Anderton Jim: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Anderton Jim: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:637;Page:7264] 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 I had prepared I thought a reasonably far-sighted visionary piece to say but I listened to the speech made by John Key the Leader of the Opposition and I had to revise my view. Over Christmas I too read the book  
The Hollow Men 
. It is a sad book for anyone who has a deep regard for the democratic process in New Zealand because of the actions of senior members of the National Party who aspire to lead the country. The actions of those MPs bring New Zealand politics into disrepute—that is the truth of it and one cannot read it without coming to that conclusion. 
That description—“hollow”—accurately describes the speech made by John Key this afternoon. Here is a critical reason to support that view. John Key talks about the underclass in New Zealand and proclaims himself deeply concerned about it. Anyone would be concerned about the no-wage and low-wage families. Certainly I and according to him John Key too came from one of those families. We are all concerned about that group because we have experienced some of the problems those families face. 
His prescription to help them—the only prescription actually that he gave today—was to reduce taxes. Will that prescription help them? I do not know whether John Key understands that the lower one’s income the less effect that tax cuts have. I do not think John Key is unintelligent but anyone who thinks that lower taxes help low-income families is either stupid or deliberately misrepresenting the truth. There are only two possibilities. Do I think John Key is stupid? No I do not. He is not stupid. So he is deliberately misrepresenting the fact that lower taxes will help underclass families in New Zealand—because they will not. How do I know that? I know that because I lived through it and was in this House—I do not know where John Key was; he might have been in futures trading somewhere—when a Government I was once a member of actually reduced taxes by far more than John Key has ever dreamt about. 
The top marginal rate of 66c in the dollar was reduced to 33c in the dollar. Now there is a tax cut for you! But of course the poorest families in New Zealand had their taxes reduced only from 20c in the dollar to 15c in the dollar. So the richest people like John Key and even middle-class people like myself now got the biggest tax cuts and the best opportunities in terms of increased income and the poorest families got the worst deal. 
What is different about what John Key is proposing? Nothing is different. I ask myself whether John Key or his National Party has learnt anything from that era and the answer has to be no they have not except that they suggest they want more than they were given then. That was a licence to print money for the affluent of New Zealand. It is no wonder some people want more of it but in my view that is completely counterproductive if John Key is to be taken at his word and he really cares one single iota for the poorest families in New Zealand. 
I believe that if that is his prescription he does not care about them. He does not and he is a hollow man. He is representing hollow men and women in what he says because tax cuts cannot fix the problems of the underclass. What happens when we want a decent health system and we have tax cuts coming out of the pockets of the poorest people in the country? Who pays for their own health care? The people who have the tax cuts can pay for it but the people who have not get a poorer health system and less accessibility to it. I went through that period. But furthermore just to rub insult into injury having given through one Government the biggest tax cuts in New Zealand’s history as far as I know and having had that fail the Ruth Richardson - led financial move was not only to sheet that in with surcharges for superannuitants but also to reduce the income of even poorer people than those on low wages—beneficiaries—by 24 percent. 
I was here when it happened. I could not believe it. I was gobsmacked by the audacity of it. We had just been through this period of the richest people getting the most by a country mile then the even poorer people than the low-wage people had their income slashed by nearly 25 percent. Has anyone noticed what actually happened? What happened was that we had an underclass squared. Those people were the poorest of the poor. They were the people whose kids in many ways we have inherited as parents and we are now dealing with that trouble. The inheritance of now is from then. Everyone asks why we have all these problems with drugs and alcohol. It is an inheritance from the past. I would hope that people like John Key if he had any kind of integrity at all would be looking to the future and saying that the inheritance for the future must be better than what we have inherited from the past. 
Surely full employment would be one of those things. Do we have full employment now in comparison with what we had then? We had 265000 jobless people when we had the biggest tax cuts in New Zealand’s history. How did that work? We are told now that tax cuts will fix everything. Did the biggest tax cuts we have ever had fix everything? If they did why are National members complaining that we have not made as much progress as they had hoped? If tax cuts would have fixed it they would have fixed it forever. How can one do any better than halving the tax rate? Is John Key suggesting that he would halve the tax rate? Well we did and what happened? It was a disaster and an inequality. 
Hon Bill English 
: So are you going to put them back? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: If we want not to make the same mistakes we should learn something from history. The record will show if anyone is remotely interested in the facts that the gap between the richest New Zealanders and the poorest New Zealanders opened during that period at an exponential rate never known in the history of this country. The gap between rich and poor was escalated by an extraordinary degree by tax cuts on the one hand and cuts in the income of beneficiaries on the other hand and the underclass has never really recovered from that. That is the truth of it and we are struggling with that. I know that and I know for sure we do not fix health education employment opportunities and regional opportunities for New Zealand simply by cutting the tax rate but that is what we are told. I watched New Zealand’s assets being sold. We were told that when we sold them it would be all hunky-dory. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Who sold them? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: As a matter of fact some of my colleagues who are still here will realise that I did not vote for their sale. In fact I exited my caucus as a result of it so do not give me that! But what I see this Government doing is rebuilding New Zealand’s infrastructure whether it is regional economies or whether it is having to buy back the very tracks that the National Government sold for less than the price of the sleepers on the ground. This Government is now having to pick up the tab for that. 
There is now Kiwibank. We sold all the banks in New Zealand and restarted another one. What I heard from people like Mr English Mr Hide and everyone else including Dr Brash was that it would be a disaster and people would lose all their money if they put it into Kiwibank. Well it is the best-selling bank in town. I want National members to come clean and say whether they will be true to their record and sell Kiwibank. Just tell that to the 500000 account holders who now think Kiwibank is the best thing since sliced bread. 
I know what the National Party’s record is because I have seen it in this House longer than most people here. John Key clearly has not. It is just a joke for him to come here today and give that great state of the nation speech in response to a Prime Minister who has overseen the biggest and best growth period both socially and economically in New Zealand history almost certainly since the Second World War—and the Minister of Finance who is sitting here has overseen it as well—and tell us that he will fix the whole lot by cutting taxes. It is a joke. National members say they are now ready to govern the country; they are ready to govern nothing.