Mitchell Clayton: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 31 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11490. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I started nice and early. Ronald Reagan’s quote is a very famous quote indeed and I think that there are a lot of National Party members out there who feel the same way: they have not left the National Party; the National Party has indeed left them. Do not panic though. The National Party of the 1950s 1960s 1970s and 1980s is a long way away from where the National Party that is in Government today stands.As I travel around this country talking to constituents on a range of issues one question that keeps coming up is “What do we pay our taxes for?” which is actually quite a good question when you think about it because what we used to pay our taxes for and what we pay taxes for now are two different things. I am talking about a time when our country prided itself on being a country with a strong economy zero unemployment low crime and record homeownership figures—a time when we were considered to be one of the best countries in the world to live. I am talking about a time when this country understood the importance of State houses and knew that the Government was the best organisation to provide and maintain those State houses not some foreign-controlled corporation. This was a time when we had watertight State housing and when more houses were being built in a single year than—can current Government members honestly put their hands on their hearts and say they are doing a better job?This was a time when we owned our own banks we owned our own insurance companies and we owned our power stations and our telecommunications a time when we saw education as an investment and we ensured that all New Zealanders had an opportunity to further educate themselves free of charge and a time when heavy investment was put into rail as a priority over roads and our Defence Force was well-equipped and ready to defend our sovereign nation. This was a time when health and law and order were never questioned because they were well enough resourced to not go without as we are currently seeing in today’s economy.So how does that segue into the state of the nation today and where does all of our hard-earned tax money go to? We have sold off our major banks. This Government refuses to bank with its very own Kiwibank preferring to bank with Westpac a foreign-owned bank instead. This is a time when our Government has sold off our power companies it has sold off our State Insurance it has sold off our telecommunications and who owns those now? Of course foreign-controlled organisations and corporations own them. State housing is now being sold off too. To whom? That is right it is being sold to foreign corporations because this Government—your National Party—is saying—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!CLAYTON MITCHELL: —that the foreign corporations are a better place for looking after social housing than the Government is. That is absolutely a living joke. We have got a Government triple-dipping when it comes to transportation too: taking road-user charges adding fuel tax and then putting on tolls to pay for new roads for profiteering long terms that more than pay for the original construction costs.What about the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement? We heard Mr Foss talking about it just a few moments ago. This is a conditional—and I underline that word—trade agreement written by foreign corporations not Governments for the complete and utter benefit of those foreign corporations where those companies can sue our Government under investor-State dispute settlement provisions if that foreign company feels that its profits are going to be marginalised by a democratic decision made by our Government. How is that democracy? This is not the National Party; this should be called the “International Party”. The next election campaign for this “International Party” should be “International Party: Working for Foreign Corporations”. That is a very good slogan actually. You can take that—it is free.This Government says that we cannot afford it when it comes to taking GST off food or paying 26 weeks’ paid parental leave for families with babies or spending money on bringing our State housing up to a reasonable code or a reasonable standard to live in. But this Government at the hands of the “International Party” can afford to pay $27 million on a flag referendum that nobody has asked for. It can afford to give $16 million to a Saudi businessman to build an abattoir in the Middle East that will not benefit New Zealanders one iota. It can afford to give a further $700 million to China to its infrastructure fund and I am prepared to debate that at another time. It can afford to give $1 billion to South Canterbury Finance shareholders to bail them out of the proverbial crap. Let us not hear any more affordability rhetoric from this Government in terms of this Budget. A Government is in my opinion like oxygen. It only becomes important when it is not there for the people. Thank you.