Williamson Maurice: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliamson Maurice: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 28 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10431. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction): Today I want to pay tribute to the New Zealand public. I want to pay tribute to them in that they do not fall for the little traps that keep being thrown at them by the Opposition which I think is known as speaking from both sides of your mouth. They know that when reality strikes Governments have to change their whole policy mix. So when the National Party was campaigning in the 2008 election and promising to do a certain number of things black storm clouds were just beginning to gather on the economic horizon. It was called the global financial crisis. What I do not understand in this House is that members on the opposite side have not got how to handle something when such an event occurs.I know that if I had promised my kids that they would all get new plasma screens for their bedrooms at Christmas and then during the year I lost my job my wife lost her job we were on welfare and we were struggling to even pay for food and so on doyou know what we would have to say? Every New Zealand family knows what they would say to the kids: “We just cannot do it. Sorry we thought we could and things were looking good but events outside of our control have occurred and we just cannot do it.” And yet it is almost like over in happy “Labour Land” that the global financial crisis did not occur. It did not happen. Why has unemployment gone up from where it was when Labour was in power? Well it is very simple: the whole world melted down. But the good news is that the New Zealand economy got the least battering of just about any country I know. That is through sound prudent fiscal management by Bill English and the team who said: “Look it is going to be rough. It is going to be tough but we have got to try to withstand some of the real sharpness of the peaks and the troughs that will come at us but without going in and doing some of the harsh cuttings of the welfare budgets that other Governments have done in the past when times have got tough.”The Labour-Greens Opposition sits there as if the global financial crisis never happened. So they will be getting up and I have heard them today saying: “Where are all the jobs? When we were in power we had this level of employment and now look how bad it is.” Well I can tell you that under the policy mix that we inherited in 2008 had we stayed on just the Labour Party policy mix platform this country would now be calling to the IMF to come in and totally bail us out. I think this country owes a huge debt of gratitude to Bill English for having steered us through 5 years of some of the most difficult economic times. By the way if you did not think the global financial crisis was the biggest smack around the whole world could have been dealt—we were sort of on our knees and trying to get through it—along came a series of devastating earthquakes that caused $40 billion worth of damage which no one could see coming.But what I find really hard to get through is that sort of duplicity of view that we hear from the other side. For example the Greens will spend half of their day saying that our economy is not functioning and that people are heading off to Australia and asking why are we not doing as well as Australia. But the other half of their debate is saying that they do not want minerals mining petroleum and taking stuff out of the ground. Well that is the only reason Australia has been a success. The only reason Australia—Catherine Delahunty: No it’s not.Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: It is true. It is the only reason the Australian economy—it has a two-tier economy. Its ordinary economy is going slower than ours. In fact the forecast levels of growth for New Zealand are better than for Australia. Have a look at the Budget that the Australian Labor Government brought down a couple of weeks before ours. It is appalling. There is a $22 billion deficit within that Budget. Australia is really struggling because commodity prices for all of the stuff that it rips out of the ground are falling. But you just cannot run the policy that the Greens do which is that we should match Australia. We should be economically as good as it is and doing as well as it is. But we should not do all the things that it is doing like taking minerals and so on out of it.I think it is enough for us to have a duplicitous view of the world from the Greens but today I saw something that I have never seen before. I saw a member of Parliament who even disagreed with himself. Damien O’Connor wrote letters saying that we have got to do the mining on the Denniston Plateau and then said that it is all wrong and we should not be doing it. It is the first time in my 27 years in this House that I have actually ever seen a member of Parliament debating with himself and losing on both counts.It applies to the Labour Party as well. If you look at direct foreign investment you see that there is no question that if we want this economy to function well we need direct foreign investment. We need foreigners to bring their skills and their capital inhere to grow it. There is just no doubt about that. What happened when Labour was in power? Let us take the sale of foreign lands because I cop this all the time. It is dreadful to be selling land to foreigners OK—dreadful. Well the National Government is a babe in the woods compared with them. I feel embarrassed. Total land sold to foreigners under a National Government is about 100000 hectares. Total land sold to foreigners under the Labour Government was 666000 hectares. That is about six times what we have done. That is what I said. I am embarrassed. I am embarrassed—Tracey Martin: You don’t know because there’s no register for it. No register for it so you haven’t any idea how much land has been sold underneath a house in Auckland.Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: There is somebody over there going off like a demented chook; I cannot quite tell what they are saying. But all I can say is Helen Clark sells 55000 hectares—55000 hectares—to Shania Twain and then goes down and walks across the farm with the cameras. Are we not wonderful? Then it comes to selling 6000 hectares to the Shanghai Pengxin Group and it is evil. They are foreigners—we cannot do it. Well Shania Twain was from Canada. I reckon that makes her a foreigner. Maybe you do not Mr Speaker and maybe Helen Clark did not but I think Shania Twain was a foreigner. And it is the same when Labour sold 350000 hectares of forestry land and then it could—Tracey Martin: If you’re not a New Zealander you shouldn’t be able to buy land. No matter where you’re from you shouldn’t be able to buy land if you’re a foreigner.Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Could somebody get her some medication? She is really in pain over there. She is really suffering. You need to help her out somebody. Get a medic kit. All I can say is that Labour sold 350000 hectares of forestry land in 1 year and then we sell a few thousand and somehow it is wrong. I want Phil Goff when he gets up because I know he is getting up next to explain to this House how it can be all right for Labour to sell six times as much land to foreigners as we do but it is now wrong and evil and how Labour could have supported the building of a convention centre in Auckland that I think was a third of the size of the one that is planned but with the same number of pokie machines with it. Again Helen Clark paraded on the stage about what a great deal we have got for you and then Steven Joyce goes and gets a convention centre three times that size which the private sector will put its own money at risk to build and with only the same number of pokies. Oh and by the way there is a sinking lid on the number of pokie machines in New Zealand so the total number of pokies is dropping. But somehow it is evil. I just do not understand how it can be all right in one case but it can be wrong in another.Labour sold just about everything that moved when it was in office in the 1980s but it now says that it is awful it is evil and it is wrong. I just still do not understand how the public—well actually the good news is that the public do not the fall for it and that is showing in the polls. It is showing in their response to this House when we are doing legislation. Parties that get up and try to be all things to all people when their history and their track record shows the exact opposite of what they are calling for are never going to convince the New Zealand public. No Mr Goff 2 more minutes of this and then you can get up—2 more minutes.So I want to talk about Labour’s alternative policies and the first thing I had to do with the research was struggle to find what the alternative policy is. I do not actually—[Interruption]—well no no they should be well known but we do not know. We have got a couple though. It certainly wants to have a much more dramatic and harsh emissions trading scheme. It thinks ours was a little toy poodle and it thinks that industry and emitters should be really really paying the price. Well that will be good for economic growth would it not? Let us really put the boot into the productive sector. It really really wants to do it. By the way also households pay a big number of moneystowards any emissions trading scheme and Labour’s scheme would make it a lot more. It wants to introduce a capital gains tax. Is that not fascinating? A capital gains tax. So it socks everybody then it is going to exempt the family home then it is going to exempt this and so on. It ends up so that it will be business and rural farming that will be hit so hard. That is really good for the productive sector right? Is that how we grow the economy? I do not think so.There are a couple of others. It wants to abandon some of the sensible monetary policy—I think this is mainly the Greens but remember the Greens co-leader Russel Norman will be the finance Minister in the coalition and just print money. Mr Goff laughs. If that is not going to be the case he should tell us. If Russel Norman is not going to be the finance Minister then just say so. I hear nothing—I hear nothing. Is Russel Norman going to be the—see Opposition members will not even answer it. He wants to back the truck up to the Beehive unload a swag of printers fill it up with printing ink and just print off the money. That has even been stamped best before 1990 in Eastern Europe.I am proud of this Government I am proud of the Budget and I think Bill English will go down in the history of this country as being one of the best Ministers of Finance we have ever had.