Logie Jan: Debate on Budget Policy StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Debate on Budget Policy Statement[Sitting date: 11 March 2015. Volume:703;Page:2148. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a call on this Budget Policy Statement. I want today to speak about a country of two halves and a Government that seems to be speaking and listening to only one half. This is a Government that is masquerading as competent. Treasury’s announcement today that a deficit is likely for the 2014-15 financial year shows that the Government is failing to meet its key economic target which it set itself. National has always emphasised and it is in this Budget Policy Statement that achieving a surplus is its No. 1 goal. But it looks like it will fail to achieve that goal and instead we will have a $572 million deficit this financial year.We are now seeing evidence that the Government is massaging the books in an attempt to return to surplus. It seems to have forgotten that the core purpose of Government is to do the best for all New Zealanders. Treasury documents released to the Green Party today under the Official Information Act suggest options for reducing or delaying spending to help achieve a Budget surplus. These include keeping ACC levies artificially high delaying Treaty of Waitangi settlements slowing down the Christchurch rebuild delaying overseas development assistance spending slowing down the Justice Sector Fund and the Better Public Services programme and delaying Ministry of Social Development spending. Again we have evidence that this Government is at the very least considering sacrificing equality justice and fairness for the sake of public relations for the sake of achieving a surplus and for the sake of reaching its No. 1 goal. That is too bad for the well-being of the entire country or at least half the country.I know some people though who still believe that the Government is doing the best it can with its limited resources and that sometimes it just has to make tough calls. I do not get this perspective; I really struggle to understand it. It seems to me that that analysis forgets the tax cuts that cost us collectively over a billion dollars a year. It misses out on the ongoing refusal of this Government to even consider a capital gains tax as a way of addressing our housing crisis and increasing revenue and the absolute refusal to consider a carbon tax which again would help us to achieve our climate change goals and bring in revenue. It certainly forgets this Government’s ability to conjure up millions at short notice for Northland and it misses the extraordinary $163 million budget overrun for implementing well-critiqued child support reforms in the Government’s last term. It misses the money lost to New Zealand from the Skycity debacle and all the other times the Government has chosen to step in and help its mates on its side of the net while spending billions on sending people to Iraq as membership of a club.The independent analysis of the Government’s books last year found that on the counter side of that—what it is wasting money on—the Government is actually cutting money from the health education and environment sectors to the tune of $3.837 billion over 3 years. The Government is forgetting its purpose which is to serve everybody in this country and it is serving a small group.I want to bring this House’s attention to the fact that in New York this week a New Zealand Minister stood up in front of the United Nations and said: “I reaffirm New Zealand’s strong commitment to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women…” although the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment has refused to take action on closing the gender pay gap. We have been told by this Government that basically we should be satisfied with a 120-year wait for gender equality. That is not good enough. It is not serving all of this country.