Moroney Sue: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: General Debate[Sitting date: 17 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9449. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): I would have a great deal more respect for that member who just resumed her seat Louise Upston and her views on the representation of women in this House if she was not standing by while her Government reduced the equal representation of women on State sector boards—that target—if she did not stand by while her Government voted against paid parental leave and if she did not stand by while her Government reduced the training incentive allowance for sole parents. If she actually stood up for women in this House when it mattered with her vote I would have a great deal more confidence and respect for what she has to say about how women are represented in Parliament.But let us move on to the real issues not about Maggie Thatcher at all because those are not the real issues that New Zealanders are thinking about. What they are thinking about is the cost of living. What they know now as a result of this week in Parliament is that the Prime Minister John Key is clueless. They used to think that he was just gormless but now they know he is absolutely clueless because he said so himself.Today we learnt—if people did not know this before—that what Hekia Parata said before is completely wrong. Just 10 minutes ago in this House Hekia Parata stood up and said that the Government wants to keep money in people’s pockets because it thinks they know best. However we know that the Government clearly has its hands in people’s pockets because today we heard that the petrol tax is going up to the tune of $20 billion more than the Government needs for the roading that it has planned. That is $20 billion that is coming out of the pockets of New Zealand parents New Zealand families which they could be spending on other things because that Government made a decision to put the tax up for no real reason at all.I want to remind New Zealanders that from 1 April this year they are paying more in ACC levies than they ought to be paying. Even by the officials’ own estimates—the estimates from Treasury—this Government is taking up to $2 billion each year out of the pockets of hard-working employees and employers in New Zealand for no other reason than it can. That money cannot be spent on anything else but injuries and accidents because it is an ACC levy. The officials have told us that the Government is taking more than $2 billion more than it needs to cover injuries and accidents. That will sit in surplus in an ACC account not going anywhere not doing anything productive just simply sitting there creating a surplus in an attempt to make it look as though the Government’s whole Crown operating expenses are going into surplus. Well it is a nonsense. It is a cruel trick being played by that Government on every worker and every employer who are paying more in ACC levies than they need to to cover the costs of injuries and accidents.The question needs to be asked: why is the Government doing this? It is doing this because it promised to bring the books back into surplus and the only way it is able to do that—because it is not growing the economy it is not getting jobs and it is not actually bringing productivity into this country—was to unfairly go into the pockets of workers and employers and take more out in ACC levies than what it actually needs.Today we learnt that that Government’s decision to actually reduce funding for pharmaceuticals and put prescription costs up has increased the cost of pharmaceuticals by 9.3 percent.So that is what is driving the cost of living. It is not anything to do with a robust burgeoning economy; it is to do with decisions made by that Government quite deliberately to take money in petrol taxes that it does not need to take money in ACC levies that it does not need for accidents and injuries and to actually make sure thatNew Zealanders are paying more for their prescription charges. Those are the things that are creating real stresses on New Zealand families because they cannot afford to be propping up that Government’s commitments that it made in order to go into surplus. When the Government made that commitment New Zealanders honestly believed that it was talking about actually getting the economy going. New Zealanders honestly believed that it was going to go into surplus by getting out of recession. But no. It is getting into that surplus surreptitiously by raising levies raising taxes and raising the cost of living for every New Zealander.