Sepuloni Carmel: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 31 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11483. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I had scheduled to be here in Wellington on Saturday thinking that we would have work to do following the Government’s Budget announcement. But actually because the Budget was such a non-event we struggled to be here even till 12 o’clock on Friday. So I think the general public would be a little bit concerned about the fact that here they had these huge expectations of the Budget and were presented with nothing—and actually here we are supposed to be working on this big Budget on any of the announcements that might have come out of it and there was nothing. It was rather disappointing. I think the only highlight was—well actually it was my 39th birthday on Saturday and it was nice to be back in the electorate.National has failed to deliver not only for New Zealanders who are experiencing hardship but also middle New Zealand on issues that matter: housing health education and the economy. Budget 2016 does nothing to fix the housing crisis. It cuts health and education even further in real terms and sees middle New Zealand getting a smaller slice of the economy. The failure to meaningfully tackle the housing crisis tops off 8 years of failure from the National Government. A Labour Budget would have taken decisive action on housing boosted funding for health and education and ensured that middle New Zealand got its fair share of economic growth as well as addressing the hardship that many New Zealanders are experiencing.The fact that it was such a non-event of a Budget meant that what we have ended up with is an increase in costs to households. Because of National’s out-of-touch approach to Budget 2016 the reality is that households will pay more. Wages are not going up as quickly as inflation over the next 2 years. We already know this. Next year house prices are forecast to rise by 8 percent. Last year they rose at twice the rate that was forecast. Auckland’s first-home buyers are already spending more than half their income on mortgage repayments. Now they will have to pay more. Households will end up forking out more for insulation or heating after the Government cut back on insulation subsidies. Education costs are rising at 10 times the rate of inflation meaning that parents will pay more.I just mentioned there all the monetary costs. That does not even cover off the social costs that we as a country are going to have to pay. Talking about social costs I really want to move over to the Government’s social investment approach. What is this social investment approach? Let us just discuss this social investment approach a little bit more widely. Child Poverty Action Group had breakfast the day after the Budget was announced. Our social services across the country are very clear that this social investment approach is not working in any way. The social investment approach that we have from the National Government is about short-term cost saving rather than investing in people which will have long-term benefits. It really is about smaller Government and that is all it is about. Social investment should be about making sure that families are better off not just making sure that they come off benefit.In so many situations that we have seen people have come off benefit but have they gone on to do anything more that makes their family more successful or improves outcomes for their families? Actually that Government is not measuring that. National’s social investment approach views people as liabilities rather than as the important asset resources that they are. Social investment should not be about managing risk; it should be about investing in people. I am so sick of hearing the National Government going on about its so-called social investment approach.If we critique it a little bit more it is not social investment but rather targeting those labelled by National as fiscal drains. For example in Bill English’s Budget speech he picks on young parents saying that the average 19-year-old sole parent will spend 18 years on a benefit. We still cannot find where he got that information from. In fact I have had to put parliamentary questions in referring to Bill English’s quote to find out where he got that information from. I have worked with 19-year-old sole parents and I do not know of any of them who have stayed on benefit for a long term—particularly 18 years—so I really want to question some of the perceptions that the National Government is creating. This stigmatises young people and we have seen it not only with its so-called social investment approach and the labels that it puts on people including “fiscal drain” but also the other labels we have heard those members use like Bill English being quoted as referring to young people in New Zealand as “pretty damned hopeless” in relation to them being able to get into employment. What hope do our young people have when they have got a Government that has so little aspiration for these young people?In fact going back to some of National’s 2008 slogans we were supposed to have a brighter future under this National Government. It was supposed to be the party that was aspirational for New Zealand. Well we have not seen aspiration for middle New Zealand or those experiencing hardship. The only people it seems to have aspiration for are the mega-wealthy the people in the top 1 percent; those people who actually do not need any more help; those people who are doing OK by themselves but actually are probably doing a little bit better with help from their mates in the National Government.Going back to the social investment approach and critiquing that if we look at the testing that has been done around the package that it has introduced and we try to see whether or not there is any evidence of an approach to it at all we see that there has been no testing. So what we have here is a $652 million package that the Government is looking to implement when it has not tested it and there has been no critique of the design and members on that side of the House have no idea whether it will actually work. The measure of success of the social investment approach from that side of the House is based on problematic outcomes.Rather than aiming for an economic self-actualisation and the long-term well-being of children and families facing hardship the short-term fiscal gains are the key priority. That is why those members have things like their Better Public Services target to reduce welfare dependency but it does not go any further in terms of ensuring that those families are better off because all it is about is short-term gain. Our concern on this side of the House is that if that is all the Government is focused on then down the track we are going to see some pretty major social implications from that short-term view. We are going to see further cost to the country as we seek to resolve the things that the Government did not address at the time it had an opportunity to do so. A failure to invest in our future now will lead to higher costs in the future for children growing up in poverty with no or inadequate accommodation. The impacts this will have on them are huge and difficult to undo later in life. So hearing the Minister for Social Development Anne Tolley talk about her package and about wanting to address the needs of vulnerable children is all good but if the children in these families do not have a roof over their head then how much traction can any Government truly make?If we want to talk about a social investment approach then we really need to talk about investment in education. So I really want to touch on early childhood education funding. I have a 3-year-old and the first thing that his centre manager said to me when I saw her on Monday this week was that she was so disappointed with what the Budget had to offer in respect of early childhood education. That Government has talked up the fact that it needs to invest in early childhood education and that it wants to increase participation and yet it has not followed that up with any additional funding for early childhood education. In fact what we see here is that because of the lack of funding offered by that Government we are seeing centres having to subsidise what they should be getting from the Government with increased costs to parents. This is what I was talking about before with regard to the fact that many of the costs that have not been covered by that Government are now being pushed on to New Zealanders.I am not going to get through the list of things I wanted to talk about but I do want to touch on emergency housing. National’s Budget has failed to address the growing housing crisis. In fact those members are fighting amongst themselves about whether or not it is a crisis or a challenge or something else. Their measures are insufficient to reverse the decline in homeownership to stop kids living in cars or to ensure homes are warm and dry. Every New Zealander out there knows that we are experiencing a housing crisis so every time that Government tries to turn round and say that it is not a crisis and there is no housing crisis people are rolling their eyes and saying: “How can you lie to us? How can you say that when it’s so evident?”—not only with regard to their own ability to be able to pay their rent or purchase a house but every day when they go to their local shopping centres or walk out on their street they are confronted with levels of homelessness that we have never seen here in New Zealand before.This was a non-event—a non-event of a Budget. That Government should be ashamed of itself and I think New Zealand will be judging it based on what costs the Government has now pushed on to middle New Zealand households.