English Bill: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeEnglish Bill: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 02 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4195. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance):That speech was better than Andrew Little’s. It was energetic by comparison. It had a lot of insight and vision by comparison. And it had more support in the Labour caucus by comparison.It is a pleasure to be able to stand and wind up this Budget debate. What a good Budget it was. I want to acknowledge the National Party team and our coalition partners because that team put together in somewhat trying circumstances a Budget that many New Zealanders are pleased with. In the last week or so I have been out giving speeches and presentations about the Budget and actually it did not matter whether I was speaking to iwi Pasifika businesses the social sector the education sector or the finance sector they all thought the Budget was good—the whole lot! They all thought it was good even when they disagreed with us because even when they disagree with us they can see that the Government is grappling with the broad economic and social challenges that they think a Government should be dealing with and they pay us the respect of engaging and giving us alternative arguable propositions—not just whingeing. The Labour Party should be worried because a lot of those people are on the face of it Labour supporters and Labour voters. I want to come back to that.As we have said for some time the outlook for the economy is positive in this Budget with moderate growth consistent job creation and increases in incomes year on year—2 to 3 percent; moderate but sustained. And the Government’s economic policy some of which is expressed through further measures in the Budget is to support the sustainability of that economic growth. There are some potential imbalances—the housing market in Auckland for instance—but there has been a series of measures over the last month that take the Government’s efforts further towards achieving a balance between supply and demand.In the Budget the Government has laid out further its progress on how to control Government spending which amounts to a view that if the Government does its job better then it will need to spend less. We do not measure the Government’s success in its own business by the fact that it spends more all the time because more Government expenditure is often a signal of failure not of success. It happens because the last 15 programmes did not work.In the face of that Budget the Leader of the Opposition got up and gave one of the worst Budget reply speeches that we have heard.Hon Paula Bennett: The worst.Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well no to be fair some of the others of the four previous Labour leaders were pretty bad. Honestly they were. The real question is: why was it such a bad speech? He made one mistake among many—probably the biggest mistake—and that is—Hon Maggie Barry: Standing up.Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well standing up—that was a bit of a problem but at least he got to sit down at the end. That fixed that problem. No his other big mistake was listening to Grant Robertson. It really was because Grant Robertson—Hon Paula Bennett: Other leaders have too.Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well other leaders have made the same mistake and look what has happened to them. In fact Grant is probably surprised how quickly his strategy is working. It has worked three times before and they are all on the bench over there and there is room for one more I am sure.One of the reasons why he gave such a bad speech is actually that Labour members do not have anything to say. Look it is not what the Government says about Labour that is most devastating for Labour members it is what they are saying about Labour. Here is a question that every heartland Labour supporter is asking: why did the Labour Government not put benefits up when it had the biggest surpluses a Government has ever had? Why did it not? Why did it not put benefits up? Every Labour caucus member was asking themselves that question. It is not our doubts about Labour that are going to be so hard on this Labour Party through a long cold winter; it is Labour’s doubts about Labour. Because if Labour could not put benefits up for the poorest when it had the money what is Labour for? The conclusion that we came to long ago—which Labour voters are starting to come to now—is that it is not for anything in particular.I will give them one reason why Labour did not put benefits up: it was because the political judgment of its previous leadership was that no one trusts Labour on welfare. They see the Labour Party as a one-way cash machine. It takes the money—the fruits of successful capitalism—and uses it to buy political power. That is the modern Labour Party and how it is perceived and the previous Government leadership was right. That is why it did not put benefits up. It knew that Labour would lose votes if it did. And now we have the irony of a National Party that can put benefits up and we will win votes because we have. We will win votes. Why? Because we do not treat the lowest-income people like meat to be ground in our political machine. Most of them do not vote or will not vote and certainly will not vote for us.But the New Zealand public trusts us with their money. That is what it comes down to. People who are working in the cold weather today who at the end of the week pay over their PAYE will vote National because they know that we will use that money responsibly and when we are alleviating hardship in the lowest-income families we will treat those families with the respect of creating some kind of reciprocal obligations. We will think about requiring them to turn up to a work test because we think they are capable of work. The Labour Party never thought that they were capable of work. It treated them as if they were helpless. The public knew that and believed that if Labour gave them more money through their benefits it would make dependency worse not better. And that is the question that Labour members are asking themselves. What are they for if they could not lift the incomes of the lowest-income New Zealanders?It is summed up in their argument against social bonds today. There is not an enterprising innovative lefty in the developed world who is not excited by the possibilities of social bonds. If you are a social enterprise if you are green if you know about Grameen Bank if you have been in the development unit of some UK local council you are pumped up and wanting to do it. One group of left-wing politicians in the whole world is against it.Hon Steven Joyce: Who are they? Who’s that?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The New Zealand Labour Party. It simply sums up the political time warp that they are in. This lazy Labour Party this uninspiring Labour Party this Labour Party that sucks hope from those who need it most has been waiting around to be able to say “The nasty Tories cut everything. Vote for us; we’re kind and caring.” It is not happening so they are marooned. They do not know what else to do. They have not done any of the intellectual work to test themselves so they have nothing to contribute to the issues—more tax deductibility for research and development credits or something is about their only policy; and they have had that same policy for six elections. It is not just about the broader economy; it is worse than that because they have nothing to contribute in areas where they are supposed to be the experts. They are meant to be the defenders of low-income New Zealand. They have nothing to say about social investment except “Don’t do it.” They have nothing to say about social bonds except “Don’t do it.” They have nothing to say about the reform of State housing except “Don’t do it.”