Jones Shane: Budget Debate 
Jones Shane: Budget Debate 
[Volume:631;Page:3231] 
SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Recently from hither and yon visitors kids and the elderly have come to the House and noted how improved are its performance tone and general status. Of course I have concluded that that was due to the absence of a certain party one member of which is now crawling around on her belly with a gun and singing “I shot the sheriff but I didn’t shoot the deputy.” and another has been doing a lap dance. But the most important thing that has happened during this period of time—in particular during this week in relation to that party—is that my distant relative Donna Awatere Huata got out of jail. All those people who are trapped along with Rodney— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! 
SHANE JONES 
:—along with the honourable Mr Hide and who are regretting the hours and minutes they were wandering around Epsom watching trees that had been visited by stray dogs and perhaps mistaking Mr Hide for one of the canine characters the SPCA have to take in— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Bulldog! 
SHANE JONES 
: The first bulldog we know that will be microchipped is the lap dancer. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Or lapdog! 
SHANE JONES 
: No I did not say that—to say that in his absence would be to cast great aspersions on dogs. There is nothing that that particular member can say or has said that will make one jot of difference to this Budget. 
This is a very good Budget. Why? Because it shows up Opposition members and those deluded speakers in the House—including some of my whanaunga from the Maori Party—for their shallow thinking and absence of ideas. What are they all saying? They are all saying that life is better in Australia. Well I endorse what the Prime Minister said and I also endorse what my whanaunga Winston Peters said—I have no idea how he became so humorous so suddenly when speaking about the Coroners Bill and various other things—that if Dr Brash wants to walk the plank he can put it right across the Tasman go to Bondi buy a surfboard and stay there. If there is one thing young people do not like in Aotearoa it is for leaders and for people who purport to have a vision for the country to put the country down—to divide people and constantly to bemoan the fact that the exercise they were a key part of has not delivered the goods. Don Brash will not stand up and take responsibility for the key part he played during that exercise. No one drove ideological excesses further and harder than the bloke who wanted to sell New Zealand Post and who wanted to get the unemployed to go to Kaitaia Murupara and Moerewa—not to Kohimarama or Remuera; oh no kahore—to collect some measly benefit. That was unlike our approach which was to ensure that everyone went into work. 
This Budget is replete with fantastic statistics. Those statistics show that our Dr Cullen has been a fantastically responsible manager in the economic sphere. How do we know that? We know that because of the buoyancy and wealth that has been consistently generated in the sharemarket. But I can almost hear Opposition members starting to ask about Telecom. Those managers in Telecom are the authors of their own misfortunes; they had every opportunity to see and hear to maintain their customer base and to replicate what other far-thinking key institutions such as British Telecom had done. So it is a bit rich for the well-heeled highly paid managers of Telecom to put the blame on to this House—that will not wash at all. 
It may be said that Dr Cullen has been too miserly. Well Dr Cullen has ensured that our books are balanced. He has ensured that we have a long-term future in dealing with one of the most terrifying human tsunamis that is on its way which is the greying of the entire OECD population. I invite members to go overseas and identify a country whose people are better suited and better prepared than we are through the Cullen fund and investment of that nature to deal with the ageing of our population. Members will find very few countries that can exceed what Dr Cullen has done in terms of sophistication and preparedness. 
Let us move on to talk a little about who is growing wealthy in Aotearoa. If the indiscriminate strategy of tax cuts is pursued that will have a disproportionately fantastic impact on a person who already has a lot of dough but we on this side of the House did not come into politics to enrich those who are already doing very well—I certainly did not. We came into politics to ensure that those who need a hand up or those who have suffered as a consequence of historical problems or dislocation from the labour market can enjoy basic protections. The vulnerability of such people is not preyed upon or exploited; we assist them so they can be key contributing members of both civil society and the economy. 
Our friends from the Opposition talk about the need for business-friendly approaches. I ask them to name one single idea that is likely to capture the popular imagination of people in this country from north to south—brown people white people Asian friends—other than the idea of impoverishing those who have been struggling in order to enrich a very narrow range of people. That is not the recipe for a buoyant or cohesive society. That is why what we are going to hear more about will never ever see the Opposition restored in the foreseeable future to the place we currently occupy—that is a position of responsible stewardship on behalf of all people. As the Maori say: te iti me te rahi. 
Let us talk about the investment in infrastructure. In that respect our friends from the Opposition have had ample opportunity to put ideas into practice. However as announced today in the House we are going to increase the investment in roads by over a quarter of a billion dollars over a 3 to 5-year period. But what do we hear? We hear criticism in the absence of any alternative other than to fall back on the tried and quite divisive ideas of the 1990s to privatise everything to marketise everything and to strip society of the key institutions that keep us together. Unless we invest in infrastructure we will not have people in society upwardly mobile—able to hop on the escalator and escape from the circumstances that may have put them at the wrong end of the equation. We will not have that at all based on National’s type of thinking. 
Let us talk about those who are actually in business. A number of us have been up and down the country recently and we know that small to medium sized businesses are in a state of total happiness. They know there is not a hope in hell that we can have tax cuts and then roll out hospitals in Kaitaia the South Island and other places. Our friends on the other side of the House do not admit to the fact that parties cannot promise tax cuts to private enterprise and at the same time go back to their electorate clinics in their constituencies and promise to maintain key essential services. Deep down National members know that what they are saying makes them unelectable so they never tell the truth about what they are proposing to do should they ever—God forbid—have the opportunity to control the Treasury benches. 
The people who are generating wealth can see over recent times not only that the capitalisation of the share market has grown $30 billion in real terms under Labour’s stewardship but that Labour is very good for business. Of course there is a narrow range of people who have been surreptitiously funding the National Party and who do not want to be identified. They do not like to mix. Why? Because they want to pull out the Edmonds Cookery Book from the 1980s and 1990s and re-run that same old scratched record. It will not do. People in New Zealand will not be hoodwinked as they were before and the tiny minority will not be able to wander off camp up overseas and enjoy their ill-gotten gains while the vast bulk of New Zealanders are left to pick up the pieces. Do members know why there is a differential between what happens to wages in Australia and what happens to wages in Aotearoa? There is a deliberate strategy to smash working people and to smash the institutions that function as their voices—as the medium for their advocacy. This is a great Budget and there will be plenty more to come.