Little Andrew: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Little Andrew: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 12 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2831. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to speak on the Appropriation Bill and the 2012 Budget. Whatever this Budget is a future for it is not a Budget for the future of New Zealand. It is miserly it is penny-pinching and it offers nothing for future wealth creation and future wealth building for New Zealand. What we have seen in this Budget—the headline issues for this Budget—is a tax on paper boys we have seen shifting the goalposts for elderly in their retirement and the support they get for their retirement homes we have seen more cuts in front-line services and we have seen a lot of rhetoric accompanying the Budget saying how wonderful it is for the future of New Zealand. It is all Alice-in-Wonderland stuff. It is head-in-the-sand stuff. It is out of touch. But the education changes that were announced in this Budget—or rather not announced but presumed and implied—are something else again.  
Let us recount what happened in relation to those education changes. The Treasury Secretary was deployed for the softening-up process. So he gave the interview and he gave the speech that signalled that class size was not the issue and that there would be changes in the Budget and changes in financing for education. Nobody knew what was happening. No signal was given about the precise changes. What has become quite apparent since the delivery of the Budget is that if Cabinet Ministers knew or even if some of them knew none of them asked the question and none of them reminded or told their colleagues about what the impact was going to be on the schools in their electorates and the schools around the country. No one asked the question.  
The sector itself did not know until the day before or even the day of the Budget. I met intermediate school principals who did not know what the impact was going to be until the morning of the Budget. That is how closely guarded this secret was. So the education changes in the Budget were much less Alice in Wonderland and much more “malice in blunderland”. That is what that was about.  
Budget 2012 offers nothing for the future of New Zealand. Where in the Budget is the foundation for future wealth creation? Where is the acceptance of the real and very serious and difficult problems facing New Zealand on for example superannuation financing and funding? What we do have from this Government and its economic and finance policy is partially selling State-owned enterprises—the State assets—a policy that we know is short-changing New Zealand in the long term. Even Treasury in its more honest moments tells us that the yield in terms of a sale price for those State assets will not make up for the return that the Government gets on those in the longer term. And we are not selling just State assets; now we are down to selling policy. So when it comes to gambling and when it comes to a convention centre in Auckland we will fund that through selling policy.  
If ever there was a matter that was a case of “malice in blunderland” surely it must be ACC. I want to take a few moments to talk about the ACC issue because this is serious. ACC is a very important institution in this country. It is 38 years old this year. It has been fundamental to good health and safety and to good rehabilitation and recovery for injured workers and for injured people and it is very important. It has long held a high degree of public trust and confidence. Its genesis was in a bipartisan decision of this Parliament to say that something had to change to provide for those who are injured by accident.  
It is unbelievable that many members opposite in their speeches on the Budget so far in this debate have referred to the wonderful ACC reforms engendered by this Government. So I want to talk about some of those ACC reforms because what we have now is this important New Zealand institution with its reputation in tatters all because of the approach this Government has taken in relation to ACC.  
The rot started under the previous Minister. One of the biggest political cons of a generation was when this Government announced and declared and persuaded everybody that ACC was in financial crisis. Never mind that for nearly 10 years ACC had been generating surpluses of $1 billion. Never mind that at that time it had reserves of nearly $11 billion. The Government announced that there was a financial crisis so it got rid of many board members and installed its specially recruited chairman John Judge who now is no longer on the ACC board at least. It recruited John Judge. It hiked up the levies totally unnecessarily and when it got a backlash from the bikies whose bikes it could not crush it had to backtrack at least on that part of it.  
It hiked up the levies and what has the impact of that been? What has the impact of that been? Well up to about 2008-09 ACC generated surpluses of about $1 billion. It used to spend about $2.5 billion to $3 billion on looking after people on paying for their medical treatment and medical costs and on paying their compensation. Well do you know what happened last year? What happened last year was that ACC produced a surplus of $3.5 billion. And do you know what it spent on looking after people? Do you know what it spent on the medical treatment and the care of people and compensation? It spent $2.9 billion. It generated a surplus greater than what it spent on every claimant who needed medical care and treatment and who needed earnings-related compensation. That is what it did.  
The National Government was so embarrassed about it that just before the election lo and behold it announced a reduction in the levies. That is how embarrassed it was about its big mistake. But the mistake did not stop there.  
Michael Woodhouse 
: Just apologise. 
ANDREW LITTLE 
: It will never apologise about it. It will never apologise about it because this is a Government that according to its own operations manual does no wrong—it does no wrong apart from Nick Smith. Nick Smith did admit that he did wrong and he did the honourable thing and stood down but no other Minister has done the same thing.  
That was not the end of National’s ACC reforms. It put John Judge in for a reason. It wanted to shake up the corporation. It wanted to get into a programme of cost-cutting penny-pinching and miserliness and it wanted to push back on legitimate claimants—people who had been injured through no fault of their own. It pushed back. One of those people happened to be one of its own—Bronwyn Pullar aided and abetted by another one of its own Michelle Boag. Of course hell hath no fury like a scorned ACC claimant who is a member of the National Party. And that is what happened.  
So what we had were the ACC reforms promoted by this Government to get rid of a good board and a good chair hike up the levies unnecessarily declare there is a financial crisis get into a dreadful programme of penny-pinching and cost-cutting and push back on legitimate claimants who are suffering who are in pain and who are just doing what every New Zealander has done for the last 38 years and that is to look to ACC for help and support. The Government has created a culture of disentitlement and then cut back on those things that are needed to manage claimants’ personal information needs carefully. Now we have an organisation whose reputation is in tatters where privacy breaches are endemic and where people are getting knocked back. These people are suffering exasperated distressed and depressed because of what this Government’s ACC reforms have done.  
The question is where the Minister is on this. Where is the Minister on this? What has she done? In the House today when asked what she had done and what her actions were she told us what everybody else had done. But what has she done?  
Her challenge now is having got rid of John Judge to issue a new set of instructions. Forget what the last Minister said forget what Nick Smith said and issue a new set of instructions. Unfortunately she has to issue them to Paula Rebstock so we do not know how much change there is going to be for this.  
But here is the challenge to the Minister: issue a new set of instructions. Tell your new board chair that we want an ACC that cares about the people who come to it for help and support. Look after those people examine the claims but look after those people and make sure that nobody who is entitled to support and assistance from ACC is disentitled rejected denied thrown out into the cold and left to battle the behemoth of ACC on their own as so many are at the moment. Issue a new instruction. Say we want a culture change and make a difference because never has a very important public institution in New Zealand which is so important to the life of New Zealand and the life of New Zealanders come under such sustained attack from the people to whom it is so important. Never has a public institution come under such sustained neglect from the Minister who is responsible for it.  
So that is the challenge. I look forward to this Government doing something new and good for ACC because that will be a change from the past 3½ years.