Curran Clare: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 26 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3992. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Talofa lava. I will say something for the Government members and that is that they are good at the spin. They are good at the political spin and they are good at telling you that everything is great when behind the scenes it is another story. I listened to the previous speaker—the new Associate Minister of Finance Paula Bennett—talk about fundamentally moving resources to where they are needed most. Well how does that fit with what the Government is doing to social housing—fundamentally dismantling the social housing scheme and the role of the State in providing housing for the most vulnerable in our society? Not one more house is coming out of its grand new plan which is not a new plan.I would also like to say something to a previous National speaker new MP Barbara Kuriger who spoke about the importance of fast broadband in rural New Zealand which is so important. It is so important that there is the right investment and that the investment goes where it is needed. I am sure she as an MP in rural New Zealand and Taranaki would know—in fact I know that she does know because I know that she has many people coming through her door complaining about their broadband—that unfortunately the Government has already spent $300 million in rural New Zealand and it is still not working. That is a real problem which is why Labour fought against that piece of legislation pushed through under urgency on Friday night.My colleague Grant Robertson described this as a politician’s Budget. It has also been described as many things but one of them is a Budget of broken promises around the surplus around wage and job targets and of course around those three new taxes. “No new taxes.” said the Prime Minister. “No new taxes.” said the campaign literature before the election. But what have we got? We have got three new taxes. The economist Rod Oram put it really well when he said in the Sunday Star-Times this weekend: “this Budget as the six before it is a triumph of micro-management. The Government has mastered the art of switching small sums [of money] around to give the illusion of progress.” Well how true that is. How true that is. This is the “sticking plaster Budget” and the “piecemeal Budget” with no vision no plan and no real hope.Chris Bishop: 25 bucks a week is not a small sum of money.CLARE CURRAN: Yes I absolutely acknowledge that $25 a week is going to make a small difference but you tell me—excuse me Mr Deputy Speaker not you—but can the Government tell me how that is going to address the fundamental causes of child poverty. Well it is just not. If you live in regional New Zealand you could be forgiven for barely registering this Budget.Once upon a time—as I am sure you would remember Mr Deputy Speaker and as many of the people in the House would recall—the Budget was a must-listen-to yearly event. There were big structural changes. There were wide-ranging visions. It was an opportunity for Governments of the day to show their core thinking and direction. This Budget has no structural shifts in it. There is no accounting for the ageing population. There is no recognition of the rapid technological change and its impact on jobs. There is no money for innovation. There is no money for regional development. There is no money for the productive economy and for exports. There is no investment in those things. Instead we have had KiwiSaver’s kick-start snatched away—the savings of future generations.This is a Budget of broken promises. We have seen firstly the taxing of capital gains—not a capital gains tax but the taxing of capital gains for property investors has expanded—secondly an airport tax charging people to enter or leave New Zealand; and thirdly a broadband tax that increases the charge on the telecommunications industry which has already resulted in an increase of broadband prices. We have got a Minister for Communications Amy Adams who does not talk to the industry to the consumers or to consumer representatives. She does not listen. She insists that black is white. In fact she stood in this House on Friday night and insisted that a levy is not a tax.I just want to show everybody Colin James’ piece in the Otago Daily Times this morning and the headline “We know a levy’s a tax Mr English”. I think the Government has lost on that one. It rammed through a special law under urgency to give the Government power to levy or tax the telecommunications industry to implement part two of a scheme for rural broadband which was $150 million. So why did we fight it? We support better broadband absolutely for rural New Zealand. It was us who provided the strong policy leading into the election for community-based rural broadband to try to address the real issues that were happening in rural New Zealand but $300 million has already been spent in rural New Zealand and that has not been a great success. How do we know this? We know this because rural New Zealand keeps telling us whether there are petitions from communities whether they have come to select committees in Parliament as three of them did last week or whether it is organisations like Rural Women which come and talk to us about the state of rural broadband. We know that Federated Farmers are worried. We even know that 68 percent of businesses and households are extremely frustrated in rural New Zealand because there was a piece of market research by Colmar Brunton for Chorus done just before the election. But there has been no analysis—no reports. The only figures that we have show a few thousand connections there have been towers upgraded and new ones built and the copper network has been improved but this is infrastructure that is owned by private companies which are benefiting from it.Is it benefiting rural New Zealand? Where is the analysis? Where are the reports? I note that members have all got their heads down over there because they know there are not any. So what does the Minister say? Well she says: “It’s my way or the highway.” she says to everybody. She says that it is a levy; it is not a tax. She said the telecommunications companies would not pass it on. Well within an hour of the debate starting in Parliament last week one of the telecommunications companies had already announced it was passing it on because it was a tax. Whether that is a good thing or not is to one side but the fact is that that is what is happening and it is a tax on consumers. She of course said that that would not happen and it did.Is a levy a tax? No it is a user charge says the Minister. Is a tax on alcohol a user charge? Is a tax on cigarettes a user charge? Is a tax on petrol a user charge? Well the Minister has certainly lost the argument on that one. The $150 million—there is no guarantee it will work. There is no guarantee that that money will not be used to finish off the first version of rural broadband. There is no guarantee that smaller community providers will get a look in. It needs an inquiry it needs examination it needs sunlight and it shows poor economic management poor judgment and a fundamental lack of understanding and good project management.Finishing up Chorus came out today pleading with the Government to move fast on Resource Management Act reforms in order to free up the roadblocks in the ultra-fast broadband project.Todd Barclay: Well why don’t you support the RMA reform?CLARE CURRAN: Well we have always said we would consider sensible changes to the Resource Management Act. We had some in our environment policy. We had a policy on telecommunications companies that said we would fix these things as soon as possible. It has been 8 months since the election. There has been no movement on this. We say to the Minister for the Environment: “Put those changes on the table Nick Smith. Let us see them. Where are they?”. And good on Chorus for putting the pressure on on that issue.