Cunliffe David: Budget Statement — Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Budget Statement — Budget Debate[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17907. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition): I moveThat all the words after “That” be omitted and replaced with: “this House has no confidence in a Government that has failed to put people first; that has widened gaps where too many of our children grow up in poverty; that has failed to provide enough good jobs and has lowered incomes; a Government that has no vision for our nation’s long-term well-being but is increasingly mired in politics as usual.” At the end of the day this Budget should not be about politics as usual. It should not be about National versus Labour left versus right us versus them. This Budget should be about those whom we are here to serve about New Zealanders in their work in their homes in their families. It should be about all of us in this country and the opportunities that we all need to live a good life. The Government says the economy is in recovery. Some even say it is booming—a so-called rock star economy. We ask New Zealanders whether that is really true for you. Where is your recovery? Is your household budget booming? Where is your fair share? Or are you being squeezed by higher costs and lower wages power food interest rates?Today I want to show three simple things to Kiwis. The first is that the much-hyped fiscal surplus is not worth the wafers it is written on—it is smoke and mirrors. This is a “fudge-it Budget”. The second is that this Government continues to favour the few at the expense of the many. This is not a Budget; it is a Cabinet club annual report. It will take more than a few election-year cosmetics to change that. The third is that we want for all New Zealanders for New Zealand to be the fairest most decent country in theworld and that will take serious long-term policy change that will create genuine opportunity reduce poverty and lift all our people up in their work in their homes in their families.This is obviously a “fudge-it Budget”. It is a wafer-thin smoke-and-mirrors fiscal surplus possible only because National has asset-stripped Housing New Zealand taking another $90 million out and stripping 40 to 70 percent of State houses out of our regions and is now underfunding Canterbury as well. It has cut $567 million out of the Canterbury rebuild relative to last year’s infrastructure budget. It is holding on to $480 million of ACC levies for another year which is more than the entire wafer-thin surplus is worth. And there is an unprecedented $375 million interest-free loan for Auckland Transport which would normally be capital spending. That just happens to be $3 million more than the total surplus. Oh yes and there is a rosy 4 percent growth forecast for the current year.National says the “fudge-it Budget” is “steady as she goes”. Steady as she goes all right—just do not ask where she is going. If you asked John Key what kind of New Zealand he wants to see in 10 years’ time what would the answer be? Just what we have got now but with more inequality more golf courses and a new flag. Six Budgets and still no vision. As Michael Cullen would say the one-trick pony is doing its one trick: the dance of the six veils. And what do they tell you? The teaser is that the tax cut is under the seventh.The numbers actually speak sadly for themselves. Numbers like $56 billion—that is how much new debt has piled up under National. Numbers like $1.2 billion a year—that is the ongoing cost of National’s tax cuts for the top 10 percent. Numbers like $10 million a day—that is the interest we are paying on National’s debt: $10 million every single day. Think about how many kids could be lifted out of poverty for that. Under this Government there is not one New Zealand; there are two New Zealands. One is for a few self-interested rock stars increasingly drunk on power and plenty and privilege and increasingly out of touch with the rest and the other is for New Zealanders struggling to pay the bills and get ahead running harder to keep up and unable to catch the fading Kiwi dream. I ask New Zealanders where your recovery is. Have you got your fair share? Is this Budget about you or about the Government? The Government says that it has balanced its books. Have you been able to balance yours?For too many New Zealanders the answer to those questions is clearly no. Real wage growth is actually forecast to go down—to go backwards—in the Budget the Government has just handed out. That is why the other set of numbers the ones the Government will not be boasting about are so heartbreaking. Numbers like 285000—that is how many Kiwi kids are living in poverty facing small cruelties like having no raincoat not being able to see a doctor or lying cold in their bed. Numbers like 50000—that is how many more New Zealanders do not have jobs since this Government opened its doors to businesses. People are seeing their employers downsize close their doors or just get left to the cold winds of the market. Numbers like 46 percent—that is how many Kiwi workers did not get a pay rise in the last year despite the so-called rock star recovery like the care worker I met last year who told me she had not had a pay rise since Helen Clark was the Prime Minister. And numbers like $3.60—that is the price of a 2-litre bottle of milk which a young mum in my electorate could not afford to buy for a child who had weak bones.And do you know what? It is numbers like that that make the real difference. I would not begrudge John Key $56 billion in debt if he had actually lifted those children out of poverty if he had got New Zealanders back to work if he had given a break to New Zealanders who have been struggling to pay the bills given them a shot at a better job and better pay. But do you know what? None of that has happened because that isnever what this National Government has ever been about. Since becoming the Government National has reinforced the privilege of the well-off. Its major tax changes cut taxes for the rich and raised GST on everybody else. It flogged off the family silver to the 2 percent of New Zealanders who could afford to buy it and the foreign speculators who clipped the ticket.This is not a Budget for New Zealanders; it is favours owed to big corporates big noters and the big end of town. There is even a $1 million stage show for Oravida. There is another $40 million of subsidies for irrigation for the dairy industry which has already had $400 million and is literally swimming in cash. It is forgetting about the need for decent taxation of property speculators. It is still open season on them buying and selling homes all across Auckland. There is no help whatsoever for first-home buyers but there is assistance for the building-product companies to get cheaper supplies.Now just a few months before the 2014 election National has brought down what John Armstrong has just said is a Budget that rifles through Labour’s chocolate box and finds a few sweeties to call its own. He has called it the “Great Brain Robbery” and I tell you that it is David Parker’s brain that has been robbed. New Zealanders know that after half a decade governing for the few a few cosmetic changes are just a cynical election-year stunt not a new direction. Paid parental leave is 16 or 18 weeks under National but would be 26 weeks under Labour. The parental tax credit is less than under Labour’s Best Start plan. It is what Paddy Gower called a baby-sized bribe. On bowel cancer screening National is finally getting around to rolling something out 5 years too late and about 3 months after Annette King just announced our plan. The announcement of a plan for kauri dieback disease is just in time as Phil Twyford and I have already announced ours.These small concessions are nothing more than a pale imitation of the new direction that a Labour-led Government would bring—a direction where people matter most. It has a very different vision for New Zealand one where we believe that the measure of economic success is whether New Zealanders’ lives are better and whether it is easier for them to get a job pay the bills and raise their kids. I believe we can do better as a country. I believe New Zealanders deserve better than the low expectations and easy cynicism of this Government. That is not what we want for New Zealand. We want New Zealand to be the fairest most decent society in the world.Labour stands for full employment so that every New Zealander who wants to get a job can get one. That is why we are committed to bringing unemployment down to 4 percent by the end of our first term. We have done it before with an average of 3.9 percent over 5 years when we were last in Government. Our monetary policy upgrade will help our exporters create jobs. Our forestry and manufacturing upgrades will reward innovation investment in those job-rich export industries. KiwiBuild our plan to build 100000 affordable homes in 10 years will turbocharge the construction sector. KiwiSaver will help build bigger savings so we are not at the mercy of foreign investment flows. A capital gains tax will swing money away from speculation and towards production and innovation. How about decent employment laws that do not see progress taken off the back of workers and an increase in the minimum wage in our first 100 days?Housing is the largest cost for most New Zealanders and it has never been less affordable. When so few people have the chance of securely owning their own homes when renting has become so expensive and so insecure something is deeply deeply wrong. It is time to take speculators out of the property market and to get fairness back in. It is time to build 100000 new homes principally for first-home buyers. It is time to tackle the high cost and low quality of rentals. It is time to lift the quality of houses witha healthy homes guarantee. It is time for measures that will cut foreign speculation on Kiwi homes and make speculators actually pay tax like wage and salary earners do.For our families under Labour you will see decent paid parental leave thanks to Sue Moroney. You will see a better tax policy that ensures that everyone pays their fair share of tax. Under National half of the top 100 richest New Zealanders are on the bottom tax rate—shame. Under Labour it will be the best possible start for our kids. That means more money for health more money for education more money for the most vulnerable—hey we are even going to bring back adult and community education.This programme to drive economic growth and improve the lives of New Zealanders will be built on solid fiscal foundations. You know the next Labour Government will run fiscal surpluses every year unless there is a big economic downturn or a domestic disaster. Our policies will be fully costed by this man Mr Parker and we will bring down National’s record debt. Labour has nothing to prove here—Hon Members: Ha ha!Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: You may laugh but Labour’s 9 years in Government was nine straight surplus Budgets—nine straight surplus Budgets. It has taken the dance of six veils for National to find the first one. It has taken six veils and there is not much under the kimono.In conclusion the next Labour Government a Government that I will lead will be a Government that puts people first. This is a “fudge-it Budget” a Budget of low expectations easy cynicism and cosmetic change. Gone are Mr Key’s days of apparently being ambitious for New Zealand because the rock star economy is apparently for somebody else not for you. Gone are the days of a brighter future. Now Mr Key spends his time talking New Zealand down. He says reducing unemployment to 4 percent is a dream. He says that there is nothing that can be done. Ambition and belief in New Zealanders have given way to snide remarks and political cynicism. That is politics as usual.Labour will build a nation in which every New Zealander has a secure job in which owning a home is not a fading dream and in which we can raise our children in our own country and realistically hope that our grandchildren will live here too so that we can grow old with them not Skype them. We will build a nation in which every New Zealander including the 285000 children growing up in poverty can share in that dream too. Labour trusts Kiwis to build this nation together and we know that a Government that backs them can do it together. Today John Key and his Government have showed once again that they do not have what it takes to make New Zealand the place that all New Zealanders deserve. This Budget proves—and you can tell by the way they are hanging their heads team—that it is time for them to go.