Roy Eric: Budget Debate 
Roy Eric: Budget Debate 
[Volume:639;Page:9570] 
ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 In case listeners out there in radioland are wondering what exactly is happening let me just refresh things for them. We are debating the Budget that was presented on Thursday of last week by Dr Michael Cullen. I have to say that it is not in my nature to be vitriolic and to be critical; I like looking at the positive in life. So I looked at this Budget to see what positive thing I could say about it. I can find one positive thing in this Budget and that is that it is a valedictory. It is one of the last Budgets that this Government will get to present. 
I want to talk about the directional vision of what a Budget should do. What is the road map that is laid out in this Budget? That is my question. We have gone through a variety of Budgets from this Government. We have had what I might say were aspirational goals set out. We get a speech at the start of each parliamentary term then we have a Budget that does not actually match that. It is very easy for anybody to come up with the rhetoric and say: “This is what we want to achieve. We want to be in the top half of the OECD.” That is a goal that National would identify with— 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Aspirational! 
ERIC ROY 
: No it is not aspirational as far as National is concerned. We know that if we want to continue to provide the services to continue to provide the opportunities for our young people and to continue to be a competitive nation in this global economy then we simply have to do better than we are doing. 
When I pick up this Budget and I look at it I say: “What does it have in it that will actually improve the lot of New Zealanders?”. When I look at this Budget I see a Budget that continues to create dependency. It is quite interesting. I looked in my old diary and 20 years ago today I was at the James Cumming Wing in Gore talking about a future for the lamb industry. We had a number of speakers and I chaired the function. About 600 irate farmers arrived and the topic was how we could get a $20 lamb. I remind members that the Government in power at the time was Labour again. Out there at the moment there is huge anguish across the primary production sector as issue after issue erodes the viability of what people in that sector are doing. In the primary sector we have the best product in the world be it fish trees dairy products deer sheep meat wool or whatever yet those people who are in a vital part of the New Zealand economy are struggling. 
If I look in this Budget what do I find? I find nothing there. Let me now draw an analogy that I think is quite significant. In the late 1980s we had supplementary minimum prices. That system was reviled by people all over New Zealand including the Opposition at the time because we were saying to our farmers: “You are now dependent on the Government because we need to pay you supplementary minimum prices.” Yet when Working for Families was brought in a name was chosen that was much more acceptable. It is called Working for Families but in essence it is no different from supplementary minimum prices. 
I am the first to admit that it is important that every sector of New Zealand is viable; that every sector is able to participate and do the things it wants to do. But this Government has chosen any form other than tax cuts or growing the economy to ensure the viability of families. The way it has done it has been by a Government handout. Why did we revile Government handouts to a productive sector in the 1980s—some 20 years ago—but today the Government is patting itself on the back? It has almost become inverted in its self-congratulation and adulation that Working for Families and dependency are great things yet it is killing the aspiration of the people. 
I ask what the aspiration of this Government should be. It has aspirational goals that it never meets. If we seriously want New Zealand to grow to feel good about itself and to have a sense of pride and achievement then it will not be achieved by making people dependent. Why would a Government want to make its citizens dependent upon it? It comes down to what the reaction might be at the ballot box; it is as simple as that. We have a Government that has said: “Let’s make as many New Zealanders as we can depend upon us.” If we look in this Budget we see a continuation of that theme. Yes there are some tax cuts—not the “chewing gum tax cut” but a tax cut to a very limited section in order to equate us with Australia. I applaud that but it does not go far enough and I will speak more about that in a minute. 
We need to make New Zealand families want to achieve more. As soon as we say that the top limit that people can climb to will be some sort of support from the Government then we kill off that aspiration. We are then giving a message quite loud and clear to the families of New Zealand that they need only to get to a certain point and we will top them up. There is no goal no aspiration to go on. Some 400000 families have now been made dependent through that. We now have a continuation of that policy with the Government saying that it will not only top up families but also it will make people save and it will make them save at the Government’s own bank—Kiwibank. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Whether you want to or not. 
ERIC ROY 
: It will make people do so whether or not they want to. It does not matter whether it is the best thing for them to do. People cannot now make decisions about whether it is good for them to pay off their mortgage whether it is better to spend some money on education or whether they want to spend a bit of money on research or whatever. People are not going to get an increase in wages. The Government is saying that this is what they will do. Employers throughout the country will now find that they cannot afford to give a wage increase because the Government has said the money is going into KiwiSaver for people’s future. It is a kind of retirement package. 
I know we should all save. I have a great story to tell of my own case. For whatever reason I started saving on a regular basis and I have managed to achieve in terms of the sum saved. Yes we should save but to take the decision away from people who may have a mortgage or who may have some other issues that they want to deal with and have the Government say that they will do that is taking away the aspirational goal that any individual might have. 
 In respect of the tax breaks that have theoretically been handed out for companies I say yes we should do that because it is important that we do not have Australia getting further away from us. But they should have been much wider and further across the board. To a degree I represent an area that is very dependent on primary production. Most of those people who are serviced out of Invercargill are in the farming sector; that is the viability and the wealth of that city. Most of those farmers are not in a company structure. They get no help out of this. In fact only about 15 percent of those people who own businesses have a kind of company structure. So this falls far short of encouraging the aspiration of actually doing better. 
This Budget does not have a road map. It does not have a road map that New Zealanders can identify with aspire to or be enthusiastic about. This Budget gives us a road map of increased dependency more bureaucracy increased compliance costs and more difficulty in doing business. It will drag us further down the OECD list. I have to say that this is not a Budget that will be causing any excitement anywhere in New Zealand particularly not in my electorate of Invercargill. The one good thing about it is that it is a valedictory Budget.