Connell Brian: Budget Debate 
Connell Brian: Budget Debate 
[Volume:608;Page:5889] 
BRIAN CONNELL (NZ National—Rakaia) 
: 
 My first observation is that this Budget has not provided an economic road map for the people of New Zealand. This Government has clearly abandoned its objective of getting New Zealand into the top half of the OECD and by implication it has no growth goal. The outlook is bleak. Treasury is forecasting 2.2 percent growth over the next 10 years and that is a generous interpretation. The good times have gone. This Government has been lucky. We should be clear about that. The three stars—low dollar low interest rates and high commodity prices—all came into alignment but those good times have now gone. What I was looking for in this Budget was some direction to give me some confidence that the Government knew how to manage in the tough times not just in the easy times. Having said that I point out even in the best of times all we could achieve was 4 percent. We pat ourselves on the back and say that is good. I say it is not good enough. That 4 percent was not really our own doing. It had more to do with the disasters in other people’s economies such as mad cow disease droughts and something this Government would understand very well—foot-and-mouth disease. Forecasting a $4 billion surplus is something the Government is wearing like a badge of honour. I say we are simply overtaxed. What we need to do is stimulate growth. What is wrong with this country? Over the last 10 years we have seen the standard of living worsen in New Zealand by about 30 percent compared with that of Australia. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: Who was in for most of that time? 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: It does not matter who was in Government for most of that time. The fact remains that there is now a 30 percent gap in the standard of living between us and Australia. A person earning the average wage in New Zealand could go to Australia and be better off by $200 per week. That is an indictment on this country. It is an absolute indictment. What is wrong with us? If the Wallabies beat us there is a post-mortem but when we take a thrashing economically we just say that that is our lot. I have bigger aspirations than that for this country. If this country is to have its children stay at home and call New Zealand their country we have to address those issues. Members should not be fooled by the Government’s rhetoric of net migration figures. We should be looking at the skills that are leaving this country. If we compare the skills that are coming here with the ones that are going members will find that we have a desperate concern. 
We need growth. If members’ eyes glaze over when we talk about growth then they should unglaze them because there is direct correlation between our standards of health and education and our crime rate. But reducing tax is not enough. What we need to do is remove the impediments to growth: red tape the Accident Compensation Corporation the Occupational Safety and Health Service labour laws and of course the Resource Management Act. What did “Blackout Pete” give us when we wanted to do something about the energy crisis? He gave us another tax. That is very helpful is it not? We had another tax the other day on sherry and now we have a tax on electricity generation. This Government has an insatiable appetite for tax. Unbelievably this Budget was silent on electricity generation. It was silent on infrastructure development Auckland roading and forestry infrastructure. Why does the Government not give back to the forestry industry the carbon credits it stole so that the industry can do something about its infrastructure requirements? We are forecasting that we will have a wall of wood to go to the market yet it escapes the Government that unless we invest in infrastructure it will just not get there. 
The biggest black mark of this Budget is that it did not have the courage to do the right thing and reduce welfare expenditure and that is killing us. It is sucking the lifeblood out of this country. It is the biggest social failure in our history. We now have multigenerational beneficiaries and multigenerational State housing tenants. It might interest members to know that in 1973 there were 30000 beneficiaries in this country. Today there are nearly 400000 working-age people receiving some form of benefit in this country. That is a 12-fold increase and the population has not even doubled. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: What would you do about it then? 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: I would reduce our welfare expenditure. That is what I am trying to get through to you if you would listen and shut up. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member must not use the word “you”. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: I apologise. I was just thinking out loud. The city of Christchurch would not be able to house the number of people on benefits in this country. That is how acute the problem has become. We now have 1 in 4 working age Kiwis on a benefit. Let us have a look at the domestic purposes benefit. Thaddeus McCarthy when he recommended it in 1973 said: “I anticipate that we will have 20000 people on it max.” Of course we now have 120000 people on it and of that 120000 16000 are women who will not even name the father of their child. This Government tolerates that type of dishonesty. I say to the members opposite that this country cannot afford that type of dishonesty. Where will the people of New Zealand go to get direction on honesty? They cannot come to this Government because dishonesty is endemic in it. Let us have a look at some of its clangers. Minister Hawkins had no record of receiving a letter telling him about leaky homes. Minister Horomia is misleading the House at the moment about the misuse of taxpayers’ funds. Minister Carter misled the House about the Hobson Dam site and the Prime Minister misled the House over some clauses in the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2). She is pleading that she was unconscious for the last 2 years. Well I agree with that! What about this clanger from Michael Cullen: “Telling the truth does not mean that what you are saying is correct.” What a clanger that was. All that dishonesty caused me to pen a little ditty which goes like this: 
George Washington couldn’t tell a lie Richard Nixon couldn’t tell the truth Helen Clark can’t tell the difference And Michael Cullen doesn’t think there’s a difference. 
The Budget has not escaped that insipid political correctness that has snuck into this country over the last 20 years. Because Michael Cullen is a servant of the politically correct people he has spent $6.5 million so that we can get better acquainted with the Treaty of Waitangi—instead of spending money on the tens of thousands of people out there who need heart surgery or surgery for their ailments or on those people who we have to send to Australia for cancer treatments. 
 How insipid is that? What sort of spin is that? It is nothing but indoctrination. The people who are listening would be excused for thinking that the Treaty of Waitangi is a complex document. “Here it is—this is the Treaty of Waitangi and we are going to spend $6.5 million learning this.” It is an indictment. It is the sort of expenditure that we expect from this Government in terms of boat races and we will probably get a “Sovereign Yachts result”. What about bureaucracy? This is how he will deal with bureaucracy: he will put an advisory board in place. That says so much about Michael Cullen. That really helps small business owners does it not? They could not sleep last week when they heard that. There will be an adviser to the adviser to the adviser to the Minister—that is really going to help! When Michael Cullen was asked to take on the job of Minister of Finance the Government members put him to a test. They interviewed him and said this to him: “Minister what is two plus two?” He looked back and said: “Whatever you want it to be.” and that sums up this Budget.