Budget DebateText is subject to correctionBudget Debate[Sitting date: 26 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:13. Text is subject to correction.]Budget DebateDebate resumed from 21 May on theAppropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill.Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance):I am very happy to rise and take a call on the Budget. I would like to commence by congratulating Bill English on his seventh Budget for this Government and a fine Budget it is. But there is a problem because last year it was pointed out that Mr English had come up with six Budgets which was exactly the same number as he had children. So I need to check—Bill have there been further children in the intervening 12 months? No there have not. So Bill has had to move on to nephews and nieces in 2015. The good news is that Bill has roughly at last count 60 nephews and nieces—so that is many Budgets to come from the current Minister of Finance.Bill of course is not flashy. He is not a flashy finance Minister. He is solid. He is dependable. As one of the commentators pointed out he is not flash in any way and his Budget last week was not flash. It was solid. It was dependable. It was conservative—all except for his tie. A lot of work went into the Budget and it is fair to say that a lot of work went into choosing Bill’s tie this year. The caucus would like to congratulate Mary English on choosing Bill’s tie for the first time in Budget 2015.This Budget is a Budget from a Government that is working hard and for a plan that is working. It is a Budget that provides for continued falling unemployment. It is a Budget that provides for wages continuing to grow faster than inflation and for reducing hardship. It is a Budget that delivers solid economic growth. It constrains spending. It controls inflation. It balances the books. It keeps debt under control. It provides significant ACC reductions. It delivers better public services—$1.7 billion for health and nearly $700 million for schools and early childhood services.It is a Budget that invests in a growing economy. It invests in business research and development. It invests in tertiary education. It invests in areas like agriculture science pharmacy and Māori and Pasifika trades training. It is a Budget that invests in New Zealand’s assets. It invests in ultra-fast broadband. It invests in the rail system in rural broadband in the Canterbury rebuild and in regional science institutes.It is a Budget that encourages the building of more houses in Auckland a Budget that increases investment in social housing. It is a Budget that strengthens property income taxes amongst many other things. It is an excellent Budget for New Zealand and I congratulate Bill English on delivering a fine Budget last week.I would also like to congratulate the Leader of the Opposition.Hon Members: Really?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Yeah I think we should—on a superb Budget reply speech. [Interruption] Hear me out—hear me out. That speech hit all the right buttons. It hit all the right buttons. We got the seven veils. We got the roosters on heat—that was a goody; that got them thinking. It is not often you see roosters on heat to be fair. It had Gene Simmons—that was an absolute stroke of genius the old Gene Simmons. And of course it had gender reassignment as well.You can just imagine them sitting in the war room of the Labour Party with their copy of the Budget which they had been given at 1 p.m. last Thursday afternoon and between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. last Thursday they realised that Bill English had stolen all of their attack. He had stolen all their lines. Their only approach was: “Oh I don’t know. How about a series of massive distractions?” First they thought of doing a little more poetry as Andrew Little said yesterday. Let us face it Andrew Little’s poetry was brilliant. Chris Hipkins popped up and said: “Why don’t you do that ‘Enrol for the Dole’ poem that Tim Barnett taught you?”. But no no Andrew Little pulled out Gene Simmons. That is leadership.Grant Robertson: Oh it really is too early in the day for Horlicks.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Then Grant Robertson pipes up just like he is now and says: “I know what leader. Let’s give that gender reassignment thing a go again. It will go down well with the party.”—and he was serious. He did take Grant’s advice because every other leader has and let us face it—where would the Labour Party be without Grant Robertson’s advice?Hon Bill English: 20 points higher in the polls.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well 20 points higher in the polls maybe for a start. But let us face it—you take Grant’s advice and you run with gender reassignment but you draw the line at two dead fish. You draw the line at two dead fish. You snap out of that one. You say to yourself—Hon Bill English: The leader doesn’t listen to him.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well he did. He listened to the gender reassignment story. And then what do you do on Friday? Well there you are on Friday morning and you have not got any of the team behind you. You are up the front you are on your own you are king of your domain and you are out there angry—but controlled to be fair.So it is a Friday morning speech in Wellington and Andrew Little angry—but controlled—says: “I know. What am I going to go on about? How will I distract them today? I know. Superannuation is too expensive. It is way too expensive. What about all these people who are working past 65 supplementing their superannuation? Where do these people get off? Outrageous! Look at people like Winston Peters acting like the Leader of the Opposition when he’s on a pension. He should be at home. He shouldn’t be trying to take my job. So let’s get into that. There’s a platform right there—it’s time to man up and deal with people who sit in Parliament and collect superannuation. I Andrew Little am going to deal with that.”He goes on: “What is that Sue? Oh I’m not going to deal with it. OK fair enough. You’re right Sue; I’m not. So no manning up this time. Sue Moroney is in charge and we’ll put out a press release because I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean anything about means testing superannuation. We could lift the age though. We could lift the age because people work for ages these days. We could lift the age; that would work. Oh we’ve said that already. No no I didn’t say that. That bit about means testing your income—that wasn’t me. That wasn’t Andrew Little; that was the media. The media made stuff up. You have got the footage? Well no I didn’t say it that way. Don’t go putting words into my mouth Patty.” That is Andrew Little’s favourite line: “Don’t go putting words into my mouth Patty. Even if I’ve said them already I don’t say them now and I hope you’ve got that. Kindly stop pushing me on the subject.”That is Andrew Little’s approach to the Budget and I think he should be congratulated. But not to be outdone in the policy-on-the-hoof division we have the newly minted fiscal conservative—one Grant Robertson the newly minted fiscal conservative. The man who spent his entire first 6 years in Parliament as the big spender is suddenly reconstructed as Labour’s new fiscal conservative. The man who could not see a spending programme that did not need to be expanded has suddenly become “Balance the Budget Grant”. He is the one who says that there should be lots of savings and there should be balancing of the Budget. He is the one who says that ACC should be cut back despite the fact that Labour extended ACC. Grant’s new version of life is that we should be fiscally conservative until the Budget is delivered.Then suddenly the Budget is delivered and actually no you should not be taking away the KiwiSaver kick-start and on the hoof he declares: “Yep. I will reinstate it.” That is the power of being the Opposition’s newly minted conservative spokesperson on finance. He can say: “Yep I will reinstate it. Forget the fact that I put out a press release not half an hour ago that said I would not necessarily put it back.” Half an hour to an hour before he puts out a press release but then he goes out and says: “Yep I’d put it back.” Feel the power! This is Grant Robertson who is not just the finance spokesperson. He is now contemplating his fifth or sixth attempt at the leadership of the Labour Party following that brilliant speech he wrote for Andrew Little last week. But that is all right. On Saturday it was back to the empty rhetoric of soulless Opposition politics calling for more innovation—except we are delivering it; calling for more skills—except we are delivering them; and calling for a better Budget—except we are delivering it.This Government has secured a Budget with a relentless focus on a strong economy and jobs a Budget that is continuing to invest to support families in need a Budget that is responsibly managing spending and revenue and a Budget that is increasing our resilience to global risk. This is a Budget that delivers a plan that is working and the Opposition is just delivering a mess.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):What a pathetic bid for the leadership of the ACT Party that was. I mean if you are going to do it do it how Maurice does it. There was only one person laughing after that: Judith Collins. No one else over there was laughing after that pathetic attempt.Today I want to talk about a Budget that has two deficits in it—a deficit of money and a deficit of ideas. Be very clear: Bill English being the Dipton version of Rip Van Winkle and waking from his 7-year slumber to suddenly decide that there is a problem with poverty and there is a problem with the housing crisis does not make for a plan. It does not make for a real plan to grow the New Zealand economy. There is a complete deficit of ideas in here and indeed a deficit of money.It is interesting because when the Government was challenged about the extent of its support in this case for working families or for beneficiary families Bill English was heard to say: “Well something’s better than nothing.” That is it now. That is the extent of the aspiration of this National Government—something is better than nothing. That is as good as it gets for New Zealanders from now on with the National Government—something is better than nothing. The party that used to say it was ambitious for New Zealand has now resigned itself to the level of the micro-managing and the tinkering.Where are the opportunities for young New Zealanders to look at this Budget and say: “There’s the chance for me to be a success. There’s the chance for me to grow up in a regional town in New Zealand get a job raise my family there and buy a house.”? Where is that in this Budget? All we saw was a Budget with its eye firmly on one thing: the 2017 election and promising tax cuts. Mark my words that is what this Budget is about. Throw out $25 a week that by all means will be welcome in those households but that is the build-up to 2017. It is the build-up to once again just as this National Government did in 2010 putting forward a package of tax cuts designed to bribe and win National an election rather than dealing with the social and economic problems that are in front of New Zealand today. It is irresponsible. It is a politician’s budget; it is not a budget for the people of New Zealand.But if we take a look at the deficit of money in this Budget and let us be clear. Yes the National Party promised surpluses to New Zealand for 2014-15. It promised that at two elections. It promised that right throughout the last 4 or 5 years and it has completely failed to deliver on that promise. But it is much worse than that because what this Budget does is kick the fiscal can down the road. Even in the optimistic scenario that Treasury put up for New Zealand we will see growth halved on an annual basis from now through until 2019. That growth today is built on the shaky foundations of milk of selling houses in Auckland and of recovering from disaster but even that in the optimistic scenario halves over the next period.Debt as a percentage of GDP peaks in 2016 but get this clear. Not a single cent of the current $88 billion worth of debt will be paid off until 2019. That is the real casualty of failing to post a surplus. It is the fact that future generations of New Zealanders are again being saddled by a National Government with huge levels of debt and that is in the optimistic scenario that Treasury is putting forward. We see exports remaining stagnant at about 27 percent of GDP in the most optimistic scenario and then today we hear that dairy exports are now down 27 percent compared with where they were last April. We have got the largest current account deficit in 6 years.These are the scenarios in which the National Party would say good times are ahead for New Zealand. But if we look into the detail of the Budget look at what is called the downside scenario included in the downside scenario is falling commodity prices. Let us be realistic here. Everyone in the world is telling the National Government that dairy prices will continue to fall. Last year Goldman Sachs put out a report that said there is a 5-year glut in milk products being supplied into the global market and commodity prices will keep falling. It also says that there will be higher inflation. We have seen no evidence of that. The Reserve Bank Governor cannot guarantee that.In that scenario there will be no surplus next year. There will not be a surplus until 2018 in that scenario. There will not be any debt paid back before 2019 in that scenario. In fact the percentage of debt as a percentage of GDP will be 26 percent—miles away from where they are now. The current account deficit hits 7.7 percent of GDP in 2016-17 under that scenario.The numbers in this Budget are clear: the economy is standing still in the best scenario and going backwards in the worse scenario. That is the economic legacy of Bill English and John Key kicking the fiscal can down the road. They made promises to New Zealand that wages would go up by $7000 and that there would be 140000 more jobs. They made that promise last year. It was to happen in 2017. What they do in this Budget in the most optimistic of scenarios is kick the can down the road to 2019. It is always jam tomorrow with Bill English. We are always on the cusp of something special. The only something special in the National Party is Nick Smith and he is very special indeed. We are always on the cusp of something special with Bill English and it never comes.Government members like to crow about being the great economic managers. Well the reality is seven Budgets seven deficits no debt being paid back and exports flat-lining. There is no real growth sustainable growth in this economy going forward for New Zealand under the settings of this Government and it is all done in a sacrifice at the altar of tax cuts in 2017. That is irresponsible Government. That is irresponsible management of the New Zealand economy.So what should the Government have been doing in this Budget? Well it should have been investing in the regions of New Zealand. No doubt someone on the Government side will get up and tell us: “No there’s a great initiative in there. There are the regional research institutes.” Well to start with there are only three of them and it may have escaped members on the other side but there are more than three regions. The other thing is the amount of money for them is pitiful. What it typifies is an approach to economic development driven by Steven Joyce. We do not want to see more money going to Steven Joyce’s mates whom he talks to in the Koru Club. What we want to see is real investment in the regions making sure that we get alongside all of regional New Zealand and build on the strengths.I was in Gisborne last week. There are people there doing amazing innovative things in engineering in adding value to wood products. They need to be backed by a Government and that is what the Labour Government will do after 2017—not pick winners out of Steven Joyce’s rolodex and not put Steven Joyce who thinks a big night out is at Skycity on the pokies in charge of economic development. We need real economic development in our regions. That was shockingly absent from this Budget.Also shockingly absent from this Budget was a proper plan to diversify the New Zealand economy. How long will this Government go on believing that it can simply supply one product to one big customer and think that that is a proper strategy for the New Zealand economy? We must have real initiatives to add value but they were absent from this Budget.Then there is the housing crisis where Bill English’s solution is to come up with a tax that will not work which he has acknowledged himself and a housing programme that Nick Smith has admitted today will not build even a fraction of the houses that have been promised in Auckland. The failure of this Government to deal with the housing crisis in New Zealand was emphasised by the fact that the Budget documents did not even contain most of the housing initiatives because it was such a panicked last-minute reaction to being told off by the Reserve Bank Governor.The biggest deficit in this Budget is not actually the deficit in the finances; it is the deficit of ideas the deficit of hope and the deficit of opportunity for New Zealanders. A young New Zealander today with the world at their feet will be looking at this Budget and asking themselves: “What is here in New Zealand for me? What future is here?”. New Zealanders deserve far far better than a Budget that focuses so much on micro-issues that is so much about political management and that breaks every promise that has been made. New Zealanders deserve far better than this Budget and they will get it after 2017 with a Labour Government.Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment):It is great to be participating in this Budget debate and to be part of a Government that is getting on and addressing the issues that are important for New Zealanders. And it is even more of a special privilege to be following Mr Grant Robertson. I have got a simple challenge for Mr Robertson: tell me a single economic statistic that today is not better than when we became the Government. Let us go through the list. How about we take—Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Oh an interruption.Grant Robertson: I would like to respond to Dr Smith’s question. We can start with debt—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): No be seated. You cannot do that.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Let us look at inflation. At 0.1 percent it is the lowest figure in over 17 years. Let us look at job growth. We have a Budget with 150000 new jobs over the next 3 years. Unemployment has come down from 5.8 percent to 4.5 percent over the Budget period. Let us look at interest rates. When we came into Government they were 11 percent. Today they are about 5.5 percent and that matters for businesses that are creating jobs and that matters to New Zealanders wanting to own their own home.A Budget is about making choices and this Government is making choices to back children who are in hardship and we say that that is the right response for New Zealand at this time. This is a Budget that puts more money into important services like health and education whether it be for cancer treatment or improving educational standards in early childhood centres in our schools and in our tertiary institutions.I was appalled—appalled—to hear Mr Grant Robertson say that there was nothing in this Budget for the regions. Well let us do a test. For most of us who represent regions—and there is a good number of those members in the House today—we know that irrigation offers opportunities for areas like that of my colleague the MP for Kaikōura in Hurunui and for my area on the Waimea Plains. And what has the Labour Party said about irrigation? Every step of the way it has opposed the Government providing support for rural communities to grow their irrigation and it has opposed the reforms to the Resource Management Act that will enable those irrigation schemes to come on stream. Was it not interesting listening to the Mayor of Westport? If there was ever a region that was in difficulty it is that one. What did the Mayor of Westport say was the most important thing for his community in Buller? It was increased communications broadband and cellphone services which we provided for in this Budget and members opposite had the tenacity to vote against the bill that would enable us to deliver for a community that is having a difficult time.The part that I just find so shallow about Opposition contributions to this Budget debate is that those members complain that there is not enough money for this that and everything. The Labour members oppose any steps in the Budget to generate additional revenue and then they whinge about the surplus. Those members obviously did not get to year 1 mathematics and learn how a Budget makes up those choices. Then we had the clangers—the clangers—from Andrew Little. The big priority for Labour—the issue that has got to make the difference—is gender reassignment surgery. I do not know about my colleagues on this side of the House but all the time we get bailed up in the corner and asked: “What’s the Government doing about gender reassignment surgery.”! That is the No. 1 priority for members opposite and they wonder why they are down in the polls.But the clanger—the real clanger—for Labour came the day after the Budget. Those members will look back on the career of Mr Little and identify his post-Budget speech as the beginning of the end for his period as leader. With just a few words he has undermined the security of 600000 retirees in our country. Let me quote what he said: “I cannot commit to New Zealand superannuation being universal.” That is word for word what he said. Does Jacinda Ardern agree with Mr Little’s statement? Does Annette King agree with their leader’s statement? As the Prime Minister said there are only three options for Labour in respect of its statements about superannuation: is it going to raise the age is it going to means test or is it going to reduce the level of the entitlement? I challenge the next member from Labour on their feet to give back to those New Zealand superannuitants some idea of what their entitlements are to be if we are to ever have a Labour Government again. I had a call from my electorate chairman at the weekend. He said that with Mr Little’s comments on superannuation he was feeling more optimistic than ever about National’s prospects of winning a fourth term.Let me come to the issue of good fiscal management. Let me give the numbers. Five Budgets ago there was a deficit of $18 billion. In the Budget after that Bill English got it down to $9 billion. In the Budget after that it was down to $5 billion. In the one after that it was down to $3 billion and the latest estimate for this year is for a deficit of only $0.6 billion or 1.3 percent of Government expenditure.Last week I tried to table in Parliament the official figures from the Parliamentary Library on the record of different Governments in terms of comparing their Budgets with the actual results. I am not surprised that the Labour Party objected to the document being tabled. So let me explain to the House what it says. How accurate was the previous Labour Government in its predictions of surpluses and deficits? Well the numbers are that over its nine Budgets it was on average out by 4 percent. Well Mr English was out by 1.4 percent. If we take the very last Labour Budget Labour members stood on their feet and promised a surplus of $1.3 billion. Do you know what we actually got? We got a deficit of $3.9 billion. Labour was out by $5 billion. How dare members opposite get to their feet and criticise Bill English our Minister of Finance for being out by only 1 percent? They know in their hearts that this is a good outcome.Let us talk about some of the initiatives and the way in which they benefit my own home community in Nelson. This Budget means $4 million more going to the families on the lowest incomes in my Nelson constituency. There are 1300 people on benefits in Nelson who are going to benefit by $25 per week. There are another 2200 families on low incomes in my electorate who are going to benefit by $25 per week.Hon Annette King: When?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: There are 6000 children in the lowest-income families in my electorate who are going to benefit from this Budget. The member asks when. I say to the member that it is 43 years since a Government increased the base level of benefits and I am proud to be part of a National Government that has delivered it and delivered alongside it increasing—[Interruption]Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —requirements for work and alongside that this Budget provides for 150000 additional jobs over coming years. There have been comments about levies—[Interruption]Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Take a breath.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Let me give an example of one. This Budget provides for a $200 per car reduction in ACC levies—a $200 reduction in ACC levies.Hon Trevor Mallard: Who put them up?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: That is a good question. Mr Mallard asks who put them up. I will tell you who. In July 2008 the Labour Government put the ACC levy on cars up by 50 bucks and we are a Government that is reducing it by $200 per car and that will be welcome relief for the 2.4 million car owners across our country.I could talk of the very constructive measures in this Budget to improve New Zealand’s management of water and to improve our management of the Resource Management Act. I could talk at length about so many initiatives in this Budget that provide for the issues that matter to New Zealand and that is why members on this side of the House have been so strongly supporting the best Budget I have seen in my 25-year career.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before I call the next member can I just encourage members to take a breath. It is going to be a long debate. It will be robust no doubt and it is a lot easier if people make their interjections rare and reasonable and hopefully witty as a previous Labour Speaker indicated should be the case. I call Dr Russel Norman—sorry; the Hon Nick Smith has a point of order.Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment):I apologise to Russel Norman. I seek leave of the House to table a document covering the last 20 Budgets prepared by Grant Cleland from the Parliamentary Library—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Which you referred to earlier. Leave is sought—Hon Annette King: Is it publicly available?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No it is not.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member has indicated that it has been constructed from the Parliamentary Library. It is not publicly available. Leave is sought for the purpose of tabling that. Is there any objection? There is objection. It will not be tabled.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green):I rise to speak on the Budget. Before I begin I would just like to say to National Party members and Labour Party members that the jokes about gender reassignment surgery are pretty disgusting. They are ugly and I think they should stop.I would like to start by acknowledging the positive dimensions of the Budget. I would like to identify four particular parts of it. The first is the benefit increases above inflation. I think that they are important. I think that they are real. There is no question that they are not enough. There is no question that they have been abated and partially taken back by the changes forcing parents to go to work when their children are only 3—that is appalling. But it is also true that the benefit increases are good. Breaking the ground and saying that benefits should increase ahead of inflation because of the terrible poverty in our country is I think a good thing. I acknowledge the work of Child Poverty Action Group and all those who have campaigned on poverty for so many years.The second area that I would like to acknowledge is the introduction of a capital gains tax and the foreign-buyers tax identity changes. The introduction of a capital gains tax I think is a very positive move. Obviously 2 years is too short as are the other limitations around it. I would particularly like to congratulate David Cunliffe and David Parker who provided along with the Green Party the momentum to actually get a capital gains tax introduced and over time it will be regularised and made more sensible as it should be. I think that those two initiatives—the increase in benefits and the capital gains tax—are ones that the Green Party has also campaigned on for many years and we are very pleased to see them as limited as they are.Thirdly I would like to identify the user-pays airport charges. I think that they are important. Biosecurity is an important issue for New Zealand and this is a good way to fund it.Fourthly I would like to congratulate National on abandoning the fetish around the surplus that characterised its election campaign. It was always ridiculous the way that National characterised the surplus as the defining feature of prudent economic management and I think Bill English has now acknowledged that. I wish that he had done so during the election campaign.Aside from the good elements of the Budget—and there are some—there are unfortunately many other elements of the Budget that are quite bad. Let me start with climate change. We now have about 421 billion tonnes of ice being lost each year from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets as a result of climate change. We are losing about 421 billion tonnes as the planet warms. The South Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet is starting to break up. This is the greatest challenge on the face of the planet facing humanity right now and unfortunately this Government is accelerating New Zealand’s emissions rather than cutting them. When we look at an economy like New Zealand’s which is dependent on a stable climate when we look at the floods in Wellington the drought in Canterbury the 2013 drought which had such a big impact on New Zealand we can see that New Zealand should be at the forefront of taking action to reduce emissions and taking action on climate change. An economy like ours is particularly susceptible to extreme weather events like floods and droughts and the changes that are coming our way as a result of our increased greenhouse gas emissions globally.When we look at what New Zealand is actually doing it is actually shameful. New Zealand’s gross emissions increased 20 percent from 1990 to 2013. New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions increased by 42 percent from 1990 to 2013. I think it is worth dwelling on how amazingly irresponsible we have been as a country. Increasing our net emissions by 42 percent from 1990 to 2013 is an incredibly irresponsible thing to do and there is no getting away from that. The Ministry for the Environment has produced forward projections that say that New Zealand plans to increase its net emissions by a further 50 percent in the next 10 years. So not only have we increased our net emissions by 42 percent over this period but looking forward the Ministry for the Environment’s projections say that New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions will increase by a further 50 percent in just one decade. That is an incredibly grossly irresponsible thing to do and future generations will curse us for it as they rightly should.The reason why these emissions are increasing is that we have policy settings designed to increase emissions. Since this Government got into office it has gutted the emissions trading scheme which was meant to put a price on greenhouse emissions in order to be an effective economic instrument to drive down greenhouse emissions. Every economic report you read tells you very clearly that the most effective way to do this is to put a price on emissions. That has an effect right across an economy and reduces emissions. Unfortunately when the Government got in it gutted the key elements of the emissions trading scheme. We now have the emissions trading scheme as a major liability for the New Zealand Government. It is projected in the Government’s papers that the cost of the emissions trading scheme to the Government because the subsidies to pollution are now so large is $684 million of taxpayer spending over 2 years. So we plan to subsidise greenhouse pollution via the emissions trading scheme—the system that is supposed to cut pollution—to the tune of $684 million in just 2 years. That is the subsidy that taxpayers are giving to climate polluters in New Zealand. The subsidy since the scheme started now totals $859 million of taxpayers’ money that has been given to polluters via the emissions trading scheme. That is not a scheme designed to cut emissions; that is a scheme designed to increase emissions.Treasury has tried to estimate what the cost of the failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions will be to the New Zealand public. Its estimate is that our failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions means that we are going to have to buy carbon credits offshore. Depending on the cost of those carbon credits Treasury says that it could cost us up to $52 billion to buy offshore carbon credits to cover the big increases in emissions coming out of the New Zealand economy because all the policy settings are set up to increase emissions. We are going to have to buy carbon credits offshore. Treasury says that it could cost up to $52 billion of taxpayers’ money to buy those offshore carbon credits because we have increased our emissions so radically over this period. Do we really want to spend $52 billion buying offshore carbon credits that may be worthless—but you know they make the grade for accounting purposes—or would we rather spend that money in New Zealand to reduce our own emissions? The Government’s answer to that is very clear. It would prefer to buy offshore carbon credits because its plan is to increase emissions. I think that is incredibly irresponsible and stupid. It is hard really to characterise how stupid it is for a Government to have a whole bunch of policy settings to increase emissions and then to spend $50 billion buying worthless hot air offshore. That is an amazingly short-sighted and stupid policy.The thing is it is not just the emissions trading scheme. Of course there are subsidies in many sectors in New Zealand to increase emissions. Just think of the dairy sector. If you are in the dairy sector you do not pay for your methane emissions or nitrous oxide emissions. The taxpayer covers the cost of those for you. They are free to the dairy sector. Plus you get free fresh water. You do not have to pay any charge for the water. You get free water pollution. There is no charge when you pollute a stream. You do not have to pay anything to dispose of that polluted water. As the Government crowed about in question time today there are very large subsidies to expand the dairy sector—the irrigation subsidies; $400 million of subsidies directly into the dairy sector in order to expand it so that its emissions will increase and water quality will decline. It is an amazingly short-sighted policy to spend that much money to increase pollution.Then of course beyond that we have the poor old forestry sector—the forestry sector actually sequesters our carbon and actually reduces our net emissions. Because the price of carbon emissions is so low in New Zealand now the forestry sector is cutting down a larger area of trees than it is replanting. As a result of the Government’s policies the forestry sector is now a net emitter in New Zealand.Then we have the subsidies for road freight and road transport. Literally tens of billions of dollars are given to motorways and road freight companies for free so that we can increase emissions coming out of the roading sector.Then we have the subsidies for fossil fuel exploration. The Government is very keen on and very proud of the high level of subsidies that it provides to oil exploration companies in order to look for fossil fuels. So we are subsidising that as well. Is it any wonder that Fonterra is literally building coal-fired boilers right now in the 21st century when we should be cutting emissions? Fonterra which does not seem to care in the slightest about its global brand is building coal-fired boilers in New Zealand. Is it any wonder that the rail network is talking about removing electrification from the main trunk line? Could anything signify more how backward and “mid-20th century” we have become at the beginning of the 21st century than the rail industry talking not about electrifying the rail network but about de-electrifying the rail network in New Zealand. We are so out of the loop about what is going on in the world in terms of the smart green economic revolution that is taking the whole of the rest of the world by storm. In New Zealand we are determined to drive back to the mid-20th century. We are going to have coal. We are going to have motorways. We are going to subsidise oil exploration. We are going to get rid of electrification on rail because “Oh who wants that electrification stuff?”.That is the reality of where climate policy has got to in our country and it is a total total disaster. New Zealand can embrace the smart green economic revolution we can be part of this global change we can do the right thing by our kids but we need the Government to change direction.TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First):Just before I begin the substance of my contribution can I just pick up on a comment that Dr Nick Smith made. He said that a budget is about choice and I would agree with him. Every budget is about choice. One prioritises what is important—whether it be for a company a family’s household budget or a Government’s Budget for example. So it is worthy of note that this Government chose to prioritise $25 million for a flag referendum that nobody actually wants but chose—Tim Macindoe: Speak for yourself.TRACEY MARTIN: —to make orphans and unsupported children wait until 2018 Mr Macindoe for the clothing allowance. So that is the choice that this Government made. It decided that a $25 million flag referendum that 84 to 90 percent of New Zealand does not want—but it is their money—was more important than providing a clothing allowance for orphans and unsupported children being raised by kin carers. So I agree with Dr Nick Smith. The Government made choices and it will be judged by those choices.Now—Hon Christopher Finlayson: “Ne-ow.”TRACEY MARTIN: —I think probably the first thing we have got here—obviously Mr Finlayson does not like my contribution either; you are getting snarky there Mr Finlayson. If one wants to put this Budget into context one actually has to look at the last six Budgets. I am going to hedge some bets here and say that National has actually had a really clever strategy over the last 6 years coming into this year’s Budget. I think we can see it by the cuts that were made between 2009 and 2012. Just one example would be the choices that were made way back in 2009. Back in 2009 this Government wiped $400 million out of early childhood education. It wiped it out in a Budget back in 2009—$400 million out of early childhood education. In this Budget it has provided $75 million over the next 4 years. How lovely—that is great. But it does not go anywhere near the amounts that it withdrew.Let us talk about the training incentive allowance that this Government removed from single-parent students. That had a value of approximately $4500 a year. In this Budget single-parent - family students will get $25 a week. That is lovely. That is about $1000. The Government just takes away and lets the people stay out there under hardship just long enough so that when it throws them some crumbs they are incredibly grateful. It is a brilliant plan and this Government has done it very very well over the last 6 years. It keeps announcing these incremental positives hoping all the time that the New Zealand public will not remember the negatives. Thank goodness New Zealand First is here to actually remind them.The other thing that we have seen in recent days is again around education and some new schools that are being built. That is wonderful. You have to build new schools when you have got a huge number of people coming into the country in net migration numbers. Their children deserve an education like everybody else’s children and so therefore you have to increase the education budget to build new schools. It seems sensible. It is unfortunate when one member of the Government does not know that a school inside his own electorate is going to be shifted and actually has to go and ask a Minister in his own Government—and he is a member outside of Cabinet himself—but nobody bothered to tell him that under this Budget a kura inside his electorate was going to be shifted from where it is now to a camping ground inside his electorate. So he has to go public and actually ask in a public fashion whether he can know please what his own Government and party is doing. I think that shows that the left hand does not quite know what the right hand is doing. There are obviously some people who are on the inside and some people who are on the outside.Perhaps that is punishment for that particular Minister for the advice he gave around Novopay. It was that Minister who gave advice to Hekia Parata saying: “It’s fine. Go with Novopay. No they didn’t meet their KPIs. No they didn’t. And yes there are about 147 glitches still in it and no we have not run a trial but I’m advising you go ahead. Go ahead Minister. Let’s roll it out.” So now let us take a look at Novopay. There is $53 million in this Budget for the continuation of trying to fix that lemon called Novopay. The increase in this Budget to the operations grant for State schools over the next 4 years is $42 million. That equates to about $10.7 million per year for the next 4 years for the operations grant increase for State schools—around about 1 percent. Power has increased by 3.6 percent in the same time frame but that grant increase is about 1 percent. Novopay is going to get $53 million from this Budget; State schools will get $42 million. You do not have to be very bright to figure out the maths and that is probably why it works over there for the Government. So this is an interesting interesting Budget because you have to drill down past the spin and the rhetoric and the marketing dollars that have been put here and actually have a look across the last 6 years to see what this Budget does.Here is another thing. This is from another press release from the Minister of Education. There is about $62.9 million of operating funding over the next 4 years. Of that $39.5 million is going to go to provide ongoing resourcing scheme support for about 500 extra students. That is lovely. There are more students of course. There are more students in our schools. That is why we are building two more schools. So actually it is not more support for current students; it is actually an increase in budget because we have got more students.The next thing we have got is that this is going to pay for specialists such as speech language therapists psychologists physiotherapists and occupational therapists. That would be brilliant—brilliant—except we have not got enough of them. We have not got enough of them because support has been withdrawn from our student body from our tertiary education provision and these are not target areas. We now have a shortage through that withdrawal of support and bad workforce planning so we do not have enough speech language therapists when schools call for them. We do not have enough psychologists. So now when schools reach out trying to help the young people in their schools—because now we have got a wraparound service and the resource teachers of learning and behaviour have all been shifted off to goodness knows where—and they reach out for psychologists for example you cannot get one to show up. You have organisations like Marinoto—and I am not being flippant—telling schools that unless a child has a rope around their neck do not call it. That is how bad it is out there. That is how bad it is. That is how short-staffed we are.Supposedly however this Budget is going to fix it. There is $23.3 million for extra in-class teacher aide support for 1500 students in special needs education such as those with dyslexia. The Dyslexia Foundation tells us that there are up to 70000 schoolchildren who actually are affected by dyslexia—1 in 10 New Zealanders—and this funding is going to help 1500 students. This once-over-lightly sprinkle of assistance devalues the need that is out there. It is crumbs from a quite well-laden table when you have a look at the priorities that this Government has decided. There is absolutely nothing in this Budget for the professional development for early recognition of dyslexia dyspraxia or Asperger’s syndrome when those students show up at school. There is absolutely nothing in this Budget to provide extra support for early childhood education early identification and professional development.Tim Macindoe: Special needs and early childhood are up.TRACEY MARTIN: There is absolutely nothing inside of this Budget. In 2009 the gifted and talented funding was taken away Mr Macindoe. In 2009 the advisory groups were disbanded. In 2009 targeting funding for innovative programmes around talent development initiatives was abandoned. There is nothing in this report for gifted and talented children. Where is the tagged funding for gifted and talented children? This Government which came in saying it had aspirational goals for our students removed the category “well above” from national standards. I do not even like national standards but how aspirational is it that apparently no longer is anybody going to be “well above”? You are either “well below” “below” “at” or “above” but there is nothing for gifted and talented children. Again there is nothing for gifted and talented children in this Budget.I could go on. I have got a few more minutes; I will go on. The reality of this Budget and 6 years’ worth of work by this Government is a shift of the cost around our free to the end-user primary and secondary education. It is now being passed on to our parents. This is the reality of this Government’s Budgets over the last 6 years. If parents want to go and have a look they will see that at the same time they freeze the parental threshold allowance where students can actually get some assistance so they can eat. It is a very interesting Budget people—drill down into it. Kia ora.Hon CRAIG FOSS (Minister of Veterans' Affairs):The previous speaker Tracey Martin said she was going to do some intro then she was going to get into the substance. Well I am standing here still waiting for her to come to the substance of that particular commentary on the Budget. But I guess we will still be waiting. Before I begin I just note that this morning I went to the Memorial Day service noting those who have fallen in service for the United States—it is a public holiday there today like our recent Anzac and Gallipoli reflections in New Zealand. Actually it was a very good reminder of the friendship we have and those we stand side by side with around the world to protect the values that we all cherish and the price that has been paid over many many years for the freedoms and the values that we have in New Zealand and that allow us to have free and open debate in forums such as this. I think it is very important never to forget—lest we forget.Budget No. 7—Bill English’s Budget No. 7. I did not think it would get better than the last one but I said that the last time as well. Actually it is. Budget No 7 continues the core part of managing our finances prudently—a fiscally responsible Budget making the hard calls for medium and long-term sustainability if you want or vibrancy for our economy rather than the short-term inclinations that some members in the House keep wanting us to go back to. Actually I did mean to say when Mr Norman was speaking earlier that if it is really as bad as he seemed to make out and if life is so terrible and everything is as tragic as he seemed to be implying that it was well actually step out into the real world because any indicator be it well-being the happiness index confidence or an economic-type matrix they are actually very very good and solid trending in the right way. A little bit of a word to the Opposition—if you like a word of advice. They do not have to take it but if you stay negative and you will stay negative polling. Be positive be aspirational as we are with New Zealanders for New Zealanders and perhaps their prospects will improve somewhat.There has been a change. There has been a shift in our economy. Yes it has been gradual and incremental but there has been a fundamental shift in the public’s expectation of how we run the Government Crown finances and the environment that we are dealing with today. For example there has been quite a bit of discussion about the fact that we have almost 0 percent inflation—zero point something. It is as good as 0 percent inflation. It is phenomenally good for consumers it is good for our economy with inflation not being corrosive on wealth but we also have about 2.83 percent growth forecast. In fact we had 3.8 percent last year. I just say that right now we have near 0 percent inflation last year we have about 3.8 percent growth I think we have about 2.8 percent forecast through this Budget and floating mortgage rates are around 5.5 to 6 percent. That is the real world passing judgment if you like on how we are managing its finances and its balance sheets and on how we are managing the economy.Our only test of another regime running our economy—say the last Labour Budget or the financials or the economic matrix when it was last in Government in 2008. It is an interesting contrast. For some of it I still cannot work out how it managed to achieve it. It is worth reminding us what happens with ill-disciplined endless spending endless revenue gathering productivity disappearing through the economy and inflation absolutely—by theft almost—taking wealth from New Zealanders. For example in 2008 the CPI was nudging 5 percent. The CPI was 5 percent. It seems unheard of now because now it is around 0 percent. Five percent and that was pumped up by the revenue gathering borrowing and spending of the previous administration. That is not a number I have made up. That is the number that it was. I think most people in the House would agree that ongoing inflation is not good for our economy or for our families. But anyway that is what it was—5 percent—and it is now about 0 percent.And yet another metric—actually when National came into Government New Zealand had been in recession for about 1 year which was 1 year earlier than the global financial crisis and of course that hit at around the same time. But right now we have had over 3 percent growth. We have 0 percent inflation and about 3-plus percent growth versus 5 percent inflation and a recession under Labour. It is interesting how those can be true. How does that play out for our families? Well the simple measure or comparison is their mortgage. For most families the highest and largest expense in their household budget is in fact funding their mortgages. Well a mortgage is now around 5.5 to 6 percent yet at the time when inflation was around 5 percent the country was in recession and mortgages were around double figures at 10 percent. Those listeners on the radio or watching on TV or members in the House: imagine if your own mortgage was now 10 percent. You would probably be paying out almost double in a mortgage as you do now because it is now 5.5 to 6 percent. That is very interesting. Even though many members opposite talk about the housing situation in Auckland—and that has been well canvassed I guess—actually the horror thought is if a Labour Government were running the show at the moment and it continued where it left off. Remember inflation was near 5 percent mortgages were in double digits at near 10 percent and the country was in recession. In fact the export sector had been in recession for about 4 or 5 years.There is much in this Budget for small business. I could talk about the framework or the cost. I could talk about the cost of working capital for example or cash flow management. You see under a Labour Government when floor inflation is around 5 percent and when mortgage interest rates are around 10 percent the cost of working capital for our businesses is so much higher. Yet when we have near 0 percent inflation and mortgages at around 5 or 6 percent the cost of running a business of being an entrepreneur and of taking a risk under the National Government is diametrically totally absolutely opposite and more beneficial to those business owners and to New Zealand than it would be under a Labour Government. There is nothing subjective around those numbers.For example low inflation and stable interest rates all impact and help our families and our businesses of course. The $500 million in ACC levy cuts benefits our small businesses. In fact that is on top of the $1.5 billion in levy cuts already locked in over previous Budgets. The tax cuts we had a few years ago—lowering company tax adjusting personal taxes and rebalancing—all benefit our small businesses particularly our small-business families who are of course those who are funding the small businesses. The tyranny of distance has been smashed. Not only international distance but domestically the tyranny of domestic distance has been smashed. For example Kiwibank is now operating one of its back offices in Hastings in the Hawke’s Bay. The 150 to 200 new jobs in Hastings in the Hawke’s Bay would not have been possible unless there was an ultra-fast broadband fibre roll-out across New Zealand. That is the magic of empowering the regions or empowering companies to have another look at the regions making an economic analysis and evaluation themselves and creating jobs in the regions. We are going to see more and more like that. The New Zealand Business Number continues to be rolled out and there is money in the Budget to help facilitate that.Dr David Clark: Ha ha! More red tape.Hon CRAIG FOSS: The member may laugh. I would be interested to know if it is Labour policy to stop the New Zealand Business Number. If the member laughs at the New Zealand Business Number he is laughing at the 1.1 million businesses that already have it. The member is laughing at about 500000 businesses that are looking to take it. I would be interested to hear from other speakers if in fact it is now Labour policy to cancel the New Zealand Business Number which will be fully implemented for Government agencies by 2017.Jacinda Ardern: You’re just making stuff up.Hon CRAIG FOSS: No I am not making it up. I am asking the question because the member laughs—he laughs loudly—at the New Zealand Business Number and disputes it. I ask other members whether the Labour Party Opposition supports and endorses the New Zealand Business Number and all the benefits it creates such as productivity or other for New Zealand businesses families and our economy. It would be interesting to get that clarification. I would welcome it if it does come. Thank you.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North):I would be delighted to provide some of the clarification that that member the Hon Craig Foss asked for. He asked about the New Zealand Business Number. We have supported that legislation to the select committee but we do have some reservations. We know that his own Government departments have been squabbling over whether it is really possible and whether it is not just another overhead on small business. His Government has been responsible for so many overheads on small business that it is not funny. Even his own Government departments that he likes to beat up on want fewer overheads on small business. They are suspicious that this Government is introducing another overhead and one that it cannot even deliver on properly with the New Zealand Business Number. Time will tell. We will see what small businesses think about it. We will ask the Inland Revenue Department why it does not think businesses can use their Inland Revenue Department number which would be a much simpler and more cost-effective way of solving the same problem. But I am sure that member will have a reason.He always has a reason. He has a reason for his overcharging on ACC levies. He has a reason for why the Rural Broadband Initiative has reached only 8500 households despite costing over $60 million—that is $7000 per connection. He will have a reason for the Government not reaching surplus for the 7th year in a row. He will have a reason for why exchange rates are much higher and that the Government can do nothing about it. He will have a reason for the flag being the top priority for New Zealand. He will have a reason and an excuse—members on that side of the House always do. They always have excuses. We heard plenty of them in the Budget. We heard plenty of excuses. That member has gone surprisingly silent. I will listen for any further interjections from him. [Interruption] There are none from that member over there. In fact it is difficult to even pick him out. He seems to have crawled under his desk.This is a Government of broken promises. This is a Budget of broken promises. I guess at least it is in theme. Let us have a look at some of the ones that the Government has delivered recently. National told us that its central campaign promise going into this recent election was reaching Budget surplus. Has it delivered on that? It has not—it has not. It has failed again for the 7th Budget in a row. National said it would not put up GST. John Key himself said he would never put up GST. Where is it now? It is at 15 percent—a broken promise. He said that the Government would increase wages by $7000 by the end of next year. Now it is saying it will be 2019. The Government said it would increase the number of jobs. Now it is saying that is being pushed out to 2019 as well. This is a Government of broken promises.In this Budget we have seen the Government give with one hand and take with another. We have seen some sensible steps towards making sure that beneficiaries have a little more money in their pockets—making sure some beneficiaries will. We have got to remember that income-related rents will be offset against it. I would not be surprised if the next trick is to try to look at them so that there is a zero-sum game in the next Budget. We will see. We will see where it goes with that.These things that the Government has introduced have come at the expense of New Zealanders just a couple of rungs further up the ladder. It is robbing Peter to pay Paul. It has told us that 500000 New Zealanders will miss out on the $1000 KiwiSaver kick-start payment. That is what it told us in this Budget. That is how it is trying to get to surplus—it is failing by the way. That is how it is trying to get closer to make it look not as bad as it otherwise would look—by robbing the future savings of young New Zealanders.This is a Government that is looking at the here and now and not at New Zealand’s savings future. We on this side of the House know that it is so important to have money for investment—for investment in new ideas for investment in small business and for savings so that we can grow our economy over time. The Australian scheme which they started after the Kirk Government’s superannuation savings scheme now has $1.3 trillion in it. The Muldoon Government canned ours. Now we see the exact same behaviour from John Key’s Government. It has made seven cuts to KiwiSaver in its time—seven cuts. It is going down the same track as Muldoon’s Government.In fact when it comes to borrowing it is doing worse. We learnt from the Budget that we are $88 billion in debt under this Government. New Zealanders pay through their taxes now about $10 million a day just in interest payments.Hon Nanaia Mahuta: How much?Dr DAVID CLARK: It is $10 million a day in interest payments. That is where this Government has taken us with debt. It is a Government with no vision for the future which is borrowing for today. The Financial Services Council said of the KiwiSaver cuts that this is like robbing the kid’s piggy bank to head down to the pub for a beer. That is the kind of vision we have from this Government. It is out of ideas and it is tired and not just that that is starting to hurt New Zealanders. That is starting to hurt kids in the future.Not one of the Government members was prepared to get up in the debate on KiwiSaver and say that they had not taken the $1000 for themselves that they had not arranged for the savings to be gathered by their children or their families. But I did later read somewhere and I hear the member David Bennett grunting over there and he may like to verify it himself that he did not take the payment. I read this actually on Twitter. Somebody was saying that that might be true. Maybe the member David Bennett is principled. He is either principled or stupid I think was the allegation in the Twitter sphere.David Bennett: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I request that the member apologise for that last comment. I take offence at it.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No I think the member is a robust member and there was nothing in the suggestions that were being made that offended the Standing Orders. I think that quotations from Twitter—and even if the comment was made by the member—do not come close. I think that saying a member is stupid is not a breach of the Standing Orders.Dr DAVID CLARK: So this is a Government that is breaking promises—promise after promise after promise. Government members might worry that somebody has reported somewhere else that they are stupid. They should be more worried about broken promises. That is what they should really be worried about.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! There are quite a number of rulings that I think date back to the 19th century that indicate that the members do not go back to points of order once they have been ruled on. The member just did that.Dr DAVID CLARK: This is a Government across from us that has broken promises. National as a Government needs to face the voters of New Zealand and answer the question why it is that it has broken its central campaign promise—its central campaign promise—to bring this Government into surplus. It has promised it before in a campaign. It is the seventh deficit in a row. If we contrast that with the last Labour Government which delivered nine surpluses in a row—nine surpluses in a row—not like National’s seven deficits we can see who might be the better manager of the economy.Of course in terms of economic development the Government promised to diversify the economy. Well it has not promised to do that. It has said it will grow the exports as a percentage of our overall economy. The Government said it would get that figure to 40 percent. Well it is now below 30 percent and it is going backwards; it is around 27 percent. It is due to drop again next year according to the Government’s own forecast. It has failed to diversify the economy. This is a Government of broken promises.It is also interesting to note in this Budget Steven Joyce’s waning influence. We have seen him over recent years play a significant role in negotiating many of the economic development initiatives of this Government. In the 2013 Budget he had six press releases and $470 million worth of new spending. In last year’s Budget it went down to four press releases and just $363 million worth of new spending—over a $100 million cut on the previous Budget. And in this one there is another $100 million cut—he has only three press releases—and $259 million in new spending. He is a Minister on the wane.The Government has seen the way in which he has handled the Skycity deal. We have learnt again today that there is a 10 percent cut in the overall capacity of the centre. We have seen a downsized Skycity convention centre. That is not what was promised. It is another broken promise from this Government a Government that said it would deliver on a convention centre that was world class and iconic. Its own independent report which it commissioned said the convention centre would create a net 18 full-time equivalent jobs in New Zealand once it was built—18. That was on an international world-class iconic one. The members for Hamilton should have answered to their own constituents as to why it is sucking hundreds of jobs out of Hamilton out of Rotorua and out of Taupō. This is a convention centre deal that will hurt the regions and is not the world-class iconic deal that was promised. The Government has put itself over a barrel of its own making and Steven Joyce was right there in the midst of it.This is a Government that is failing to deliver on its promises on almost every promise that it makes. It is a Government that is out of ideas that is tired and that is so arrogant it does not think it needs to answer to the public any more on its decisions and it is a Government whose day of reckoning will come when New Zealanders stand up in the next election and say: “We do not want to hear your broken promises any more.”DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East):It gives me great pleasure to rise in this debate and also to follow that last speaker David Clark who came to Hamilton some months ago and tried to debate economic policy in the Hamilton community. He left with robust articles in the paper really just destroying his credibility and showing the inane comments that come from that side of the House. They showed that that member who is supposed to be talking about economic development actually has no idea of what economic development is. Next time he comes to Hamilton he will be driving on those beautiful new highways that we have built he will be visiting those beautiful new schools that we have built and he will be seeing that lovely new hospital that we have built. He will see a university that has gone into Tauranga. He will see broadband being delivered first of all in that city and around the country.Dr David Clark: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I feel like I have entered into a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will take a seat and now he will apologise for that comment. If he has really got a point of order he will make it.Dr David Clark: I withdraw and apologise.DAVID BENNETT: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker and a very good Assistant Speaker we have as well in doing that because that member has got—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! It was not 5 minutes ago when I told that member he was not allowed to comment on rulings. It does not matter whether it is a positive or a negative comment; the member is not to comment.DAVID BENNETT: That member came to Hamilton and tried out the Labour economic policy and was resoundingly told where to go just like the Labour Party members are resoundingly told where to go all the time when they come into this House with their economic policy.Dr David Clark: Arrogant out of touch.DAVID BENNETT: They are saying “out of touch”. Well let us have a look at being out of touch. I remember that member’s speech last weekend when we were talking about KiwiSaver. He said: “Let’s give $1000 to everybody that signs up to KiwiSaver.” His exact words were: “The reason to do that is because it will make people feel better.” Those were his exact words. That is the economic policy from somebody on that side. Why do we not just make it $10000 if it will make people feel better? What about those people out there who stand and work for 60 years in hard labour working in hard jobs who will be made to feel better when they sign up but who will actually lose money because the Opposition wants to means test them when they come to get their superannuation and it wants to make sure they do not get their superannuation until they are 70? Go out there and tell somebody working on the farms and in the factories of New Zealand today that when you are 18 we are going to put $1000 into some account to make you feel better but you are going to have to work until you are 70. You are going to have to stay in that job when you have done 50 or 60 years of hard labour in that work. Go and see how that goes down with those people. That is the reality of what you are saying.Look at the statistics around KiwiSaver. The Inland Revenue Department put out a report on Saturday and it showed that 38 percent of people who signed up for KiwiSaver never make another contribution. Thirty-eight percent of people who sign up for KiwiSaver just take the 1000 bucks because they know it is a gift from the Government. That is the kind of thing we do not need to do as a country. Those are the statistics. Read the report. It also says that two-thirds of the people who should be in KiwiSaver the bottom income earners—two-thirds of them—are not in KiwiSaver. The people who are in KiwiSaver are the upper and middle-income earners and 38 percent of them are just taking the $1000.That is the great economic policy of the Labour Party—make them feel good; make them happy; we will give them another $1000. Well that is $500 million you have to find in the next election campaign and that is $500 million that Grant Robertson promised without going through his caucus. That is $500 million that we can spend on vulnerable children and vulnerable families. That is $500 million that we can spend on infrastructure to make sure the people of Hamilton get what they deserve and what they want. They know what they want and they want that infrastructure so they can grow. They want to have that ability to look after the people in their communities who are in the most need. For 43 years—43 years—the Labour Party has been in this House and not delivered for those people. The Labour members will talk about Muldoon. They go back to Muldoon. Well there has been a Labour Government or two between now and Muldoon and they did not do anything in that time. They did not bring in a savings plan.Hon Phil Goff: It’s called KiwiSaver you idiot.DAVID BENNETT: They did not bring it in to the same extent that we are talking about here in a compulsory savings scheme—that is what he is talking about. That was not brought in. There was no compulsory savings scheme. So they can go back to Muldoon but that is not the reality. When they had a chance they did not do anything.Hon Phil Goff: What do you call the Cullen fund? What do you think the Cullen fund was?DAVID BENNETT: There is Mr Goff there now—he is another economic genius. He would know all about these things would he not? He is still trying to work out things about foreign affairs let alone economics so we would like to hear his opinion on this.But 2 weeks ago there was a Budget delivered in Australia. In the country right beside us called the lucky country guess what their deficit was? It was A$41.1 billion. Guess what New Zealand’s deficit is? It is NZ$684 million. GDP growth in Australia is under 3 percent; in New Zealand it is over 3 percent—under 3 percent there over 3 percent here. In 2014 we grew faster than the US the UK and Japan. Net migration is positive in New Zealand for the first time. People are staying. People are coming here because they believe in this country they believe in this Government and they believe in what we stand for. The unemployment rate in Australia is over 6 percent; in New Zealand it is under 6 percent. All the economic statistics stack up in our favour—Dr David Clark: What about the latest ones?DAVID BENNETT: —because we have come through the recession we have come through rebuilding Christchurch and we have delivered the best for New Zealanders. That member there will talk about economic policy and he will go back to the Muldoon days. I say to them—and do not let anybody in New Zealand forget this—that the Labour Government put New Zealand into recession before the rest of the world. Before the global financial crisis even came along the Labour Government had New Zealand in a recession. It had 10 years of huge deficits ahead of this country. It destroyed this country’s economic potential 10 years ago. We have taken 6 years to get it back and it is back now at a stage where it is better than our biggest competitor and our biggest neighbour who typically has done better than us.It is really rich of this Labour Party members to come into this House and pretend that they look after people pretend that they want to look after the vulnerable people in our communities and pretend that they actually care about economic growth when they have no interest in that. The Labour Party always has been and always will be about power because that is all Labour stands for. Labour is about the union-dominated power of the workers. That is what the Labour Party’s core fundamental beliefs are. It sees itself as some kind of privileged elite whose members can sit in here and make judgments for other people. It does not believe in giving people the chance to get a good education to have health care and to have the infrastructure to grow. That is what this Budget does. This Budget delivers that for New Zealanders. That is why New Zealanders out there understand this Budget and actually believe in it.I remember when we had the Budget speech. Bill English delivered a very competent speech about the Budget as you would expect and the Labour members’ heads sank. They absolutely sank. They did not want to look up. They were looking at their papers trying to work out what was happening. They were embarrassed for their own party. I give credit to one member of the Labour Party though who was not embarrassed. There was one member on the front bench who actually looked at the Minister of Finance and she smiled. She is here today—Nanaia. She knew every one of those policies were good policies for her people for the people of Waikato and for the people of New Zealand. I did not see her head down. She was smiling nodding and saying: “Yes this is good stuff—this is the stuff we should have done 9 years ago. This is the stuff we should have done 12 years ago.” She knew that it was good. And then the Labour leader stood up. He was stunned. He was a stunned mullet. He had no idea what was going on. Then the Prime Minister stood up and absolutely carved him up—destroyed him shredded him to pieces.That was the story of Budget day 2015. What a great Budget day that was. So New Zealanders will not forget that. They will not forget that this is a Government that has delivered to all New Zealanders. It has delivered not just to the ideological elite that the Labour Party preaches to it actually has delivered to not just one core set of voters; it has delivered to all New Zealanders as it should and as it needs to do to keep people engaged and progressing in this country. I ask you members of the community and members of this House to remember that. We are not going out there making fickle promises about spending $1000 just to make you feel good. We are not going out there and attacking your superannuation after all those years of hard work that you have put in. We are not going out there and doing silly policy things on the hoof like the Labour Party did this weekend. The Labour Party will not retract from those policies. It has had 2 days to say that it made a mistake. It will not. We know that going into the next election that is what it will do.Jacinda Ardern: What policies? You’re making things up.DAVID BENNETT: And then we have got Jacinda Ardern there. I tell you what Jacinda: I remember that great policy of capital gains tax that you had at the last election. Then the Labour Party retracted from it—the Opposition members and their leader said there would be no capital gains tax under Andrew Little. They said there would be no capital gains tax under Labour. Then we brought in a tax on people selling properties within 2 years and the Labour Party cannot do anything because it has said no to that policy. It has said no to that policy because it does not want to have any taxes. That is the Labour Party that will say one thing do another and does not actually deliver for New Zealanders. This is a great Budget.Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato):Talofa lava. Can I just take a brief moment to acknowledge the families of the Pike River miners who are in the gallery today and who are listening to this particular debate. They could be forgiven for thinking that we were on a whole different planet and that Budget 2015 is delivering to the many regions across New Zealand in positive ways.Well Mr Bennett it gives me great pleasure to follow you. You mentioned Waikato University but you failed to recognise what the vice-chancellor himself said. He said that the change in tertiary policy has had a huge effect on new enrolments to Waikato University and that the change in postgraduate policies also had a huge implication for enrolments at that particular university. I am proud of our university I am proud of what it does and I am proud of what it is trying to do to ensure that more young people come to Waikato University to study. But the Budget did not actually deliver to many young people who see their prospects in education and it certainly did not deliver in tertiary education.There have been many things that have been said through this Budget debate that I am very very concerned about. In fact you could be forgiven for thinking that the Government wants to roll through this very quickly. When one listens to Minister Steven Joyce’s contribution one might almost think that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment was becoming irrelevant to the aspirations of the regions.Just the other day I was in Manukau and it is glaring where the priorities of the Government are. We hear a lot about National’s economic plan and the benefits for the country. If you look on one side of the road you see that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment office is in a very dimly lit building with no signage whatsoever. It is in a small building on the one side and just across the road in the biggest building the flashiest building on the street is Housing New Zealand. However people in Manukau have to ring a 0800 number to try to get a house. If they are lucky they might be rated as priority 13 but they more than likely will not get a house. There is hardship in the regions. This Budget has not delivered to a whole lot of families that I think it could have.Mr Bennett you made the comment that the $25 increase to base benefits will make a difference. It will make a slight difference but when you yourself know that the Children’s Commissioner said that it is a start but that it is not a plan to tackle child poverty how can you look members on this side of the House in the face and say: “We’re doing a whole lot to address child poverty.”?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: My apologies Mr Assistant Speaker. In fact the Government refuses to set targets for a comprehensive whole-of-Government strategy to reduce child poverty. The Opposition has continued to push for targets that are possible to measure by every Government department that has an ability to influence outcomes for children and set some simple measures in place.Coming back to the Budget there are a number of litmus tests that members might want to put across the Budget to ensure that it is achieving something. Mine is simple: regional development and regional opportunity. I have had a lot of opportunities to visit several regions. I just want to comment on a few things that have come up through the regions and then ask whether or not this Budget addresses issues for them.We were in Gisborne and one of the visits that we had was with an entrepreneur. He said: “Look at those ports out there. We want to be able to do more than export raw logs from our particular region but the rail link is a problem.” The Government has done nothing there. We are still exporting raw logs. There is a huge health and safety risk in the industry itself but there is huge potential to diversify what is happening in Gisborne. Did the Budget deliver for that region? I think not. I do not think any of the investment in research and innovation will go into the Gisborne area.I will take a look at some of the other areas. Yes the net migration to New Zealand is significantly positive. However over 50 percent of those people choose to live in Auckland and that compounds the housing pressure in Auckland. In regions like Invercargill and Gisborne people are saying: “We want to attract skilled migrants into our region. It is cheaper to get a house here than in Auckland. However we need a whole plan for regional growth and development where central government and local government and the business community can work together and collaborate around firm plans to ensure opportunity exists here.” Did the Budget deliver against that priority? I think not.In Pukekohe we have just got a new milk factory built by the Chinese down the road in Pōkeno. Again the people there are saying it is more than likely under the current growth limits for the city of Auckland that Tuakau and Pukekohe are prime areas to attract population into. But again there are the regulations around housing and some of the challenges around infrastructure and the investment required and the public transport needs create certain pressures for places like Pukekohe and Tuakau. They themselves would say that they have got huge challenges in both cutting through the red tape of local government and getting central government onside to recognise that there is more to Pukekohe than horticulture and the Glenbrook steel mill just down the road at Waiuku. Did the Budget deliver for them? Well perhaps in time but not immediately.In the area of education and skills training one of the things that continues to come up more and more as I travel around the country is the cost that occurs when you try to ensure that young people have opportunities beyond school not only in apprenticeships but also in going and studying at their nearest tertiary institution whether it is to secure a trade or a professional degree. Many parents teachers and indeed mayors identified that one of the significant barriers to getting their young people into training is the cost of travel from rural areas into the city. The cost of tertiary fees alone is a significant barrier as is the cost of accommodation if they have to find accommodation in the area where they are going to study. Has the Budget delivered for them? Is there hope and opportunity for the young people who are wanting to do more and be more? Well it is hard to see—it is very hard to see.This is a serious debate and it requires serious attention but one of the things that I am most concerned about is the lack of a plan for young New Zealanders. We were in urgency debating the removal of the $1000 kick-start payment. If you were to believe the member for Hamilton East David Bennett you would think that just because 38 percent of people take up the $1000 and make no contribution it is a justification for removing it. I totally reject that debate. I totally reject that proposition. In fact the kick-start payment enabled families to be able to open up an account and create a savings history.When KiwiSaver started it was really clear that New Zealanders were not good savers but KiwiSaver provided an opportunity for people to start to put a little bit away in the hope of having a nest egg. Taking away the kick-start payment will not help the next generation. It robs from the future and it creates no hope that people can have security in retirement.Coming back to the point that I really want to make about child poverty measures it is time now. If the Government makes the decision to give an extra $25 to those families who most need it in order to give them a little bit of support then it is now time for the Government to set some targets to reduce child poverty. We need a whole-of-Government target that it consistently reports against to ensure that all the policies—a comprehensive set of policies—can reduce poverty and inequality and improve the outcomes for children and young people. We just cannot have a country where inequality gets bigger. Budget 2015 was a major flop in my perspective for children whose lives really require our attention and who should be put at the centre of a whole-of-Government approach to improve opportunities for the future. Kia ora.Hon NIKKI KAYE (Minister for ACC):I am very pleased to speak this afternoon. At the heart of this Budget is the concept of fairness. I was in Japan when the Budget was delivered and one of the things that struck me was the number of people from countries within the Asia-Pacific region who said this to me: New Zealand is the comeback country. It is really important when we have this Budget debate to understand the history here. In 2011 we said there would be 170000 jobs created and 3 months before that deadline we have done it. When we came in from Opposition we were faced with a decade of deficits. We have seen an incredible comeback as a nation. We are within reach of surplus.But what we have also said and what has been a hallmark of this Budget is that we will not get to surplus at the expense of our most vulnerable. So with all due respect to all of those Opposition members who stand up in this House and talk about the surplus they know actually that when you are in Government it is about the hard choices. I am proud to be a member on this side of the House to not only be delivering at a fiscal level—to be responsibly managing the books; we have got 150000 jobs forecast in the next 4 years; we have got 2.8 percent growth forecast—but also to have delivered over a long period and to now be focusing on some of the harder issues for New Zealand. We have had public sector reform but we have to do more. What you can see in this Budget is a concerted effort to tackle the hard issues. But this is on the back of years of hard work in areas like some of our most vulnerable children. So let us walk through it.We have under our Government insulated more houses than ever for vulnerable children. We have in the last year’s Budget really focused on those children having access to good health-care. That is why we announced free GP visits for under-13s. We have also done a range of other things so you can see on the back of that that there is an investment in the vulnerable children’s action plan. And then on top of that $790 million in this Budget is targeted at those children who are in hardship. This has been a concerted effort over a range of years to help our most vulnerable children.Secondly if you actually look at what we are trying to do from the education perspective part of our legacy is significant reform in terms of ensuring where those kids are who need basic numeracy and literacy. Through national standards we are targeting those schools more than ever in terms of numeracy and literacy and we are seeing those results particularly around Māori and Pacific Island students. You can see in this Budget another round in terms of investment in those young people and you can also see that we are fixing those schools that have for years been in a state of disrepair.Over successive Budgets we have done more than ever. I think we have spent about $80 million on weathertightness and earthquake strengthening and another $240 million is in this Budget package around not only ensuring those schools are fixed and earthquake strengthened but also so that we can expand where we need to expand and build for growth. It is not a model whereby communities have been left in the cold because they have not had the planning for growth that we need. So we have got another area in this Budget building on all of the good work that we have done before to invest in young people on top of a targeted package of $790 million targeted towards our most vulnerable children.If you take the area of science and innovation—again we have had sustained investment. But if you look at this Budget alone there is funding of $25 million for regional research institutes. The Budget will give an $80 million boost over 4 years to research and development growth grants. We have got a $113 million boost for tertiary education and skills. This is very significant and it is very significant particularly in the investment in terms of Māori and Pacific students in trades academies.So for those members opposite to say that we are not investing in young people they need to have a really good look at the line items in the Budget. We are investing more than ever before. In fact $2.4 billion in this Budget is in education and health services. But this is 6½ years of concerted effort around our most vulnerable and young New Zealanders. I am very proud of this Budget.The second area we have been really tackling is around housing affordability. Again let us look back and see what we have done. So firstly we have increased subsidies for the HomeStart grants. Secondly we have had one phase of Resource Management Act reform. Thirdly we have invested more than ever to really tackle those issues of productivity in the construction sector. But also we have really got a focus in this Budget on ensuring that those people who are trading effectively or speculating in terms of houses are penalised for that. Again this is a very targeted policy focusing on penalising those people who may be shutting young New Zealanders out of the housing market while also respecting the fact that we do not want to be taxing those people in terms of the family home. That is building on an existing policy that we think needs to be enforced properly. That is about tackling the hard issues and having dedicated policy focused on housing affordability.In my area of ACC again we were left with a $4.8 billion hole.Hon David Cunliffe: That’s just not true.Hon NIKKI KAYE: Again I heard Andrew Little. Andrew Little went out there when I made these announcements—no I think it is time the member Mr Cunliffe listened for a second. Andrew Little went out there when I announced $500 million of ACC reductions and when I announced a new piece of legislation aimed at transparency—I do not have his exact quote but it went something like this that it was dishonest and manipulative.This is a piece of legislation based on transparency of the ACC accounts after we have come back from a $4.8 billion hole to actually be able to give another round of levy reductions and this is after we have already given back $1.5 billion. He is so out of touch. He is so emotional that he does not actually have any policy that exists behind what he says. We saw it with the means testing of superannuation. We saw it when he commented on ACC. We are seeing it all over the place and that is because they do not have targeted policy on the other side they do not have the grunt within their caucus and then they have got a leader who effectively just goes out there says what he thinks and then has the caucus pulling him into line. That is compared to a Government that has continually developed good policy that is targeted and has invested where it matters.Another area where we have invested where it matters is the Future Investment Fund. Again we had ideological opposition from members on the other side of the House but I think the total capital investment in New Zealand is about $939 million. This includes a contingency of up to $210 million for additional investment to bring ultra-fast broadband to 80 percent of New Zealanders. We have got the telecommunications development levy extended to provide $150 million for major improvements in rural broadband. I represent Great Barrier Island actually and we have a whole lot of young people there who have not done as well as they could have but who are now getting access to learning resources that they have never had before. For members opposite again who talk about this Budget not delivering for young New Zealanders these are very tangible things that make a difference to isolated communities and to young New Zealanders.We are also seeing KiwiRail receive $210 million in new capital investment and a further $190 million as a pre-commitment against Budget 2016. In the area of the Resource Management Act and freshwater reforms we have got $37 million of operating funding for 4 years to provide greater national direction and support to councils. Again this is on the back of a whole lot of other money that we have invested over successive Budgets around fresh water.So there is a lot of hot air and rhetoric that comes from the Opposition but at the end of the day what it knows and what I knew when I was in Japan—I was there when this Budget was delivered by our Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister—is that they said to me that we are the comeback country. In my view the numbers show that. We have created over 170000 jobs. We are on track for 2.8 percent growth. We are in reach of surplus. But we are a Government that has done more than that. At the heart of our Government is fairness and you saw that with this targeted $790 million package for some of our most vulnerable children. That is on the back of so much investment whether it is education reform whether it is free GP visits for under-13s whether it is insulating houses or whether it is an investment in fresh water. We have managed to do that in very difficult fiscal times balancing the books but looking after New Zealanders and providing fairness at the heart of this Budget. This is a great Budget. This is a fair Budget. This is in contrast to an Opposition that is bereft of ideas. I support this Budget.JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green):Like many Aucklanders I am an immigrant to Aotearoa New Zealand. I chose to make my home here because I love this country. I love the mountains I love the beaches I love the old-growth forest and I love the people of New Zealand whom I have found very warm welcoming practical and above all fair-minded.I had a successful career as a transportation analyst and I did that because I wanted to have a job that allowed me to find creative solutions to some of the biggest most pressing challenges of the 21st century. So I did a lot of work in the areas of transportation planning and economics because I wanted to be part of the solution. I ended up joining the Green Party firstly because it is the party that shares my values—looking after the environment; ensuring that we have a fair society and democracy that decisions are made at the lowest level at which they affect people—but most important because the Green Party in Aotearoa was the only political party that was really championing the proven practical policies that should be mainstream but are not being implemented here in New Zealand.We know they have been proven overseas in very successful northern European countries that are managing to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and reduce pollution and that do not have the levels of increasing inequality that we see here in New Zealand. I think that we could follow that path; we do not have to reinvent the wheel. Unfortunately neither of the two larger parties has grasped the opportunities that are provided by understanding all the interconnections between our environment our economy and our society. It is common sense to respond to climate change as soon as possible because we have to respond sooner or later. The sooner we take action the less it will cost us. It is common sense to reduce the growing gap between the rich and the poor because it is better for everyone in society. It ensures that we are all better off. It ensures that we build a much more successful society and economy in the future if we invest in our poorest kids.The National Government members—and in particular I heard the previous speaker the Hon Nikki Kaye—claim some of these values. They want to say that they care about the economy they care about fairness they care about the environment and they are doing all these things. But when you get down to it and you look at the numbers and you look at the policies they are implementing they are simply not taking us in a smarter greener and fairer direction. They are taking us in a direction of greater inequality and more pollution. I would say the Green Party is the only party that is really prepared to stand up for younger New Zealanders who are being let down by this National Government.I think the National Government is deeply out of touch if it says the economy is working for everyone. We have got a younger generation that is drowning in student debt unable to afford a home in Auckland and unlikely to afford one any time soon even if they get a job and work hard. Wages are actually stagnating for at least half of the people in this country and a quarter of all children are still living in poverty. So I would say National has really lost touch with everyday New Zealanders. It is choosing to build an economy that relies on increasing pollution in the extraction of natural resources. It only really works for the New Zealanders who already have a lot. It works very well for them. They have got tax cuts and were able to buy shares in our State-owned energy companies. They are doing quite well. They are not paying any tax on the capital gains they have seen in Auckland over the last few years.There is an alternative to this. There is an alternative to just tinkering around the edges which is what this Government has done. The Green Party has a costed plan to retool the economy to get a better cleaner future that provides opportunity and prosperity for everyone.I want to speak specifically about two issues: firstly environmental protection and the Resource Management Act and secondly transport because those are two areas in particular where this Government is missing huge opportunities. John Key admitted last week after the Budget that National cannot get support for its most radical proposed changes to the Resource Management Act. These are the changes to section 6 and section 7 which would fundamentally gut our world-leading environmental protection law. The reason it cannot get support for these changes is that they are very radical and cut to the heart of our national identity. I know New Zealanders love their natural environment. They are proud of it. They know there is huge value in protecting it—immeasurable value. We set environmental bottom lines to protect the things that we value. If you really believe in the ingenuity of people as I believe the Green Party does we know that people can adapt. Any economic activity must respect those bottom lines.As we know the economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the natural environment and once something is gone it is gone for good. When a developer in Auckland proposed to cut down a 500-year-old kauri tree to build a house 93 percent of New Zealanders agreed that the tree should be protected. That is where the rubber hits the road because National’s changes to the Resource Management Act have already made it more difficult for communities to protect trees to protect the places they love and to have a say on the development that is happening. Changing the purpose and principles of the Act would fundamentally change the balance in a way that means no environmental bottom lines—communities cannot protect trees they cannot protect the things they really care about.Giving up environmental protection does not make us richer. You only need to look at China to see where this trade-off has occurred. They have managed to achieve huge GDP growth but it has been at the cost of clean air clean water and healthy communities. I know that is not what New Zealanders want here. We do not need growth of an economy that is reliant on increasing pollution and the extraction of non-renewable resources. That is just going to end up costing us in the long run.National has used the housing crisis in Auckland as a Trojan Horse for these reforms to the Resource Management Act. It is claiming that we cannot have affordable housing and protect our environment. I know that is not true. There is no evidence to support Nick Smith’s claims that planning rules are entirely responsible for the housing crisis. In fact if you look at the research you can see that pretty clearly. We have got research here in New Zealand from 2014-15 from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research Arthur Grimes and Ian Mitchell. In this graph we have got estimates of what the impact of planning rules has been on development in Auckland. If you believe the Government which likes to listen to a pro - urban sprawl thinktank called Demographia you would guess that the whole difference in the increase in house price costs is due to planning regulations when the actual research in New Zealand shows that they have a much smaller impact. Maybe 20 to 30 percent of the price can be explained by planning regulations but most of the cost is actually on apartments or medium-rise density—you know the development not just of apartments but of town houses character flats.These are all things that the Green Party has been saying for a long time we should be developing because it is better for the environment and it means people can live where they want to live in compact walkable neighbourhoods where they can access goods services and jobs through public transport or by walking and cycling. That is what people really want. Land values are highest on the isthmus not out on the fringe because people want to be on the isthmus. They want to be close to where things are. The reason they cannot afford it is that the planning rules do not allow that high-quality mid-rise intensification which is what we have been arguing for and are quite happy to work on with the Government.Of course that is just the supply side. I would say that on the supply side the Greens have got it right. We have got a smart solution that not only reduces housing costs but reduces transport costs reduces pollution and enables people to live where they want to live. On the demand side it is clear that the tax treatment of income has fuelled speculation in residential property. The Green Party has long called for smart measures like a capital gains tax limiting the amount of capital coming in from overseas—limiting the purchase of land and property to citizens and residents here in New Zealand—and also having minimum standards for rental accommodation. All of that would help take the heat out of the housing market. And on the supply side we would welcome central government leadership with a national policy statement and environmental standards on good-quality mid-rise development in the central city because that is where the evidence says people want to be.The other side of the coin is of course transport. There is no point in building cheap houses on the fringe where people just have to spend more on cars and transport to access education and jobs. A smart green approach enables people to live closer to jobs and closer to public transport but we need that investment in public transport infrastructure first. This is where National is really failing Auckland and future New Zealanders because there is no money in this Budget for new public transport infrastructure in Auckland. In fact since National came to power there has been no new money announced for rail projects in Auckland. All of it was committed under Labour thanks to the pressure of the Green Party 8 years ago. If you look at the next 10 years this chart shows what the National Party is planning to spend the transport budget on—mostly on a bunch of motorways that have no business case when growth in rail in Auckland is at 20 percent a year and there has been no growth in vehicle kilometres travelled. So this is where the investment should go because it is smart it reduces pollution it increases people’s quality of life it reduces costs for Government and it reduces costs for households.We can have this smart green revolution here in New Zealand. We can have a fair society and we can respond to climate change but we need a Government that is willing to actually take on the evidence and take us in a better direction. The Green Party would do that. Thank you.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration):I am very much looking forward to an overview of the Budget and in particular of the votes in my responsibility but I cannot let the final comments by Ms Genter go unchallenged in respect of public commitment to public transport and in particular rail. I would say two things about that. Firstly wild commitments that are unfunded are not commitments. They are just promises of the future. It was this Government that found the funding to meet the need for the electrification of Auckland. I will also say this. This Government has committed—I am not sure of the exact number but I am sure this is pretty close—$3.4 billion investment into KiwiRail and another $0.25 billion in this Budget just to help KiwiRail stay afloat. So let there be no question about this Government’s commitment financially to rail but it needs to be smarter than that. Big grand plans for rail and rail links and things like neglect the way in which the vast majority of people do go about their business and that is on roads and let us just remember most public transport goes on roads. The significant investment of I think about $100 million that Minister Bridges has announced for cycleways means that this Government can hold its head high in respect of its commitment to both public transport and cycleways.Budgets are hard and the longer Governments are in office the harder it can be to put together packages that in straitened times continue to fund the programmes that are existing while looking and finding the funding for those new programmes that are invested in. So I was extremely proud to be part of a Cabinet that came up with the package for families in hardship. I must say it was a surprise to most but not to this side of the House. I think the description of my colleague and friend from Taranaki - King Country Barbara Kuriger—I do not know whether this has been publicly said Ms Kuriger—that I heard recently of the reaction from the Labour Opposition when that part of the Budget was being read was that it was like seeing a child reach out for a balloon that burst in front of its eyes before the child could grab it. That I think was the best metaphor for the reaction and the surprise that Labour had having banged on about how heartless this Government is to this Government being the first Government since 1972 to increase support for families in hardship over and above the cost of inflation.Hon David Cunliffe: You’ve taken it away from KiwiSaver.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well the member is quite right. My offer to the member—and my chequebook is still in my pocket—is I will pay that $1000 back when just one member says that they did not take the tax cut. That is all I am asking. It is not a big ask but not one member has knocked on my door yet. I think that package reflects this Government’s compassion towards those in most need while at the same time acknowledging—and I heard Mrs Tolley in question time say—that the best pathway out of poverty is work. Well I would suggest actually that the only pathway out of poverty and the constant battle and the resilience that one needs to be able to pay the first bill then the next bill then the next and not live fortnight to fortnight is to find work and work that can be sustained. I know as the Minister of Immigration that that work is there. It is a fact that we do have a skill mismatch a geographic mismatch and the challenges for many of our young in particular in terms of their ability to be able to get and sustained work are ones that this Government will overcome. But let there be no doubt that with the support comes an expectation that working-age beneficiaries will seek work. I think that is what the taxpayer who invests in their support would expect.We have had a focus on exports and growing exports through these straitened times. One thing we have failed to do one export that seemed to be gangbusters under the previous Labour Government that this Government has singularly failed to do is export its people. We could have filled Westpac stadium with the people who were leaving these shores every year. The Prime Minister as Leader of the Opposition made a commitment to turn that around. We turned it into a bus then a phone box and now they are coming back. They are coming back not only in positive numbers for the first time but Australians are now looking to this country for the job opportunities that a strong growing economy will have.I was at the Brisbane job fair one of four job fairs that the Government initiated in Perth Brisbane Sydney and Melbourne and the level of interest in and applications for the jobs that were available with the employers that went over to those fairs was very very high. There is a nervousness across the Ditch about their economy. I think last year’s Budget by the Australian Government was an example of where slashing and burning and not sticking to a plan can have political ramifications. This Government has not done that and there would have been a temptation I suspect to cut just to get to surplus. I would much rather suffer the slings and arrows of that Opposition about the Government’s failure—albeit by a wafer-thin margin—to achieve surplus than to cut important programmes just to get there. Not only did this Government not do that but it invested very heavily in its most vulnerable.With that flow of people and a significant increase in the number of people wanting to visit New Zealand our tourism industry—our single largest service export earner—has gone very very strongly over the last couple of years from emerging markets. Immigration officers in Beijing Shanghai and Guangzhou are very very busy with a significant increase—40 or 50 percent year-on-year interest—in that growing middle class in China wanting to come and visit New Zealand. It is not just China; it is India it is the rest of Asia and it is the United States. New Zealand is a desirable destination but with that comes risk. The important challenge for immigration is to ensure that we let the right people in and we keep the wrong people out and so I was very pleased to be able to announce a $33 million increase in Budget 2014 over the next 4 years to ensure that those growing passenger arrival numbers do have a commensurate increase in the risk management—in the advanced passenger processing—that we have for them.Indeed as Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety I announced another $32 million because many of those people coming to work or study here have work rights attached to them. It is very important to me as Minister that they are well looked after and that the people who are helping us to rebuild Christchurch following the earthquakes can do so on the back of supportive employers and not exploitative employers. I think that the incidence and prevalence of that is quite low but it is very important that we keep it that way and so the extra investment in the labour inspectorate—which has now increased that team by 40 percent since we came to office—is a significant reflection of this Government’s priority to make sure that our migrants who are working are made welcome and are well looked after. The task is prevention and then prosecution for those who fall below. I must say it is very disappointing that Labour and the Greens did not support my Immigration Amendment Bill which significantly increased the punishments on employers who knowingly exploit legal workers in this country.I just want to touch on Vote Police. An extra $164 million is going into the baseline to consolidate the police’s funding to continue the excellent work that they have done in reducing reported crime in this country to its lowest level in 30 years—a more than 20 percent reduction. That has been done in a number of very very smart ways using technologies that this Government has enabled the police to get to get police out from behind their desks and their cars and to be out on the beat visible and supporting their communities. IPads and iPhone technology is just one example of the hardware that police have been given to support their communities but it is also an example of very clever tools that are being developed by their software providers to ensure that the process of infringements and prosecutions is a much more efficient one. The Policing Excellence: The Future programme I think will continue to deliver excellent results in enabling the police to have and maintain the very high levels of trust and confidence—probably world leading for a law enforcement organisation—that the public have had in them despite the fact that they work in extremely difficult parts of our community. I want to commend them for the work that they do and I certainly will continue to support them in their efforts.RON MARK (NZ First):It gives me some pleasure and also some sadness actually to rise to speak in this debate on the Government’s 2015 Budget. I was reminded before I came down here that there was an interesting documentary on the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating who provided a warning to members of his Government that they had better give heed. This Government should better give heed too given the chest-beating that we have seen over this “I Can See Red I Can See Red I See Red Budget” because that is all we see in New Zealand First. It is a red Budget but not because it is a Labour Party Budget. It is red because it is a deficit—again a deficit—despite all the promises and all the assurances.I have got to say to anybody listening when you are talking about the police budget there is only one fact that one can actually bank on when looking at this Budget and it is not the fact that there is in the Budget a $164 million increase for the police over the next 4 years—you cannot bank on that. We cannot bank on that. What we can bank on is a $41 million increase for this year—this first year. The rest of it is pie in the sky. The rest of it is all doctored and fudged to create the illusion of the potential of a surplus and maybe a tax cut. It is all designed to appease and appeal to New Zealanders who are driven by greed and driven by keeping their own money no matter what cost that actually has on the rest of New Zealand in terms of delivering services. The services I am talking about are services delivered by our police force.I do actually want to digress a little bit because the Minister raised the question of transport funding in saying how much money this Government is spending on transport. Well let us be very clear about this. Rural provincial New Zealand—go to the New Zealand Transport Agency website I say for the benefit of all the new backbench members of the National Party pull down the New Zealand Transport Agency table and look at how much funding is being cut from rural roading by your vote in this House. For Carterton Masterton and South Wairarapa that cut is 1 percent each year for the next 4 years. That will result in a 1 percent increase in rates for all of those farmers and all of those rural people if those councils want to keep pace with the same level of maintenance. That is a cut that the Government members are voting for. Let us be clear about that. All the prattling on about how much money they are spending in Auckland—actually in the Wairarapa we do not give a stuff about how much money you spend in Auckland. We want to know how much money this Government is cutting from the funding that goes to our councils because that shortfall will be met by a rates increase which is the very thing that young Nick Smith used to bleat on about when he was chastising local government.So let us look at the police budget. Looking at the estimates appropriations on page 129 it says that the total appropriation is $15 million less than it was in 2014. Output expenses are $5 million less than in Budget 2014 and the capital budget is a staggering $13 million less. That is not an increase; they are all reductions.It is so sad I have been reliably informed that on Saturday 21 March on the night of the Cricket World Cup match in Wellington there were only 18 police officers on duty in the city that night at 11 p.m.—18 police officers in the whole of Wellington city. Why do the police numbers concern New Zealand First? Well I am sorry folks beat your chests all you like over on the Government benches but there is only one party and one party alone that has consistently stood by the police when it comes to numbers and that is New Zealand First. Nobody else in history has ever produced 1000 extra police in one Budget. Nobody in their short time in Government has ever increased the police establishment by 2500. New Zealand First did that.So when we look at the shrinking size of the police force and the shrinking budget—and let us be clear: $41 million is not an increase in the police budget. It is simply marking time treading water. It is keeping things where they are and what does that mean? Well it means no extra capacity and no extra equipment. There is no extra capital works in there. There is certainly no pay rise and there is certainly no increase in the establishment.In fact what do we see? No matter where we go there is the closing of police stations in rural New Zealand. My colleague sitting beside me Ria Bond who is proud and pleased to now be representing people in the Invercargill-Southland area—in fact the whole of the lower South Island—knows about this. We know the cutbacks that have occurred down in the South Island in rural provincial New Zealand. We know the number of police stations in rural provincial New Zealand that are being closed.That is not improving capacity. That is not improving capability. That is not improving the service to New Zealand. That is not improving people’s safety and well-being or improving the standard. Do not go bleating on at me Government members about reported crime being down because a large number of the police officers I talk to say: “All we have done is change the way we collate the data.” How convenient. They changed the way they collate and report the data to present information that satisfies the Government and suits its political needs.Crime is not down. Go and ask any police officer on the beat. Go and sit in a police station and go and talk to people who put in insurance claims. What do they complain about now? Well actually they are resigned to it; they give up now. They say that reporting to the police is simply a measure you have to do to get your insurance claim accepted by a company. They have no belief whatsoever that a police officer is going to turn up take finger prints and interview them—Hon Michael Woodhouse: They still record them.RON MARK: Mr Woodhouse do not even go there because we will start to roll out the numbers for the Minister. We will start to roll out the numbers for the Minister. Now he is looking embarrassed. He has got that little look on his face and I know Woodie the Minister when he gets embarrassed that little smile comes on. I have seen enough on the rugby paddock. Look Mr Woodhouse—you are the Minister of Police; you know that crime is not down. The way it has been reported has changed. The way the statistics are being presented has changed.By the way if we think that shutting down the services of Relationships Aotearoa is going to help reduce crime we in this House have got to be nuts. Relationships Aotearoa is actually one of the front-line teams that is working to reduce domestic violence and working to help the police indirectly by resolving those matters and dealing with those people who are in that situation. So once Relationships Aotearoa has closed down what do we think is going to happen with domestic violence? What do we think is going to happen with the number of people being bashed in their homes? And how many extra police officers are going to be needed to cater for that shortfall?This is short-term thinking. This is not holistic policing. This is short-term narrow-minded Budget-focused numbers-focused thinking that is all orientated around producing a Budget that gives a surplus next year maybe. Well it is not good enough. New Zealand First opposes this Budget and we will so at the final vote.JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany):It is interesting following Ron Mark from the New Zealand First Party. You would think it was single-handedly responsible for all the good things that might have happened in the policing budget in New Zealand’s history. In fact the last time that police numbers were increased in this country New Zealand First was not even in Parliament. New Zealand First was not even in Parliament because it got turfed out after its shoddy dealings in Parliament between 2005 and 2008.This Government I have to say to Mr Mark is delivering for New Zealanders in the law and order sector. Crime is down by 20 percent Mr Mark. If you want to talk to police officers come to Counties Manukau and I will put you in front of a whole lot of police officers who will say that they are working hard every single day to get crime down. The disrespect shown by members like Mr Mark who are saying that police officers are not getting crime down I think is shameful. Our police do an excellent job. Crime is down by 20 percent and 600 extra police officers have been delivered by this Government. Crime is at a 35-year low. This Budget backs up the police through the funding they require to do their job and on this side of the House we are proud of the things we are doing for police and for New Zealanders when it comes to law and order. I did not intend to start my speech by talking about law and order but after listening to the drivel from Ron Mark I simply had to respond. He is wrong and New Zealanders know it.I want to join with my colleagues in congratulating the Hon Bill English on delivering his seventh Budget. I had the pleasure last night of delivering a presentation to my local Rotary club about Budget 2015. It showed many of the slides and graphs about how we are tracking as a country compared to other countries how we have responsibly kept spending in check and how we are getting our country back to a position where it can start to pay down the debt incurred when we had to borrow during the global financial crisis. The fact is that wages in this country are going up employment is coming down and more New Zealanders are able to get into work put food on the table for their families and ultimately live a better life.It is good when one looks properly at the graphs around this Budget. There was an executive summary with a whole lot of information in a visual format which is quite easy for taxpayers to look at. When you look at the spending that we have been tracking and following for the last 7 years compared with the very large amounts of additional expenditure that Labour was putting into its Budgets you can see that this Government has been extremely responsible during tough times. New Zealanders have tightened their belts in a huge way as well and we should be congratulating New Zealanders on what they have done to try to help this country get back into a better fiscal position.I have actually brought the graph along with me. When one looks at the 2008 year when Labour was spending $7 billion extra that is in fact more in 1 year than what we have spent in additional spending in all of our Budgets put together. That is responsible spending and it is only through that responsible spending that we see wages go up. Wages are expected to go up by $7000 on average for New Zealanders over the next 4 years. If we put that together with the fact that wages have gone up by $6000 in the past 4 years we see that that is a $13000 average increase over that 8-year period for New Zealanders. That accounts for about a 25 percent increase in wages for New Zealanders.But the news gets better for New Zealanders because over that same 8-year period inflation will have tracked up by only about 14 percent. So New Zealanders are actually getting wealthier. New Zealanders are seeing more money in their pockets. Inflation is low in this country and that is a good thing for New Zealanders. We are seeing wages going up and I say to those people who go out there and like to give the police a hard time that when they are talking to the police about all the good work the police are doing they should go and talk to New Zealanders too about whether they are seeing more money in their back pockets because the answer absolutely is yes.The fact that inflation in this country is pretty low at the moment has its positives and it also has its negatives. One of the negatives unfortunately for the Government is that it has not seen the amount of revenue that it was expecting. Yes we have not been able to post a surplus this year as we were hoping to. We are expecting to post that next year.When other members get up on their hind legs in this House and complain that we have not posted a surplus this year that we are supposedly not doing enough for families in hardship that they want to spend more money in other areas of the Budget—and at the same time say we should not have removed the KiwiSaver kick-start—I say to those members that they simply cannot have everything. They simply cannot have all those things on their wish list go to the public and credibly say that they can put together a Budget properly. Look at the things on their wish list and the fact that they complain that we do not spend enough in certain areas and that we should not be cutting back in other areas. To get a balanced Budget there are a whole lot of things that have to come together and Bill English has been able to do that.I am also very proud that for the first time in 43 years we have a Government that is willing to increase benefit rates. Whilst New Zealanders in work are seeing on average their wages going up the fact of the matter is that there is a range of New Zealanders who are in hardship and do need more assistance. Unashamedly this Government is prepared to step up to the plate and invest in the areas where New Zealanders need it. The Hon Anne Tolley has been pushing hard for some time—alongside the Prime Minister I must add—to see those increases to assist those who are most in need.I have to say that it is not actually the parents who are getting the benefit that we are really looking out for here. It is in fact the children in those families who will benefit from those increases through the welfare system. If the children who are most in need and living in families in hardship do not get the assistance they require—for example children who may have seen their families interact with Child Youth and Family or the corrections system or their families may have been on a benefit for a long period of time—then it is those children right at the bottom there who are at most risk in our society and they are the children who need the most investment by Government and by New Zealanders as well.There are 160000 families in this country that will benefit from this $790 million package. Some may think it is unusual for a National Government to be doing it but I have to say that if there is one thing that they have not worked out yet about John Key it is the fact that he is willing to step up to put the money of the Government where his mouth is and he is prepared to invest in areas where New Zealanders need and require investment. This Government is delivering for those people.I also want to touch just briefly on the housing area in my last 2 minutes because housing is a significant issue for Auckland. Ultimately we still stand by our view that the housing supply needs to increase. We are seeing housing increase at a very fast rate. When we came into office 200 houses per month were being built in Auckland. Now 750 houses per month are being built in Auckland. The supply of housing is increasing quite rapidly. The special housing areas are seeing more houses being built as well. There are about 40000-odd sections that have been made available to the special housing areas. New Zealanders have been giving us a clear message—and it is one that we have been listening to—that we need to do more about those who are buying and selling properties and effectively speculating through the property system. The fact that we are now stepping up and clarifying the tax situation for New Zealanders and clearly outlining that those who trade property within 2 years regardless of their intention will now be taxed is I think a very positive thing and one that shows that we are a Government that does listen to New Zealanders.Hon David Cunliffe: It took 7 years.JAMI-LEE ROSS: Whilst David Cunliffe the man opposite who just spoke out wanted to go to New Zealanders with an unworkable full-scale capital gains tax again we are doing things in a measured way in a way in which New Zealanders understand and appreciate and in a way that will make it easy for New Zealanders to understand their tax obligations. Also alongside the requirement for IRD numbers to be provided for those offshore who are buying properties this measure will see more impact in the housing market which will benefit Auckland and ultimately all New Zealanders. I commend this Budget to the House. It is a very good one. Thank you.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn):Imagine that the member who has just resumed his seat Jami-Lee Ross was a plumber or a builder and that you had a leaky roof and it took 7 long years for the plumber to come and fix it and when he turned up he put a few tiles on and left a few holes so that the water kept leaking through. That is about as good as National’s attempt at solving the housing crisis. There is a much bigger problem in this Budget. This Budget is a Budget of broken promises. It is a Budget that is a deficit of ideas as well as financing. In my remarks today I am going to quickly run through the headline promises that have been broken. I am then going to say why this Budget does nothing for the portfolios that it is my privilege to represent: tertiary education regional development and innovation.The No. 1 broken promise in this Budget is the return to surplus. It was a centrepiece of National’s re-election campaign. It had been trumpeted for the last 5 years. It is the reason the Government stopped funding superannuation it is the reason that it has starved pay rises for hard-working New Zealanders and it is the reason that it has short-changed research and innovation. It is the reason that it has done a whole lot of things to get back to surplus but it did not get there. In the seventh innings—no home run. Labour—nine out of nine. I wonder how long it is going to take New Zealanders to ask the question: “If National is so good at managing the economy why can’t it balance its cheque book? What is wrong with the National Government that it can’t balance its cheque book?”. If it took 7 years to get a plumber and they could not fix your roof if it took 7 years to get an accountant and he could not balance your cheque book do you know what you would do? You would get a different one. There may be a lesson in that.The second broken promise: Mr Key said that over the next 2 years the Government was going to create over 150000 new jobs. Well it has fallen 60000 short—60000 short. He said he would raise the average wage from $55000 to $62000. It is $3000 short. It promised that it would retain the $1000 kick-start contribution in KiwiSaver. Hey presto! Next minute it is gone—it is gone. It said that it would not increase any taxes or bring in any new taxes. This is like President Bush: “Read my lips: no new taxes”. Well we got three in this year’s Budget alone. We got a broadband tax we got a visitor tax and we got a kind of a half-pie capital gains tax with a leaky roof. That is three new taxes. Just imagine if it could actually do it properly but it broke three promises. It also said it would increase exports to 40 percent. Do you know what? Exports are going backwards as a percentage of GDP.This amounts to poor economic management—poor economic management. The Government has surfed the upside of the recovery after the global financial crisis. That is the time that you put some money away you run a surplus and you pay back the deficit spending that we accept needed to be done when the economy was in a hole—except the Government did not because it could not because there was no surplus. National staked its credibility on that and now it has none—now it has none. There is a deficit of finance and a deficit of ideas.Part of the reason that National cannot get back to surplus is that our regions are going backwards. Unemployment is stubbornly high in places like Northland the East Coast the Manawatū and the northern South Island. In a lot of our rural and provincial regions unemployment is at 7 and 8 percent. People cannot get jobs and they cannot move because they cannot sell their houses and move to a bigger centre because their house is worth not very much. It is called a poverty trap. The only way to address it is to get jobs and growth in the regions—in every region—so that New Zealanders can work their way to a better future. That is what Labour stands for. The clue is in the name: work. We work to a better fairer future for all New Zealanders. We stand for giving hope and resources and a leg-up to every region.Where is National’s systematic help for the East Coast—Te Tai Rāwhiti—and where is it in Northland? Simon “Bridges” Bridges is here one day gone tomorrow. People are not so stupid. Where is the help in the Bay of Plenty? Where is that harbour project in Ōpōtoki? Where is the railhead to Northport? Where are the breakthrough projects that will drive the high-value manufacturing jobs in New Plymouth where Jonathan Young comes from or up and down in Canterbury? Where is the high-tech manufacturing boom? There is not one because what has National put up in this Budget? A paltry $25 million for one to three so-called regional innovation centres. What happens in the other 20 regions? Irrigation New Zealand—Amy Adams’ friend—reckons it has already got that sewn up. Well nobody else need apply. I see in the Waikato Times that the Waikato thinks it is getting one. Well I do not think so. I think the irrigators have already trickled away the money. There is nothing strategic for the regions. It is a bit of window dressing.What about tertiary education? What is needed is a tangible boost for a sector that has been under a sinking lid for far too long. It is a sector that has been a driver and should be a driver of smart ideas smart graduates and smart jobs that will help our economy and our society flourish; a sector where the hard work and professionalism of both academic and professional staff should be valued and rewarded; and one where all three roles of higher education are recognised—research teaching and its role as a critic and conscience of society. It should be one where students should be supported to be the best that they can be with fair allowances and fair accessible affordable loans right throughout their education not stopping halfway through a post-graduate degree like medicine dentistry or a PhD so that only rich kids need apply.That is not good enough. That is why Labour says that we will extend student allowances and student loans for the full term of post-graduate education including medicine dentistry and doctorates. We are not going to leave our graduate students high and dry halfway through.What is the Government now doing for tertiary education? Well it said it was pumping in $113 million in the Budget. Really? It took away $17 million by limiting fee rises to 3 percent. It took away $13 million which is just unspent carry-overs from last year then takes away $50 million from the reduced number of tertiary students that forecast to come through from Vote Education and another $20 million from the Inland Revenue Department. And do you know what the result is? It is $113 million in $115 million out—there is no new money for tertiary education. There is no new money for tertiary education at all. That is why Steven Joyce will continue to do what he has been doing. He will simply say to the universities and the polytechs: “Just make do. Pass on your costs to the poor old students and if you really can’t make it get a few more students from China.”That is how the Government is robbing Peter to pay Paul. It may rearrange the deckchairs. It gave agriculture—surprise surprise; the farmers’ friend—20 percent more and it cut funding for a whole lot of other courses. There was no real boost for the really smart stuff: the information and communications technology that will power our economy into the future. Like Oliver Twist students were told to take the crumbs: “Be grateful. Your fees are going up only 3 percent; not 4 percent. That’ll save you a whole $60 a year.”Hon David Parker: At a time when inflation is zero.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: At a time when inflation is zero. Well Labour is committed to a full review of student loans and allowances so that any Kiwi kid from any part of New Zealand and any family can get the training that they need to be the best that they can be. It is good for them it is good for their families it is good for our communities and it is good for our country. That is how we become a small smart nation.This brings me finally to innovation. Where is the boost for innovation? In last year’s Budget there was $201622000. In this year’s Budget there is $201622000—no new money for innovation. There is no investment in the step change we need to be a smart country. Broken promises deficit of finance—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! The member’s time has expired.JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth):Mr Cunliffe the previous speaker asked a couple of questions: where are those high-tech manufacturing firms and where is that investment that is going to power our economy into the future? I am very happy to speak about a company from Taranaki which right now is developing a perpetual motion energy generator from wave energy transferring it into electricity.Hon David Parker: There goes a first! The National Party believes in perpetual motion. Get the press release out.JONATHAN YOUNG: Look Labour members mock. They mock. They mock. When they ask those questions and they are answered they are not prepared to hear about the innovation and the technical excellence that is being generation in the regions. This company with the assistance of Callaghan Innovation right now is testing its invention off the waters of Hawaii with great interest coming from international investors all around the world. So I am quite surprised that Mr Cunliffe who spouts off does not know any of this because he seems to know everything else.This is a very disappointing Budget for the Labour Party. It is a very exciting Budget for thousands of New Zealanders. We saw from the Leader of the Opposition’s reply and even from the replies that have come into this House today what a real lack of substance there surely is in the attack on this Budget. You would think that the No. 1 attack against this Government which it has been for 6 long years is that this Budget is one that looks after the big end of town—as I have heard Mr Cunliffe talk about so many times. But this Budget is exactly the opposite. Without wanting to be cliché-ish Mr Little and Mr Robertson were left gasping for air and grasping at straws when they sought to attack this Budget. The strongest line of attack that has come has been that we have introduced a new tax in the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill.Kelvin Davis: A broken promise.JONATHAN YOUNG: It is not. As we know it is a user charge that principally protects our primary industries from the incursions of biological threat from offshore travellers. Is it not interesting that of those offshore travellers who come and go from our country half of them are not New Zealand citizens? So what we are doing is we are transferring the cost of the threat they bring to those industries. Is that not smart economics? And all the time we are protecting our primary industries which are so important. Those kiwifruit farmers up in the Bay of Plenty will applaud this legislation which will see increased resources for border protection. This is a responsible piece of legislation that enhances our border security. It shifts the burden of costs away from the non-travelling public—those who do not often go offshore and overseas—to those who just by the mere fact of travel create the potential threat.I come from regional New Zealand. I come from Taranaki a region that is hard-working that is skilled and that is successful. We would say that in past years our region has been very productive for this country. Right now due to international commodity prices we are seeing a decrease in production and profitability coming out of the Taranaki region but I am very convinced that in due course and in time that will bounce back and once again we will see the Taranaki region producing ahead of every other region in this nation.When I look back on the past 6 years that I have been in this House the Taranaki region has received strong support from this Government. We have a new hospital we have a new police station and we have roading projects that had been unattended and unsupported now having investment put into them. When I think about the investment into our transport system and into our roading system which creates greater safety and greater economic benefit for our region I think: “Why haven’t we done this before? Why in those long 8 years of surplus did that party over there which had the purse strings of office not invest? Why didn’t they spend? Why didn’t they spend that money?”You know the first time that the Waiwhakaiho Bridge and the Northgate route was raised in a public forum was in 1968. All these years you were crowing about the fantastic surplus but you did very little with it. What we have done in the hardest of times what we have done in this Government during the time when Christchurch has demanded such support is we have continued to invest in the regions to enable the regions to become more and more productive. That is because not only do we have stronger financial management happening on this side of the House but we have a commitment to our regions as we have experienced in Taranaki.What this Budget has done is commit $790 million over 4 years to the families in this country who struggle the most. This is what took the Opposition parties by surprise. You would say that is the response of a party that cares for New Zealanders and Opposition members have never given us that credit. John Key the Prime Minister of this nation continues to surprise people. He has reached back into his past as a young boy who was raised just by his mum. As he described this Budget it is a compassionate but conservative Budget. It is conservative in that we still believe that the way out of poverty is work and we will put incentives in place to lead people and incentivise them to work but at the same time we care. We want to help those people who often for no reason or fault of their own find themselves in places of deprivation. Just this last weekend when I met with many of my colleagues the Hon Anne Tolley spoke about this at a conference. The resonance of agreement in that conference was outstanding. People felt that this Budget was going to make a real difference for New Zealanders. This is the very heart of our spending in Budget 2015.I often hear comments from civic leaders and sometimes from commerce leaders saying that in Taranaki we actually want more and that out of all the royalties that this region gives to this country we want some more of that back. Funnily enough this became a little bit of an issue in the election campaign of 2014. I think that at a time like this when at the very best we have wafer thin margins between surplus and deficit the bit extra that some of the people in my region want is a significant bit that those experiencing deprivation will not get. I found myself in September 2014 in election 2014 having to defend an egalitarian New Zealand against the call of the leader of the Labour Party who wanted Taranaki to get more and other regions to get less. I could not understand it. I could not understand the flip-flop.What people in New Zealand are starting to wake up to is that—Opposition members across the way there have always said that the Government is looking after the big end of town—this Government is looking after all New Zealanders. We understand that in this country success is something that should be universal. We will go and make the investment into people’s lives to enable them to start on the ladder of education and opportunity.I have to ask—and I am going back to some figures from a couple of years ago—that when this previous Government across the way had those 8 years of surplus but it claims nine what did it do with the surplus for what I would say are the most deprived communities in our country? I am talking about the families who have somebody in prison. There are 24000 kids who have a father or mother in prison. Today all prisons have education screening with individual learning plans designed for them. The number of prisoners gaining qualifications has increased under this Government by 830 percent. Almost 3000 prisoners will start literacy which is a 155 percent increase. There has been an almost 1500 percent increase in places on drug and alcohol treatment programmes since 2008—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! The member’s time has expired.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour):The speaker who has just resumed his seat Jonathan Young asked what the Labour Government did with its nine surpluses in a row. We reduced Government debt—Hon Michael Woodhouse: There weren’t nine surpluses. There were eight.Hon DAVID PARKER: No we ran nine surpluses in a row—nine. Every Budget that we ran was a surplus for 9 years in a row in contrast—[Interruption] Obviously it is a matter of great sensitivity on the other side because the score is currently nine—nil. What did we do with those surpluses? We actually applied them to a range of things like improved education and health services but we also used a large amount to reduce Government debt. Gross Government debt was reduced from 40 percent of GDP to 18 percent of GDP and net Government debt was reduced from roughly 18 percent of GDP to zero zilch nothing nada—none was left—so much so that when Bill English inherited the books one of the first things he said when the global financial crisis hit and he was asked about the state of the Government’s books was that this was the rainy day that the Government had been saving for. I think his exact words were: “This is the rainy day that Government has been saving for.”It is true that the Budget bounced well for the Government on the first day. It is normally the way in respect of Budgets and it was also true of this Budget. Why was that? In this case the Government had so depressed people’s expectations of the Budget that they were expecting that its promise in respect of reaching surplus would be broken and they were not expecting any money in it whatsoever for the vulnerable. So when the Government did announce $25 per week for beneficiary families people were surprised and gave the Government some credit for that. As Andrew Little has said on our behalf we give the Government some credit for that. We make a couple of points if the Government is now at the point where at long last it acknowledges that amongst some of our families we have very serious levels of deprivation—and the Government’s own surveys show that. In those measures of deprivation they include things like quite often not having breakfast or quite often not having lunch never being able to pay your school fees sometimes not having shoes or a raincoat—those sorts of things. The Government now acknowledges that we have that sort of deprivation in New Zealand and yet the parents of those children have to look them in the eye and say that in this wealthy country that is New Zealand that has a rock star economy you cannot get breakfast until 1 April next year because this $25 a week does not start until next year. I contrast that with what the Labour Party plan was at the last election: for low-income families it was $60 a week for every child for the first 3 years of their life.I want to turn now to some of the other problems that are becoming clear the longer you look at the Budget. We of course now all know that the Government’s promise of reaching surplus has not been met. We also know that its promise not to introduce new taxes has not been met. We know that there is nothing meaningful to overcome the problems that we have in housing particularly in Auckland where we have the lowest rate of homeownership since the 1950s. Indeed one of the centrepieces of the legislation passed following the Budget was stopping the Government getting advice from Housing New Zealand despite the fact that we have a crisis in housing in Auckland. We have also got some terribly substandard housing in other parts of the country including in the provinces.I want to talk about the areas that relate to my portfolio which is export growth and trade. Today’s figures of merchandise trade—they came out today for April—show that for April 2015 compared with April 2014 exports fell by 5.5 percent. It is a drop of 5.5 percent year on year. This shows up in the Government’s forecasts in the external deficit that we have as a country. I know that I have taken many barbs over the years from Bill English saying that I rattle on too often about the external deficit. But the truth is that an economy is a bit like a household budget. If your economy is leaking money to the rest of the world it is just like your own family budget leaking money to somebody else. If you do not earn enough money to pay your bills then at the end of the year you either have to sell something or take on debt. Our economy is exactly the same. As an economy we do not sell enough in our exports to pay for our imports plus our interest and the dividends that we pay overseas. The current account deficit this year is projected to go to $13.7 billion. It is a huge amount of money. It is an extra $13.7 billion that we owe to the rest of the world in a combination of debts to the rest of the world and extra amounts that the rest of the world owns of us because we sell more of ourselves to them in order to meet that deficit.It is against that background that you have to ask what it is that the Government has done since it came to power 7 years ago to change the shape of the economy. How do you judge it? Well for a start you would say that one of the ways you could reasonably judge it is by assessing its progress against the very targets it set itself. The National Government came to office saying that we consumed too much in New Zealand we did not save enough and we needed to increase exports and savings. What has happened? Well it is true that New Zealand in the last 7 years has saved a little bit more. The vast majority of that is insurance receipts that have come in following the insurance claims in Canterbury following the Canterbury earthquakes and also when New Zealanders put their cheque books away because they felt vulnerable in the recession. But it is also true that we are now verging on the point—if we have not already crossed over it—where as a nation we are overall dissaving. We are overall dissaving at a household level.In addition to that our exports rather than going up from 30 percent of GDP to 40 percent of GDP which was the Government’s target have raced backwards. I say “raced” because they started at about 30 percent of GDP. The Government got them up to close to 31 percent of GDP and since then our exports as a percentage of the economy have dropped back. A couple of years ago they went to under 30 percent of GDP and now in the year we are having they are forecast to be 26.4 percent of GDP. So 7 years after this Government came into power saying it was going to increase exports from 30 to 40 percent of GDP the figure has gone back to 26.4 percent of GDP. Indeed even to the end of the forecast period which is 4 years out it does not even get up to 28 percent of GDP. That is a massive fail. What is causing it? Well as Gareth Morgan says in New Zealand we are a wealthy country but we misapply capital. We put our capital in the wrong parts of the economy. We do not save enough because we do not encourage enough savings and then the capital that we do apply we apply to the wrong parts of the economy rather than to the more productive parts of the economy. There is no doubt that the biases we have that encourage that outcome remain.That leads me to KiwiSaver. KiwiSaver has had the incentives for it cut. In the last week at great length we went through the eight changes that have been made to KiwiSaver by this National Government seven of which are cuts. I could not understand the Prime Minister at question time today when he said that this change will not change savings behaviour. It is just a nonsense. I think that all of us know that the days when economics was overrun with statistical formula are over. Behavioural economics is a very real part of economics and we know that if you are a young person starting out in your first part-time job probably earning only $50 or $100 a week and you are saving only a few percent of that and your tax is deducted from that then the amount of increments you are saving of $2 or $3 a week does not seem much. It would almost seem like you are not going to give up much if you do not do it. So a lot of people will not. If you have already got $1000 in your KiwiSaver account from the kick-start contribution and it is growing by $2 or $3 a week when you are earning only a small amount any way it seems like progress and it seems like you have already got a significant nest egg.Good Governments build countries; this Government does not. This Government cannot build the export economy it cannot even build enough houses for people to live in and it certainly has not built the diversity of economic output that we need in order to employ people in well-paid jobs.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. I call Jo Hayes—5 minutes.JOANNE HAYES (National):I am pleased and very proud to stand and speak on this wonderful Budget. Last week we had a ripper of a week ending at 10 o’clock on Saturday night. The whole of New Zealand benefits from the wonderful Budget that this Government has released to the public over the last few days.I just want to talk a little bit about some of the Budget funds that are actually going into the Christchurch rebuild. I want to talk a little bit about the anchor projects because yesterday we were fortunate enough to be part and parcel of the opening of the bus interchange in Christchurch City. That was a $53 million project and was one of our major anchor projects in the city. That was just one of many anchor projects. The next big project that we are looking at is the justice precinct where we will be bringing 1700 employees back to the centre of Christchurch. It is co-locating them on a site at the heart of Christchurch City. This is an amazing amazing effort.This Government has stood by Christchurch from September 2010 from the very first earthquakes and we will continue to stand by it until our projects have been completed. I will quote a press release that came from Peter Townsend who is the chief executive officer of the Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce. This is what he said: “It is once again a reinforcement”—that is what this Budget is—“of the Government’s continuing involvement and its role in the rebuild of Christchurch and in particular the central city.” That is an amazing statement from Peter Townsend because that is exactly what we are doing.I want to focus a little bit on the east because some of the projects that have been happening and the investments that have been happening have been affecting the east—and it has been a good effect actually. On the education side of things we are looking at the development of the Aranui community education precinct. This is an amazing project. It will start education right from preschool and will take students right through to secondary school. This is amazing because it grows the community from babies all the way up to young adults and it hooks up with the tertiary education organisations as well—Canterbury University and Lincoln University.I want to talk about the co-location of our secondary schools. We have got two secondary schools—Avonside Girls High School and Shirley Boys High School—that are being relocated to QEII Park Recreation and Sport Centre. That co-location has been in the pipeline for a long time. There have been a lot of discussions about it. The Ministry of Education has been engaging with community over a period of a good 18 months and now the decision has been made that these two high schools will co-locate to QEII Park Recreation and Sport Centre; the park where during the earthquakes we lost the stadium and the swimming pool and where quite a lot of the sportsgrounds were devastated during that period of time. But now it is up and up for the east. Here we have the co-location of these two high schools.If that is not enough take the funds that are going into health in Christchurch. Burwood Hospital is going to be a beneficiary of the funding for the development of Christchurch Hospital and Burwood Hospital. What we are going to see over the next 2 to 3 years is a blossoming of the east and the Burwood/Queenspark area. We are going to see that blossom as the schools take off and as the hospital is redeveloped and the people of the east are going to get facilities there that are second to none in this world.Finally—I can see that the clock is ticking away; 5 minutes is a very short time—I want to talk a little bit about trades academy. The He Toki ki te Mahi apprenticeship programme was launched at Rehua Marae just recently. That is a great initiative when it comes to tertiary education. I heard the Opposition speaker talk about there being no investment in education. Here is a quote from the Lincoln University deputy vice chancellor international and business development Jeremy Baker. He said: “A 20 percent increase in tertiary funding for aquaculture announced in today’s Budget is being welcomed by the university.” If that is not proof of investment in tertiary education then I do not know what is. Christchurch is flourishing it is growing and we are very very proud to be part and parcel of that whole investment. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Barbara Kuriger—5 minutes.BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country):It is a pleasure to take a call this afternoon. I want to focus on how our Government is working for our regions to reach their full potential. I find it really disappointing that we have heard the member David Cunliffe get up this afternoon and talk about the regions. He is a man who actually has his roots in history in Te Kūiti. It is very disappointing to hear him say to this House that regional people cannot afford to sell up their houses and buy in Auckland. Let me tell you Mr Cunliffe it is very affordable for your people in Auckland to actually sell up their houses and come and live in our regions. Let me tell you something else: I do not know how long it is Mr Cunliffe since you have been in Te Kūiti but come and have a look at the new developments and things that are going on. As a regional electorate MP I do not accept that people need to sell up their houses and move back into Auckland. I am actually very focused on what is going on.If you ever go back to Te Kūiti again which I invite you to do you will realise that it runs off State Highway 3. I want to talk a bit about the roading packages that are being put in place. At the moment it takes me about half an hour longer to drive up my electorate because of the roads that are being developed particularly the roundabout at Waitomo. Focusing forward there is consultation going on about Mount Messenger and Awakino which is actually part of the Budget—Stuart Nash: Is this in the Budget?BARBARA KURIGER: Yes it is. It is roading in the Budget package about Taranaki and just exactly—[Interruption] Yes it is. And just exactly as Mr Young alluded to before around the Waiwhakaiho Bridge State Highway 3—Awakino Mount Messenger—is a project that has been on the go for a very very long time. I am really proud to be standing here as the member for Taranaki - King Country saying that the consultation is going on right now to get that road up and running because of this Budget. The second thing is broadband. We have actually got $100 million expansion going into rural broadband. It is key to our regional electorates.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.BARBARA KURIGER: Earlier in the evening before dinner I alluded to the money that was going towards the Accelerated Regional Roading Package which is great for the regions and particularly for State Highway 3 in my area in Awakino and Mount Messenger. Then I got on to the topic of broadband where there is a $100-million expansion of fast reliable broadband to our regions. That is just so critical. We are doing really well with the schools. We want it spread across further so that the kids are able to do their homework as well as they can do so they can learn more and so that we can have some more businesses who operate off the internet and high technology that are able to operate out in the regions because as we said before it is just such a wonderful place to live. The other thing as part of the Budget package is $50 million to extend the mobile coverage and black spots. As we all know we have got quite a number of black spots in the regional roading network so it is good to see those fixed up but it is also imperative that we have the cellphone coverage to go with that. Unfortunately when people do have an accident they need the opportunity to ring for help as fast as they possibly can.I would also like to commend the $25 million over 3 years that is going into regional research institutes. That is really important because although there are some issues that cover right across the region each region has its unique features. It is really important to do the research out in the regions to talk to the local people about what is needed and apply it there. I have to say also to get the border processing levy across the line the other night was such a pleasure because actually a big risk to our regions is having some sort of disease or pest brought in. We all know that tourists are unfortunately some of the big contributors to the dangers that are posed to our economy. It is a real pleasure to take a call on this bill tonight. I am really proud to be part of a National Government that has presented a very very good Budget 2015.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call for the Green Party—5 minutes each.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Talofa lava Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou i tēnei pō. Yep the Budget. Yep it happened. Yep we survived. I was looking for the plan. All I still hear is the mine-it-to-death plan or milk-it-dry plan. Amidst shaky international economic times we are going to mine it and milk it which is a continuation of the previous Budgets that I have heard but it is a strategy that is not really going to work sorry. There is a group of people missing out. There is definitely a group of people missing out and they are the abandoned generation of people who do not want to mine Aotearoa New Zealand and do not want it milked dry at the expense of their rivers. They have nothing against milk; just not at the expense of their rivers.It is important that we look at the Budget in the context of what is actually happening for the generation of people who are going to have to pay for the decisions we make. If we have 60 percent of our rivers unswimmable because they are full of nitrates and phosphorus we are going to leave that cost with the next generation. If as the Budget did we ignore climate change we are going to leave that cost with another generation. That generation has been out this week attending so-called consultation meetings on climate change etc. which were not reported on or considered seriously by the media or by the Government but they actually spoke for a generation of people who are not going to keep quiet about what is going to happen to them. We as a party are going to stand up for those people because they actually need to have their issues addressed. They should not be carrying the cost of our negligence. The Government is out of touch with their economy and those young people are our future economy.Our present economy is swimming in debt. People cannot have their own home their wages are stagnating and a quarter of our kids are still in poverty. This is not a Budget that will deal with that. This is a Budget that has touched cleverly on a range of issues but it has lost touch with the every day and it has chosen to build an economy that works for only some of us. There is another way and we do believe that we have got some great ideas for doing it more positively.Looking specifically at the money spend in some of my portfolios in the area of water the Government has put more money in the Budget for more conversation about water. But meanwhile the actual decisions are being made in the courts some in a precautionary manner and some in a business-as-usual manner. All we know and all we can see if you go out to the communities and look at water is that the water is deteriorating.Meanwhile the Government’s supposedly best-practice farm Landcorp is assisting others to continue the conversions from forestry to dairying—despite the extremely serious issues for dairy farmers around the price—and it wants to commodify our water and use it for dairying and then dump the cost from the Upper Waikato conversions on to the Lower Waikato farmers and communities. We are going to have approximately—and this is I am told a conservative estimate—29500 more cows in that catchment. The nitrates will be leaching into the lakes and awa—the rivers—downstream and this Government is going to continue to fund a conversation about that. Actually what it could do is stop Landcorp from being an irresponsible farmer but is it going to do that? Pigs let alone cows will fly on that one.The Government is also giving a subsidy to irrigators with an additional $25 million going to Irrigation New Zealand the Government’s acceleration group to promote some unpopular and destructive dam projects that could add to these pollution statistics and increase the pollution of our beautiful and precious fresh water which we as a Parliament should be protecting. That $25 million is great news for the irrigators but not necessarily great news for the communities so we wonder why the Government is doing that. Why is it subsidising this industry? Who chose irrigation? We are not subsidising an awful lot—this is supposed to be the free market. What has happened? How come these guys cannot manage on their own? How come they need a big handout from the Government? Interesting—interesting who gets subsidised in this Budget. Very interesting.I would also like to touch briefly in my short time on the education appropriation. That was not enough—a 1 percent increase in the operating grant for schools. Last year it was a generous 2 percent which was not anywhere near enough and now it is 1 percent. There are now two new charter schools being promoted without our having a review of the existing models. Many of the existing first four charter schools and then the other nine are not in the best shape but they are a sop to Mr Seymour so they have got to go ahead. Lest we forget this was supposedly about our priority learners such as Māori Pasifika and disabled students. Look closely at what is actually happening at the charter schools and we can see that that is not what is happening. We are not making a game-changer for those students.So we are pretty disappointed with this Budget. We are concerned about the abandoned generation and we will keep talking about what else we can do better.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Five minute call; Denise Roche.DENISE ROCHE (Green):This is a Budget that has not addressed any of New Zealand’s fundamental problems. It is a start but it will not lift enough kids out of poverty it will not help address the gap between the haves and have-nots and it certainly does not address the fundamental issue of our time which is climate change. It is a political Budget that has made or continues to make the thousands of cuts that have happened under this Government. From the medical students who will not become doctors because of the changes for fulltime-equivalent students to the single mum who cannot upskill and move up due to the cutting of the retraining grant this Government has ignored people who are marginalised.When and where the Government has paid attention it has paid attention due to the public outcry and attention from ordinary New Zealanders and that includes things like the zero-hour contracts and getting child poverty into the Budget at all this time. Credit where credit is due but I want a Government that cares about issues not because it is popular and not because of the polls but because it genuinely cares about those who are marginalised.One of those marginalised groups is refugees. This Budget will make life for refugees even tougher than it is. The $1.5 million cut in funding for essential refugee protection services has the potential to send an already vulnerable group overseas. It will strand them. Refugees live in risk of their lives in hot spots and they stand to stay stranded in those areas because of the bottleneck of the unheard cases.We are going to spend $24.4 million over the next 2 years sending New Zealanders to support the Iraqi army. But for a fraction of that we could be taking concrete steps to protect vulnerable refugees from human rights abuses in some of the places that they are caught in. We think refugees need to be resettled as soon as possible so that they can integrate and get on with their lives. It will make a huge difference for the lives of so many people.What about migrant workers in New Zealand? They are another marginalised group. How do they fare under this Budget? The Government announced a package of $33 million for immigration but that money is going to be spent on border control not necessarily on seeing to the needs of migrant workers. Recent high-profile cases have shown that there is a need for better education and information for employers about minimum standards but also for migrant workers so that they know their rights. Essentially we also need strong compliance to ensure migrant workers are not exploited.I recognise that the Government has announced a funding increase for labour inspectors; in fact for six new labour inspectors for Auckland. That is to be applauded. However we lag behind international standards in terms of the ratio of workers to compliance officers. In New Zealand it is about one inspector for 14162 workers. That is about double what happens in Australia. With the deregulated labour market that we have—and workers’ rights have basically been steadily eroded under this Government—it is essential that we have some kind of compliance for workers and particularly for vulnerable workers like migrant workers. Seasonal workers for example are also at risk of exploitation and I note that we have got only five labour inspectors who are specialists in this area for the recognised seasonal workers’ scheme.This Budget is a case of Peter being robbed to pay Paul. There is a reduced allocation for WorkSafe New Zealand. There was a promised increase in health and safety inspectors when WorkSafe New Zealand was set up in 2012—$37 million over 4 years. But this Budget says there will be a reduction. And we still have not recovered the number of health and safety inspectors we had before 2012. We need that compliance to occur if we want people to come home safe and unharmed from their jobs. This Budget leaves a lot of people behind. It makes it harder for families to get ahead and we certainly could be doing a lot better.Hon PAULA BENNETT (Associate Minister of Finance):It is with absolute pleasure that I stand and actually get to put on record just how proud I am of this National-led Government’s Budget for 2015. It has been my first Budget as an Associate Minister of Finance and so I have worked my way through it with the guidance of Bill English actually looking at what needed to be done and where we could address the needs of this country.It is easy to forget actually that we have an average growth rate of 2.8 percent and that we are projecting 150000 more jobs to come on board. I remember the call when we were saying that there would be 170000 more jobs and it would be fair to say that we were derided by the left. They took every opportunity that they could to throw that back. Well here we are saying: “No no we did not do 170000. Actually the economy has produced 194000 more jobs which have been created since 2011.” And that makes a fundamental difference for New Zealanders. That and seeing the average wage increase. That and seeing actually people able to have more money in their pockets and able to get the jobs that quite frankly they do deserve in this country. That and seeing us project that unemployment will continue to drop and employment will continue to rise. You can see from the projections in this Budget that we are heading well and truly to that 4.5 percent unemployment rate.But what is different what is fundamentally different in how we look at that unemployment rate is that we are actually not putting all of that sort of slightly discretionary funding of how we assist people with CVs and skills and training and helping them to get work-ready on to just those who are on the unemployment benefit. What you can see is that over the last 6 ½ years we have moved resources to those who fundamentally need them the most. And yes we reset obligations as we did a bit more of in this Budget.But I want to take people back to when we first became Government in 2008. I was the then Minister for Social Development and Employment and I will never ever forget sitting in a room in Paris with my colleagues with welfare and employment Ministers from around the world and they fundamentally could not believe—in fact I had to repeat it about four times—that we had absolutely no work obligations for someone who was on welfare until their youngest turned 18 and who could then have another baby and get another 18 years of no work obligations. They fundamentally could not believe that we did not have balance in what we expected of people.As a consequence it was actually worse than that. We did not put any resource or extra into helping them get work-ready. So we did—we reset. We reset the balance. We made sure that those people had hope and opportunities. We reset the balance that had never been there in the welfare system so that they could actually create a better life for themselves and their children. As a consequence of that and many changes we now have the lowest number of sole parents on welfare since the 1980s—1988 I think it is.But what people forget is that we could not have actually made the changes to welfare and given those families who still are there an extra $25 a week on average—we could not do that if we had not reset the balance if we had not actually got some mutual obligations within the system in those previous years. It is not just the work of the last 12 months that leads us to a place where we can produce a Budget that is giving back to those who most certainly are having it tough and living hard lives on very limited incomes where we can put more in their pockets that goes to helping them and their children. The way that we are able to do that is over many years of resetting our social policy to make sure that we are helping those who need it most and making sure that they actually recognise what changes need to be made.I have heard many from the opposite side say that this does not make a difference. Well it makes a huge difference. Actually $25 makes an absolutely huge difference. Also though we really wanted to make sure as we worked our way through this package—and we have spent a lot of hours and a lot of time debating and looking at it from every angle—that we were also increasing Working for Families and making sure that those who did go into jobs and were still on low wages were able to reap those rewards as well. We are making sure that we have the obligations right that people are able to get into work that they get the extra assistance through agencies like the Ministry of Social Development through education and other skills and training—but then equally for those who do go into jobs making sure that they get assistance on that extra pay so that we are keeping that balance right that work really does pay. Because from everything that you look at it is work that makes the biggest and most fundamental difference in people’s lives. When we could we have. At the first chance that we have had to increase benefits for the first time in nearly—what is it—43 years we took that opportunity to put money in the pockets of those who need it most.If I am to be a little negative which is not really my thing I would have said that the Opposition was expecting us if we were going to do anything to do sort of nine or 10 bucks. Yeah? And we all then would have gone around thinking we had done a good thing. We knew that we could and it was absolutely important—as we worked our way through what was actually quite a tough Budget process of trying to make sure that we are actually looking after the needs of those who work for our agencies and are expecting a wee pay rise for those who have got cost pressures there—that we set real money aside to go to real people who needed that help and assistance. That says I think a lot for this Government and a lot for the leadership quite frankly of our Prime Minister. When he stood up on election night ladies and gentlemen and said having accepted the win: “This National-led Government will govern for all people.” here is the evidence of it. It is in black and white. It is in this Budget that he stands by what he said and he stands there and says: “I will govern; we will govern. This National-led Government will be there for all people.” When he could give back under his leadership and under this hardship package that is what he has delivered to New Zealanders.I also want to just touch on another part of that hardship package that has not been touched on much I do not think from what I have heard so far which is the increase in the childcare subsidy. What perhaps some of us knew instinctively was that if you removed barriers and believed in and backed these women and children then they would take every opportunity to make a difference in their lives and in the lives of their children. They have proven that by the tens of thousands who have gone off welfare when we have actually rebalanced.What they also need though as I indicated is those barriers removed. One of the biggest barriers is the cost of childcare. So for those who are looking for extra assistance we have put the subsidy up from $4 to $5 which is a 20 percent increase in what we will actually pay to help them while they are working so that they can get that extra assistance.The other thing that people I do not think have realised so much—and it is not necessarily in this Budget—is that about a year ago we also really relaxed the rules on what we will pay for as far as childcare is concerned. Too often it was just about the creche down the road or the day care centre although for many parents they are working different hours and they want more flexibility with that. That is part of how we are actually getting there and how we are rebalancing it.You could hold this Budget up in the world—and I do not say that lightly—and know that you are extremely proud of it and that New Zealand is more than punching above its weight as it does so well. As a country we actually have the economy well and truly on track and are delivering to all New Zealanders as we see the average wage increase as we see those on welfare being assisted with a bit more money as we see more jobs coming on board the support for the regions and also the support for our businesses that is recognised daily through a Budget that is delivered like this. I am incredibly proud to be a part of a team—and it is a pretty big team and it is a pretty great one—who cares a lot about this stuff and who have spent the time on really using the data analytics using the information that we have and making sure we pull that together in the best interests of all New Zealanders. I am really proud to stand up and support what as I say is a really strong team who is actually backing a really strong growing economy. Thank you.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):Talofa lava. I will say something for the Government members and that is that they are good at the spin. They are good at the political spin and they are good at telling you that everything is great when behind the scenes it is another story. I listened to the previous speaker—the new Associate Minister of Finance Paula Bennett—talk about fundamentally moving resources to where they are needed most. Well how does that fit with what the Government is doing to social housing—fundamentally dismantling the social housing scheme and the role of the State in providing housing for the most vulnerable in our society? Not one more house is coming out of its grand new plan which is not a new plan. I would also like to say something to the previous National speaker new MP Barbara Kuriger who spoke about the importance of fast broadband in rural New Zealand which is so important. It is so important that there is the right investment and that the investment goes where it is needed. I am sure she as an MP in rural New Zealand and Taranaki would know—in fact I know that she does know because I know that she has many people coming through her door complaining about their broadband—that unfortunately the Government has already spent $300 million in rural New Zealand and it is still not working. That is a real problem which is why Labour fought against that piece of legislation pushed through under urgency on Friday night.My colleague Grant Robertson described this as a politician’s Budget. It has also been described as many things but one of them is a Budget of broken promises around the surplus around wage and job targets and of course around those three new taxes. “No new taxes.” said the Prime Minister. “No new taxes.” said the campaign literature before the election. But what have we got? We have got three new taxes. The economist Rod Oram put it really well when he said in the Sunday Star-Times this weekend: “this Budget as the six before it is a triumph of micro-management. The Government has mastered the art of switching small sums [of money] around to give the illusion of progress.” Well how true that is. How true that is. This is the “sticking plaster Budget” and the “piecemeal Budget” with no vision no plan and no real hope.Chris Bishop: 25 bucks a week is not a small sum of money.CLARE CURRAN: Yes I absolutely acknowledge that $25 a week is going to make a small difference but you tell me—excuse me Mr Deputy Speaker not you—but can the Government tell me how that is going to address the fundamental causes of child poverty. Well it is just not. If you live in regional New Zealand you could be forgiven for barely registering this Budget.Once upon a time—as I am sure you would remember Mr Deputy Speaker and many of the people in the House would recall—the Budget was a must-listen-to yearly event. There were big structural changes. There were wide-ranging visions. It was an opportunity for Governments of the day to show their core thinking and direction. This Budget has no structural shifts in it. There is no accounting for the ageing population. There is no recognition of the rapid technological change and its impact on jobs. There is no money for innovation. There is no money for regional development. There is no money for the productive economy and for exports. There is no investment in those things. Instead we have had KiwiSaver’s kick-start snatched away—the savings of future generations.This is a Budget of broken promises. We have seen firstly the taxing of capital gains—not a capital gains tax but the taxing of capital gains for property investors has expanded—secondly an airport tax charging people to enter or leave New Zealand; and thirdly a broadband tax that increases the charge on the telecommunications industry which has already resulted in an increase of broadband prices. We have got a Minister for Communications Amy Adams who does not talk to the industry to the consumers or to consumer representatives. She does not listen. She insists that black is white. In fact she stood in this House on Friday night and insisted that a levy is not a tax.I just want to show everybody Colin James’ piece in the Otago Daily Times this morning and the headline “We know a levy’s a tax Mr English”. I think the Government has lost on that one. It rammed through a special law under urgency to give the Government power to levy or tax the telecommunications industry to implement part two of a scheme for rural broadband which was $150 million. So why did we fight it? We support better broadband absolutely for rural new Zealand. It was us who provided the strong policy leading into the election for community-based rural broadband to try to address the real issues that were happening in rural new Zealand but $300 million has already been spent in rural New Zealand and has not been a great success. How do we know this? We know this because rural New Zealand keeps telling us whether there are petitions from communities they have come to select committees in Parliament as three of them did last week whether it is organisations like Rural Women who come and talk to us about the state of rural broadband. We know that Federated Farmers are worried. We even know that 68 percent of businesses and households are extremely frustrated in rural New Zealand because there was a piece of market research by Colmar Brunton for Chorus done just before the election. But there has been no analysis—no reports. The only figures that we have show a few thousand connections there have been towers upgraded and new ones built and the copper network has been improved but this is infrastructure that is owned by private companies that are benefiting from it.Is it benefiting rural New Zealand? Where is the analysis? Where are the reports? I note that members have all got their heads down over there because they know there are not any. So what does the Minister say? Well she says: “It’s my way or the highway.” she says to everybody. She says that it is a levy; it is not a tax. She said the telecommunications companies would not pass it on. Well within an hour of the debate starting in Parliament last week one of the telecommunications companies had already announced it was passing it on because it was a tax. Whether that is a good thing or not is to one side but the fact is that that is what is happening and it is a tax on consumers. She of course said that that would not happen and it did.Is a levy a tax? No it is a user charge says the Minister. Is a tax on alcohol a user charge? Is a tax on cigarettes a user charge? Is a tax on petrol a user charge? Well the Minister has certainly lost the argument on that one. The $150 million—there is no guarantee it will work. There is no guarantee that that money will not be used to finish off the first version of rural broadband. There is no guarantee that smaller community providers will get a look in. It needs an inquiry it needs examination it needs sunlight and it shows poor economic management poor judgment and a fundamental lack of understanding and good project management.Finishing up Chorus came out today pleading with the Government to move fast on Resource Management Act reforms in order to free up the roadblocks in the ultra-fast broadband project.Todd Barclay: Well why don’t you support the RMA reform?CLARE CURRAN: Well we have always said we would consider sensible changes to the Resource Management Act. We had some in our environment policy. We had a policy on telecommunications companies that said we would fix these things as soon as possible. It has been 8 months since the election. There has been no movement on this. We say to the Minister for the Environment: “Put those changes on the table Nick Smith. Let us see them. Where are they?” And good on Chorus for putting the pressure on on that issue.DARROCH BALL (NZ First):It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to make some comments on the Budget. I will be concentrating my comments on the changes to the social services area. The first thing I would like to do is to ask a question. That question is about the Budget: has the Government addressed the very worst levels of child poverty in New Zealand with its Budget announcement last Thursday? The answer is unsurprisingly a definitive no. After persistently ignoring 40 years of research on a topic expert advisory group recommendations largely ignored why all of a sudden a U-turn? The Government has been in power for 7 years and for 7 years it has denied it denied the scale of the problem. We have the Prime Minister who usually shrugs most things off including the problem of child poverty. But worst of all is that in those 7 years the Government has failed to address it. So why the U-turn? Probably because of the public pressure and post-election promises in the face of widespread public protestation.We are already witnessing the Government reverting to its ideological blind spot on child poverty. On Thursday we had a Budget preaching about the focus on child poverty and the needy and just 2 days ago we had Mr English commenting about the anti-poverty figures. The article in the New Zealand Herald has the title: “English hits back at anti-poverty figures”. It goes on to say that “Professor Jonathan Boston refuted the minister’s claims saying Mr English ‘doesn’t understand how poverty measures are calculated’.” Mr English’s response to that in an interview on Q+A is that “campaigners like Prof Boston and the Children’s Commissioner used an unrealistic set of measures to quantify poverty in New Zealand.” The funny thing is that during Mr English’s Budget speech he said this: “Two-thirds of children in more severe material hardship have a parent on a benefit and nine out of 10 of those are sole parents”.Where did he get that measure of severe hardship from? In order to get to this conclusion he would have to be using the very calculation of poverty used by Professor Jonathan Boston the same man he criticised on national TV for the way in which he calculated it. So I challenge the Minister to prove where he got those figures from and by which method. He cannot continue to contradict himself and say that Professor Boston has an unrealistic set of measures and yet use those exact same measures in his speech. That is a blatant attempt to diminish expert opinion. The public can now quite clearly see that the Minister of Finance has no idea about how poverty measures are calculated. It is a poor start to the Government’s acknowledgment of the problem—far less than a step in the right direction.We know that the measures the Government announced on Thursday will not lift those children out of poverty. The Children’s Commissioner someone else whom the Government does not listen to himself said that it will not bring families out of poverty and he is calling for a comprehensive plan. So all pre-Budget all of at the end of last year there was this promise from the Government from the Minister for Social Development and from the Minister of Finance about a comprehensive plan to tackle child poverty and vulnerable children. What we got was not even a skeleton of a plan. They did not even do the map recce yet.So where is the package? Where is the plan? The measures announced in the Budget are piecemeal and they are disappointing. Put quite simply this Government is continuing to fund supported poverty. Being a step in the right direction is not enough to warrant a vote of confidence for or indeed acceptance of this Budget. One can never win a game of cards if they are given only one single card to play with. How are these people in poverty with vulnerable children expected to get out of their way of poverty to work their way out of poverty to fight their way out of poverty with just $25 a week? The Government has given them that one card to play with. These moves are a token effort to appease the general concern of the New Zealand public at the plight of an unacceptable number of our children. We want to hold on to the country we once proudly advocated for when we travelled around the globe proud of a land of equal opportunity but now we are reminded by the National Government that times have changed and that we need to focus on quite a long-term savings for the Crown—on cost cutting on more efficiency and on better investment.How did child poverty end up being about what these children will cost us in the future? Why is it not about the New Zealand vision that every one of these children should have an equal opportunity to contribute to our society? New Zealand First believes in the fundamentals of a social welfare system that provides a robust safety net. No one should fall below this most minimum of levels—no family and no child. It should not be a reward; nor should it be a punishment. It should not be a matter of approval for a Budget change; it should be an automatic expectation. Anything less would mean we are all leaving our principles behind for the sake of financial convenience and outright judgment.The Government’s investment approach stretches it further. Now each person who requires a social service has a dollar sign floating above their head. If their need does not fit within the criteria of the Government’s targets then the dollar is extinguished and the individual is left to fend for themselves. If a social agency tries to look after all of its clients’ needs it will run adrift. If a service attempts to exist in the regions where the client numbers are low it will struggle falter and disappear. So if you are a young person looking for support in a small provincial town tough. Your need is not financially sustainable. Where in this do we allow for a community to identify its own needs and provide a response? Will a coupon system for social services mean less supply and lower quality just as it did with the voucher system for childcare that was evaluated in Sweden and Australia?We have seen social services retracting. Most recently we have seen the struggles of our biggest counselling agency Relationships Aotearoa and the release today of an article “Government forces closure of Relationships Aotearoa”. It goes on to say: “Unfortunately our financial position worsened by Government’s needless delay means we cannot afford to transition clients. We had hoped to transition clients [more]. ... Government could have easily reached an agreement with us that was equitable for all concerned. It is fair to say that we feel betrayed … it is likely that our doors will be closed to our 7000 current clients by the end of the week.” But this Government would rather spend around $30 million on a flag referendum. Where is the priority shown by this Government?Two months ago we met with the Salvation Army youth education and employment unit. It has just shut down branches in Kaikohe Matamata Wairoa Waipukurau and Blenheim. The common theme in all of those is they are all regional. Why did they shut down? They were not financially viable. One would have to ask where this will end. Where is the plan by this Government to ensure that the essential safety net that is faltering in our provinces especially remains intact and maintains its integrity? This Budget surely did not deliver confidence in that.New Zealand First wants more than just a $2-a-day down payment for the 250000 children living in poverty. We want front-end investment focused on our youth. Simply increasing the benefit is lazy. It lacks focus and it lacks realism of the understanding of the real issue. Instead it tries to plug a gap over the symptoms. The Government has ignored our young people in this Budget. The Government may not care but the vast majority of New Zealand cares about the future generations. As Mark Powell chief executive officer of The Warehouse said this weekend: “A flourishing society equals flourishing business.”May I lastly say this: if we are to maintain that minimum social floor that no one should fall through we need a heavy focus on our youth. Unemployed youth become unemployed adults who remain on a benefit and bring children and families into poverty. Acting too late with too little should never be acceptable.KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National):Talofa lava Mr Assistant Speaker. It was great to see you come into the House and greet us with a Samoan greeting. This week we are celebrating Samoan Language Week. In New Zealand—the most diverse country in the world—it is very important that we acknowledge the cultures that we have adopted. The Samoan language is the third most spoken language in New Zealand and I appreciate those who are still continuing to speak their language and are continuing with their culture. Today we also celebrate Africa Day in Parliament. It shows another example of diversity in our country and we are lucky to have people from different ethnicities representing us in various areas.It is my pleasure to participate in this debate on the Budget. As we know the appropriation bills are the basis on which Parliament authorises the executive to incur expenses and capital expenditure. Each year the Minister of Finance places in front of this House the Budget which provides appropriations for the coming year. I would like to congratulate the Hon Bill English on presenting an excellent seventh Budget and I am proud to be part of this team. For the past 7 years thanks to the strong leadership provided by the Prime Minister and our Finance Minister this National-led Government has provided prudent Budgets that have proven instrumental in the New Zealand economy’s excellent growth.I was talking to my friends based in Melbourne and they were full of praise for our Government for presenting an excellent Budget. So much so that one of my friends said that he would like to move to New Zealand to live because it is a better place to live—and that has been proven in the last 7 years. There was a time when 50000 Kiwis were migrating to Australia each year but the trends are changing. Now Australians are moving to New Zealand.A survey conducted by Statistics New Zealand and published today indicates that New Zealanders are highly satisfied with their lives with people rating their sense of purpose highly. The New Zealand General Social Survey conducted by Statistics New Zealand which provided the above result was based on a survey of 9000 people. The General Social Survey is the biggest social survey conducted by Statistics New Zealand outside the 5-yearly Census of Population and Dwellings. This independent survey by the country’s most credible organisation proves what we in the National Party and the Government have been sharing with this House and New Zealanders for some time. The leadership of New Zealand has done an outstanding job in steering this country forward in the difficult times. Here I would like to congratulate the Hon Paula Bennett who did a lot of work in social welfare which has been appreciated worldwide and is now being continued by the Hon Anne Tolley.In this Budget the honourable Minister of Finance has once again provided excellent vision for New Zealanders. The Budget makes excellent allowances for issues that matter to New Zealanders. The Minister of Finance has announced that this National-led Government will deliver a $790 million package to support children who live in poor families. This amount will be balanced between sole parents and the provision of $25 per week more for families that may be on some form of income support. The Government has also announced in the Budget that we will increase the Working for Families payment. There is also an increased focus from our side of the House on providing more childcare support for low-income families to help parents to be in work education or training. Budget 2015 makes allowances for a further $60 million in extra support for at-risk children. We know from experience that the best way to help families and children out of hardship is through employment. Keeping this in mind we are allocating $32.5 million for services that help beneficiaries to move into the workforce. I would like to reiterate that we are allocating $32.5 million to help beneficiaries to move into the work force. These initiatives confirm that this National-led Government focuses on building a stronger economy and that delivering Better Public Services is working for New Zealand families.In addition to taking steps to improve the economy we have said from the very start that this National-led Government has zero tolerance for corruption and we remain committed to maintaining New Zealand’s robust reputation. That is why this Budget has allocated $280 million to the justice sector. The Budget provides an extra $8.1 million over the next 4 for the operating fund of the Serious Fraud Office. This further enables the Serious Fraud Office to fight bribery and corruption and to create a business environment that is free of serious financial crime. The Department of Corrections will receive more than $6 million from the justice sector. Also the new operating fund of $164 million over the next 4 years for the New Zealand Police shows that the Government is investing more and more in creating communities that are away from crime-related activities. There has been a 22 percent drop in recorded crime over the past 5 years and we have been successful in disrupting organised crime. We have over 600 extra police officers on the front line. They are helping to safeguard vulnerable communities.I take this opportunity to thank the New Zealand Police for making New Zealanders feel secure while at the same time developing constructive relationships with the people who belong to different cultural backgrounds. The New Zealand Police has been able to successfully identify issues of victimisation within ethnic communities and to develop culturally appropriate strategies that are implemented in order to increase the community’s safety. This funding will support the police in providing more effective policing and will help in preventing crime to a huge extent.There are some positive points of our economy that I would like to share here. New Zealand is on track for an average of 2.8 percent growth a year over the next 4 years. This strong growth is forecast to deliver another 150000 new jobs over the next 4 years. Government debt is expected to be less than 20 percent of GDP by 2020-21 when we can resume full contribution to the superannuation fund. This is a Budget that is responsible and based on a plan. The Government can deliver when it is following a plan that is working. It is because of the prudent plan in all areas that we have announced a record investment of $15 billion in health. New Zealanders and their families should have access to timely quality health care no matter where they live. The health budget will reach a record $15.9 billion this year; a clear sign of National’s commitment to supporting the growing public health service. We are investing $1.7 billion over the next 4 years in new initiatives and to meet cost pressures and population growth. Budget 2015 also includes $12 billion to extend the Waitematā District Health Board’s bowel cancer screening pilot to start in December 2017.Despite the economic challenges National is focused on delivering high-quality services for New Zealanders in areas that make a huge difference. Of course we understand that to continually pay for these and other services we need to have a well-trained and skilled workforce. We are spending $10.8 billion on education. These are the plans we have for New Zealanders and I commend this Budget to the House.STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):We heard a lot of statistics there but it reminded me of a great quote because that speaker uses statistics like a drunken man uses a lamp post—for support not illumination.There was a very interesting answer—[Interruption] Thanks for that mate. There was a very interesting answer that John Key gave in question time today to a question that was asked by I think Andrew Little. He talked about the number of overseas investors buying houses in New Zealand. Mr Key said: “You don’t know that fact. No one knows.” You know what? He is dead right and that is the problem we have got. No one knows how many foreigners are buying houses in New Zealand. Nobody knows the impact that foreigners are having on the Auckland housing market. So when John Key and Bill English come out and say that they are now going to require overseas investors to have IRD numbers and bank accounts what I would like to know is how they are going to police that.The reason I bring this up is that one of my shadow portfolios is land information. Land Information New Zealand is responsible for overseeing the Overseas Investment Act and the Overseas Investment Act is about making sure that those who come in and buy sensitive New Zealand assets or sensitive New Zealand land go through the right process. Looking through the Budget I made an assumption—I could be wrong here—that it would be the Overseas Investment Act that would be in charge of monitoring foreigners buying houses in New Zealand.The problem we have at the moment is that the Overseas Investment Office is way behind in consents. Technically it has to have a consent approved or a sale and purchase agreement signed off within 65 days of signing if it requires Overseas Investment Office consent. Technically there are a whole lot of sale and purchase agreements now in place with foreign investors that are redundant that have fallen by the wayside because the Overseas Investment Office has not got the staff to monitor this consent process. If it is going to be asked to monitor this new process—and I for the life of me could not figure out who else would do it—then I do not know where it is going to get the resources for it because there is not a cent extra in the Budget for this certainly not under Land Information or the Overseas Investment Office.One thing I would like to talk about is that I am a provincial MP and I get a little bit sick and tired of hearing people say that the provinces are failing because as you know yourself Mr Deputy Speaker the provinces are not failing. In fact there are some fantastic stories of businesses that are doing incredibly well in the provinces and certainly there is a whole number of them in my electorate of Napier. But they could be doing a lot better. My firm belief is that if we are to maximise economic development in the regions it has to be a partnership between local government central government and key stakeholders. So what I was looking for in this Budget and what I would have really liked to see is a commitment to regional economic development.If I was writing this Budget what I would put into it is a commitment to regional economic development. What I would have done if I was the Minister of Finance is set aside a decent chunk of money let us say $500 million and I would have sent a very clear message to the regional economic development agencies and the regions as a whole to say: “You come to us with plans around what you would like to see in the regions around where you see benefit being generated around how the Government can partner with the regions and we will help you out.”I am the first to admit that we cannot expect the Government to throw money in the air at the regions watch it settle and hope it settles in the right place. That is not how Governments spend money. But what we do need to see is a commitment to the regions. By that I do not mean money thrown willy-nilly in an irresponsible way but what I do mean is a commitment to partner with those who make a difference in provincial New Zealand. This is not what we have seen at the moment. I would suggest that one way to deal with the booming Auckland housing market at the moment is to give businesses a reason an economic imperative to move out of Auckland—not all businesses but certain types of businesses—and into the regions.Let me give you one example. We know how much money it costs to bring a 40-foot container or a 20-foot container across the Port of Auckland how much it costs to transport that container from the port to a warehouse and how it much it costs to warehouse it and then distribute it around the country. It is about 40 percent more than to do that sort of operation in Napier where we have one of the most efficient ports in the country. Even Mr Foss will agree with me on that point. So there is a very very compelling business case for a number of these businesses to move out of Auckland and to the regions. But what we do need is a real partnership between central government and local government and that will come only when central government sends the right signals to provincial New Zealand and those signals were not sent in this Budget. It would have been easy to do.I wonder what the provincial MPs in the National caucus were saying to Bill English when he was putting the Budget together. I suspect they were not saying much because they did not know what he was planning. [Interruption] Exactly they had no idea what he was actually planning. But I would have thought certainly as a provincial MP as a number of my colleagues here are that the message we will send very clearly to our party and as a result the policy I think you will see us take into the next election is one of regional economic development and regional economic engagement.While we are on that topic one of my shadow portfolios is actually forestry. What the Government did announce in this Budget is $5 million to spend over 3 years on research into alternative species. I am not going to knock that because it is quite an important project of that there is no doubt but it does not deal with the fundamental issue we are facing in the forestry sector at this point in time. In the last 10 years we have gone from 6 million cubic metres or 30 percent of the logs cut to 17 million cubic metres or 56 percent of all logs cut going across our wharves without a single cent of value being added. Part of the problem we have got here is a lack of money going into regional economic development and especially into the wood processing sector.In fact one of the great policies Labour came out with and went into the 2014 election with was accelerated depreciation for those who want to invest in timber processing facilities. It was a fantastic policy and the resonance it gained in the processing sector was enormous. In fact again I would have thought that that would be something that this Government signalled in the Budget because it was a great policy that resonated right across the industry. We have got to do something about this. To be honest we might not need sawmills in the future and the reason I say that is that the size of the planted estate has dropped by 76000 hectares over the last 10 years. This is an industry in decline yet this is the only industry that is going to get us out of the problems we face with our carbon emissions in our global responsibilities as a clean green “100% Pure New Zealand” branded country that allows us—that gives us—a global competitive advantage.The sawmilling and forestry sectors really are suffering under this Government. As a man from the provinces that have a number of plantation forests I know that you yourself Mr Deputy Speaker must be bit a little frustrated with this.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do not bring me into the debate.STUART NASH: I am sorry Mr Deputy Speaker but you know I get passionate about the regions and I know you are as well so I do apologise. There have been about 6000 jobs lost in this whole industry.I would like to conclude by saying three things. First and foremost what this Government—what a Government—really needs to do is to start engaging with regional and provincial New Zealand and go out to them with an action plan even if it goes out to provincial New Zealand and says: “This is what we would like to see from you.” There needs to be a level of engagement. That is just not happening at the moment. The second point I would like to make is that the forestry sector is a very important sector for a whole raft of reasons. First of all it can transform commodity logs into specialty products. Second it employs a whole lot of people in the regions where there is high unemployment and third it will actually help us meet our Kyoto or Paris commitments under the emissions trading scheme.The third point I would like to make is that we really do need to get a handle on who is buying our assets in this country; we really do. It is not a difficult thing to do. In fact it would be quite cheap to do. We would support it if it was done in a way that was meaningful. I think as parliamentarians we need to work together to provide New Zealanders with information around who is buying our houses how much they are paying where they are buying and what they are doing when they do buy. Thank you very much.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a 5-minutes each split call from the National Party.SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill):It is my absolute pleasure to take this call on Budget 2015 firstly because I am 50 percent of “Team South” and apparently a percentage too of the young wing of our caucus. So if 40 years of age is considered to be youth I will take that along with taking it as read that this is a triumphant Budget with thanks to the Hon Bill English and his team. Let us put the facts on the table shall we? This is a Government that has grown the economy and that has continued to put measures in place to strengthen our position on the world stage. We have a clear economic plan with economic growth forecast to average 2.8 percent over the next 4 years. We have created 194000 jobs since 2011 and have forecast 150000 more over the next 4 years. Average wages have increased by 15 percent—that is a rise of $7000 by mid-2019—and unemployment is forecast to fall below 5 percent next year. For Mr Nash who waxed on about the regions that is 3.3 percent unemployment in Southland currently—Chris Bishop: How much?SARAH DOWIE:—3.3 percent and our province is currently producing 15 percent of total export receipts. So we are a province that is boxing above its weight and we are a province that is thriving and doing well under this National-led Government.But it is work that I want to focus on. As we have heard from many social agencies including the Salvation Army and my very own Southland Beneficiaries and Community Rights Centre based in Invercargill work is something that raises people out of hardship and gives them dignity and a better quality of life. A job provides money and boosts standards of living. A job improves health and well-being provides social contact and contributes to social cohesion. A job contributes to life satisfaction and gives people a sense of identity and belonging and of course their efforts contribute to society. That is at the heart of our package—$790 million to help children in hardship. As part of that package there are pragmatic things that we are doing to support the vulnerable our families and to support parents and mums back into work. We have got a $25 a week after-tax rise in benefit rates for families with children—a real increase in benefits and the first Government to do so in 40 years.Chris Bishop: How long?SARAH DOWIE: That is the first Government to do so in 40 years. It is supporting the vulnerable and looking after people in hardship. We are giving $12.50 a week more in Working for Families to lower-income families—$12.50 a week—and for very low-income families there is an increase of $24.50 per week. We are placing greater work obligations on parents who are beneficiaries including asking most sole parents to look for work when the youngest child turns three. As part of that to remove the barriers as the Hon Paula Bennett covered earlier we are increasing childcare assistance for low-income families from $4 to $5 for up to 50 hours of childcare per week per child. The parents get out to work and gain all the benefits of work. They earn money and move themselves and their child out of hardship and the child is engaged in early childhood education learns and gets a good start in life.I just want to focus on an example that I was given. Being a working mother I was lamenting this during the Budget—the guilt associated with working. When you are at work you think you should be spending more time with the kids and when you are with the kids you think you should be meeting all those deadlines at work. A friend sent me an editorial the other day from the Pew Research Center. It surveyed 50000 adults in 25 countries and the research showed that daughters whose mothers work are more likely to stay in education longer earn a higher qualification be employed in a supervisory role and earn a higher income. So that is excellent all round for the movement of women. But wait—there is more. Although the research found that mothers at work did not affect males’ career choices it did influence their sons in that. Sons of working mothers did spend more time on childcare and housework. So I ask all those men out there: can they iron a shirt? I commend this Budget to the House.TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland):It is a privilege to carry on with the second phase of “Team South”. I can quite proudly say that I have got an ironed shirt and it was fully thanks to my mother joining the workforce as soon as she could following my easy birth I can imagine. It is a pleasure to speak on this Budget for a number of reasons. Firstly after a couple of the speeches that I have heard so far tonight from the Opposition members it is clear that they are not fit for Government. They are not even fit for Opposition given that they clearly have not read major aspects of this Budget. They have talked about regional New Zealand not getting a look-in. We can say—and we have heard from Sarah Dowie tonight—that Southland has experienced 15 percent growth over the last year. It is one of the largest growth-rates in the country and we have got one of the lowest unemployment rates at 3.1 percent.Clare Curran: How come I’ve got your constituents coming to my office?TODD BARCLAY: The member over there for Dunedin South Clare Curran as well speaking about information and communication technology and ultra-fast broadband—these services are being rolled out continuously throughout New Zealand. Regional New Zealand whether it be through ultra-fast broadband or the Rural Broadband Initiative is getting great gains through the initiatives being driven by this Government.What I want to talk about tonight is the system of Government reforms and that has been touched on by Paula Bennett tonight because she is one of the main architects of it along with the Hon Bill English and Prime Minister John Key. This is fundamentally one of the biggest things—and one that does not get enough attention I do not think—that this Government has done that is going to make systemic changes going forward. I hope that one day when unfortunately there is a future Labour Government some of these changes that we have put in place through the Better Public Services framework will actually stay in place and help protect against frivolous spending and empty programmes that are simply not benefiting New Zealanders.What we have done through these reforms is to say that for far too long they have been focused on increasing spending in Government departments for the sake of increasing spending in Government departments whereas this Government is focused on individuals and on people who need the investment the most. So what we have seen through the work of Paula Bennett Bill English and now the Hon Anne Tolley in the social welfare space is that they have identified some of the largest cost drivers in the social welfare space and I want to touch on two of these groups.First I want to touch on teen sole parents. We know that since we have come into Government we have reduced the number of these by almost 50 percent to a level of about 2600. We know that the average expected time that the teen sole parent will spend on a benefit is 20 years at a cost of around $250000 each over their lifetime on a benefit. But if they have a qualification their time on a benefit automatically reduces from 20 years to 7 years. So as part of Budget 2015 what was announced is that from 4 April 2016 the childcare assistance rate will increase from $4 to $5 an hour for low-income families. This does not sound like a lot of money but for these families it is. It is a significant amount of money over a long period of time. It helps lower-income parents get access to affordable childcare and supports them in employment education and training. The benefit rates have increased in real value as well for the first time in 43 years.For the Labour Party members to say this is absolutely nothing and is not making an impact is incredibly hilarious actually given they are meant to be the party that looks out for the most vulnerable New Zealanders—or the self-proclaimed party that does that. It is the National-led Government that has made some fundamental changes affecting some of our most vulnerable New Zealanders. Just as a snapshot going back to teen sole parents in my electorate alone we have got 185 teen sole parents in Gore 168 in the Clutha district and 98 in Queenstown. These are real people who will experience real benefits from the change that this Government has put in place.The next portion of high cost drivers which relates directly to my electorate as well are children in care. We know that these members of society are hugely disproportionate cost drivers. Within this group we know that there are a group of 2000 kids whose future prison costs based on 30-years’ worth of records will be $750 million. Budget 2015 appropriates almost $60 million to help at-risk children through new operational funding and capital grants to Child Youth and Family for its Children’s Teams. In Balclutha we have got 12 children who are in care in Gore we have got 19 and we have got a number of other kids across other parts of the electorate as well. We know that included in one of these groups we have got one kid who is 12 years old and who has had 95 foster families. That is utterly outrageous and it is not something that this Government wants to see continuing. That is why I wholeheartedly believe that these changes will make an impact on real New Zealanders. Thank you.JAN LOGIE (Green):I rise to take a call in this the Budget debate and being the third Southlander in a row feels particularly momentous.I am sure that sole parents and children in care will be feeling quite proud and understanding of their place in our society now having been described as cost-drivers in the Government’s Budget. I would like to say that the Green Party’s perspective on our society differs a little from seeing these people as cost-drivers to the Government.When an economy is not working for everyone it is not working and we have had many examples over the last few years and weeks that tell us clearly that our economy is not working. But I do want to firstly acknowledge the Government actually for raising base benefit rates for people with children.Hon Member: Aw!JAN LOGIE: Yes I think it is important to acknowledge this because the Green Party has been saying for well over a decade now that these incomes have needed to increase. This was long actually before the National Government came to power because child poverty which we have been talking about was not created by this National Government; it has existed for decades going right back to the fourth Labour Government.In question time today the Minister of Foreign Affairs said that National had been changing lots of policies at our request. We appreciate that but we cannot take all the responsibility for the increase in base benefit rates because it was not just us alone. It was also the advocacy of Every Child Counts Child Poverty Action Group Plunket Unicef Barnados amongst many other community organisations as well as of course Bryan Bruce Nigel Latta and most prominently probably John Campbell. These groups and people have been working tirelessly for years now to help everyone in New Zealand to understand what child poverty looks and feels like because there is a big disconnect between our communities and most people who are working hard on good incomes do not necessarily get to see that real impact and they did not before understand the generational consequences of it. So I do really want to acknowledge them and the people of New Zealand who made sure the Government knew that they were not happy with so many of our children suffering and dying because of Government policies.The Government members certainly seem very pleased that they have introduced this policy and they should but I have got to say their pleasure does seem to verge on crowing and I am not really sure that that is the way to show that they genuinely care about the well-being of our children. But the acknowledgement that poverty will not be solved without addressing income is critical and the Green Party is really relieved to finally have that acknowledged.But in some ways all of this is about the politics because although we know that some people will get that $25 a week many will not get that much. The degree of poverty in this country with a quarter of a million children in poverty and 60000 to 100000 in severe deprivation without beds of their own without decent meals every day without Christmas presents or birthday presents without being able to afford to go to the doctor without transport and being unable to go on school trips—we know that that extra $25 even for those who get it is not going to solve those problems. This is one step; this is not a solution and sadly it is still not a plan yet. We desperately on behalf of those children need to keep advocating for that plan to be able to give them the opportunity to live good lives.I do want to specifically acknowledge too that that $25 increase does not compensate for the cuts to the child disability allowance which is an allowance that is not means-tested. There have been very significant cuts since 2009 and there are 11000 fewer children accessing that child disability allowance. That disability allowance is worth $46.25 a week so that has been a cut to 11000 children of an amount that is significantly more than what the Government is offering in this package and they are some of the children who are in the most need.Those cuts have been made by the Government not telling people about the available entitlements and by tightening up the entitlements. There was a very moving article in the New Zealand Herald at the end of last year talking about this and some examples. One of the Wellington beneficiary advocates Graham Howell was saying that one family with an intellectually disabled child—a child with a learning disability—lost the child disability allowance when the boy grew old enough to tie his own shoelaces and a boy with eczema lost the allowance when he became able to put on his own ointment.That is the threshold where access to that disability support for beneficiaries and working families has been put at such a level that I do not think any of us can understand. There was an Onehunga mother Emma-Rose Cottrell who was quoted in that article. Her husband works part-time and she is full-time caring. Her husband is able to work only part-time because otherwise they just would not cope as a family. She said referring to her husband: “He’s not allowed to do full-time otherwise I’d die of stress.” She said: “I have to do naps most days because I am just so exhausted.”This is the reality for some of our families. I really want to focus the House’s attention on the fact that that was a two-parent family and she is talking about that level of exhaustion when she is sharing the care of their child with a partner. Now to put that in focus around the increased work testing for sole parents that was also contained in this Budget when their child turns 3 regardless of whether their child has a disability or special emotional needs regardless of what trauma that family may have been through that parent is now going to be required to go and look for 20 hours’ work. Remember this is the story of a woman with a partner who is in work who is saying she could not cope without her partner being at home with her to care for her child. It would be just too physically and emotionally demanding.We need desperately to be supporting our families better and acknowledging the different struggles that our families are coping with. One-size-fits-all policies like this are likely to do so much more harm. Sure for some families some parents some mothers it is going to suit them to be able to go out to work and find a job if they can find one. But we also heard from Dr Nikki Turner at the Child Poverty Action Group breakfast that she is seeing parents going out to work and the only jobs they are able to get are evening or night jobs and they are leaving their kids at home alone because of that requirement and that pressure to be in work. Is that really what we want for our children? Is that really in the best interests of our society in the long term? I would say very clearly that it is not. The Green Party advocates for child-centred policies where we consider the interests of the child first. They will be different for every single child and we support families being able to do what is best for their children. That sadly is not a blanket 20 hours of work a week from the age of 3—the work-test requirement for parents—regardless of the needs of their children.I know I do not have much time but I do want to specifically also touch on—because the Speaker told us this was the space to do it—the funding decision around Relationships Aotearoa. That the largest counselling organisation in this country with 7000 clients which has been in existence since 1949 will be closing its doors this week without a publicly available transition plan for its clients is an outrage.Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice):It is a great pleasure to take a call on the seventh Budget of this National-led Government that Bill English as our Minister of Finance has led us through. I am very proud that this is a Budget that consolidates the clear approach that we have brought to the Government benches since 2008 and that is recognising that actually you can have it both ways. You can get the Government’s books back in order and deliver better services for our taxpayers and the New Zealanders who need those services.For many years we have seen Governments that just wanted to throw more money at a problem. If it was not working and the spending was not effective let us spend more and that must cure all ills. Actually we cannot afford to do that. We have said for a long time that we need to set the example of what we preach which is to say that families need to be saving and investing and thinking about the future. It would not be credible for us to do that as a Government if we continued to live beyond our means as had become the pattern particularly in the early years of the 2000s. Yep this year we will show a deficit of $684 million but the important thing is that year on year we have been building a platform to get the Government’s books back into surplus. We will be one of the first countries in the developed world post - global financial crisis to do that. That is something we can be incredibly proud of but we have not done it by cutting slashing and burning.Actually in all of the core sectors we can point to real progress where the sector has been encouraged supported and cajoled into delivering better services for New Zealand. Whether you look at health whether you look at education whether you look at law and order the reality is that the numbers now show that New Zealanders are getting far better value for the money that we take from them. We have recognised that for every dollar we take out of the pocket of a hard-working New Zealander we owe that taxpayer the respect of showing that we will spend that money as carefully as we would our own.That is what this Budget to me really talks about. It talks about the fact that we have recognised there are areas of New Zealand and there are families in New Zealand who are doing it pretty tough. We wanted to do more to support those 160000 of the lowest income families but we did not simply get the cheque book out and add some more numbers on to the spend. We said that we need to do this responsibly and that is about targeting where we put money and where we do not. We did not do it as I said by adding to the deficit. We thought very carefully about what costs were fair to fall where in our society.I think the border processing levy that we passed under urgency on Thursday is a fantastic example of that. Here you have a decision that asks: “Should we be taxing all of those lowest-paid families to fund the international travel of foreigners and New Zealanders who can afford international travel?”. My view very simply is no we should not. If we are travelling the cost that we impose on an economy through doing that should fall to us. Ditto the foreigners who come through our airports should be contributing to those costs.I am not going to be taking money out of the pockets of some of those hard-working families who are doing it tough and who certainly could not afford international travel to make them pay for it. It is my cost and I should pay it. Labour thinks that we should tax the poorest families in New Zealand to pay for the travel of wealthy New Zealanders and wealthy foreigners. I do not support that. Targeting that levy to those people who incur the costs—[Interruption] They do not like it when you call them on their hypocrisy but actually that is the reality. They spark up when you highlight the facts. They did not want us to have the costs of that expensive travel falling on those who travel. They wanted it to fall on every taxpayer. I would far rather those costs fall where they should and the spare money can be reinvested in low-income families. That is the difference between us. We ask: “Where is our money best spent?”.Let us see how that same approach applies in my own area of broadband. Again we had two options. We could have asked the companies that will profit from the infrastructure to help fund it on a communal basis which is what we have done and what every other party in Parliament supported except of course for Labour or we could have taxed people who actually do not get to make their living off that infrastructure. In our view you target it to those who will get the benefit from the spend. You use the money that you create the surplus spend that you create in the Government finances and put it where it will do the most good.In this Budget that is about reaching out to those children who are living in some of our poorest families supporting them but also with that sending the message that the best path out of hardship and out of poverty is work. The best thing bar none that we can do for those families who are really struggling is to get them into a job. There are many parts to that of course. It means making sure they have the educational standards they need making sure national standards and our National Certificate of Educational Achievement targets are supporting them to have that education making sure our tertiary system is set up to provide pathways and jobs and skill sets that will help them into those jobs making sure that their health is strong enough to support them working making sure there is drug and alcohol counselling in our prisons and making sure our mental health services are strong.Tim Macindoe: Appropriate childcare where it is needed.Hon AMY ADAMS: That is exactly right. If they need support with childcare putting those subsidies up—making them available. All of the parts of this Budget facilitate that approach. The other side of that equation is making sure there are opportunities for them—creating jobs in the regions creating jobs in areas that need them. This is a Government that has already seen the development of hundreds of thousands of new jobs in our term in office. Budget 2015 shows that Treasury modelling is that more new jobs will be created as a result of these settings.We are ensuring people are supported to get back to work that they have the opportunity to work and that they have the skill set and the support in childcare to do that job. That is the path out of hardship. There is no two ways about it. Although we want to support those at the lowest ebb it cannot be into a pattern of dependency. We are not helping anyone if the pattern is one of dependency and teaching them to rely on the State. Self-reliance self-responsibility working for a living is the best thing that any family can do for their fortunes and for their children. This is a Government that will support them.I just want to highlight a couple of the ways the Budget has helped areas like the one that I represent because I think that often when we look at the big packages and the national approach we lose some of the detail of the very real things that this Budget will do in parts of rural and provincial New Zealand like the electorate of Selwyn. I have to comment on the $100 million set aside in this Budget to rebuild the science facilities at Lincoln University which obviously were significantly damaged during the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011.This is the Budget and this is the Government that have set aside $100 million from the proceeds of the mixed-ownership model to make sure that Lincoln University gets back on its feet and I welcome it. As part of the $200 million - plus spending on new school facilities I am very proud that Rolleston in my electorate is already having its third primary school built an integrated Christian school opened another new primary school in planning and a high school on its way. This is the Government that is making that funding happen.I was also delighted to see the announcement in the Budget around the regional research centre recognising that some of the best innovation in this country is not happening in the cities; it is happening in regional and rural New Zealand. Funding that sort of regional research centre will do two things. One it will create jobs and activity in the regions. And two it will show that the Government recognises that some of the most innovative parts of New Zealand are in the regions and that we respect and want to support that and this is a Budget that certainly does that.Finally let me end my contribution talking about the funding in the Budget for the extension of the Ultra-fast Broadband Initiative and the regional broadband initiative. This is a Budget that puts $360 million more into our investment making a total Government investment of over $2 billion. This is the Government that will deliver high-speed high-quality broadband to as many New Zealanders as we possibly can because that is the foundation for all of the services that we need in the future—social cultural economic and Government services. It is the digital highway that will really enable our small towns and our communities to flourish.The extension of the Ultra-fast Broadband Initiative will see another 200000 New Zealanders access absolutely world-leading connectivity infrastructure. I am incredibly excited by that. We are going to see some of the smallest towns in New Zealand get switched on and opened up in a way that we will not have seen since the railways were first rolled out since we took electricity into some of the communities. That is exciting. I am excited by that. I am proud of it. There is a reason that New Zealand is held up internationally in terms of the success of our broadband programme. Around the world you have got companies like Alcatel-Lucent saying New Zealand is a country that has got this right and that this is a model for the rest of the world and this is the Government that enabled it. I am very proud to commend the Budget to the House.JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East):Malo soifua talofa lava. The National Government has repeatedly stated that it is improving the economy. The Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister claim that Budget 2015 delivers to those who are in hardship but the people of Manukau East along with many other ordinary hard-working Kiwis are falling further behind. Their ability to live with dignity to support their families well and to see their children flourish is being affected negatively by this Government’s failure to deliver on its promises.The curtain has dramatically been drawn back and this Government’s Budget reveals only that there is hardly anything there for ordinary hard-working Kiwi families. For hard-working families the cupboard is bare. The Budget surplus that was promised by this Government is not there. The promise of a 150000 increase in the number of jobs and higher wages has not been reached. The promise of no new taxes has been broken—we now have three sneaky new taxes. The promise of more affordable houses has been broken and hard-working New Zealanders are losing their KiwiSaver kick-start incentive to save for their future. This has been a Budget of broken promises and there is not even anything in this Budget for the high and ever-increasing rents for families.Aotearoa New Zealand’s poor vulnerable children do not choose the parents whom they have. They do not choose their country or the neighbourhood they are born into and they do not choose their race or their religion. In fact if they had been born into another OECD country they would probably be less likely to be born into poverty. Having so many thousands of children—over 250000 kids—grow up in poverty is really expensive for all of us as taxpayers. Child poverty is really expensive in the long run for us all and it is an issue we should address in a comprehensive and planned way. The lost productivity extra health costs and law and order costs—to name but a few—add up to millions and millions of dollars per year. For far too long the Government has allowed the level of child poverty to remain really high. The reason or justification if any is given at all is often that action to address child poverty is too expensive. But inaction as done by Budget 2015—with a few tweaks here and there and a fiddle at the margins—completely misses the other side of the equation which is the fact that the cost to all of us in society is much too expensive. Inaction and a lack of comprehensive action to address child poverty has its costs.Good things better outcomes in life are worth paying for. I believe that having food shelter—a house—and investment in early childhood education in order to get kids ready for school and education in an equitable and fair way are things that all children should have. This is something that should be of a higher priority instead of corporate welfare and tax breaks. Why is it that National can afford tax breaks of over $3 billion since it has been in Government thus far and it is already promising tax cuts for 2017 even though it cannot even balance the books right now? Why is it that the Government is wasting $26 million on a flag referendum that most New Zealanders say is a waste of money and yet in the same breath it is saying that we cannot afford to make sure that every child is fed and every child is housed or to invest in a comprehensive way in our children who are the future of our country?A key driver of child poverty is the public policies that we have. We will know when the Government is actually addressing child poverty because when it does we will actually see that it will apply principles of inclusivity and it will have principles of non-discrimination which will help protect our children from poverty as equally well as they protect our elders from poverty. Child poverty matters to the Labour Party. Child poverty matters to me as a mother and it matters to my electorate and to the rest of New Zealand. Our children deserve to be treated fairly and they deserve to be given equal opportunities.A responsible Government would be a Government that actually has a plan—a plan to competently address the long-term challenges that New Zealand faces a plan to lay the foundations for a sustainable and healthy future and a plan that would grow incomes and invest in a productive and diverse economy. This Budget has been long on promises and short on solutions. It is a Budget that contains nothing significant for diversifying the economy or for supporting our manufacturers and our exporters or for developing the skills that our workers will need in the new economy. Growth has now passed its peak and it is expected to halve by 2019 and not reaching surplus at the peak of the economic cycle is a huge failure by this Government. It makes a mockery of National members’ claim that they are good economic managers.Our Prime Minister John Key in his open letter to New Zealanders after the election promised: “Over the next two years we expect to see about 150000 jobs created.” The National Government will fall short on this promise by 60000 jobs and it has pushed the date of delivery back a few more years—yet another broken promise. Also in John Key’s open letter to New Zealanders after the election he promised: “Over the next three years we expect the average wage to move from $55000 to $62000 …”. The Budget shows that the Government will fall short by $3000 on its wages promise. In fact we are unlikely to even get to the promised wage level until 2019—in another 4 years.Manukau East in South Auckland which is the wonderful electorate that I represent is a young electorate. The median age in Manukau East is 29 years. The national median age is 37 years and one-third of the people living in Manukau East are under the age of 20. Many are on low and limited incomes. In order to get ahead and to contribute to the future of New Zealand they need properly funded education correctly targeted skills training jobs to go to that pay decent wages and the ability to save for the future.New Zealand used to be the land that led the world with the lowest unemployment rates in the OECD. This was under Helen Clark and the last Labour-led Government. Today we rank 13th and the general situation in my electorate is compounded by it having one the highest unemployment rates in the country. This Budget will not fix that. The Government is failing to act on jobs and wages for ordinary everyday New Zealanders.We have heard the other side trumpeting the fact that for people on a benefit who have children receiving $25 extra a week will make a huge difference. Well it will make some difference but I would not call it a huge difference. Although an increase in benefit levels for those with children is good news those who are working with children and families and who have Working for Families will receive only $12 per week. This makes working families relatively worse off than when this Budget was announced. For families the Government will claw back this $25 through reduced accommodation supplements. The Budget offers no firm pathway out of poverty and the $25 a week cannot—it cannot—fix 7 years of neglect and the mismanagement of our economy.Cutting the $1000 KiwiSaver kick-start initiative demonstrates the absolutely short-term thinking that is typical of this National Government and this Budget. This cut will detrimentally penalise our young people who are going to be less able to get ahead and to save for their future. In 2011 the Prime Minister promised to retain the $1000 kick-start for new KiwiSaver members as it was at the time. The Government has now cut it entirely—yet another broken promise. Now around 500000 people mainly young people and children will miss out as a result of this cut.This Government is wandering aimlessly with absolutely no long-term plans for our economic future. It has failed to deliver a Budget surplus for 7 years now. We pay millions per day in interest because the Government cannot get the books into balance or deliver a Budget surplus and it is continuing to fail to meet the needs of New Zealand families. The Government’s latest Budget might be clever in a political sense as it has robbed Peter to pay Paul but having a collection of short-term jabs and a few high-profile targets does not a comprehensive strategy for the future make. Thank you.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs):This Budget shows what New Zealand can do after 7 years of a strong stable Government led by John Key Bill English and this National Government. We see great growth in this economy—nearly 3 percent is projected for the next 4 years which is one of the fastest levels of growth in the OECD. We have seen a jobs boom in New Zealand with 194000 jobs created in this economy since 2011. That impacts countless thousands of lives of families across this nation who have had access to work and the dignity of work. We expect another 150000 jobs to be created in this economy over the next 4 years. We see optimism dynamism and enthusiasm in this economy and in this country.This Budget has shown that we also have the ability to help the most vulnerable thanks to the prudent management of the economy with a $790 million package for the poorest families in New Zealand. It shows that this Government is managing this country for everyone. It shows that we recognise that there are families genuinely in need in this economy and we can help them out. Some people—and we just heard it in the latest speech by Jenny Salesa—think that we did that because it is politically clever. That is not the point at all. We have done it because it is the right thing to do in this country. We have done it because thanks to the prudent management of this economy over the past few years we do have the resources to help those who are most in need. We do it because it is the right thing to do.At the same time we expect responsibility back from those we help. This Budget has talked about solo parents being available for 20 hours of work once their youngest is 3 and they need to reapply each year. Again we do that not because we want to make life difficult; we do it because we genuinely believe that the best thing you can do for families is to encourage them back to work. We do it because again it is the right thing to do. We have had decades of just giving people money no questions asked as long as you like and no understanding of the dependence that it has developed over decades. This Government wants to do better and understands that it is important for the families of this country that we do do better and that we encourage people to get back to work. That is why I am so enthusiastic about this Budget.We have seen an interesting survey come out from Statistics New Zealand that again demonstrates the progress that has been made over these past 6 years. We have had this review the general social survey showing that families who say they have enough money to live on has increased from just over 50 percent in 2008 to nearly 63 percent last year. That is a significant improvement over a short period of time. We have seen families who say that they do not have enough money to live on dropping from over 15 percent in 2008 down to 12 percent in 2014. We will see that the extra $25 a week that will be delivered through this Budget will also help. That is showing the progress we are making.We constantly hear history lessons in this Budget debate from the other side. They talk about 9 years of surpluses. They need to read and understand that there were 8 years of surpluses yes and good luck to them. At the start of the first term of the Labour Government they were reasonably disciplined but the final year is what counts. They left a massive deficit for this economy. Conditions count. Yes we inherited the global financial crisis and we inherited the Christchurch earthquakes. Yes we could have slashed and burnt and got back to surplus faster but we judged that the best thing for the economy was to set a clear path back to surplus to manage things carefully and to be disciplined with our spending.When we talk about disciplined spending we just have to look at this graph here that demonstrates in the last 5 years of the previous Labour Government billions and billions of dollars of extra spending was poured into each Budget. In the last Budget in 2008 there was $7 billion of new spending in 1 year whereas this Government has been so much more disciplined averaging well less than $1 billion a year of new spending—$1 billion this year but about $600 million or $700 million on average. It is that extended period of a disciplined Government seven Budgets in a row that has led us to this good strong position that we are in today.I also heard on the radio when I was driving around town a couple of days ago one commentator saying that this Budget reflects a left-wing Government. What a load of nonsense that was. What we have seen here is that strong disciplined spending has reduced core Government expenditure from nearly 34 percent in 2008 down to 30 percent a very significant drop in the size of overall Government. We have actually got control over the size of the Government. We are reducing it. We are focusing it on actually doing the job well. The outcome is leaving a larger slice of the economy to the private sector and job creators.I also want to reflect on the biggest issue in my area where I come from the Epsom electorate which has been the Auckland housing market and the rapid growth in prices that we have seen there recently. I hear every day lots of speculation and lots of rumours about what is going on. There is some concern and some Opposition scaremongering talking about every other country coming in. The Opposition seems to be very anti-migrants in some areas which is interesting again. Going back to that survey that I just referred to before about three-quarters of New Zealanders are very comfortable with people of different ethnicities and migrants coming in and living next to them. Most New Zealanders are very tolerant and welcoming of new people. We are naturally concerned about what is influencing the Auckland housing market. It is a serious matter. That is why this Government has put a huge amount of focus on that in the last few years working with Auckland Council to try to free up more land for the building of houses is the best thing we can do. We are trying to reform the Resource Management Act. I only wish some of the Opposition parties would get in there and support us New Zealand First included.This Budget has brought in new measures such as requiring IRD numbers or the equivalent from overseas buyers and new buyers when purchasing extra property and that for the first time will give us a good clear understanding of what exactly is going on in the Auckland market. It will help the Inland Revenue Department to enforce the current tax law which shows that if you are buying and selling property with the intention of trading then you do pay tax in this country. We are extending that making it clear putting a brightline test in place and giving the Inland Revenue Department the resources to police that. That is an important step to deal with the demand for an important issue. We have considered these things carefully and we are making good progress. The Budget also refers to extending Crown land available for building new houses in Auckland.This Budget is also about building a more competitive and international economy. One of the areas that I am responsible for is the New Zealand Business Number. We are investing $12 million there to provide a unique identifier for businesses so that Kiwi businesses do not have to go out and constantly update information with a plethora of different Government departments. It is just one small way in which we are helping New Zealand businesses get ahead.The other thing that I want to refer to is that it is important that we have strong financial markets to give the capital resources for businesses to grow and that is why we continue to invest strongly in the Financial Markets Authority and why we are reviewing the Financial Advisers Act which I announced today and outlined the details of.We are also focused on improving the living standards of all New Zealanders and that is the focus of the Business Growth Agenda. It is the focus of the Better Public Services policy so that people get quality resources in health and education and safer communities through a good and effective police force and justice system. It is also about trying to keep control of the costs of everything and that is why good strong competition laws are so important to the economy. That is why this year we will be reviewing section 36 of our competition law which relates to the misuse of market power. This is an important element of making sure that the New Zealand economy is competitive so that New Zealand living standards can be maintained. And so this is a great Budget. It confirms 7 years of good solid stable sensible Government in New Zealand and we are starting to see the fruits of that. I commend it to the House. Thank you.PITA PARAONE (NZ First):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Talofa lava. I preface my presentation tonight by acknowledging our Pacific Island relatives. Given the contribution that they have made to the industrial development of our country I think that they would be very disappointed in the Budget particularly as it affects them and the amount that has been allocated for them. Just over $8.8 million has been allocated to the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs and of course one of the things that was mentioned in the Budget was that there will be a name change to the department. I just wonder how much that will cost and whether or not the funding involved in that change of name could have been better utilised in terms of the development of that community.I also want to make the point that there was a programme running in Auckland where they previously had $1.1 million allocated. This Budget provides only $50000 because it is seen as the end of the programme. But I believe that there is need for such a programme and it should be maintained but that has not been recognised in this year’s Budget. I suppose we should not be surprised because given the debate so far—particularly from that side of the House—no mention has ever been made of that part of our community. They talk about diversity and the need to get on with the rest of our fellow man but in terms of this Budget reflecting the needs of that community it is very limited.I now want to move on to the main part of my contribution to this debate tonight and that is in the area of Māori affairs. On Budget day we heard from the Minister for Māori Development and the Leader of the Māori Party Te Ururoa Flavell just how much the Māori Party had contributed to this year’s Budget and the fact it was were responsible for a lot of the funds that have been allocated in the direction of Māori affairs. But a closer analysis of the figures will show that there is not really any new money. What the Government has done is it has just moved the different allocations around and the Māori Party told us it was responsible for an increased level of funding for the Māori affairs portfolio.One of the elements of the contribution to that part of the Budget was the reference to Whānau Ora. Any discussion on this part of the Budget without a mention of Whānau Ora would be very remiss. So I want to remind this House that of the $137 million already allocated to this programme $40 million has been allocated towards administration. I want to say that when the officials came before the Māori Affairs Committee and were questioned about this programme we asked what the major issue facing Whānau Ora was. The response was: to inform people as to what it was. After 5 years in existence that was the only response that they could come up with. And in spite of a damming report from the Office of the Auditor-General what does the Budget provide? Another $50 million. Another $50 million for a programme that although it does have its merits—I will be the first to say that—I think the way that it has been administered and managed certainly does bring the programme into disrepute. What it does is pass the responsibility of Government to service providers out in the community and therein lies the difficulty. I wonder about the value of this Budget giving further funding to a programme that clearly is in disarray. I am not being critical of those service providers out there who are clearly making the best effort to deliver something that the Government is responsible for.I just want to remind the Minister for Māori Development and the Māori Party that although they might jump up and down with glee about being able to sit at the table at the end of the day it depends on where you are sitting at that table—whether it is underneath or at the head of the table. I would suggest that the Māori Party is certainly not sitting at the head of the table notwithstanding the joy that it might have in terms of the level of funding that it has been able to get out of this Budget. Almost $220 million—it sounds a lot but when we have a look at the way that the Government has split it up one needs to question some of the decisions that have been made in this area.I want to comment about the allocation made to specific Māori Potential programmes including the Māori Registration Service Māori Wardens Project the New Zealand Māori Council and the Māori Women’s Development Fund. I want to say that when New Zealand First was part of the Treasury benches it was able to get $7 million alone just for the Māori wardens. All of a sudden we see in this year’s Budget—and of course it has headed a plan that is working—that that level of funding has been reduced. I just wonder why that is the case given that the Māori wardens are one of the few groups within the Māori community that have been very successful in caring for their community—with nothing.I also want to point out that if what the leader of the Māori Party said—that it had done so much for the Māori community—is true then why is it that after the 8 years that it has been associated with the Government in power Māori make up the worst figures in all of the social indices: unemployment poor housing and low incomes? To me that suggests that the Māori Party is not as cracked up as it would like us to believe.The other thing is the question that it has had to provide funding for rangatahi Māori suicide—just over $2 million. If we have to provide funding for that sort of issue then that begs the question: what has the Māori Party been doing for the Māori community? Why is that suicide rates amongst young Māori are the highest in this country? I have got to ask that question of the Māori Party because if it says that it is that good then why is it that we are having such a poor—[Interruption].The other thing is that the Māori Party talks about having gained $35.3 million in investment for Māori housing. I can recall in the old Department of Māori Affairs days that each region was able to build 60 new homes every year. This $35 million that the party talks about for housing is going to be over a number of years. So what has happened? Is it because the predominant party in the Government has overtaken the Māori Party and it is not as effective as it would like us to believe? Although the Government may talk about how good this Budget it is at the end of the day it ends up the wrong colour: red red red. Kia ora.PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau):Tēnā koe.[Samoan text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker and thank you for this opportunity. Can I take this opportunity to highlight a significant day for Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei the people of Tāmaki Makaurau and indeed Māori in its entirety.Yesterday 25 May marked 37 years since my whānau were evicted from Bastion Point after 507 days of protest occupation. The National Government under the Muldoon administration at the time was shameless—I say shameless—in its attempt at a land-grab of prime real estate. I am proud to say that under a Labour-led Government the Lange administration agreed with the Waitangi Tribunal recommendations and Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei are still there today.Why do I bring up this marker in our history? I bring this up because it is an important moment and because 37 years on under a National Government many of the people of Tāmaki Makaurau find themselves still in a desperate position. There are also parallels that can be drawn between the Muldoon administration and this administration. As a result of poor fiscal management by this Government we see nothing in this Budget to really help the hard-working people of Tāmaki Makaurau.In my maiden speech in this House I spoke about how the backyards of family houses in Tāmaki Makaurau will be the playground of property developers and land speculators. Let me add to that list foreign investors. Nowhere in this Budget do the people of Tāmaki Makaurau get a sense of relief. Nowhere in this Budget are young or first-time homebuyers given any hope of entering the housing market that they long to enter into.I dare not claim any Nostradamus abilities here because what the people of Tāmaki Makaurau have known for the past 7 years is that there is a crisis something that this Government has ignored for far too long. I believe it has come to a head and it is time for some real opportunities some real plans and some real vision to go into Tāmaki Makaurau to ease the housing crisis.Can I turn the attention of this House to the paltry sum of $500000 allocated to addressing Treaty and contemporary claims matters. This means very little to the many claimants who currently have longstanding claims with the Waitangi Tribunal an organisation that is already currently under-resourced in dealing with true reconciliation for the people of this country—reconciliation that the Māori people in particular deserve—to build a stronger bicultural New Zealand leading into the future.Some might ask: well what is the Labour Party doing about this? What are our plans in the future? Can I first congratulate my staff who work extremely hard in Tāmaki Makaurau to pick up the pieces of those families and those whānau who are left behind in this Budget—those whānau who despite the paltry sum of $25 being offered to beneficiaries in the latest Budget are still being left behind in Tāmaki Makaurau which is far too expensive for them to live in. It is a place that they have called home for many many years. All of a sudden they find themselves being pushed out into the regions. I wonder whether this is the true regional development plan that this Government has—to force all of those families out of Auckland to leave Auckland to foreign investors and to price the people of Aotearoa New Zealand out of the housing market and force them into the regions.Can I also speak on behalf of Tāmaki Makaurau and say to this Government that shifting Māori Television to Rotorua is not a sound regional growth development plan. I stand by the people of Tāmaki Makaurau and insist that Māori Television stays in Tāmaki Makaurau. It has been looked after for the past 10 years and I hope that this tradition of looking after Māori Television continues long into the future within the boundaries of Tāmaki Makaurau.A responsible Government that holds the Treasury benches would not deliver a deficit to this country time and time again. I have already spoken about the blowout in the debt that matches in fact exceeds that of the Muldoon administration. At this point in time I cannot see a plan and given that this Government is very good at talking to itself I daresay that the rest of New Zealand cannot see a long-term plan for this country.I am concerned as a young parent to know that our families will be forced I believe back into the workforce too early. We know what the research says. It says that the first 5 years of a child’s life are the most important. Sure more money into the household will help those families. I agree with that. So let us give proper growth to wages that will benefit our people. Do not force them back into the workforce far too early where families as already pointed out by my esteemed colleagues who are stuck in a cycle of poverty at the moment just cannot seem to get their heads above water.These are of course huge concerns to the Labour Party and we are committed to making sure that we keep this Government accountable—accountable to the Budget it has delivered. Some might argue it is a “Claytons Budget” and I am not referring to my esteemed colleague in the New Zealand First Party. What I am saying is that this is fake and it is false. We have heard many other words to describe this Budget and I believe them to be true. I believe that the people of Tāmaki-makau-rau will not be better off under this Budget they cannot see a brighter future for themselves or their whānau and these are of course concerns right across the country.When I say “right across the country” it is well known in this House that I am also from the rural heartland of Northland. I am from the rural heartland of Northland and I can tell you that after years of that seat being held by a National member still nothing has been done up there. There is still no clear plan for the people of Northland to grow. Some people might argue a Ngāpuhi settlement might do that. But I doubt that. I doubt that because in this Government’s rush to settle many of the claims—and you will hear Government members boasting and beating their chests about how many claims the Government has settled—what it does not realise is that it leaves a wake of destruction behind it and one that does not recognise whānau one that does not recognise hapū. The Government thinks that if you pour enough money into the situation it will fix itself. That is not the case.I also have a little chuckle regularly when I consider the recent by-election in Northland and the pledge to make two-lane bridges and the Government is going to fix up 10 single-lane bridges. Yet if it is serious about tourism the one bridge it did not promise to fix was the one-lane bridge in Waitangi the biggest port for tourism in Northland. There was no promise to develop that bridge to allow more numbers to access our beautiful Bay of Islands. If the Government was serious about that it would fix that bridge. But what that tells me is that Government members are actually scared. What they are scared of is that on every Waitangi Day they will see an increase in foot traffic protesting at what this Government is doing—whether they be Māori whether they be Pākehā or whether they be from the Pacific Islands or from any other place in the world. We are going to beat that bridge protesting against what this Government is doing to this country leading us into nowhere into the abyss. Fa‘afetai.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. Andrew Bayly—5 minutes.ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua):Compassionate conservativism—this is what this Budget is all about. It is about the chance of creating a better New Zealand where every New Zealander can get a job and can live in a warm house in the comfort of a secure community with the knowledge that their children are going to get a great education. Unless we continue upskilling New Zealanders and creating higher-paying meaningful jobs the chances of improving New Zealand as a country are limited.We can take no pride in the fact that there is a group that feels disconnected. This Budget is a continuum where this Government has constantly put the individual and family at the heart of the issue. This Budget addresses some of the perceived inequities. I am proud of the initiatives that this Government is making to strengthen families and children. The $790 million child hardship package to assist beneficiaries and working families is well timed. Obviously the rate increases of up to $25 per week after tax will not address all the financial pressures some of our families face. It is however an important step. It should not be understated that it represents the first real increase in 43 years.When that is considered in the context of the other recent announcements this Government has made it represents yet another step in a range of well-considered initiatives. Specifically I am talking about increasing paid parental leave to 16 weeks which is going to increase to 18 weeks next year; extending payments to primary caregivers recognising that there are over 12000 Kiwi kids being looked after by members of a wider family group; and increasing the parental tax credit from $150 to $220 per week. In the area of health the free visits to general practitioners and free prescriptions for under-13-year-olds effective this year together with the target to have 95 percent of our toddlers and youngsters immunised all mean that our children will be healthy. Healthy children learn better. Healthy children get ahead faster in their schools and in their education.We have also invested more in education. Of particular note is the investment that we have made into special needs children and their education. We are currently spending over $500 million per year and this Budget commits an additional $63 million to this important area. We have also put another $75 million into early childhood education. We are committed to achieving that ambitious target of getting the participation rate up from 96 percent where it is at the moment to 98 percent. This is important to create a dynamic learning environment and a safe haven for our youngsters.This Government’s support for families goes further. Every New Zealander knows that the family home is the foundation of a secure childhood. Our $280 million HomeStart package is an important ingredient in assisting Kiwi families to buy their own homes. We do want Kiwis to have their own homes to manage their own homes and to actually control their own destinies. Even though we have insulated in excess of 300000 homes this Budget goes further in committing a further $35 million over the next 4 years to improving housing outcomes for Māori.Every one of us as either a parent uncle or aunt or grandparent wants the best for our children. We are prepared to make sacrifices and sometimes even difficult choices but we want to make sure that our children are healthy happy and well educated and that their future holds opportunity for optimism. The changes in this Budget give our children the possibility of a better start. This Government has understood the importance of this. This is a caring compassionate Government.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Stuart Smith—5 minutes.STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura):It is a great pleasure to put a contribution towards this Budget debate and might I say before I start that last week was a lot of fun. It was my first Budget and my first time in extended urgency and to have all the people lined up on our benches on Saturday night—it was really great to be a part of that and it was a great moment. I look forward to many more.I want to focus tonight on ultra-fast broadband and the roll-out of the Rural Broadband Initiative. To my colleague the Hon Amy Adams I say that this is a fantastic initiative. I think that the importance of it to rural New Zealand and to New Zealand as a whole has gone past many people and I would like to just make sure that we dwell on it.Hon Amy Adams: Especially those in New Lynn who say we shouldn’t care about the regions.STUART SMITH: That is right. This is $360 million of funding targeted to deal with ultra-fast broadband rural broadband and mobile black spots. If we take those one at a time—where I live in Blenheim I have just recently seen a piece that was prepared in the New Zealand Heraldand in the local Marlborough Expressabout a deputy principal at Marlborough Boys’ College who has shifted down from Auckland. He realised that reaching his Kiwi dream of having a good house in a good place to live in Auckland was going to be very difficult for him. He looked around the country and decided to settle in Blenheim. So he and his wife moved down there. They had no connections to Blenheim. They have now ended up owning a much higher-quality house than they would have been able to buy in Auckland at a much lower price with a smaller mortgage. They have a very short drive to work—Andrew Bayly: And a great place.STUART SMITH: —and a great place to live. But of course one of the things that those people will be looking for is to enjoy the connectivity that they can enjoy in a major metropolitan area. Fortunately Blenheim is one of those towns that is now fully fibred and so they are able to enjoy that. That is one of the things that people look to when they make a decision about where they are going to live. This is a major opportunity for rural New Zealand provincial New Zealand. People are struggling in Auckland trying to buy houses and we are trying to deal with that but in the meantime there is a wonderful opportunity for regional New Zealand. All you have to do is put your hand up and tell a good story.Moving on to rural broadband farms and rural businesses today are modern businesses that absolutely rely on good connectivity. It is not just internet banking although that is a very important part of it. Farmers have had to deal with satellite internet connections in the most part in quite isolated areas. Unfortunately with the security systems that banking requires on the internet and the way that satellites work with bursts of information going up and down in most cases it simply will not work on a banking system. So that does not work for them. That is not the answer. They are working on those satellite systems but they are very expensive. The Rural Broadband Initiative offers a really good way for solutions to be found locally and I had the pleasure on Monday night of attending two meetings in my electorate Kaikōura around putting a bid together for a Marlborough solution alongside the contestable fund for the Rural Broadband Initiative. This is really a great example of a community getting together and working together for a local initiative to solve a local problem.And we can do it in a very cost-effective way. I can give you an example. In the southern part of the electorate the Āmuri Basin had the same problem and a local guy got sick of trying to deal with it through the normal channels so he got off his backside and started Amuri.net. This provides high-speed broadband via wireless right around the Āmuri Basin and it has extended it out to much greater areas than that. That is a local solution for a local problem but a very modern solution with high-speed internet. That technology is moving on as we speak. I heard yesterday from a local person in Marlborough. They are putting together a package for a 14-home subdivision where they can provide 1.2 gigabit via wireless. I hope in the near future to hold an event here in the Beehive to demonstrate that technology which is a major step forward.So fibre is the ultimate but it is not suitable everywhere—but there are other solutions. So it is with great pleasure that I commend what is a very commendable Budget to the House.EUGENIE SAGE (Green):Well National has called Budget 2015 a plan that is working. It might be working for some New Zealanders like Fonterra and the big dairy farmers who stand to benefit from $100 million in subsidies for irrigation and more water pollution. It might be benefiting and be a plan that is working for all the offshore speculators who are free to buy up residential properties in Auckland. It might be working for the big corporates that have bought off shares in our energy companies. But Budget 2015 and National’s economic policies are not working for our climate and they are not working for our environment. National is building an economy that works only for New Zealanders who already have a lot.National has failed to reach a surplus this year but even worse is the environmental deficit that it is creating for present and future generations. The environment did not get very much attention at all in the Minister of Finance’s Budget speech and nor did the greatest challenge of our time: climate change. Our national icon the kiwi was briefly mentioned but even that had a strong element of public relations spin and Budget day smoke and mirrors. The much-vaunted $11.2 million that the Minister is directing to the grandly titled “Save our Iconic Kiwi” initiative is being funded from the Department of Conservation’s natural heritage programme. It is not new money and that programme has actually been cut by $7 million from $166 million budgeted this year to $159 million in 2015-16. More funds should certainly be dedicated to saving the kiwi but that should not be at the expense of the 2800 other species that are threatened with extinction. But that is what National is doing because it is cutting conservation funding not significantly increasing it.The Department of Conservation desperately needs more operational funding and it has not got it. In the post-election briefing to the Minister the department said: “effective pest control is the single biggest determinant of ecosystem health and biodiversity loss or gain. Less than 25 percent of conservation land receives interventions on key threats with around 8 percent receiving possum rat and stoat control.”—other than in the Battle for our Birds year. So we have the kiwi population declining. We need a significant investment in conservation and in more pest control but that is not what the Government has provided. That is of course in total contrast to its spendthrift approach and its $46 million in subsidies to the oil industry! And what are we seeing with the Department of Conservation? It is actually having to reduce the area under sustained possum control from a million hectares in the current year to 785000 hectares in the coming financial year. That is right—reduce the area subject to sustained possum control. That is despite the fact that the department’s own advice to the Minister said that that is the key issue that needs more funding. And most of this kiwi money only comes in 2017 and 2018 so it is not an immediate programme.What have we heard today? We have heard that the population of Māui’s dolphins is declining. It has fallen from 55 adults to an estimated 43 to 47 adult individuals. Māui’s dolphins could be extinct by 2029. The marine mammal sanctuary needs to be extended. There needs to be proper protection from fishing-related mortalities there but we are not seeing measures in the Budget to assist species like Māui’s dolphin.Then we go on to the climate which was barely mentioned in the Budget. I have been to two of the Government’s consultation meetings on New Zealand’s target for emission reduction. Everyone who spoke at those meetings did so with aroha with passion and with information. They were talking about our future for themselves and those who come after us. They want real action and real targets. There was a strong sense of disappointment that the Government has not fostered a strong national conversation about climate change and about what individuals whānau and families can actually do to reduce our emissions. It is not just at the consultation meetings where people have been calling for action. The Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust produced a report this month that showed that 87 percent of New Zealanders are concerned about climate change and want action. So the Budget is very disappointing in its failure to engage on the climate.The Government has certainly taken a small step towards a capital gains tax to try to discourage property speculation but it has done absolutely nothing to put a real price on carbon. It has gutted the emissions trading scheme and the Budget has nothing in it to stop Fonterra continuing to put in place new coal-fired boilers in its new plants like at Darfield and in its expanded plants like at Studholme. All we are getting in the consultation document is the Government making excuses on what the cost of real action will be and making excuses as to why our emissions at 17 tonnes are more than double the global average. It is really disappointing that we have not seen in this Budget measures to help us make the transition to a low-carbon economy. Instead we get the Government talking about the cost. As someone at the Christchurch meeting said: “The Government talks about cost but what cost do you put on the collapse of civilisation with a 4 degree rise in global temperatures? Please Mr Groser don’t talk to me about cost; talk to me about my children.” This Government is not investing in future generations. It is not investing in protecting our planet and our climate.There has been a complete failure of imagination in the Budget and in the Government’s whole approach to climate change. Instead of moving out of industries like dairy it is focusing on encouraging and promoting industries like dairy and oil which just increase our emissions rather than reduce them. The Government is missing the chance to create new jobs in industries that can help us make that transition. It is missing the chance to invest in renewables it has not got a plan for positioning us so that we are in a good position for the fast uptake of new technology like electric vehicles and there is no real plan of transition. By spending up on motorways and by weakening the Resource Management Act to encourage urban sprawl it is missing the chance to have compact liveable cities where it is easy to take a bike to take a bus to get on the train and to have new residential developments clustered around public transport routes. It is missing the opportunity to improve the health of the New Zealand population and to reduce obesity by encouraging more active transport. Yes we have $35 million in this Budget being spent on urban cycleways but that is a pittance compared with the hundreds of millions being spent on new motorways.We can rework our economy for a better cleaner future that is innovative and that provides opportunities for everyone but that is not what National’s plan is about. The Green Party wants prosperity for everyone. We want to make that transition to a zero-carbon economy and we have got a plan to do that. If it had been a Green Budget we would have seen a research and development tax credit.Debate interrupted.