English Bill: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeEnglish Bill: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate[Sitting date: 24 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18788. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance):I move That the Appropriation (2013/14 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2014/15) Bill be now read a second time. These two pieces of legislation ensure that the Government has supply from Parliament to conduct its ongoing business. It will be interesting to hear from the Opposition members just how they expect to debate these pieces of legislation. We could have a wide-ranging discussion about the recovery of the New Zealand economy and the way it is generating more new jobs and higher incomes but alongside that we are going to have a discussion about the core business of Government which is funded by these pieces of legislation.Can I note that just 3 months out from an election the inherent laziness of the Labour Party is becoming increasingly obvious. It has for the last 3 or 4 years waited for the time when the issues of inequality and public service cuts would fall in its lap. New Zealand’s best and brightest its finest and best-trained political intellects have been sitting around waiting doing no thinking and no work on how Government works in the 21st century because they hoped as we saw in one pathetic example today that the Public Service would by now be covering them burying them in a deluge of leaks about the terrible National Government that has been cutting services hurting communities and dealing harshly with New Zealanders and about how a grateful electorate would then turn to the nice Labour Party because it knows how to do these things better. Labour has been hoping that there would be a deluge of data that would demonstrate to the public at large that the sense of fairness and equality that New Zealanders hold so strongly had been trashed and ripped apart by a nasty Tory Government dealing with a deep recession and a difficult recovery. Well Labour is still waiting because neither of those things has happened.In the absence of the Public Service providing the Labour Party with the raw material for a robust election campaign on public services social services health education law and order welfare and justice for the people Labour has got nothing to say. In anticipation I can say that will become evident over the next few hours as we debate Parliament funding the core activities of the Government. If the Labour members want to get up and talk about inequality they will have to deal with the OECD report that came out in just the last day or two. New Zealand is one of only six countries to report a fall in income inequality. I would not go so far as to claim that it is a fall; I would go only so far as to say that in the period from 2007 prior to the New Zealand recession and the global financial crisis through to 2011 the middle of a difficult recovery the rich and the poor did about equally well which is a very surprising result and one that is very difficult for the Labour Party to campaign on. It wanted to say that in a recession and a difficult recovery the nasty Tories let the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.Well it did not happen. It did not happen. Income inequality is about the same now if not slightly better than it was at the peak of the last economic boom under the previous Labour Government—about the same. And is that not a surprise? It is certainly a surprise to the Labour caucus because it has been waiting to run that as one of the big issues in 2014 just like it has been waiting for the deluge of Public Service leaks. Well I want to take this opportunity after 5½ years of tight budgets—Grant Robertson: Give them a pay increase. Give MoBIE a pay increase.Hon BILL ENGLISH: —to compliment and thank the Public Service for the way that it has consistently refused to play Grant Robertson’s games. He is “Mr Beltway”—“Mr Beltway” who cannot even win the beltway but he is expected to win the 2017 election for the Labour Party. Well he has not even won the beltway because in the beltway the Public Service has worked hard to provide more for less. Through a deep recession and 5 years of tight Budgets the public rating of public services is higher now than it was when the Labour Party was pumping billions into the public sector. The reason is that this Government has made itself accountable to the public for achieving results—for achieving results. Every professional public servant wants to achieve results. It is their intrinsic motivation. It is why they work hard for lower pay than they could earn elsewhere.I will give you just a couple of results. There are hundreds I could pick from but I think this one illustrates a number of interesting points. Data published in April 2014 shows an increase of 23 percent in the number of National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 1 students in Kaikohe—Kaikohe the very place that the Labour Party parades around the country saying it is an illustration of the failure of everything that this Government is trying to achieve. As it happens Northland is the fastest-growing region in the recent regional GDP statistics. Its economy is growing faster than the rest of New Zealand and in NCEA level 1 23 percent more students are passing. But wait for this: in NCEA level 2 the increase is even larger—24 percent of them. And they have got to get NCEA level 2 to get access to the skilled economy. That is the start line and one-quarter more kids—that is hundreds more students—in one of our most deprived areas are doing a lot better.That is why “Mr Beltway” Grant Robertson cannot win the beltway—because the Public Service understands what this Government is trying to achieve. That is why despite the fact that we have run tight Budgets we have been able to get better results. I will just explain how tight those Budgets have been. In the 5 years up to 2008 the last Labour Government pumped in $2.5 billion extra discretionary spend each year on average—$2.5 billion. This Government has over a 5-year period pumped in an average of $250 million per year—one-tenth of the new expenditure for much better results. In fact the Labour Government did not know whether it was getting results because its measure of whether it cares is how much of other people’s money it spends on a problem. Of course what that does is fund the problems not solve them. What we are doing is solving the problems. That is why this Government is so confident in its fiscal management. We know that when you help people resolve their issues and provide more support now for a pay-off later you save money. What works for the community works for the Government’s books.We have now got a couple of hours to hear from Labour about its ideas for modernising government in New Zealand. We have got a couple of hours to hear from Labour about all the deep thinking of those people trained at the best universities and in the Prime Minister’s office and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet no less of the best Prime Minister ever according to them. We are waiting for the progressive forward-looking inspiring thinking about the core business of government that is to support New Zealanders in their aspirations. I do not think we will hear that. I think we will hear a tired recital of the worn-out slogans of the handful of interest groups and unions that still support the Labour Party. Labour needs to know that even the people who feel compelled to vote for it are going around telling their friends that National is doing a great job of running the Public Service.In particular I want to compliment our Ministers who have spent a lot of time building a political consensus and enforcing accountability and responsibility. They are out there on the front line talking to the New Zealanders who need and deserve our support because they have done a great a job. They have done a great job. So here is the challenge for Labour: can “Mr Beltway” actually win the beltway? Because if he cannot even win the beltway he certainly cannot win the election.