van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. This week is Budget week. It is the time when the Government tells us how much of your money it wants to spend and on what. Over the past few days the Government has drip-fed little details of how much will go to whom. The media has of course lapped it up and we've already seen them ask that inevitable question: who will be the biggest winners in this year's Budget? Will it be billions spent on subsidies for film companies or millions on jobs that nobody wants like the Jobs for Nature scheme which has been a complete failure? One group of people that I know will be watching are patients and their families the New Zealanders wondering will there be enough money in this year's Budget set aside for the medicines that they need to survive or live healthier lives—people with breast cancer blood cancer Crohn's and colitis spinal muscular atrophy. There are so many conditions.New Zealanders have access to fewer modern medicines than in 19 other comparable OECD countries. We have publicly funded the lowest number of modern medicines in the past decade. I suspect the Government will announce a funding increase for Pharmac and medicines this week as they did last year pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves for seeming wonderful and compassionate but they are not. Not only did they rule out funding from the review into our drug-buying agency Pharmac after ACT pushed them into a review they have had that review for months and patients are still in the dark. They haven't seen it. The Minister should release it to those patients desperate to get their hands on it.Any announcement this week is simply political theatre and it doesn't address the underlying issue. How have we fallen so far behind the rest of the world? Why can our cousins in Australia afford so many more medicines than us? It's because every Budget the Government and the media focus on who are the biggest winners who receives the biggest hand-outs. But if we keep thinking of wealth as a fixed pie that's divided up every Budget we will keep gradually declining down the world rankings. Instead we need to ask: who do we want to be as a country? Do we want to be a country with access to the same newer and modern medicines so New Zealanders can live longer healthier lives? The ACT Party says yes. So how is it that we have fallen behind the rest of the world and how do we change it?It comes down to culture. We need to be a country that says to Kiwis: if you work save invest and aspire for more you will be rewarded not punished. I spoke to a young kid last week about what he was going to do when he finished school. He said Engineering and then I'll move to Australia." His friend said the same but said that he'll move to the UK. I also had an email from a mother who said that she's moving her four kids to Canada because "anybody who works hard saves and budgets is just punished here". The Budget should give hope to that mother that if she strives for her family if she works hard she's not going to be fodder for a hand-out culture and that her kids can aspire for more. It also needs to create an environment that leads to more productive jobs with higher wages so that our best and brightest feel like they can have a future here. ACT's alternative Real Change Budget would deliver just that. We would reduce taxes make them more competitive to bring aspiration back. ACT's tax rates would be 17.5 percent up to $70000 and 28 percent from there. We'd reduce wasteful spending by cutting policies like the Jobs for Nature scheme which has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a job shortage. We've found billions of dollars of wasteful spending that we can cut. We need to make sure our spending is high quality our tax system is competitive and our regulatory environment is welcoming because that creates a more productive economy. Australia has a more productive economy. Their workers' wages have grown $6600 a year more than Kiwi workers' here since the Government took over. We would make it easier to invest in New Zealand. It's easier to invest in Myanmar and China than here. We would reintroduce 90-day trials. All of this would make New Zealand a more productive economy. That's the only way that we can fund more modern medicines. ACT's alternative budget takes on these issues that politicians run a mile from because they're scared of big bold change. The question is not whether we can afford big bold change; it's whether we can afford not to. Do we want to be a pretty island nation that people visit or one where people stay?"