Maharey Steve: Taxation (Annual Rates and Urgent Measures) Bill — First Reading Instruction to Finance and Expenditure Committee 
Maharey Steve: Taxation (Annual Rates and Urgent Measures) Bill — First Reading Instruction to Finance and Expenditure Committee 
[Volume:628;Page:207] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I do not think that we have very many worries about Mr Key opposing this legislation with every bone in his body. I am not sure how many he has got left after the election that he helped to lose—that he helped to ensure would put the National Party back in Opposition for what is going to be a historic 9 long years. Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith will be retired nosed out by the end of that period of time and will slip off into the darkness having never returned to where he wants to be on the Government benches. The man to blame for that Mr John Key just spoke. He helped to lose the election and Bill English no doubt is seeing that his chances of returning to the leadership—having lost it some time ago—are now rising because of John Key’s performance. [ 
Interruption 
] It is worth pointing out to Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith who is calling out across the House that the National Party lost the last election. 
This is a Government that has won not one term not two terms but three terms. It went back into power with 100000 more votes than it won last time. After three elections we have 0.03 percent less of the vote than last time and we won on more votes this time than we won on in 1999. That is not bad for a third-term Government—not bad for a Labour Government I would say on looking back over history. 
I say to people on the National side of the House that they should ask themselves why that was. I think the simple answer to that question is that New Zealanders believed they wanted to see a continuation of investment in the things that make a real difference to the future of this country. The students of this country understand themselves to be people who will get an education and then invest their skill back into what we do in this country. They know that if the costs of that education are too high then the chances are that they may take those skills somewhere else. If we want to retain those people—if we want to ensure that they can start a family buy a house start a business and do all the things we want them to do—we should not have them leave tertiary education with the kind of burden they would have under a National Government. 
Members should remember National’s track record. Who allowed the fees to rise on average 12 percent every single year in the 1990s? National. Who said that people did not really need an allowance as students? National. Who put in the loan scheme? National. Who gives the signal that they will give people back a tax cut but that they will pay more for their education because all the regulation of fees will be lifted? The National Party. Students could see that; anybody could see that. So students said that they wanted to look at a party that would invest in keeping the cost of education down and that they would then stay in the country and invest their skill here as they should. I want to applaud students for saying that that is what they wanted to do and for not being led off by some massive bribe by the National Party that says: “ Let’s cash up the hard-won gains of the last 6 years—the hard-won gains that came under a Labour-led Government—and just blow them on immediate consumption.” as would have happened if the National Party were the Government today. Students understand that investment is the key. 
I want to turn to the Working for Families policy. It is one of the most important policies this country has seen in 30 years because it is the first time in 30 years that we have set an intentional purposeful redistribution of wealth in this country into the pockets of people in lower-income brackets all over the country. It means that they get accommodation supplements and childcare supplements and that when they go to work from a benefit they will get a definite increase in their take-home pay. It means that money goes into the households of families and kids all over the country are better off on that. Now Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith would say we should not do that but should give more money to higher-income people. But we have said that we have to start reinvesting in having children in this country. That is not just something an individual should be doing by himself or herself. This country has always stood for sharing the costs of having children and for making it attractive to have a family. 
We on the Government side of the House believe in families and I see Gordon Copeland sitting there representing a party that wants to make sure that families are something people want to have because they can share the cost with people across the country—as they should be doing. That is what Working for Families does; it is a direct investment in the families and children of this country. 
I say to Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith that we were seeing child poverty driven to a point where one in five children were in poverty under the previous National Government in this country. We are now finally seeing ourselves on a track by which we can compare ourselves to the best in the world. That has to be an achievement that everybody in this House should be proud of. Iknow the National Party is not proud of that. It would rather have given more money to people who are well off as an incentive for them to work harder—as if people who are less well off do not work hard! National does not seem to want to put money directly into the pockets of families who have children. It does not seem to want to be family-friendly. It does not seem to want there to be an in-work payment so that when a person goes from a benefit into work he or she actually gets genuine money. It does not seem to want to help with childcare costs.  
But Working for Families does provide such assistance. It was another part of an investment policy alongside the investment in keeping students in this country so their skills will stay here. Students know that their country has invested in them and they will invest their lives in this country just as generations of us in this House today have done—staying here to live and investing our lives here. Labour has invested in working families; we have invested in children. That is the difference between Labour and National and we are on the Government side of the House because we belong to a group of people who said: “Please carry on investing in the future of this country. Do not cash up after only 6 years of really getting some gains carry on making a difference and do not have the short-sighted view that Dr Brash and John Key had.”  
That is why we have the privilege to be on the Government side of the House leading this country and why the National members have the privilege of going for 9 long years—probably 12—sitting there opposing opposing and opposing.