Robertson Grant: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 01 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11561. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): That is how proud Steven Joyce is of this Budget: he mentioned the word “Budget” twice in 6 minutes and nothing else—there was nothing else whatsoever about the details in the Budget. He is obsessed with the reality TV show The Bachelor. The show he should be talking about is The Biggest Loser. That is the show that he should be talking about and Steven Joyce knows who that is.In regard to this Budget I take the word of Dominick Stephens the Westpac economist who produced a publication the day after the Budget entitled New Zealand Government Budget 2016: Fiscal mirage. That is what he said—he said it is a fiscal mirage. This is why. He said: “it’s clear that the improvement in the fiscal outlook has largely come from economic projections … rather than from policy decisions.” That is the point. There is no plan here to grow jobs. There is no plan here to get New Zealanders back into work to get young people back into work to transform the regions. There is just a fiscal mirage. Bill English is like some kind of Moses on Mogadon stumbling about the desert for 40 years trying to find an economic plan and it is not there. That is why Steven Joyce had nothing to talk about when he stood up today because there is nothing in this.There is nothing in this Budget but the thing is to call it boring is actually an insult. It gives it too much credit. It is not boring; it is useless. It is a failure. It is hopeless. Another economist Ganesh Nana described it as breathtakingly visionless—breathtakingly visionless—and that is exactly what this Budget is. It has failed the key tests that New Zealanders would put on a Budget. What will it do to make their lives and their families’ lives better and easier?If we take a look at the core things that are the building blocks of opportunity which every single Budget should be built upon this one failed. In health the Budget once again failed to meet the basic test of keeping up with demographic change from an ageing population and an increasing population. It falls short again adding to the $1.7 billion of effective cuts in the health budget. Every member of this House knows that district health boards (DHBs) around New Zealand are not keeping up. They are not keeping up with hip and knee surgeries. They are not keeping up with mental health services. Every DHB in this country is struggling and this Budget failed to deliver an increase in funding that would see New Zealanders get the health system they actually deserve. And so New Zealanders will pay.The New Zealanders who are parents will pay as well because we have an education budget that amazingly freezes operational funding. Hekia Parata can stand up in this House and tell us: “Actually we are targeting the funding.” Well no they are not because it turns out that the targeted funding actually just goes to the schools. So it is not social investment; it is social disinvestment—Carmel Sepuloni: Divestment.GRANT ROBERTSON: —divestment. Thank you Carmel Sepuloni—divestment. It is not saying “There are 150000 people in need and we are going to get something to them.”; it is actually reducing the amount of money that schools need and then claiming that it is targeted. It is disingenuous and the Minister of Education should stand up in this House and say the truth to New Zealand parents: they are going to pay more. New Zealand parents will pay more. They are already paying 10 times the rate of inflation in terms of the increase in so-called voluntary donations and a frozen Budget like this will not help.Then we come to housing. Everyone in New Zealand was expecting the Budget to say something about housing—the biggest crisis facing New Zealand—and Nick Smith he came up with the goods for the Government. He came up with the goods: another 25 hectares to go with the 12 hectares that he got from the last Budget—37 hectares out of a promised 500 hectares. Dr Smith’s maths might not be fantastic but even he can work out that he is failing Auckland when it comes to actually doing the one thing that this Budget needed to do. Three words Dr Smith: build more houses.Hon Dr Nick Smith: We are.GRANT ROBERTSON: That is what this Budget needed to do. He says: “We are.” We have been through this. A consent is not a house Dr Smith. It is just not—you cannot live in a consent. What Aucklanders need and what the rest of New Zealand needs is a State-sponsored housebuilding programme. It is the only way that we will get affordable homes built in New Zealand. Bill English in his pre-Budget speech said it: only 5 percent of homes built in New Zealand in the last 10 years have been affordable homes. It is not going to happen without the Government behind it.The Labour Party has been saying since 2012 “Let’s do KiwiBuild. Let’s build 100000 homes so that New Zealanders can actually get on to the homeownership ladder.” rather than having the worst homeownership rates in 64 years which is what we have got today in New Zealand.Hon Dr Nick Smith: Not true.GRANT ROBERTSON: It is true Dr Smith. It is absolutely true. We have the worst homeownership—and this is the problem.He is so out of touch. He sits in the House every day tut-tutting saying that it is not true. Get out into the real world Dr Smith. Get up to Auckland. I think they have gotten over seeing your face on the billboards. Get up there and listen to Aucklanders about what is happening in the housing market.But here is the issue. Fundamentally the housing system is a system and when people cannot afford to buy houses that pushes them into the private rental market.That pushes the cost of rents up and that pushes New Zealanders out of the private rental market into having to find social housing which is already overstretched and that in turn pushes people who would get into social housing out looking for emergency housing. Right now today in Auckland there are people living in cars and garages crying out for help and for emergency housing. Last weekend in Auckland there were no emergency housing beds available—none whatsoever. The wonderful whānau at Te Puea Marae stepped up and I want to say on record congratulations on that whānau for stepping up and saying: “We will look after that.” But what kind of indictment is that on New Zealand that today we rely on Te Puea Marae to be the social service provider? That is the core moral responsibility of a Government: to ensure that its citizens are housed if they cannot house themselves.This Government has lost its moral compass. It has lost its ability to responsibly govern when it comes to housing when there are people queuing up—people coming all the way from Whakatāne because they are so desperate to find a house somewhere and more than that to find someone who actually cares. That is what they went looking for at Te Puea Marae—someone who cared—because they did not find it in the National Government. They could not find anybody over there who cared enough to step up in this Budget and provide the emergency housing that is needed because this Government has lost its way. It is out of touch. It does not understand the plight of New Zealanders.And it is not just Auckland. In the last couple of weeks there has been story after story about homelessness. Homelessness in my old home town of Dunedin—I do not remember that when I grew up there. I do not remember people living on the streets then. Dr Smith said that ever since he has been in Parliament people have been coming to him. Well I have got news for Dr Smith: it is worse and it is getting worse and worse and worse under his watch. This Government has completely failed New Zealanders with this Budget.In this Budget we also see that in the next 2 years real wages will fall. Real wages will fall—they will go down. All the promises in the world from the Government cannot get around that. Wages are not keeping up. Unemployment goes up. Anne Tolley sits over there—one in 10 people in Gisborne are out of work. The Government does not care. It is not doing anything about it. The Budget fails those people.Well I have got good news for people: a change of Government is coming. A change of Government—built on health education and housing—that New Zealanders can be proud of. A Government that is actually prepared to invest in the future have a proper programme for infrastructure build roads build rail and not pretend that the Inland Revenue Department computer system is infrastructure as the Government has done in this Budget. A Government that actually says that wherever you live in New Zealand you have the right to expect that there will be a decent job for you to do a decent house to live in a good hospital and good schools because they are the building blocks of opportunity in New Zealand. That is what the next Labour Government will bring. A Budget that we would bring to this House would be one that was about a fair share for all New Zealanders and prosperity—not just the very few at the top doing well but every New Zealander getting a shot at success. That is what a future Labour Government will bring and that is what a change of Government will bring.