English Bill: Budget Debate 
English Bill: Budget Debate 
[Volume:655;Page:4327] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
 It is only the Standing Orders that prevent me from graciously yielding to the member in order for her to continue her outstanding description of my qualities and those of the Budget. 
Hon David Parker 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My understanding is that the Standing Orders do not prevent the Minister from yielding to the previous speaker and we have no objection to him doing so. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: That is not really a point of order. 
Hon David Parker 
: It is very much so a point of order. The Hon Bill English said that the Standing Orders prevented him from yielding to the previous speaker Hekia Parata. I seek your ruling as to whether that is correct. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: In theory I guess the member is right but the member cannot seek for someone else to yield. In that respect the Hon Bill English has the call. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I think that that is typical of the quality of the contribution the Opposition has made to the Budget debate. I would like to be standing here saying that in the absence of Dr Cullen the level of contribution from the Labour Party has continued with the same insight acid wit and vigour that he maintained but I have to say somewhat disappointingly that that is not the case. In fact we have in the  
Dominion Post  
today probably the best description of Labour’s efforts in its first 6 months in Opposition and in the Budget debate. On the top of the editorial is the heading “Labour soiled by its own muck”. For all the Labour Party’s clever politicking all it has achieved is to remind the public about the dirty-tricks Labour Party. It was the party when in Government that took us all through last year with Owen Glenn. It was the previous Government that passed the Electoral Finance Act and then spent the last dying gasps of its life clinging to Winston Peters who had broken every rule in the Electoral Finance Act. It is the dirty-tricks Labour Party whose former MP is on trial in a court today having been defended by Labour’s previous illustrious leader for about 2 years and by the now front-bench spokesperson on finance when he was the Minister of Immigration who oversaw the whole scam. Today this is just one small reminder to them that they have not changed they have not apologised and they have not contributed anything that matters but they have taken up a lot of time in Parliament just because they are the Opposition—“Labour soiled by its own muck”. 
When will those members realise that the public has rejected their mix of dirty clever politics reckless economic management and political correctness? I thought there were only two elements but there are actually three: dirty clever politics; reckless economic management; and an overdose of political correctness. Actually I know the answer to the question. Well they are never going to apologise until they remember one thing which is that they lost the election. We can tell from here in the House that they still think there is some kind of visual aberration. Perhaps there is just a large video screen with a mirror in it that means they are on the Opposition side of the House and we are on this side. But Labour lost the election and that was—I ask members to listen to this—before New Zealanders really understood how important economic management was going to be. Imagine if we had had the election in March when they really knew it would matter. David Cunliffe would have lost his seat. He almost did even in the good times under apparently the best political leader the country has ever seen who actually got thrashed by the least experienced leader the country has ever had. John Key thrashed Helen Clark and again David Cunliffe almost lost his seat. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Most unsuccessful man in politics! Worst leader in a hundred years Bill English. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well who is winning now? 
The Budget was a measured response to difficult circumstances. The fact is that the global recession has come on top of an economy that was already in recession and it was already in recession because of the mismanagement of the previous Government. It is a myth that all our problems started in September last year; that is not correct. The fact is that under the previous Government the growth in our economy had become particularly unbalanced. It was driven in the first place by excessive borrowing in the household sector and in the second place by excessive Government spending. We need to shift the balance of this economy from borrowing consumption and reckless Government spending to investment exports and careful Government spending. The Budget does not complete that job; the Budget only starts that job. 
There are a number of key features to the Budget that I think are important to re-emphasise. The Government had two objectives. One was to protect people from the sharpest edges of recession. I know that that has disappointed Labour members; they would rather see hundreds of thousands of people suffer so that a political point could be made to justify all their pre-election scaremongering. That is another reason they are losing public support. Many of the people who voted for them now realise that the things Labour members said about National were wrong—dead wrong. We have protected the most vulnerable as my colleagues have pointed out. We have maintained entitlements across the board and we have maintained and in fact increased public spending. We have increased the investment in infrastructure; at the same time we have set out to enforce long-term fiscal control. So in the short term the Government is maintaining spending through the bottom of the recession—that is we are preserving and supporting jobs while we put in place the first steps on the long road to recovery. The second part of the equation is just as important: the Government must gear up so that this economy can come out of the recession at some speed. 
One of the measures the public are going to apply to the recession is the number of people unemployed. They do not really apply the measure of GDP; they know the economy is getting better when their jobs are secure and when the unemployment number is coming down. We are willing to do almost anything to offer to people who have lost their jobs the hope that they will get another one and they can get another one only on the day that a business is confident enough to invest a bit more and employ another person. There is no other way. We can do what we can to keep people connected to the world of work to give them the opportunity to get the skills they will need for a recovering economy but in the end it is business the tradable sector of the economy that will provide sustainable jobs. So our longer-term programme is going to be focused on an improved investment environment less red tape better infrastructure and a much more responsive Government. 
The Budget debate has been a disappointment because Opposition members have had so little to contribute. They seem to be the last 27—how many is it; 32 or something—people in New Zealand who seem to believe that nothing has changed and that every civil servant is doing a very effective job which is not right and that every public dollar they put in a year ago is being used well which is simply not the case. 
This is a common-sense and balanced Budget and it is important to note that the New Zealand public have reacted to it in a very pragmatic way. They know that times are tough; they know that the Government has had to make some decisions that will help to put us on the long-term road to prosperity. 
I thank our coalition partners who have supported the Government through this Budget process and who are demonstrating to the public that the Government has the confidence of the House. I look forward to working with them on the next Budget. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: The question is that the amendment in the name of the Hon Phil Goff be agreed to.