is dropping and the police were so worried about the conclusions of that report that they spent months keeping it secret. When the Prime Minister was asked today in the House about the standard of police recruits she said that the standard is higher. Actually it is not. In 2004 a new test came in but they are letting a lot more people through it. That is what is happening. There is a new test but they are letting a lot more people through. 
There is absolutely no doubt whom we should believe. We should believe the police who wrote the report and who were so worried about it that they believed they should hide it from the public. It is in the public arena only because the Ombudsman made them put it there. If the standard was higher why did they not just release the report? The Prime Minister is wrong—she knows she is wrong; she said it for the purposes of the House—and the police are right. She misled the public about a matter of public safety again. That means she is putting the political requirements of the Labour Party ahead of public safety. 
But that kind of dishonesty is not unusual. For instance there is the “Minister of Free Childcare for Which There is a Charge”. Actually as the Minister knows about half of the children whom he will count as receiving free early childhood education already get it free because they go to kindergarten. Forty thousand are at kindergarten. In fact the effect of his policy is that the kindergarten movement now has to bring in compulsory payments. It used to be free under the so-called nasty right-wing National Government. Now under the soft left slithery slippery Steve Maharey kindergarten is being turned into childcare by bringing in full-day sessions and they are bringing in charges. That is what it is. The parents who have already paid their donations now want to know why it is compulsory. They are thinking: “I’m getting 20 hours’ free childcare but my donation has become a compulsory fee.” 
Well what is going on with this Government is that it cannot tell the truth any more. It is really about that simple. It just cannot tell the truth. I will give another example—in fact Mr Maharey knows all about this. These appropriations today really sum up the fact that the Labour Government is continuing to spend more and more taxpayers’ money for low quality. We heard today about the health situation in our emergency departments. There was a measuring system in the past—that statement was a lie. More and more money—40 percent more—has been spent on health the output is the same and the emergency departments still cannot offer timely service to patients. 
That is because Labour members do not really care. What they care about is that the health system is public and that they have spent more money on it because that is their whole political strategy. Dr Cullen went through it. He just went through the long list of all the things he is spending money on. He has treated the economy like a cash machine. He goes to that cash machine with the cash card belonging to all New Zealanders and he never bothers to put any money into the back of the machine. It is a cash machine that just keeps throwing up cash that he and Mr Maharey keep spending. 
In tertiary education Mr Maharey and Dr Cullen have overseen the expenditure of $400 million on thinking about tertiary education—thinking about it. None of that money has actually gone on educating young New Zealanders but $400 million has gone on thinking about it. I asked Dr Cullen the other day whether he could explain any of the $400 million and do members know what he said? He said: “I am here to talk about the future not the past.” He would not even stand up to defend Steve Maharey’s mess in tertiary education. It starts on 1 January after 8 years of thinking reform and endless document strategies workshops launches and ministerial cocktails. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: It’s called panache. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: It is called panache apparently if Steve Maharey does it and it is called a disgraceful waste of money by everybody else. That is tertiary education. 
But the really big issue now for Labour is tax. There is a really simple problem for Labour. Dr Cullen says no to tax cuts Trevor Mallard says yes to tax cuts and Helen Clark cannot decide. She cannot decide. She cannot decide whether to push Dr Cullen because he has resisted all personal tax cuts for as long as possible. In fact he cancelled the tax cuts he promised twice: the chewing gum tax cuts. For two Budgets he promised them; in the third Budget he cancelled them. Trevor Mallard left the country and was brave enough to tell an Australian audience that Labour will cut taxes in the next Budget. Well Dr Cullen said: “We think the same.” but he said he had announced last week that he would make some announcements in the next Budget about tax cuts. So he is trying to find just enough grip on the tax-cut idea to try to keep his job. 
John Carter 
: He won’t be here. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well Dr Cullen says that he will be here Trevor Mallard clearly thinks that he will be the Minister of Finance and Helen Clark who is stuck with the job of trying to renew the corpse of Labour cannot decided whether to boot out Dr Cullen. She should listen to his arguments which we have heard here time and time again. 
Dr Cullen says that if we have tax cuts then we will have to sack nurses and doctors. I want the next Minister who gets up to take a call to tell us which nurses and doctors Trevor Mallard will sack. Is it the case that when Labour does tax cuts then we do not have to sack anybody but if National does them then that means meltdown in the public service? How ridiculous! This is the logical corner that Dr Cullen has got himself into. In fact the day he made a billion dollars of tax cuts in the Budget for companies he said that we should not do them. He said that if anyone does tax cuts then we will have to sack teachers and doctors and that he had just given $1 billion worth of tax cuts. So this man says that there should not be any tax cuts and then he puts them in place. He says that we should not borrow money and then he goes and borrows it. How can we believe this man? 
I will tell members a bit about debt. Dr Cullen has been out there borrowing. He has borrowed $9.5 billion for Reserve Bank reserves. Out of $32 billion of gross sovereign issue debt he has borrowed $9.5 billion of it for the Reserve Bank and did not tell anybody until I asked him about it at the Finance and Expenditure Committee last week. Here is Dr Cullen going around the country saying that National’s policies are reckless and will cause debt to go up and behind our backs he has increased public debt by about 25 percent in order to finance Reserve Bank reserves. It has nothing to do with fiscal policy; it is simply an entry on the books that he has counted as a big increase in New Zealand’s debt. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Is that their foreign market speculation? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: It is for those members’ foreign market speculation. That is exactly what it is for. It is not for infrastructure it is not for hospitals it is not for schools; it is just for foreign market speculation. That is what it is all about. 
What all this adds up to is high interest rates for New Zealanders and that is the real problem Steve Maharey should be worrying about. About 30 percent of 2-year mortgages roll over in the next 6 months and those people will be coming off interest rates of 7.5 percent on to 9.25 percent—an increase of about 30 percent in their interest outgoings. They will thank Steve Maharey for that because they know that one of the pressures on interest rates is the huge spending plans of this Government. The Government has been warned time and time again by the Reserve Bank by Treasury and by every economist in the market saying to Dr Cullen that if he keeps spending at the rate he is spending then it puts pressure on interest rates. So when those interest rates go to 9.5 percent it is partly because of Labour’s spending. 
Dr Cullen plans to spend $7.1 billion more over the next couple of years—$7.1 billion more—destroying the prospect of homeownership and carving into the budgets of New Zealanders living in the suburbs running their small businesses and running their farms because he thinks that everyone else should carry the burden of fighting inflation. He wants it both ways. He has just re-signed an agreement with the Governor of the Reserve Bank to fight inflation but then he says that exporters and families have to carry the cost because the Labour Government wants to just keep spending to get people’s votes—and waste their money. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Usually when one comes down to the House for a Bill English speech one gets a speech that is pretty scintillating. I noticed earlier this year that Bill English was singled out as having given perhaps the best speech that the journalists had heard in the House this year. He was noted as having been a kind of orator; he was full of passion and he had something going on. But I have to say to my colleagues today that that speech was flat do they not think? I do not think that it was just that he was rated below the cat when John Key went away; I actually think I begin to detect amongst the National Party members that the honeymoon is over. I think the shine is off. I think that while the aspirational marketeer is currently off overseas trying to see whether he can find his way to America—and that is not working very well any more—the sort of role that Bill English has carved out for himself as the bean counter for the aspirations is also starting to wear a bit thin too. 
Do members know what is starting to happen? Comparisons are starting to be made. Did members notice the way that Katherine Rich said today: “Oh don’t focus on us during the question. What are you doing focusing on our policies? Isn’t that a bad thing to be doing?”. Well she should get used to it. Over the next year or so the entire country is going to do what it always does. People will ask themselves something very very simple: whose plan will take this country forward? They will say they know about the aspirations and about the notion that we can count up all the beans that go around those aspirations. But people will ask whose policy will get them a job help them to raise their kids give their kids an education and make sure they have superannuation. Whose policy will do that? That is what people will ask themselves. They will start to make comparisons between the Labour Party wanting New Zealanders to work together and the National Party wanting to leave them on their own between the Labour Party wanting effective Government and the National Party not wanting any Government and between the Labour Party saying it wants to invest in the things that will make a real difference to people’s lives and the National Party saying: “Here is 30 bucks a week or whatever it is. Go and get your own roads your own health system and your own education system—buy it for yourself.” That will be the comparison that is made. 
There is a stark difference between Labour and National when one gets down to real policies. One finds that the National Party does not want primary health organisations and cheaper health visits. It does not want paid parental leave. It does not want the most stunning superannuation scheme a scheme that virtually everybody in this House would love to be part of and wishes he or she was able to move into or 20 hours’ free early childhood education—it does not want that either. I want to focus on 20 hours’ free childhood education because that highlights a great deal of what the National Party is going to have to wade its way through. The National Party has opposed the policy of 20 hours’ free early childhood education all the way through because it has to make room for tax cuts. All its policies are about tax cuts. I tell people to beware by the way of any party that has the same answer to every question. If one has a problem with his or her children National says there should be tax cuts. If one has a problem with health National says there should be tax cuts. If one has a problem with the roads National says there should be tax cuts. If things are not working very well and one is not feeling good about life National says there should be tax cuts. When a party gives people with a problem one answer to every problem that shows the party is not thinking. 
National is trying to say the same thing with regard to early childhood education as well. National has campaigned against 20 hours’ free early childhood education and has lost on that—National knows that and members saw it today. Today members saw Ms Paula Bennett who has campaigned up and down this country—she is a sliver of the person she used to be as a result of that—and who has lost. In fact we would pay for her to go around the country. She went to Whakatane and when she left more people came into that fantastic scheme. She was running around the country trying to run it down and more people took it up. 
The thing that Ms Bennett has missed is that this is part of the biggest change in early childhood education in the history of this country and probably one of the biggest changes in that area in the whole world. The National Party has never understood that 20 hours’ free early childhood education is part of a 10-year strategy and that the whole sector is committed to the strategy. The sector wrote the strategy. It believes in the strategy and the last thing the National Party is going to get away with is going around and telling people Labour does not have the strategy and not to turn childcare into education. Well what would one want to turn it into education for? Let me tell members that we want to do it because it builds more centres it means the teachers will become professional it means the sector has proper regulations and it means the centres have funding—a 142 percent increase in funding in early childhood education since 2000. 
Bill English says we should not waste money but should let him give tax cuts to his well-off mates. What are we wasting money on? “Wasting” a 142 percent increase in early childhood education means providing wages for teachers building centres providing quality environments for kids and having a curriculum that works. That is what Bill English calls wastage because he wants to spend it on his tax cuts. 
Now 20 hours’ free early childhood education also means stable education. It means there is ongoing funding like that of a school. One goes down to the local school and one has guaranteed funding for the education of a child for the entire time that the child is there. Early childhood education is going to be treated in the same way from now on. Even today the National Party members still get up and talk about childcare. I am aching to be in front of an audience of early childhood people and to have a National Party member come along and tell them about its childcare policy. I am waiting for that. In fact I would organise the meeting drive Katherine Rich to it and listen for the entire time. I would not say a word. She could talk about childcare and I would see whether she got out of the building alive. It will be a very interesting campaign when we go out with our two kinds of policies. 
Meanwhile the National Party is actually offering an alternative. That is what we finally heard from Paula Bennett. She is the spokesperson it seems in this area and she tells us it will be a tax credit for parents. Let me tell the House what a tax credit means. First of all it means bureaucrats will give the tax credit to parents. The National Party members tell us they hate bureaucrats and one has to get rid of officials but they base their policy on—for instance one of us who has children; someone like Sue Bradford over there—parents saving their slips up all year for their children in a little file and then going down to the Inland Revenue Department and saying to the official whom the National Party hates and is trying to get rid of: “Here is my annual return for my children so can I have my tax credit please. I have been paying for the children all year and here I am out of pocket with no money. I’ve saved up all my chits and I would like my money back please.” Sometime in the future the Inland Revenue Department will get around to giving the tax credit. But when the parents receive the tax credit they will find that whereas they might have received $3600 under the Labour-led policy they will receive $2000 less than that under the policy that the National Party follows and if the parent is a beneficiary or he or she does not go to work the parent will receive nothing. He or she will not get anything. Those parents do not get a single sausage under that policy of the National Party. 
So on the hustings when we are arguing about childcare versus education when we are arguing about how much a parent receives from the 20 hours free policy versus the tax credit childcare policy and when we are arguing about the whole notion of the comparison between the two the pigeons will come home to roost. One can be as aspirational as one likes and one can have co-leaders and divide up the jobs as much as one likes but eventually people are going to say they want to be shown the National apple to compare with the Labour apple. They will ask to be shown what National has that will help a family to receive early childhood education. The answer from the National Party will be that it is going to give them a tax cut that will not give them education and will not give them real money and that if they are in the wrong position they will not even get any money at all. 
That is the difference between the two parties. Nick Smith is an experienced senior front-bench politician who has been around the track a few times and looks as though he has. He has been here before and he knows that he will stand on the hustings soon. He will have to have a concrete plan for New Zealand. He will have to say: “I don’t want cheaper doctors’ visits. I don’t want paid parental leave. I don’t want KiwiSaver. I don’t want your kids to have 20 hours’ free early childhood education; I want them to have a tax credit. I don’t want them to have education; I want them to have childcare. I want to give you a measly little tax cut. That will mean you can go and buy your own paid parental leave you can go and buy your own KiwiSaver you can go and buy your own health care and you can go and buy your own early childhood education all out of the $20 a week I will give you back in your tax cut.” That is the choice. Which plan would members choose? 
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) 
: 
 I am pleased to follow the Hon Steve Maharey because New Zealand First is concerned about exports and about exporters and we have been waiting to hear the National Party’s answer to these things. National members have talked about tax cuts too. But I think people should know and should understand quite clearly what the deal is when the National Party talks about tax cuts. The proof of the pudding is in the eating so they say. I think people should understand exactly when the last time was that a National Government gave a tax cut. 
I am not an expert on this sort of thing but I mentioned this to a Minister in the Labour Government the other day and he was not even alive when a National Government gave a tax cut the last time. That is fair dinkum. He said: “I was not alive in 1966.” and he is a Minister in the Labour Government today. That was the last time a National Government gave a tax cut. However I can say the last time National voted against a tax cut—I can say when that was. It was only a few weeks ago at the last Budget. New Zealand First voted for a tax cut for business and the National Party voted against it. 
New Zealand First is prepared to put its money where its mouth is. We are prepared to say that we want to do something for exporters. We want to help exporters and we want to help business. We are prepared to say that there is something missing in the mix that we want to fix. We are going to put a bill in the ballot as my leader mentioned publicly the other day. We believe that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act needs to be amended. It should not be done away with thrown in the rubbish bin or anything like that; it should be enhanced. We believe that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act needs to be enhanced by giving the governor the ability when he is setting the official cash rate or the interest rate as most people know it to consider what his increase—or decrease if it comes to that; we will look forward to that day—will do for the dollar in this country. We want to know what it will do for growth in this country and we want him to have to consider what it will do to employment and manufacturing and particularly because we are talking about it today to exports. 
At the present time he has just the one issue to concentrate on and that is keeping within the inflation band of 0 to 3 percent. That is not something that happens in very many places in the world because they have a broader view of these issues. It is something that goes back to the days of Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas and those sorts of people. It may have been needed then. I did not think it was but it may have been needed then. But today we need to enhance the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act so that the governor is required to take these other things into consideration when he sets the cash rate. 
I hail from the Waikato and as everybody knows the Waikato is the dairy land of New Zealand. We have recently been told some good news that next year we will be seeing an increased payout for the dairy farmers. One would have thought that the Government and the country would be delighted about this because we all know that it is our exports that set our standard of living and if there is an increase to the dairy farmers for their produce we would all be the beneficiaries of that. But no sadly the Governor of the Reserve Bank thought that this increase was one of many factors that would add to inflation. So recently just following the announcement of that price as it happened—probably coincidentally but it may not be—he said we would have to raise the interest rates or raise the official cash rate and that in turn raised the dollar. The net effect is that farmers will receive less than they otherwise would because of the governor’s action. 
We say that if he had to consider these other issues including what it would do to exporters vis-à-vis the farmers then he would think twice about stepping into the market quite so quickly. As anybody on the other side of the House will know if we raise the official cash rate the dollar follows and that affects our exporters. But what it means is that another flood of money comes into this country and again we are dealing with what trips off the tongue of Bill English and company—what they call the uridashi bonds the Japanese spare money. It comes over here because where they can get 1 percent interest or perhaps 2 percent if they are really really lucky they can come over here and get 8 percent or some discounted rate around that. 
So we are in a cycle that has no end unless it is to end in tears and we certainly do not want that. We believe that there is a solution. We believe that it does not have to turn the finance sector on its head. We believe that we have to enhance the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act and we think that that is exactly what should be happening. If we are going to be serious about an export year and 2007 is Export Year we should also be serious about the environment in which our exporters have to carry out their business. It is simply not right that they have to face a dollar around the US75c or US76c mark. That is simply not sustainable for this country. 
We all know that a higher dollar means cheaper imports. We know conversely that a lower dollar means more expensive exports. But as in anybody’s household it is the amount of money that one earns compared with the amount of money spent on consumables that means how well off one is. In New Zealand because of this trade with the price of the dollar and with the exchange rate we are consistently year upon year compounding spending more than we earn. We believe that something needs to be done about it before it ends in tears. 
There was always the fundamental failing with people like Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson because they were working to an ideological model—a model that was set in the absence of any reality for countries other than New Zealand. It was not set for New Zealand. Dr Cullen just the other day at the select committee suggested that this was a problem with housing. We agree with that but it is certainly a problem for our exporters. We have a way of fixing it. We believe that the Governor of the Reserve Bank should be required to take into account our dollar our growth our employment our manufacturing and our exports and we will have a far better balanced economy and money in our pockets. Thank you. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 Our economy is being mismanaged. The core public services of health education and the police are in a mess. We have the extraordinary situation where for the first time ever in New Zealand history a former Labour Minister is in court on corruption charges. It is no wonder that every member of this Labour Government is wanting to talk and make up stories about National policy. All the way through question time and this debate the Labour Party members have not been talking about what they are doing in Government or about their ministerial portfolios; they have been setting up straw men about what National’s policies might be. If we want a sure sign that the Government is on the way out that is it. 
I want to talk about the first issue that is on the minds of ordinary New Zealanders as thousands of them receive letters from their banks about their interest rates being pushed up because I want Labour members opposite to understand what that means for those household incomes. At the weekend a constituent came to see me. He had just got a letter from the bank to say that its fixed-term interest rate had gone up from 6 percent to 9.75 percent. 
Darren Hughes 
: Their fixed rate. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The fixed rate. It had come to an end. Mr Hughes might not understand this but fixed interest rates come up for renewal and that was the new rate. That meant for that family $135 a week. How do Labour members expect families like that tens of thousands of them to pay for those big increases in their mortgage bills? Why I ask Mr Hughes are New Zealanders paying the highest interest rates in the OECD? Silence. Are there any more bright words from the Labour Party? 
Jill Pettis 
: What did you do to bring interest rates down? Tell us what you did. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Jill Pettis should get on her broom unless she can answer and tell this House why New Zealanders are paying 2 percent more in interest than an Australian 4 percent more than an American and 3.5 percent more than a Brit. Why? [ 
Interruption 
] Those members want to scream out but they are not prepared to answer that basic question that is on the minds of ordinary New Zealanders. 
It is not just homeowners that those high interest rates are having an impact on; it is also business. If people want to invest in their farms and their small businesses to build the machinery we need to increase New Zealand’s productivity and be better off then they need to borrow. Those interest rates mean that New Zealand businesses are less competitive than their competitors in Australia the US Canada and Europe. Members opposite have no answer. They do not understand. We have seen the figures on the affordability of owning one’s own home. It is harder now in 2007 than at any time in New Zealand history to be able to afford one’s own home and again Labour members simply do not understand. 
Yes I do want to talk about tax because a very important graph came out last week and I think it is worthwhile for the House to understand it. We know about tax freedom day. That is the day on which New Zealanders get to work for themselves. I have some updated figures on when it is. If we go back to 1990 we see that tax freedom day the day when New Zealanders got to work for themselves was 10 June. Labour as it always does when in Government had found ways to get its hands deeper into the pockets of ordinary New Zealanders. By 1990 after Labour had put up taxes in the late 1980s tax freedom day had gone out to 10 June. National worked hard in the 1990s. We pegged tax freedom day forward 31 days. By 1999 when National left office tax freedom day was 10 May. 
Darren Hughes 
: Pity wages didn’t go up. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: They went up by a huge amount. 
Darren Hughes 
: Wages? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Yes they did. They actually went up and productivity went up I say for Mr Hughes’ benefit. But let us go back to where we are with tax freedom day. This year I say to Mr Hughes tax freedom day has gone all the way back to 10 June again. It has gone back by over 33 days. Every single year that Labour is in Government New Zealanders need to work more days before they are able to keep their own income. The real worry for New Zealand is this: while New Zealanders have to work through to the middle of June to be able to work for themselves in Australia tax freedom day is 10 May. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: But they can afford to take their kids to the doctor. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: It is no wonder I say to Judith Tizard that every single week a 747 loaded with talented New Zealanders is travelling to Australia. They are leaving I say to Ms Tizard because her Government is forcing on them the highest interest rates in the world making the dream of homeownership more difficult here than in any other country and because her Government keeps wanting to tax them to death so that they cannot keep their own income. 
But this Government is also in trouble because its policies are in tatters. Let us take the issue— 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: You had cash registers in hospitals and there will be cash registers in schools under National. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Ms Tizard should get on her broom. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. This is a robust Chamber but I deeply resent that member constantly using deeply sexist language. I really really resent my right as a member of Parliament being insulted because I am a woman and I want him to withdraw and apologise. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: No no. It is a robust debate. The member was also participating by— 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: It is not acceptable for him to be sexist. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I am on my feet I say to the member. You do not call out when I am on my feet. The member will withdraw and apologise to me. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I think that if we get down to ruling out every term like that—this is a robust debate and the member was debating. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Implying that any member of Parliament is a witch is not acceptable. The term “witch” has been used as a term of insult to women. Women were burnt because they spoke out. I deeply deeply resent the sexist language and the insult to every woman in this Parliament and every woman in New Zealand. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: Obviously the member has taken offence at that term. I ask the member to withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I withdraw and apologise. Judith Tizard constantly interjects and when I tell her to get on her broom she gets all super-sensitive. I am not surprised because Judith Tizard told the electorate that there would be 20 free hours of early childhood care. I have to tell the member opposite that her Government is not delivering and New Zealanders are angry about that. The Government has broken its word. The reality is whether it is a surcharge or a morning tea fee Labour is not delivering what it said. 
Then we have the extraordinary situation of a formal report from the police saying that new recruits do not know the alphabet. Such is the deterioration of standards that new cops are sworn in and put out on the streets who do not know the alphabet. I simply say that that shows the degree to which the quality public services which the public rightly deserves are in trouble. What happened was that Labour in the middle of the last election campaign promised anything to save its bacon—20 free hours of early childhood education 1000 extra police—without actually ensuring they were not just slogans. The delivery is in trouble and as a consequence Labour is in trouble. [ 
Interruption 
] 
I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I have the flu and I am struggling with my voice. I have put up with 5 minutes of constant screaming from Jill Pettis and Judith Tizard and I wonder whether you might bring the House to order so that I can give the House a quality speech. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I agree with the member—[ 
Interruption 
]; silence during points of order—that constant barracking is not acceptable. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: This Government is in trouble in terms of health education the police and those record high interest rates. New Zealanders are looking for fresh new direction and there is none from this Government. They see failure they see broken promises they see a tired old Government that has done its day. 
From National they are looking for straight leadership they are looking for good-quality policy they are looking for the sorts of policies that will make homeownership affordable. They are looking for the sorts of policies from National that will see quality in areas like early childhood education—not the broken promises we have seen from this Government. They want policies that will not see New Zealanders paying the highest interest rates in the Western World. They want policies that will ensure we do not have police out on the street who do not know the alphabet. They want policies that will reverse the trend of 7 million trees being ripped up and not replanted over the last 3 years. They want policies that will see our health system put into decent shape. 
I say to members of this House that this Government is an incompetent Government it is a corrupt Government it is a Government that has had its day— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: The member knows very well that he cannot use that term. He will stand withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I withdraw and apologise. We have the unhistorical scene which has never occurred before of a former Labour Minister being charged with corruption. 
DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki) 
: 
 I seek leave to table an extract from the  
Nelson Mail 
 where Nick Smith says that one of the problems in Parliament today is MPs indulging in too much personal abuse. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 On behalf of the Green Party I wish to address the Vote Transport section of the supplementary estimates. If members look at that section they will see two very big figures there. One in relation to the State highway construction programme is $60 million. The note says this is “To ensure that the State Highway Construction Programme can be delivered in the event that the input cost escalation …”. Then there is another item for ALPURT B2—that is the Albany to Puhoi northern motorway extension—which is a figure of $65 million. Taken together that is $125 million in the supplementary estimates under Vote Transport which is a very large amount. 
There was some controversy back in March over the way extra money was being poured in beyond that budgeted when Jeanette Fitzsimons our co-leader in a question to Michael Cullen as Minister of Finance raised some information that she had obtained under the Official Information Act about the advice given to the Minister relating to supplementary expenditure for State highway construction. She asked whether the Minister agreed with officials’ advice to the Cabinet economic development committee that “Singling out the activity class of State Highway construction for Crown guarantee would signal a preference for funding State highways over all other forms of transport.” and that “This may be perceived as being inconsistent with … the LTMA [Land Transport Management Act 2003] or integration of the transport sector”. I think that was very relevant and we can see the problem being reflected in the supplementary estimates. 
Under the Land Transport Management Act 2003 Land Transport New Zealand has a very sophisticated and deliberate funding allocation process. It is actually outlined in a document I received in my office today a fact sheet dated June 2007 on the National Land Transport Programme. That body which is delegated under the Act to determine these things goes through what it describes as a six-stage process for the formulation of funding options which have to come from all sectors of land transport—not just road building but also public transport walking cycling etc. Under the Act the programme is supposed to be balanced. 
The stages are firstly the formulation. Secondly there is the assessment where the proposals are assessed by approved organisations in terms of the requirement of the Act and all of that is looked at. The third stage is that Land Transport New Zealand uses the profiles to assist prioritisation. Stage four is the programming. stage five is the approval of funding activities and stage six is the monitoring and review. So everything is worked out and authority is delegated to Land Transport New Zealand. 
But clearly what has happened is that over the past year in the year 2006-07 covered by the supplementary estimates Cabinet has intervened in that process and has not taken account of the officials’ advice that was quoted by Jeanette Fitzsimons in her question to Michael Cullen on 20 March. Michael Cullen effectively said the Government was just guaranteeing all the top-ups to make sure the roads were built. I think there are problems with that. 
One is when that is done to only one activity class as it has been and not to public transport. If we leave aside the operational dimension of public transport which obviously fluctuates according to demand in terms of infrastructural funding public transport does not get that preferential treatment and the officials’ advice was right. 
The other thing is how Government spending can be made really cost-effective for the taxpayer if there is a provision that if the cost of building a particular highway goes up—be it ALPURT B2 or State Highway 20 or whatever—then the money will be forthcoming. An extra $65 million will just be chucked in as happened with ALPURT B2 over that financial year. It is not very good discipline. If the contractors know there is a cost-plus approach they will put their tenders up to meet what is available particularly when we know that the contracting system is quite stretched at the moment in terms of all these roading projects. The contractors can benefit by many millions of dollars more—at the taxpayers’ expense—if we have such a funding system. 
It is true that in the Budget the Government has put some serious money into public transport. The Greens of course have been very keen on seeing extra money put into rail although it must be said that the $500 million put into electrifying Auckland suburban rail even though it is very good is in the form of an infrastructure bond. Sure it is Government guaranteed but it does not immediately come out of the Budget; the provision is that the interest on that infrastructure loan will come out of a petrol tax. That is how it is working. The Greens have supported that as have all the Auckland local bodies as enabling electrification to go ahead. But it is a more conservative approach than the Government just throwing in $125 million as is recorded in the supplementary estimates for State highway construction. 
The Government has admitted that it has gone against the proposal of funding Land Transport New Zealand which then works out in a balanced way what is funded. It actually says in the note in the supplementary estimates on the ALPURT B2 funding: “Contribution to support the construction of the Albany to Puhoi Northern Motorway Extension … Reason for Change: As per funding profile agreed by Cabinet.” That indicates that Cabinet itself has said there is some political pressure from the roading lobby for this road to go ahead and to make sure it goes ahead at a certain pace it will throw money in that direction even though it is not incorporated in the land transport budget. 
In the answer to Jeanette Fitzsimons back in March Michael Cullen said it was like superannuation in that it was demand driven. Well it is true that superannuation is demand driven and that we do not know the number of older people etc. so there has to be a bit of flexibility there and the situation changes year by year. But when we are talking about motorway construction we cannot draw the parallel that it is demand driven. We have these different projects: public transport infrastructural projects and road infrastructural projects. Whether money is allocated is not demand driven. That is where the parallel with superannuation is not right in that the funding process through Land Transport New Zealand is a contestable system and a balance has to be reached. It is I think quite wrong for Cabinet to intervene in that way and it is quite contrary to the concept of carbon neutrality that the Government is aiming at. 
If one is going to spend extra money above and beyond the Budget surely that money should go into public transport infrastructure if we are serious about getting New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions down because a lot of those emissions come from cars and trucks on roads. So if we put the extra money into roads we are not dealing with that problem; in fact we are encouraging people to stay in their cars rather than allowing for the availability of more public transport that can take people out of their cars. Or if we put more money into rail then we have more goods travelling long distances by rail as opposed to trucks. Surely that would be very beneficial. So I think we should seriously note the problem in the supplementary estimates with so much money being diverted by Cabinet down this track. 
The other problem is that the earlier funding for State highways was actually done before Land Transport New Zealand had published its programme and that is undercutting that body. Thank you. 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I am not sure whether the House has realised that which is obvious to me and to anyone on this side of the House which is that the National Party cannot stand success. It cannot stand it when this Government continues to make progress. It continues to frustrate that progress and continues to opine that progress will not be made. It continues to hold the view that things will not come to fruition: that we will not be able to make progress on 20 free hours that KiwiSaver will not work that the roll-out of the Primary Health Care Strategy will not work and so on. National members are desperate for this Government to not make progress and the reason is that they have decided they want to go into the next election with one policy: no change from what is going on now but to do things with more style. That will be National’s policy approach: no change but they will do things with more style and maybe they will have some tax cuts. 
You see the problem National members have got themselves into is that this Government does not lack ambition. We are keen to improve the lot of New Zealanders in this that and the other sphere. In the short term in the medium term and in the long term we have a plan one might say. That plan is rolling out inexorably and the National Party if it is to have no change must embrace every part of the plan as it comes to fruition. Otherwise it will have to say it will roll it back. So if we look at our policies we see that the Primary Health Care Strategy is a cracker. If we look at National’s policies we see that its members went into the last election saying they would not have any more of the Primary Health Care Strategy roll-out. They said they would keep it for the under-25s and verily they would keep it for the over-65s—that part of the policy having already been rolled out—but oh no they were not going to roll out any more. Well National lost the election and the roll-out continues. So National will do a U-turn and say it did not mean that. It will say it will keep the Primary Health Care Strategy in its totality with not one bit of change but will do it with more style and there will be tax cuts. 
One can see that that approach is what National members are hoping for throughout all of the policy areas. They are desperate for the 20 free hours’ early childhood education policy to not work. They are talking it down as fast as they can because they know that when it does work they will have to embrace it. If they do not embrace the policy then a whole lot of people will say it was good and ask why National would want to take it away. So you see National members are on a rolling U-turn and they will stay on that rolling U-turn unless or until they finally one year a long time from now get themselves on to the Treasury benches. 
This Government does not lack ambition. We intend to roll out KiwiSaver and people will join it. Members can mark my words: people will join KiwiSaver. And what is more KiwiSaver will change the macroeconomic settings in this country significantly. It will over time improve our savings record. It will over time address the current account. It will over time mean that we will start to own more and more of our own country. And National will not be able to roll it back. 
That is also the case with regard to another change that is coming next Sunday: the 20 free hours’ early childhood education. That will be taken up and those who have been grizzling about it will join it. Some of them will not join immediately; they will want to hang out for a while and see what the market does. Well I can tell those people that they will end up with a niche position in the market if they want to keep charging a lot of money or they will change. When they change the National Party will change too. 
And so it is in the health system and so it is with regard to anything else that is going well in this country: the National Party is determined that it is not going well. So when we have the lowest unemployment rate in the world—except sometimes for that of South Korea—the National Party assures us that there are far more people on benefits than there ever were before even though we know that the numbers of people on the domestic purposes benefit the unemployment benefit the sickness benefit and most recently the invalids benefit are plummeting. The numbers are coming down. When we look at youth unemployment where the unemployment number has nearly hit the bottom we see that the National Party asserts week after week that the number is very high. Soon the number will be so low that we really will know the names and addresses of New Zealanders aged 18 and 19 who are on the unemployment benefit—again; just like the situation that existed in the 1960s. But the National Party will have no truck with that; its members cannot stand that success. 
National members cannot stand Working for Families being a good success. They cannot tolerate the notion that 130000 New Zealand children have been lifted out of poverty in recent years—they cannot stand it; they just do not like it. They say that they will take away bits of Working for Families and that as soon as Bill English and John Key can agree on which bits they will have a bit of policy. But so far they have not done so. Instead National members say that everyone is being made into a State beneficiary. Well Working for Families is optional. People can join it if they want to but National says we are making everybody a State beneficiary. Some of those National Party members are themselves State beneficiaries who earn $122500 for doing not much work. I would have thought that those members needed to reflect on what is a reasonable allocation of wealth across this country. In particular they should look at the way that children are treated in most other Western nations because there they will find some equivalent of the New Zealand Working for Families package. But no National members do not like it. 
The National Party is facing a Labour Government that refuses to stop its very substantial incremental changes for the future of this country. In respect of economic development National has the same argument that it has in other areas. Here we decided that our economy needed to be thickened up that it was not OK to rely on commodities alone and that we needed to move beyond that situation. And so arrived the fashion industry the film industry and many many other things beside that courtesy of the work of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. What does National want to do? It wants to throw out New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. It thinks it is corporate welfare. Well no Western nation in the world agrees with the New Zealand National Party but that is the position it holds and that is certainly the position it held in the 1990s. The position it had in the 1990s when it was in Government was that all of that stuff was corporate welfare and that it was not going to have anything of it. 
So you see the National Party is in trouble because the business community thinks that New Zealand Trade and Enterprise does a good thing. The business community agrees with this Government’s approach to economic development. The business community thinks that the change that occurred in 1999 is a good change not a bad change. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Tell us where you’ve read that. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The proof comes in the votes right left and centre. Whenever we try to introduce New Zealand Trade and Enterprise legislation National votes against it. When we tried to involve National by seeing whether we could get its support for Industry New Zealand legislation it voted against it. When it came to changing the law in order to provide a tax break for research and development only a few weeks ago National voted against it. You see National votes against things then claims to be in favour of them. There is a word for that. It begins with “h”. One is not allowed to use that word— 
Darren Hughes 
: And you shouldn’t. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: And I shall not. 
To talk about another “h” word health I point out that what National does in respect of health is to ask where the extra $4 billion a year has gone and to say that it must have gone into bureaucrats. Well I will make a couple of points about that. First of all had there been a National Government for the past 7½ years—God help us all—there would not be an extra $4 billion spent in health. Instead there would be part charges in hospitals big fees to go to the doctor big fees to get drugs and waiting lists from here to Africa because that is what we inherited when we became the Government. So under National there would not be an extra $4 billion spend in health. 
Second if members want to know where that money has gone let me tell them. There are 28 hospital rebuilding projects under this Government. How many might there have been under National? There are 1200 more doctors in this country since the change of Government. How many more might there have been under National? There are 4000 extra nurses in our health system under this Government—4000 extra nurses! How many more might there have been under National? Doctors’ fees as I mentioned are cheaper. Rest homes are cheaper. Those members do not even want money to go towards paying for people to work in rest homes or for people to be paid extra to have their wages shifted from $11.50 to $13.50 for home-based support services. What do they call that? They call that unionist. I call it stabilising the workforce. 
National members are against expenditure on health in whatever form it comes. They do not want the before-school check. They do not want the newborn hearing screenings. They did not care about meningococcal meningitis—if they did care about meningococcal meningitis they would have introduced the vaccine when they were in Government. They do not care about pneumoccocal meningitis. They do not want more money to go into mental health. We have the best emergency department system amongst five nations and at question time today we saw Mr Ryall try to pull it to bits. What does that do for the people who work strange hours of the day or night dealing with people who are acutely unwell? What does that do for them? We have the best system it is getting better and he rips it to bits. That is the sort of leadership we see from the National Party. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I have news for the Minister of Health. Yesterday I was speaking to a young person in the North Shore. She said she is going to Sydney. Why is she going to Sydney? She is going because she can get $20000 extra. She said she really wanted to stay in New Zealand but how could she look past $20000 extra and more opportunity? She has made a decision against this Government which is to say that it has not delivered. Each and every week 750 people are making exactly that same decision. 
The Government has made a great deal of KiwiSaver. I ask the Government this question: “Is that all there is?” because the Budget was all about KiwiSaver and on that basis the Government expects to be re-elected. 
Darren Hughes 
: That is right. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: We have heard it. On the basis of KiwiSaver the junior whip says the Government expects to get re-elected. That is its platform. 
Darren Hughes 
: And business tax cuts. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: I want to say to that member—who will actually lose his seat in 18 months’ time—that the public gave a clear verdict on the Budget and they did not like it. The public said that if it is only KiwiSaver that is not enough for a Budget. This Government and indeed previous Governments have had 13 years of continuous surpluses and the public is saying that it is their turn now that it is about time they had a share of those surpluses and it is simply not good enough for this Government to come along each and every year and say: “Oh no you cannot get a reduction in your taxes.”; even though the surplus might now be $6 billion it is still not enough for a tax cut for hard-working New Zealanders. The consequence is that that young lady has made a decision to go to Australia for more opportunities. A tax cut might be just the sort of thing that she needed to give her an incentive to stay here. 
That is the difference between this Government and the Australian Government. In Australia each and every year there is a reduction in taxes. It is not huge every year but cumulatively it adds up and therefore people get a sense of hope and optimism. In this country this Government crushes aspiration hope and initiative. 
In just over 3 months New Zealanders will be voting in the local authority elections. Earlier this year the Prime Minister said she was going to reform Auckland local government. The Minister of Finance said in the Budget that the electrification of Auckland rail is a priority and the Government announced that it would be paid for by a 10c regional petrol tax. Is that not symbolic of this Government—a $6 billion surplus and what is its answer? A new tax! One would have to ask the parties sitting at the back of the House why they would support an additional tax on hard-working New Zealanders. I have to ask members of New Zealand First why they are even contemplating voting for a tax increase on hard-working New Zealanders. I have to ask members of the United Future party why they are voting for a tax increase on hard-working New Zealanders. 
Everyone admits that the electrification of rail is a desirable project. There is no dispute about that whatsoever but one has to ask why it cannot be paid out of that $6 billion surplus—just the most recent of 13 continuous years of surpluses. The feature of the Labour Government in relation to surpluses and taxes is that it has only one answer when it comes to taxes and that is to increase them. When Labour got elected in 1999 its first gesture was to increase personal income tax from 33 percent to 39 percent. Since then we have had two petrol tax increases and a sherry tax increase—talk about grinding the face of the poor there—but we have not had a single adjustment to thresholds. During that period of time inflation has gone up around 18 percent but there has not been a single adjustment for thresholds. That is the difference from the Australian approach which at the very minimum lifts the thresholds by the rate of inflation—usually it is a bit better than that in fact. But there is not one thing from this Government. 
Last week we heard Trevor Mallard the new Minister of Finance for the 2008 Budget say in Australia that there would be a tax-cut Budget in 2008. I have to say that I actually trust New Zealanders to see through the cynicism of such a move. I believe that New Zealanders will ask whether they are expected to be fooled and bribed so cheaply by a Government that waits until the desperate nether ends of its term to give us a pathetic sort of tax cut the sort of thing that Mallard would deliver. I think New Zealanders will see through the cynicism of that and they will deal to the Government. 
This Budget was a turning-point for this country because it meant a catastrophic loss of faith by the public of New Zealand in the Government. We saw a dramatic turn-round in the polls at that point. We saw a fundamental change on the question of whether the country is going in the right or the wrong direction. It is not just about individual policies; it is about the public’s attitude to the Government. They are sick of being taken for suckers. Because of that they are saying to this Government that it is time it got on its bike and was gone. 
I turn directly to Auckland regional governance. This is yet another symbol of failure. I note that the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues the Hon Judith Tizard is sitting in the back of the House at the moment. One has to ask oneself what she has actually done for this country. What has she actually done for Auckland? I know for an absolute fact that her major problem with Auckland is that she simply complains that Aucklanders do not recognise her in the way she thinks appropriate. Well I guess the public are making their judgment. So when the local body leaders in Auckland and the four mayors in particular came up with a plan which actually the Prime Minister said was pretty good—and one might have expected a visionary Government to have a legislative process that should dramatically improve local governance in New Zealand—what happened? 
Hon Georgina te Heuheu 
: Nothing. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: That is absolutely right. As my colleague Georgina te Heuheu said it did nothing. During question time in the House in questions to the Minister of Local Government in fact and in two questions to the Deputy Prime Minister they said there would be no legislation on regional local government. Well I see that only as a testament to failure. 
The point of all of this is that this Government has simply run out of steam. It treats the voters with contempt and voters are saying they cannot wait until the next election because they want to get rid of this Government and they want this country to be a country of aspiration progress and drive. That can be done only with a John Key - led Government. 
Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 Kia ora Madam Speaker. Tena koe. It is entirely appropriate to be examining the Appropriation (2006/07 Supplementary Estimates) Bill at this time—the time of Matariki. Matariki signalled a time of abundance when the fishing was thriving the moki and korokoro were plentiful and kumara and other vegetables were gathered. It was a time of plenty for our tipuna. It was a time for planning ahead: for planting new soils and for preparing the ground for fertile growth in the months ahead. So it is that we turn to the task ahead: the need for parliamentary authorisation of individual appropriations and changes in the expenditure. 
It would be fair to say we come with high expectations. In the week preceding this debate we have witnessed David Richwhite and a company involving his former partner Sir Michael Fay pay over $20 million to the Securities Commission to settle insider-trading proceedings relating to Tranz Rail—$20 million the cost of innocence! We have watched shares rocket exponentially from 14c to $5.15 as the news came to hand that the Skycity Entertainment Group Managing Director Evan Davies is to receive a $1.7 million exit payment. So one would think the scene is set for new beginnings for planning ahead. 
Part of that scenario setting is the allocation of an additional $2 million to host the World Heritage Committee and for the chairing of that committee. It is a very important committee which takes up a global surveillance role in protecting and preserving the world’s most outstanding and precious cultural and natural heritage. We have the incredible honour of hosting the World Heritage Committee meeting in Christchurch. It opened on Saturday and will run through to 2 July 2007. Matariki is a time to share and present offerings to others. In this regard we are particularly proud of the international leadership being demonstrated by the Ngati Tuwharetoa paramount chief Tumu te Heuheu in his role as chairperson. 
What else does the new year herald? It appears to herald a very significant investment in operationally deployed forces—an additional $72 million to take up the balance of three financial years. This is in addition of course to the $329952 million appropriated for defence equipment $10 million for fixed-wing transport forces $9 million for maritime patrol forces $8 million for land combat support forces and $21 million for naval combat forces—just a few among the items on the armed forces shopping list. 
I have come to this House on many occasions urging Parliament to consider the notion of a genuine progress index or GPI as the measurement of all aspects of our wealth human and other. It assesses all our social and environmental assets as well as our deficits. The index basically tracks all the flows of income that are not in the cash economy. It includes the widest range of measures that affect the health of the economy. So when we consider the supplementary estimates of appropriations for the year ending 30 June 2007 we expect to see planning for those who lack the fortune that others so clearly possess. I am reminded of that old 1970s poster: “It will be a great day when schools have enough money for books and the air force has to run a cake stall to buy another bomber.” 
All I need to do is to turn to my electorate to see that the fortune is not shared with all. Tamaki Makaurau has the highest proportion of youth. It is one of the fastest-growing regions in population terms and one of the lowest-income regions in Aotearoa. It is in the spirit of Matariki that we will be supporting the Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill to ensure that a sincere though small start is made in spreading the abundance the wealth of this country amongst the youth and families of Otara and similar low-income areas. We expect that all who have a genuine interest in sharing abundance and wealth will also support the bill. 
We have been meeting together for months now to address what others may describe as the dysfunctionality of our youth gangs. Yet when we called the Minister to support us with one simple measure the call for an 0800 number—a team of workers was all ready at the other end to intervene in this negative culture—no funding came forward. When we come to this House we hear “Ban the patches!” and “Ban the gangs!” but nothing to say that here is a helping hand or a willing ear to offer a positive step forward. 
This is the south of Auckland where a 3-year-old boy died after being beaten to death with all manner of weapons including a baseball bat and a vacuum-cleaner pipe. I have a 3-year-old mokopuna and when I think of that precious life lost I wonder where our priorities are as a nation. This shameful horrifying abuse just keeps on occurring but with no sign of any response in this list of supplementary estimates. 
This is the south of Auckland where workers at the Centra Auckland Airport Hotel took strike action to highlight wages so low that people cannot make ends meet. One of the workers at that hotel Lopa Muliaga like many hotel staff earns just $12 an hour while the hotel spends over $10 million on refurbishments. That is not enough to get by to keep the power bills at bay to survive. I think of the statement made yesterday by the Mercury Energy boss who said: “Financial hardship is a social problem and it requires a coordinated community response. It requires us all to play our part and that includes not just the power industry but social agencies and Government as well.” 
It will be a grim Matariki for some. How can we have any hope of reinventing and rejuvenating ourselves of preparing for the cold hard winter ahead of anticipating the bounty of the season when that resourcing is clearly not evident in this Appropriation (2006/07 Supplementary Estimates) Bill? Although Maori Party members support of course any increase in the appropriations to settle Treaty of Waitangi claims the plans to establish a contestable aquaculture planning fund and the investment in a digital strategy for high-speed connectivity and growth this bill is sadly lacking in making the real difference to families in my electorate. I refer to the basics of life: a hot nutritious meal; essential services including water; and being able to avoid disconnection of power. The purely market-based approach is doing nothing to help the constituents who come to my office and probably many others as well. We must be brave enough to admit that the parlous existence of too many low-income families cannot be disregarded. 
How did we get to such a state that the balance is so skewed? The rising costs of electricity water and transport are all well above the rate of inflation and threatening the very viability of families to survive. Genuine progress must be reflected not just in sharemarket prosperity but also in gross total family incomes. Yet New Zealand exhibits a very uneven distribution of wealth. The richest 10 percent in our nation have increased their net worth to just over 50 percent of the total wealth of our country. Genuine progress is about the nation being able to host the Rugby World Cup and the World Heritage Committee at the same time as families and communities can host each other in their homes and can share the collective vision where benefits are shared by all. 
When we think of benefits we think of beneficiaries. We must ensure that those who find themselves on income support—some 37 percent of whom are Maori—are not turfed out in the cold or forced to sign up to the perplexity of a paper war without their real needs being met. We must build community resilience and community responsibility helping each other to help ourselves and caring in the broadest sense. We must combat the parasites of poverty—the loan sharks the pokie machines the addictions the alcohol and drug abuse—that feed this dysfunction. We must do it now because we can and we should. That is the promise of Matariki that we in this House are morally bound to take up. 
MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 In speaking in this estimates debate I want to highlight the significance of 1 July which is a day that sees another step being taken in this Labour-led Government’s set of ambitions for this country. I begin by highlighting what we are doing in health as of 1 July. We have cut in half the cost of seeing the doctor and from 1 July all New Zealanders will be able to access affordable doctors’ visits and affordable prescription drugs. These are policies that directly impact on the families that the previous speaker Pita Sharples was referring to. These remain the families about whom the Labour Party and this Labour-led Government care. This is a historic achievement in health that is coming to pass on 1 July and that only a Labour-led Government could deliver. We have invested $2.2 billion in order to make it happen. This is what it costs to make primary health care affordable for all families. 
This investment has reduced doctors’ fees by around $25 and lowered the standard prescription charges from $15 an item to $3 an item. Three million New Zealanders are already benefiting from lower fees and on 1 July they will be joined by people in the 25 to 44-year-old age group. We are just getting started. Lowering doctors’ fees is the beginning. We will be stepping up efforts to improve screening to prevent diabetes and cardiovascular disease and to boost vaccination rates to protect the health of all children. 
Another initiative that will come into effect in its fullness on 1 July is KiwiSaver. This initiative is vital for Kiwis in securing their financial security. There are a whole range of complex repercussions and implications from the KiwiSaver initiative that comes into effect on 1 July. First of all it secures the future. Saving more will secure better futures for our families and it will also help New Zealand companies to access local capital and expand both here and overseas. It is a non-inflationary policy. Savings mean less consumption taking pressure off interest rates—which is in part an answer to the Hon Dr Nick Smith’s comments earlier in this debate. The answers to the problem of high inflation rates are complex but KiwiSaver is a large step in the process of taking pressure off interest rates off inflation and off the dollar. It is a non-inflationary policy. 
KiwiSaver means that we will be investing in ourselves. We will have a larger pool of domestic capital so that New Zealand businesses can expand and grow and our economy can become more self-reliant rather than being reliant on overseas investors who have no long-term interest in the state of the New Zealand economy but are keen to make a short-term profit. 
Another significant impact of KiwiSaver is that it will mean more New Zealand ownership. New Zealand business can grow under New Zealand ownership rather than being dependent on the overseas investment I referred to a moment ago. Profits can stay in the country and fuel more new businesses and jobs. 
KiwiSaver makes it easier for New Zealanders to take the hard step of saving for the future and helps to develop long-term savings habits. In fact KiwiSaver is the best opportunity ever for low-income families to make provision for their retirement and to develop savings habits that in the long term benefit not just them but also the country because of the anti-inflationary effects I mentioned a moment ago. Under this Labour-led Government more people will have better financial security in their old age. 
Further to that KiwiSaver impacts on homeownership. This Labour-led Government believes that all hard-working New Zealand families deserve the best and that if they want their own home they should be supported to achieve that goal. KiwiSaver tax credits and the employer contribution make it easier for New Zealanders to save more and for many to save for their first home. We have made sure that KiwiSaver is flexible enough to be applied to the ownership of a family’s first home and the flexibility around that is a very significant contributor to the future well-being of New Zealand families. 
KiwiSaver gives a helping hand to workers early in their working lives because hardworking young New Zealand families deserve support and it is our way to promote family savings beyond the family home as well. 
July 1 will also see the introduction of 20 free hours’ early childhood education. I want to talk about that for a moment because it is a very significant contribution to education in this country. In fact it is the most significant contribution to education in this country since we saw compulsory secondary education introduced by the first Labour Government. It is a very significant milestone and a very significant step for education and the education of very young children in particular. It means that up to 20 hours a week up to 6 hours a day are free for enrolled 3 and 4-year-olds. It is an excellent policy and the early childhood centres that I have visited recently—including the Inglewood Childhood Early Education Centre which I visited yesterday—are delighted with the policy are applying it in exactly the way it was intended and are confident that they will see more and more parents taking up early childhood education for their children. Staff from the Inglewood centre talked about the benefits to the families in Inglewood and about those people on low incomes in the Inglewood area who are delighted that this will now be within their reach. 
People remember the National Government. Despite the fact that some of the new National members opposite do not remember their own heritage people out in the electorate do. They remember things like the wage and price freeze in the 1980s. They remember the Employment Contracts Act and the increased surcharge on superannuation in the 1990s and the questions are building for National. The questions will come from the electorate. What will National do? Will it rescind prescription drugs charges? Will it make them more expensive and out of the reach of many? Will it take away 20 hours’ free early childhood education? Will it axe KiwiSaver? Will it in fact renege on the doctors’ fee support that 1 July will see made available to everybody? Will it make primary health inaccessible? Those will be the questions for this National Party to answer in the forthcoming election. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 This is truly an incompetent Government that sits opposite the National Party today. It is a Government of slick slogans and no delivery at all. It is a Government completely fixated with spending more and getting less for what it is spending and there is no area where that is more stark than in Vote Health. This is a Government that measures its performance solely on how much money it has spent on health. If we ask the Government whether things are improving in the hospitals its answer is that because it is spending billions of dollars more yes they must be improving. If we ask the Government whether maternity services are improving it says that yes they must be because it is spending hundreds of millions of dollars more in that area. If we ask the Government whether our hospital services are improving for people who need non-urgent but vital surgery it says that yes they must be because it is spending more and therefore we must be getting more. 
Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a Government that has produced more spending and lower quality. I will give an example in relation to maternity services. The Government says it is spending more than ever before on maternity services. But the question about quality has to be asked. In Waitemata 24 percent of women presenting at the hospital to give birth this year did not have a lead maternity carer. A quarter of all the women who presented at the Waitemata District Health Board hospital did not have a lead maternity carer. What does that say about the quality of support that those women of west Auckland and the North Shore have received from this Government when they cannot get a lead maternity carer? 
Jo Goodhew 
: It’s a lucky dip. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: “It’s a lucky dip.” says Mrs Goodhew. And what about the issue of the emergency departments we have been highlighting this weekend? Basically every provincial newspaper around New Zealand today is reporting that no major hospital in this country is meeting the Government’s own benchmarks for the delivery and treatment of care of people presenting to emergency departments. It is not the National Party’s benchmarks; it is the Government’s benchmarks. Even people with imminent threat to life and limb cannot get their problems met and serviced within the Government’s own time frames. What does that say about the quality of care in our emergency departments? 
Jo Goodhew 
: It’s scary. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: What is scary I say to Mrs Goodhew is that researcher after researcher has shown that the longer people wait to be treated in an emergency department and the longer they lie on a hospital trolley—for hours in Waitemata at the North Shore Hospital—then the less chance there is of a successful recovery. Researcher after researcher shows that the risk of dying increases dramatically the longer one has to wait in a hospital emergency department. Is that quality health care? No it is not. 
The Government has put an awful lot of money into primary care—an awful lot. But what about the quality of the service? We know there are fewer general practitioners today than there were in 1999. We know it is harder for many people to get on a general practitioner’s books. We need just go to the Otaki electorate to see the experience of people who live around Waikanae and Kapiti. They cannot get on a general practitioner’s books. There are problems in Waimate and people in Gisborne cannot get on a general practitioner’s books. It boils down to the quality of the service that is being provided. Where are the multi-disciplinary teams—the cooperation between doctors nurses physiotherapists and pharmacists and all that stuff the Government promised? There are none. Even the Minister admitted that in a paper to his Cabinet colleagues. 
Where is the coordination between primary and secondary care that would improve the quality of the service for patients in response to the millions and billions of dollars being put into health? There is none. Look at the diabetes “Get Checked” Diabetes Aotearoa programme. Millions of dollars have been put into that programme and it has been panned by the Auditor-General. As Dr Jackie Blue will be able to show in this House some time this week the Government simply has not delivered on the promises it made. 
We should look at what is really another indicator on the quality of the service for New Zealand patients; that is non-urgent but vital surgery—elective surgery. Whatever the Government says despite the $4 billion extra a year in health fewer New Zealanders are getting operations in New Zealand hospitals today. Is that a quality health system? I do not think so. Is it a quality health system when most people who turn up in emergency departments in some parts of the country will not be seen on time? Is it a quality health system when women cannot get a lead maternity carer? Is it is a quality health system when people cannot get on doctors’ books? Is it a quality health system when as was mentioned in Dunedin people have to be crippled bent over and on maximum opiate medication to get a hip replacement? Is that a quality public health system? I do not think so and neither do the people of New Zealand. 
This Government is all about throwing money at things rather than dealing with providing a quality public service. Under Labour the hallmark of the public health service is waiting waiting waiting. People wait longer to see a hospital specialist longer to get their operation longer in a hospital emergency department and longer in their general practitioner’s surgery. This Government has us on a path to a place where that will get worse. The real challenge for the party opposite is to provide quality public health services with what is being spent. One measures that on the service patients are getting not on how much money has been thrown at it. This Government is putting $4 billion extra a year into health and there is nothing extra to show for it. Indeed the quality is raising concerns all around the country. 
But the pressure the Government faces in health is across a whole lot of areas of portfolios today. One area of particular concern to most New Zealanders is the massive increase in interest rates being seen under the Labour Government. As Bill English said earlier on in this debate 30 percent of New Zealanders with a 2-year fixed mortgage will have that mortgage come to term in the next 3 months and they will find their interest rates going from about 7.5 percent to 9.25 percent. That is an incredibly significant increase. Driving that burden of rising interest rates is the unchecked growth in wasteful Government spending that is putting huge interest rate pressure on New Zealand families. The Government should tighten its belt to carry its share of the burden of fighting inflation. 
The problem in our country today is that the Reserve Bank is operating in isolation and in fact is diametrically opposed to the fiscal policies of this Government. This Government is spending spending and spending wastefully. That is putting huge pressure on interest rates and New Zealand homeowners are feeling the pressure of that. It is making it harder for New Zealanders to buy their own homes. Is that what the people who voted for Labour in the 2005 general election were promised? Were they promised that there would be higher interest rates making it harder for people to buy their own home? I do not think so. This is a Government whose own profligacy is contributing to that. 
I would like the Minister of Health to take a call this week and tell us which doctors and nurses in the public health system will lose their jobs this year because Pete Hodgson stood up in this House 2 months ago and said that if there are tax cuts of any sort doctors and nurses will lose their jobs. Well I say to the Minister there is $1 billion worth of company tax cuts in this year’s Budget so how many doctors and nurses will lose their jobs? The answer is none because that was a ridiculous claim made by that Minister and a foolish claim made by the outgoing Minister of Finance Dr Cullen. 
This Government has no idea. Dr Cullen says no to personal tax cuts; Trevor Mallard says yes to personal tax cuts. Helen Clark just does not know which way to go. She does not know which way to go. Michael Cullen who has been with her all those years almost cost her the 2005 general election with his belligerent attitude towards letting people keep more of the earnings from their hard work in their pockets and he will put her back where she belongs in Opposition if he stays as Minister of Finance. 
New Zealanders are now realising that there is a new leader on the political horizon John Key—a leader who is offering a new sense of vision a commitment to a quality education system and lower taxes to help people work harder and get ahead. Lastly he is offering a Prime Minister committed to building the infrastructure of this country and a Prime Minister who will assure New Zealanders that the money they are investing in public services will provide quality public services not wasteful public services like those provided by Mr Benson-Pope who spent $158 million of taxpayers’ money to get fewer people on the sickness and invalids benefits when today there are actually more. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Before I call the next speaker I advise members that United Future has a 5-minute call. 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I was very interested in some recent comments from the Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner. The office highlighted the fact that it had very few complaints from the disability side of its mandate compared with the health side. It became apparent that because people in the disability sector have a long-term ongoing dependence on the people who work for them there is a greater reluctance to come forward—and even sometimes a fear of doing so—with a complaint in case the services that those people rely on are jeopardised in some way. It is an issue that the Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner plans to do something about and I commend it for that. 
It highlighted for me a parallel situation that I see with Child Youth and Family whereby people who are on the receiving end of an intervention by that department—particularly when it uses the statutory powers it has to uplift and remove children from the home and then determine the level of contact parents and family members are to have with those children and the conditions under which they are able to see their children—have the same fears regarding laying a complaint. In fact they are right to have those fears. I have seen case notes from Child Youth and Family where parents or relatives have gone in and complained about the way their case was handled and it has been written into the case notes and they are now seen as troublemakers. United Future is now deeply deeply concerned about the fact that currently there is no proper complaints procedure in place for adults who have concerns at the way their case is being handled. 
I think that this needs to change and that two things need to be put in place. United Future believes that first of all there needs to be a complaints authority—we think something similar to the Police Complaints Authority—that is independent from the workings of Child Youth and Family so that those who have concerns know that when they lay a complaint it will not be added to their case notes. That is the first thing that we believe sincerely needs to be put in place. 
The second thing we have noticed is this. Most members in this House will have received tragic emails phone calls and letters from members of the public who believe that they have a grievance against that department. None of us is in a position to know how credible those complaints are. We do not have the investigative powers or resources to check out those stories. But I do understand at a very gut level what it must be like for mum and dad to find that their children have been removed and that they are no longer considered fit and able to care for their children regardless of how much truth there is in the accusation. One of the common threads I have become aware of from the families that have contacted me is that these people are in desperate need of a calm sensible rational advocate to hear their story to write it down and to give them advice as to how they should then proceed. 
This is not about naming shaming and blaming Child Youth and Family social workers; that is far from what we want. We want to set up a system that is similar to the health concept of quality assurance activities that feeds into professional development. We need a complaints authority that sends messages to the Minister about the developing trends of the complaints it receives. 
The Minister acknowledges that currently most of the complaints are about the quality of social work. We need to understand what aspects of social work are falling short of international standards. Child protection work is cutting-edge social work and it should be the domain of our most qualified and competent social workers. Yet due to the high staff turnover and to training and workforce issues sometimes we see very young and newly trained social workers having to work in this extremely difficult area—yes with some professional supervision but certainly with very little feedback because the very people whom they need feedback from are too scared. They are blind terrified to go in and lay a complaint. 
As we move through into the next financial year and beyond United Future would call on the Government and on the National Party too to consider very seriously what they will do about the missing ingredient in this important Government department. We want to see both advocacy and opportunity for those cases to be investigated thoroughly in order to make sure that good social work practice is happening that families are getting the fairest outcomes and that children are well protected. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Members are advised that the next speaker has 5 minutes. 
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak in this debate on behalf of the ACT party. One dollar in five of Government spending goes on health and we need to ask ourselves seriously whether we are getting value for that dollar. If there is one thing that scares me in New Zealand these days it is the thought of getting sick and having to depend on a health system that quite frankly is failing in many respects. We know courtesy of a Treasury report that the Government tried to keep quiet that despite Labour spending an extra $4.5 billion a year on health since it came to power there have been no extra health services as a result. The number of Ministry of Health staff has increased by around 40 percent during that time with district health boards and primary health organisation bureaucracies costing this nation over $40 million a year. That would pay for a large number of heart operations hip operations grommet operations and the like. 
What has this extra spending achieved? According to yet another internal report from Treasury absolutely nothing. I quote from one of its reports: “Increased staff numbers have not led to higher outputs.” In the language of everyday people that means not a single extra operation has been performed. In fact when we take into account population growth since 1999 fewer operations are being done now per head of population. I thought that I was over being shocked by the state of our health service but even I was left speechless when told there are now more bureaucrats than hospital beds in the system. That is right; if every single health bureaucrat fell seriously ill tonight then there would not be enough hospital beds for them all let alone for anybody else. 
Jo Goodhew 
: Sad isn’t it. 
HEATHER ROY 
: It is sad; it is not a joke at all. But this might make members laugh. Six years ago this Labour Government set up the Health Workforce Advisory Committee. The Minister knows all about that. It cost $3.5 million and failed to produce a single recommendation. The good news though is that last year after the committee had received almost a million dollars in funding it managed to produce one media release and six reports one of which was its annual report. That is encouraging is it not? 
What those reports did not tell us is that a third of general practitioners are looking to change jobs within 5 years—and can we blame them? The health workforce who are the people who do the work that matters—the doctors the nurses and the health professionals—face the daily nightmare of struggling to care for the country’s sick while an army of bureaucrats monitor each other’s outputs. Outputs indeed. How about some input? How about patients being able to see a specialist when they need to? Instead district health boards have been told to send people on the waiting list back to their doctors. It is called “Hodgson’s choice”. Some choice! We know courtesy of a leaked document from the Waitemata District Health Board that the board was threatened with a $3 million penalty if it did not wipe 800 people from its waiting list and send them back to their general practitioners. “Waiting lists” the board said “what waiting list? There isn’t one. We’ve sent them all back.” That is 800 patients just wiped from a waiting list and that number is just in Waitemata. 
What about the rest of the country where this very same deceit is going on? This Government thinks that if we send patients back to their general practitioners then we do not have to worry about them. The general practitioners sent those patients to the hospitals in the first place either for a second opinion or because they felt those patients were in need of specialist care. This has to be the cruellest hoax of all: a cull of the waiting list in order to put a healthy face on this Labour Government’s woeful incompetence and disregard for the sick and the vulnerable in our society. 
We are now paying more tax than ever but increasing numbers of us are not receiving the Government services that we pay for. People who can afford to though can pay twice if they choose to by using private health care. They really have to queue but those who are less well off have no choice but to wait and to wait. Any decent democracy is judged by the way it cares for its least fortunate and making people wait for health care or worse denying that they even exist is an outrage we should all be ashamed of—even if this present Government is not we should be. Thanks to the cynical abuse of the health system by this Government more Kiwis than ever before are taking out health insurance and 1.3 million Kiwis feel they have to do that because they cannot rely on what they are told will be provided for them. 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 This is definitely a tax-and-spend Government. One of the things we need to think about when I make that statement is the fact that New Zealanders now pay $20 billion a year more in taxes than they did when this Government came into office—that is $20 billion spelt with a “b” not an “m”. That says to me that a lot of money has been pulled away from New Zealanders who have earned that money and it has then been thrown out as a lolly scramble. We have seen it in health. We have seen $4 billion extra go into health and we have seen no better health care than people had before this Government started spending. We have seen it in education we have seen it in welfare and we have seen it all the way through. 
We have also seen an economy that has benefited from relatively low interest rates until recently we have seen high immigration and emigration and we have had very high commodity prices for our farm produce. That has been a recipe for having more people come into the country more people wanting to build houses and more people wanting to get into work. That has been very good and one cannot argue with that. 
There is nothing like having people wanting to spend except that New Zealanders now face a huge increase in their interest rates. A lot of 2-year mortgages are coming up for renewal and those times will really hit New Zealanders hard. These are the people who are working who are saving and who are incredibly productive. They have children they work and they want to get ahead. We are losing these people every single week now—750 a week are going to Australia under this Labour Government. 
People say that they are sick of slogans and no delivery. They are sick of hearing about 20 hours’ free early childhood education and finding out that free comes with a fee. People are sick of hearing about having a single core benefit that will be the major welfare plank of the Labour Government and then finding out there is to be no single core benefit. The Government will now ask people whether they would like to work and if they do whether they will work. Well that is a really big effort—not! Many New Zealanders will say that they have to get up in the morning to go to work because that is how they earn a living. 
We know there are jobs available. We know also that this Government has overseen a massive increase in sickness and invalids beneficiary numbers. We now have 125000 working-age New Zealanders who are too sick to work. That is despite the fact that $4 billion a year extra is now spent on the public health system. That tells us that it is not good value for money. 
We have seen a decrease in unemployment and it would be churlish not to acknowledge that. But we have also seen a huge transfer of people from the unemployment benefit to the sickness and invalids benefits. We have heard doctors say that they are intimidated at times by people and that they are infuriated that Work and Income sends along people whom it knows have nothing wrong with them other than let us say an attitude against work. Doctors are sick of being pulled hither and thither. They are constantly told that if they complain about it then they are party to a fraud. Those doctors are simply trying to do their job and we should have far better controls over that situation. 
We have heard about tax cuts from the Government. We have heard from Mr Mallard that we are to have personal tax cuts. 
Bob Clarkson 
: Is that the new Minister of Finance? 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: That is the new Minister of Finance; yes he is coming in as the new Minister of Finance. He will see off Mr Goff in that role. Mr Goff will not now be in that role because Mr Mallard will have it. 
Mr Mallard said we would have personal tax cuts. He told that to Australian audiences which were probably full of the almost 1 million Kiwis who are now living overseas. He probably told them that to try to get them to come back home. But Dr Cullen has said: “No we cannot have tax cuts. That might encourage people to think that they earn their own money and that they should have the ability to spend it.” Instead we have this Government telling people what their kids can have in their tuck shops. I think that is a fine move when it comes from a Government where a whole stack of members think it is OK for 16-year-olds to be allowed to vote but do not want 16-year-olds to choose whether to have a pie at lunchtime. 
What have we heard from the Prime Minister Helen Clark? Well she is not too sure. She has been in the job only 8 years and she is not too sure whether Kiwis should be able to keep more of their money. After all this Government has been taking $20 billion extra out of New Zealanders’ pockets during the year. 
We do know that a lot of young people are unemployed. We know this because of the household labour force survey which the Government has constantly said is the only true measure of unemployment. We have seen the numbers of 15 to 19-year-olds on the unemployment statistics for the household labour force survey actually go up not down under this Government. More people have been listed as unemployed on that criteria since 2003 than were listed then. That tells me that the great schemes are not working. We also know that fewer people are on the unemployment benefit because they are on other little benefits and schemes and are in training to not be on the benefit. All sorts of other little fiddles are going on. 
But none of that gets past the fact that we have a serious issue with some 15 to 19-year-olds. This Government has been somewhat remiss in wanting to deal with this issue. Maybe it is because it does not really want to have to say that sometimes someone has to sit down and tell 15 and 16-year-olds that they just have to knuckle down at school. Instead the Government has threatened some of the solo parent schools which my colleague Katherine Rich has noted previously. In fact it is putting teen parenting schools under threat. 
One thing we need to acknowledge is that children need extra help and 15 to 17-year-olds are still children regardless of whether they have kids. They are still children. They are still learning and their brains are still growing. If we can put a focus on those 15 to 19-year-olds and save them from a lifetime of poverty of having no choices and of always being at somebody’s mercy then we would do the most wonderful thing for those kids. We know that some of those kids have good parents and good families who want to help them. We also know that unfortunately some 17 and 18-year-olds think that their parents know nothing and that their parents are the last people whom they will listen to. But those kids do need help. 
Instead what we seem to do in this country is to alienate parents who are prepared to be involved with their children. In this House National members try constantly to stop the tide of legislation coming from this Government from Labour and its cohorts who constantly want to knock down parents parenting values and parents’ rights. I do not understand why the Government wants to do that. At the end of the day the State is an appalling parent. 
All we have to do is listen to the story that my colleague Anne Tolley was able to talk about during question time in the House about Child Youth and Family and its parenting role. What did it do? It took kids out into the bush taught them how to use guns gave them horses and guess what? The kids took off on the horses with the guns and the next thing they were shooting at police cars. So now we have 14-year-olds shooting at police cars. 
Bob Clarkson 
: It’s like “Killer County” isn’t it? 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Well it is absolutely appalling. One thing we need to remember is that those kids did not just turn up at 14 like that. They have in many cases been in Child Youth and Family’s care for year after year. 
I have been to visit some of those residential care units where Child Youth and Family keep kids and I think one of the problems is we do not accept that when we send children back into totally dysfunctional homes after their 3-month stay in those units in many cases we are sending them back as hardened criminals. Effectively they have gone to school to learn how to be tougher criminals. That is what we are breeding when the State takes over. The State is almost invariably the wrong one to be involved in the welfare of those most vulnerable children. We need to support people such as the Salvation Army we need to support families and we need to support those who really know what they are doing in this area. 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 It is a real pleasure to be able to stand in this House and talk about the policy initiatives that are due for implementation this weekend. I will spend a bit of time on the ones we have introduced earlier in the year and also mention some important new initiatives for the whole of this country that have already been introduced in the 7½ years of this Labour-led Government. 
First of all of course as a number of my colleagues have already mentioned we have the introduction of the enhanced KiwiSaver programme next Sunday which was announced in the Budget. I think it is essential that we do revisit the comments that Dr Cullen made at question time earlier today. Most New Zealanders including those in the workplaces around my electorate have already realised that not signing up to KiwiSaver—or not staying in it because signing up is already the default for everyone—is an absolute no-brainer. What a surprise it is to us that National Party members oppose the enhanced KiwiSaver. We are not quite sure—indeed we are not sure they are sure—what their policy is on the first phase of KiwiSaver but they are quite clearly not supporting “KiwiSaver II”. Why? Well I suppose it is because it expects employers to make a contribution and we know the focus of some of the sad policies that we see from the Opposition. 
Of course as of a few days’ time we also have the 20 hours’ free early childhood education. It has been fascinating to see the evolution of that discussion. We have not heard any policy from Opposition members. We know they oppose the $285 million new policy extending the availability of early childhood education to younger children but they do not have a replacement for it. We know they oppose the paid parental leave initiatives that this Government has introduced and we know— 
Darren Hughes 
: Why? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: They have not told us why but they certainly oppose them. We know that Opposition members oppose the development of better primary health care which has the final cohort of the population ages 25 to 44 coming in next week. We know they oppose that because they have told us. They have also told us that they oppose the $3 prescriptions that have been so welcomed by our community. 
Let us look back to a little earlier in the year. Earlier in the year as of 1 April we had the final phase of the Working for Families package which is now contributing $1.6 billion this year to the incomes of New Zealand families with children. That is about 360000 families and the uptake has been just fantastic. We know that National Party members oppose that. What they want to do is to put money into the hands of their mates and have flat-rate tax cuts which we know put more money into the hands of the people who earn more money. That does not target the inevitably limited resources that any community has into the area of greatest need. They stand up and pretend to shed crocodile tears about the National Party’s concern for low-income people. Well there are not many people who have studied the political history of this country who cannot see through that absolute sham. 
We also know that this Government in one of its first steps reindexed the floor of superannuation. We increased national superannuation to 65 percent at age 65 in the year 2000 when we were first returned to the Treasury benches and we know that in 2001 we also introduced the Superannuation Fund to ensure that that political commitment will be able to be funded. What was the attitude of National Party members? Well National previously cut the floor of superannuation and those members certainly were not suggesting any reinstatement. Dr Brash is on record as saying that inevitably they would have to review the floor of superannuation anyway or the age of entitlement. And as for the Superannuation Fund the very vehicle that guarantees the ongoing partial funding of national superannuation the National Party continues to oppose that. 
Earlier in the year as I said we introduced the last stage of the phase-in of Working for Families. We are now starting to see thank goodness in the latest census the sort of achievement and the sort of movement in people’s income that we had expected as a result of that policy. We know that those changes distribute around $366 million to families with children in this year. That is new money in addition to the earlier three phases making up the $1.6 billion I referred to earlier. We know that around 360000 New Zealand families—that is around three out of four New Zealand families—are better off as a result of the Working for Families package mostly made up of tax credits of various kinds. 
What does that mean? What it means for Natelle of Whakatane is this. Natelle is a sole parent and she has one child. She had been receiving the domestic purposes benefit for 14 months. When her Work and Income case manager outlined to her the benefits of Working for Families during their meeting she was motivated to find a job. She found a part-time position with the assistance of her Work and Income case manager working 20 hours a week in a childcare centre and was able to cancel her benefit in March of this year. With her part-time wage and Working for Families assistance Natelle now earns $117.52 more a week than she did when she was receiving the domestic purposes benefit. So she is pretty pleased to be working and she is enjoying the financial benefits of the targeting that this Government’s policies have brought to the workforce. 
I must say that it is exactly that sort of initiative coupled with the in-work payment that is part of the Working for Families package that is causing the very significant reduction in the numbers of domestic purposes beneficiaries right now. I am pleased to tell the House that that trend continues. We know that those policies have lifted around 70000 children out of income poverty this year in addition to the 60000 lifted out of income poverty and food poverty of course in the period between 2001 and 2004 prior to the implementation of Working for Families because of the changes in employment huge decreases in unemployment and the policies of this Government. We hope that those reductions in child poverty will move New Zealand from its current 2001 ranking of 18th out of 24 in the OECD to the top half of the OECD by the end of the next assessment period—most likely we believe into the top quarter. That is very good news. 
I had the pleasure yesterday in Hamilton of speaking to a meeting of the Mayors Task Force for Jobs. I said that in the 7½ years of this Government unemployment benefit numbers have fallen from 161000 in 1999 to under 24000 now. That is a better than 83 percent reduction. The reason I mention Hamilton is that that reduction means that 137000 former beneficiaries are now in work thanks to the policies of this Government. That was pretty poignant in Hamilton which has of course a population of 131000. But even more pleasing is the fact that between 1999 and today the number of young people aged 18 and 19 receiving an unemployment benefit has dropped by 93 percent. In 1999 when National was still in power 17514 18 and 19-year-old New Zealanders were receiving an unemployment benefit. Today that figure is not 17514 it is not 17000 it is not even 1700; it is actually 1227. So if anyone wants to look at the performance of this Government he or she should look at the figures for unemployed 18 and 19-year-olds because they have dropped from 17500 to 1227. The previous speaker may well want to go away and cry but that is not just a reality for 18 and 19-year-olds. 
I talked about the total figures. Let us talk about the John Key myth of the long-term unemployed. When National was in power 70000 people had been on an unemployment benefit for over a year. That number now is 10000. What an extraordinary achievement. Maori unemployment is no different. Under National 44500 Maori were receiving an unemployment benefit. That number is now 8238. And members should listen to this if they are interested in young people. The number of Maori aged 18 and 19 receiving an unemployment benefit under National in 1999 was 6276. The number is now an extraordinary 477. That has been done because of good economic conditions good policy and good support from our support partners—and I thank New Zealand First—and also because of the extraordinary work of groups such as the Mayors Task Force for Jobs. It is an achievement that this community should be very very proud of. 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 It is quite clear that the Government has already decided it will soon be in Opposition because most of the speeches I have heard have concentrated on National and on what will occur after 2008. It is clear that the members on the other side have already started to pack up their offices. They are concerning themselves not with what they will do and what was in the Budget and the estimates but with what National will do. With the sort of lemming-like confidence that the Labour Government is showing I will tell some of those members what we will not do in 2008. 
One of things National will not do is to pretend that the 20 free hours policy is free because it is not. It is a fraud. The Government members with some kind of Orwellian idea might think that the word “free” can mean a payment but on this side of the House we think the word “free” means free. Steve Maharey is standing up in the House day after day saying it will be OK to have a quality surcharge a payment for books in early childhood education centres a payment for music appreciation or a payment for any kind of service the centre will be offering in order to cover its day-to-day costs but we do not think it is OK. We think that is fraudulent. We think that the 20 free hours policy is not free no matter how many times the Minister might say it is. 
National also will not pretend that the standards of police are higher in the light of evidence that some of the recruits going through the police schools are needing help with their alphabet—needing help with one of the basics of the English language. The Prime Minister stood up in the House today and said that the standards are higher. She can continue to say that as much as she likes but the New Zealand public does not believe her in the light of reports from people who are actually involved in training police cadets. Those people say there are some serious problems when it comes to quality and some serious problems with some of the people we are letting into our police colleges. 
We will not pretend that the health system is getting better. We will not pretend that longer waiting times in accident and emergency departments and people dying while they are waiting for basic services is acceptable. Although we have spent more and more as a country we are getting less elective surgery than we did years ago. 
One of things members on this side of the House looked at when we looked at the estimates was what will change in education. In the light of some really problematic issues in education we were looking for something new something that would make a difference to Kiwi kids in our schools. Truancy is an issue that has concerned members on this side of the House for some time. Since 2002 the rate of truancy has risen by 41 percent under this Government and for young Maori women it has risen by over 60 percent. What was in the estimates to deal with the problem of truancy? There was nothing new. There was nothing in terms of any kind of thrust or initiative to make a difference to this growing tidal wave of a problem facing New Zealand schools where some 30000 New Zealand kids play hookey each week. 
We looked to see what changes might be made in the early childhood sector. The Government is still pushing the 20 free hours policy and pretending that “free” can mean a payment which is interesting in itself. We looked to see whether the Government would keep its promise. Members will remember that back in 2005 the Government said that all 3 and 4-year-old children would be eligible for this policy. But what we will see come 1 July is something totally different. The Minister will stand up and say that so many thousand kids are receiving it but he will also include the over 40000 kids who are already in kindergarten and already receive a free service of sorts. He will count those kids even though in many cases they are not receiving 20 hours at all. We will see a number of parents who are deeply angry about the failure of this Government to keep that promise. Many Kiwi parents saw that as a promise and many people voted as a result of that policy. It is certainly an example of how to spend $178 million and please absolutely no one. 
We also saw the slithery shape-shifting when it came to the discussion of ratios in New Zealand schools. The promise back in 2005 was very clear: by 2008 all junior classes would have no more than 15 students. When we looked at the Budget and looked at the expenditure that was analysed by the Education and Science Committee we saw that the Government had moved that ratio to 1:18 and pretended—or hoped I suppose—that nobody would notice. Certainly the education sector has noticed and when questioned specifically on this point Steve Maharey continues to say until he is blue in the face that there has been no change in policy. Well that is news to schools and it was certainly news to schools that this policy had not been costed as late as December 2006. It is just another example of this Government promising one thing and doing either the absolute opposite or not fulfilling those clearly communicated policies. 
One of the things we heard the previous speaker discuss was the supposed changes that have been made in the welfare sector. Well that Minister and his predecessors have been talking about the universal benefit ever since Labour came into Government. They have been announcing it re-announcing it launching it and holding functions but have we seen any progress? No. Year after year it is absolutely the same. 
We have seen some changes to scholarship. I find these changes quite entertaining because this is one area where the Government has made one of its new announcements but it is quite bizarre in my view. Parekura Horomia made the announcement that one of the momentous changes to scholarship was that students who have grown up with a certain language as their first language—for example they are native Mandarin speakers French speakers or German speakers; they are not studying a second language—will now be able to enter the scholarship exams and win monetary awards. The Minister argues that this is to create a level playing field for all students. 
I wonder how it can be that in an attempt to create a level playing field we are now letting students who have that language as their first language going head-to-head with Kiwi students to win those monetary awards. Those Kiwi students will have been learning Mandarin French German Spanish or whatever it might be as a second language and now they will get monstered by other students who have had that language as their first language. That was one of the strangest announcements I have heard for some time. 
The issue is that Government members have run out of ideas and that is evidenced by the fact that all their speeches have been about the National Party. Their speeches have not been about what they are doing or what their vision is for this country. If we look at the estimates we can see that there is nothing new particularly in the education area. There is nothing that will deal with the rising problem of truancy in our schools. There is nothing to deal with concerns about exams or the behaviour of certain students. 
Certainly there is more spending in the early childhood area but I do not think there is a single parent in the country who thinks that the 20 free hours policy is free. There is not a single parent who feels happy about handing over what are now compulsory payments for something they were receiving in the first place. Certainly there is not a parent who is happy about the dramatic change in the kindergarten movement. This Government has created a huge change to the kindergarten movement meaning that for the first time a movement that prided itself on being free is now charging fees. A service that prided itself on providing sessional education is now moving to sessional and long-term care and education. 
There is nothing here that provides a vision for this country. Those members have given up. That is why they are spending all their time talking about what National will do in 2008. 
SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Tena koe. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member is calling? I call the honourable member Shane Jones. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I thought it was a rule in this House that to get the call a member had to call. The member did not make—[ 
Interruption 
]—and I also thought that points of order are supposed to be heard in silence but then again I could be wrong. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member is right. 
Hon Tau Henare 
:The member did not call straight away. He did not call until I had called and you prompted him Mr Assistant Speaker not with words but with a bit of a look. That member has been here for some 18 months now and still does not know that members are supposed to call to get the call. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you. I do not need any help. I just advise the member that once the call is given Speaker’s ruling 25/4 stands. However it is not a race as to who gets up first for that person to be called. I have chosen to call the honourable member Shane Jones and he is called but the member’s point is well made and I thank him. 
SHANE JONES 
: The enthusiasm with which my Ngati Hine whanaunga seeks the call could be related I think to the new diet he is on. I salute him for that as he is the only member on the Opposition benches who is prepared to run from all accounts to secure victory because his leaders have left New Zealand with the impression that they can sleepwalk to victory. There were some long faces today. There were some very dreary disappointed disillusioned countenances in the House today from Opposition members. They thought that just because one rogue poll showed an unacceptably high level of enthusiasm for the political boy scout John Key the prize lies lazily waiting for their hands. Nothing could be further from the truth because this Labour Government has put before the nation a veritable sumptuous feast of policies and programmes. 
It took a bit of time before the value and the strength of this Government’s Budget became recognisable on the streets of Auckland and was capable of being understood by biased media commentators. Consequently the  
New Zealand Herald  
has picked up on the fact that more New Zealanders are not only flocking to this Budget but also finally realising that the Budget is part of a long-term plan and 1 July is when Labour will be giving dividend day back to the people. The people have been told that our country according to National is headed in the wrong direction. But despite the best efforts of Paula Bennett in telling all sorts of hackneyed stories and confusion about what will happen to the young families of New Zealand and to preschools the signing ceremonies up and down the country with early childhood education just beggar belief. They are there in enormous numbers. Come 1 2 and 3 July members will see that that policy is not only a valuable investment but also highly sought after. 
Of course one bleak aspect continually intrudes on our attempts to reach into the more vulnerable elements of our society and in particular to Te Ao Maori. It comes from the misguided contributions of the Maori Party which are admittedly encouraged distorted and confused by more wily players such as Tau Henare. We had Dr Pita Sharples lament the fact that we are not doing enough. Well this is one case where Pita Sharples should recognise that Tau Henare is his senior. Tau Henare is Pita Sharples’ senior when it comes to political guile and confusion and when it comes to showing great flexibility. 
I say to Mr Woolerton that Pita Sharples stood in this House and said that not enough was being done about gangs. I would ask Mr Sharples to go back to his own party and tell his co-leader to stop cuddling the gangs of Wanganui. He should not come to this House complaining that the gangs are getting a free load from members on this side of House when he is trying to give a message in South Auckland about gangs. Admittedly it was a vague and confusing message that he gave. If we open the front page of the newspaper if we turn on—blighting our hearing capacity—a radio or a TV we see or hear Tariana Turia trotting out excuse after excuse for the criminality and the general riotousness associated with the gangs of Wanganui. I would tell Pita Sharples to clean up that little mess in his own backyard. 
However several other things of great usefulness to the nation took place last week. Not the least of them was when my senior colleague Lianne Dalziel showed New Zealanders that they should no longer entertain fears about how well managed their investments through KiwiSaver might be in respect of the equity markets. That was good because the problem we have in New Zealand—and National is no longer interested in it—is that as we prepare to encourage more people to save we have to provide and encourage more opportunities for firms to grow and to bring enterprises to market so that there is a greater array of destinations for people’s savings capital. 
A key contribution to that came from my colleague Lianne Dalziel. She warned us that malevolent menacing forces were trying to obstruct the Securities Commission. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Who were they? 
SHANE JONES 
: The member will hear more about that very shortly but those forces were out there. Through people relying on that ancient privilege called parliamentary privilege which goes to the very root of Westminster democracy I have no doubt that the country will be suitably informed as to who they were. 
However we have a great story to tell not only in relation to early childhood education but also in relation to doctors’ visits. In fact I had the good fortune to travel around with some of my colleagues recently and not just in the Whanganui - Taranaki area; some went to the east others went to the north. I say to Mr Hughes that everywhere people were celebrating the fact that they can see a doctor and they can have access to a pharmacy. It costs the smallest amount of money and in some cases it does not cost anything at all. 
That is why I say to Maori Party members that they cannot tolerate dancing with John Key and his offbeat siren song for them to join forces because they cannot sustain that type of subsidised level of access and at the same time put dough back into the rich pockets of the Fay Richwhites of the world. People either invest broadly in the most vulnerable elements of society or squander the dough in relation to unnecessary high levels of tax repatriation to those who quite frankly do not need it. If those people are overseas and they are not contributing to Aotearoa then they should stay overseas. That is what I would say to those members. 
Another thing that young people are very happy about lies with the fact that the primary health organisations represent a great step forward. Young people are able to see their aunts uncles grannies and tupunas receive medical care at a point in their lives when the malady is not so serious as to see them needing to be raced into hospital. That has happened only because health delivery is taken back into a level of the community where people feel a lot more comfortable interacting with health professionals. That has happened under this Labour Government. It needed high-quality strategic thinking; something that is conspicuously absent despite the clamour of my whanaunga Tau Henare on the other side of the House. Such thinking is conspicuously absent from members on the Opposition front bench or from anyone else on that side. They have yet to lay out what they propose to do. 
This Government has a signatory event and a signature document called the Budget and it is enjoying support from firms from young people from families and from the parents of young children. In Auckland people are clamouring for more of these devices such as the ability to raise capital through petrol tax to address their infrastructure needs; also people’s ears are turning away from the Opposition because it has put not a single coherent idea before the nation. National members cannot expect to sleepwalk to victory. That will not happen and we will be continuing to offer many more Budgets with a great deal of glee. Thank you very much. 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. That member Shane Jones thinks he will be the new leader of the Labour Party. Did members read the  
Listener  
article? He will be the leader of the Labour Party. It might not be next year it might not be the year after that but it might be in 25 years when we have all gone home got old and retired. 
He talked about National thinking it can sleepwalk to victory. We will not sleepwalk to victory; we will just walk to victory because we have the nous and the policy that goes with it. New Zealand is crying out for some new ideas. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Oh what? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Doug Woolerton is from New Zealand First the lackey party of the New Zealand Labour Government. Did members notice in the last week or so how the Rt Hon— 
R Doug Woolerton 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I take exception to the words used by Tau Henare. We are a support party. We are in an agreement with Labour. We are not— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: No that is not a point of order. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Well— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: No it is not a point of order. 
Darren Hughes 
: I think you were distracted by talking to another member of the House. Mr Henare made a very specific remark about Mr Woolerton as an individual member of Parliament and he used a phrase that is unparliamentary. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I accept the member’s word. If the member did that I ask him to withdraw and apologise. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You did not hear the word obviously. I think I know what word caused offence but I am not sure that I have ever heard it ruled out of order on the grounds that it is unparliamentary—the word “lackey”. I am not sure it has ever been ruled as unparliamentary. Mind you any word could be unparliamentary. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The word can actually be taken as a personal reflection. I looked to the member and asked him indirectly whether he felt that way and he gave me a nod so I assumed that you had accepted you had transgressed the rules of the House. But if that is not the case I will not rule the word “lackey” out of order. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You may not have ruled the word out of order in the past but I took exception to that word being used when the member was speaking about me and that surely is the point. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Speaking to the point of order Mr Assistant Speaker I say to cut this thing short that I did not say Doug Woolerton was a lackey; I said New Zealand First was the lackey party of the New Zealand Government. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you. The member will continue. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. Labour is tired and lazy and it has no idea and no new talent. If Labour thinks that Shane Jones is the new talent then boy we are in trouble! 
R Doug Woolerton 
: You are in trouble. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Well not according to the polls I say to “Mr Under 5 Percent” but that is another story. What New Zealand First is not able to do is hold a seat. But that is OK. When we are talking about “no new talent” I say that if Labour thinks Doug Woolerton is new talent then we are really really seriously in trouble. 
All Shane Jones can do is use words like “sumptuous” as if he is sitting down to one of his big feeds again—a sumptuous meal. Well I tell members that the attacks on the Maori Party by Mr Shane Jones show nothing more than an amount of fear in the Labour Government. My recommendation to Mr Jones is to feel the fear and embrace the fear because it is not until one does so that one realises what sort of fight one has with the poor old Maori Party. There are only four of them in it but they are freaking out the big Labour Party. Feel the fear embrace the fear—I have been there—is what I want to say to Mr Jones. The last thing I want to say to Mr Jones is that if he thinks that that poll was a rogue poll he had better think again. 
Let us talk about the real issues not Shane Jones; he is not the real issue. The real issue is how this Government has duped 92000 children into believing that they will get 20 hours’ free early childhood education. Well it is not 20 hours free; it is 20 hours free for a fee. That is all it is. Somewhere down the track those poor little kiddies who went to the early childhood centre believing they would get 20 hours free— 
Shane Jones 
: Will you terminate the policy? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Is it not interesting that every speaker from Labour in this afternoon’s debate has rounded on the National Party and talked incessantly about the National Party’s policies? Well well well those members are scared. Like I said before—and this is a statement to all Labour members—they should feel the fear and embrace the fear before they go from office. 
Ninety-two thousand kids will not get 20 hours free; they might get a slogan but they will have to pay through the nose for it especially in places like Auckland and Wellington. Out of that 92000 I wonder how many kohanga reo kids will get 20 hours free. Can anyone in Labour say—[ 
Interruption 
] Mr Cunliffe says “What?”. He does not want to say anything any more because he might trip up. There are 13000 kids who go along to kohanga. How many of those will get 20 hours free? 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: You do the maths. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Those members do not have a clue about how many kids will get 20 hours free. Next week will be the big sign-off day and what is the bet we will find that only between 50000 and 60000 get the 20 hours free? But we were told that the number would be 92000. Every day in the House we have asked how many kids will be eligible for 20 hours free. 
Darren Hughes 
: Up to 92000. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: They said 92000. 
Darren Hughes 
: Up to 92000. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Oh no! The original number was 92000. Then a couple of weeks later it was “up to 92000” and I tell members that on 2 July and 3 July— 
Shane Jones 
: The media! 
Hon TAU HENARE 
:—when the media gather around the figure will actually be only 50000 or 60000. And how many— 
Darren Hughes 
: That’s still pretty good though. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: That is still pretty good for a 20 hours free policy that one has to pay a fee for! The big lie that has been perpetuated on the children— 
Shane Jones 
: A koha. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Well I say to that member that it is not a koha; it is a hoha to all of those little kiddies and all the parents who are expecting 20 hours free. I tell members that it may be 20 hours free in places like Inglewood where the costs of early childhood education are not very great but the big metropolises like Auckland—where the costs are greater—cannot afford the sort of dilly-dallying that this Government is on about. It is tired lazy— 
Shane Jones 
: Speak properly! That is not a real word—dilly-dallying. Gosh! 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Well it is far better than the word “sumptuous”. I think the member has been going home every night and reading the dictionary because he wants to be seen as some sort of brown intellect. He wants to be seen as New Zealand’s brown hope. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister of Labour) 
: 
 Mr Assistant Speaker I am usually pretty familiar with the Standing Orders but I just want clarification which I am sure you will give me at the conclusion of my time about whether the fact that the Hon Tau Henare has not been able to continue his call—because he is participating in urgent public business I am sure—means I will be able to take an extension of his time and have 13 minutes. I am sure you will clarify that matter at the end of my contribution. 
It is a privilege for me to speak in this estimates debate. Throughout the entire debate this afternoon it really has given the House the opportunity to look at the Labour-led Government’s commitments for the next little while and at what National is proposing to do in its place. One of the biggest initiatives that has been debated of course is the “KiwiSaver Mark II”—the announcement made by the Hon Dr Michael Cullen in the Budget of the extension of KiwiSaver and about the contribution from employers the subsidy of that contribution by the Government and how the KiwiSaver programme will give New Zealanders and our future generations of New Zealanders financial security. It will promote savings habits; something that we are not good at. We are not good at saving and as our generations develop we tend to get worse. KiwiSaver will help us save for our retirement. 
We have to be very proud of the retirement income that we already have for our over-65-year-old New Zealanders. Because of the Labour-led Government’s legislation retirement income is guaranteed at 65 years of age. It is guaranteed for a married couple at 65 percent of the average ordinary time weekly wage. But we know that that does not leave a lot of spare money for people particularly when they have major capital calls on their income. KiwiSaver will develop a larger pool of domestic capital so that we can promote New Zealand investment in New Zealand. It will reduce demand. That will take pressure off interest rates and will help our New Zealand companies to retain skilled workers. 
All of those things are very good for New Zealand and for New Zealanders and we know that National has said no to the KiwiSaver extension. John Key is on the record as saying that it is not something his party will support. I have not heard Bill English comment on it; he may well have an entirely different view. That is the wont of the co-leader of the National Party but John Key as the current leader has said quite clearly that he does not support the extension being made to KiwiSaver. That is bad news for New Zealanders particularly those who work very hard during the week but who do not have enough money left over to put substantial amounts of money away for their retirement savings or who do not have the ability to easily purchase a house. Those things really are core bread and butter issues for Labour because we believe people should have financial security in their retirement years and should be helped to buy their first home. 
A number of other key policy initiatives—some of which I am responsible for—have been raised during this estimates debate. In fact some of them were raised at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee last week. One of the issues not discussed and I am not surprised was the extension of the paid parental leave scheme. Many people in New Zealand now take paid parental leave for granted. Of course we have it like most other civilised societies but actually we have had it for only 5 years. We have had for only 5 years a payment scheme for women who have been in a paid job and who leave that paid job to have a child or to adopt a child. 
We introduced the scheme in 2002 at the rate of 12 weeks’ paid time. We then extended it to 14 weeks which brought us into an international comparison. That is what the International Labour Organization says we should have and we have now achieved it. We then extended the scheme so that self-employed women could also have the benefits of paid parental leave. So now 90 percent of women who are in a paid job are entitled to apply for the paid parental leave scheme. That is another policy that National opposes. 
Dianne Yates 
: How many? 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: Ninety percent of women in paid jobs are now able to access paid parental leave. 
In fact we had the most extraordinary statement from Kate Wilkinson who is the current National industrial relations policy spokesperson who said that the paid parental leave scheme should really be able to be used only for people who are out of their homes. Perhaps National is proposing to have a paid parental leave scheme whereby women who have their babies can go overseas on a holiday and leave the baby with the nanny. 
Darren Hughes 
: Oh butt out! 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: That is right; that is exactly what she said—butt out of the home. Or maybe she thinks that women should go straight back to their paid job after they have had their babies so that they earn their money. 
Well that is not the attitude that Labour and the other parties on this side of the House support. We support giving financial support to new mothers so that they are able to make better choices about when they are able to go back to their paid jobs. The surveys on the take-up have been tremendous. The surveys of employers’ views on paid parental leave have been very supportive as well. 
Of course another initiative that is in exactly the same category is addressing the pay and employment equity gap we have in New Zealand. We know that in occupations dominated by women we have a lower level of pay than in occupations dominated by men even though the comparison with training skills and the commitment required is exactly the same. Labour is committed to addressing the pay and employment equity gap. We now have an action plan being implemented in the public service public health and public education area and National has committed to stopping that programme. The very first legislative move that the incoming National Government made in 1990 was to repeal the pay and employment equity legislation and National is on exactly that same 1990s track. So women who are finally having the worth of their work truly valued can look forward—if ever we have another National-led Government—to having that value diminished again. 
Every year since the end of 1999 we have reviewed the minimum wage and in every year we have been leading this Government we have increased the minimum wage. In fact the most recent increase which took effect from 1 April was the largest increase ever: an increase of $1 an hour. Throughout the entire 9 years of the previous National-led Government that was the total amount by which the minimum wage was increased—$1 an hour over a total of 9 years. But I hear National members complaining that people are poorly paid and that we should have higher wages to attract and retain more New Zealanders in their jobs. What happened when those members had the opportunity to lead the Government? Over 9 whole years there was an increase of only $1 an hour increase in the minimum wage. That is just extraordinary. We have pledged to review and increase the minimum wage every year and we have done it. 
 The final policy point I mention that I have responsibility for—which is another one that National opposed in the House and it would clearly repeal if it were leading the Government—is the implementation of 4 weeks’ annual leave for workers. It is very interesting to hear John Key and Bill English compare New Zealand with Australia in many aspects. I do not know why if they think Australia is so good they stay in New Zealand instead of moving over there. If they think that that country is so much better than our own country perhaps they should go there. But Australia has had 4 weeks’ annual leave for all workers for years so we are just bringing New Zealand up to that rate. I am delighted that New Zealand workers now have an additional week so they can have some rest and recreation they can spend time with their families and they can tune in more to the parliamentary debates to hear the difference between the estimates that Labour is debating and the promises that National has made. 
It has also been made very clear during this estimates debate that National’s promises would hurt New Zealand families whether it is the pledge that National has made to cut back on the Working for Families programme in order to fund its tax cuts or the pledges to repeal the extension of KiwiSaver to remove paid parental leave to cut back on the pay and employment equity moves to stop increasing the minimum wage and to cut back on our annual leave provisions. All of those moves have been made by the Labour-led Government to improve the quality of life for New Zealand working families. That is something for which one would expect to have across-the-House support from all parties and I have certainly been appreciative of the support we have had from a number of the smaller parties. But both National and ACT consistently oppose those measures that improve the quality of life for working New Zealanders. 
I look forward to this debate continuing in order to hear some more of the promises from National and from ACT so that New Zealanders can judge fairly and squarely exactly what sort of a country and what sort of a future we would have if we ever have a change in the leadership of the Government. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Appropriation (2006/07 Supplementary Estimates) Bill be now read a second time. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand First 7; United Future 2; Progressive 1; Independents: Copeland Field. 
Noes 50 
New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 2. 
Abstentions 10 
Green Party 6; Maori Party 4. 
Bill read a second time. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Imprest Supply (First for 2007/08) Bill be now read a second time. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand First 7; United Future 2; Progressive 1; Independents: Copeland Field. 
Noes 50 
New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 2. 
Abstentions 10 
Green Party 6; Maori Party 4. 
Bill read a second time.