Maharey Steve: Budget Debate 
Maharey Steve: Budget Debate 
[Volume:639;Page:9602] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I begin my 10 minutes of comments on Budget 2007 by saying to Dr Michael Cullen that his eighth Budget is a fantastic Budget. He has a record second to none in the Western World in the OECD. He is someone about whom we in this House—even I am sure Tau Henare—if we were offshore would be saying “I feel good about Dr Michael Cullen.” In the 1990s the National Party left the country in a parlous state. At least we can now travel around the world with our heads held high because after eight Budgets we have seen Dr Cullen balance the books make the country prosperous make the country proud again of its social policies make one feel good to be a New Zealander and make those things sustainable. This Budget did those things and once again I congratulate Dr Michael Cullen. 
National members have been saying to themselves over the last little while that there is a wee glimmer of hope for the National Party. They said goodbye to Dr Brash. They had a whack at getting into Government with him but that did not work. So immediately we saw the leadership rumbles begin again and out of the dust emerged Mr John Key the great hope of the National Party. He has been doing all sorts of things—delivering muesli bars wearing pink shirts getting T-shirts with little insignia on them walking around with children and doing all sorts of things that go with sizzle in politics. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: And it’s going very well. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: As Mr Williamson said he has been a bit of a media star over the last little while. National members are saying: “This is good. This person knows his stuff extremely well.” I say to Mr Williamson who is a real information technology - savvy person that it is very interesting to look at YouTube where the highly knowledgable leader of the National Party takes people around the parliamentary complex and tells them things such as that we meet in the Legislative Chamber and that we met in the Legislative Chamber when this Chamber was closed. He says it with total authority looking down the barrel of the camera and telling people on no less than four occasions completely wrong things about the most basic procedures of this House. 
That is the problem with Mr Key. Mr Key is all flash but no substance and that is his weakness. We saw this in the 2007 Budget when Mr Key was confronted by the fact that politics is not all about the pink shirts the T-shirts and trying to say that he is a person who is up with the play. It is about having something concrete to offer the people of New Zealand. 
KiwiSaver is a fantastic policy that will offer an opportunity for us finally—as Norman Kirk’s original proposal was cancelled by Mr Muldoon—to get back into saving as a country again. It will ensure that many people will have a top-up for their superannuation. We guarantee superannuation unlike the National Party. Where did KiwiSaver leave the National Party? It left it floundering. Do we think that National members will agree with KiwiSaver? I think so. Will Mr Gerry Brownlee go to the next election disagreeing with KiwiSaver? I do not think so. Will Mr Henare go to the next election disagreeing with Kiwis having the chance to save finally for their future with a 2:1 subsidy and a $1000 kickstart? Will the National Party campaign on removing that from Kiwis? All we can say is: “Make our day. Go and do exactly that.” 
In other words Mr Key and the National Party ran into a brick wall of reality with the Budget. They have to come up with some ideas some policy and they have to do better than they did in the 1990s. In the 1990s they cut accident compensation and privatised it. In fact whole companies went broke trying to run accident compensation privately. Does anyone know that? They went broke. Bulk funding of schools produced a real divide between winner schools and loser schools. The National Government said it wanted all children to read by age 9 but then immediately Mr Henare halved the operational budget that was going to pay for that during the 1990s. National said: “Let’s say to ourselves that we care about health.” but immunisation was so low in the 1990s that we became a net exporter of measles. We became a net exporter of illness because of National’s market rents policy—that is one of my favourites; I will return to it at the end because Maurice Williamson is here. It introduced the market rents policy and rents went up 106 percent between 1992 and 1999. Despite making crime one of the top priorities of the National Government under Maurice Williamson crime went up a staggering 80.6 percent between 1990 and 1998. 
The National manifesto said it wanted a major offensive on unemployment and it drove unemployment to 11.9 percent! Talk about a major offensive—National certainly created a huge amount of unemployment during its time. Fantastic job—thank goodness we are here! In subsequent Budgets since then we have done things like Working for Families and therefore lifted 70000 children out of poverty so far. Mr Benson-Pope continues on his mission of lifting young people in families that have not got the money out of poverty with that programme. 
In education we have lifted funding by 47 percent. Mr Brownlee looks puzzled. I know why: he sits there reading the National research unit notes which do not say the truth like this. The only way the National Party can get access to the truth is to come and listen to what the Government says—47 percent! More Maori are participating in education and in the workforce than ever before. Health spending has increased by—and I ask Mr Brownlee to listen to this—99 percent. There are more options for women to get into the workforce. There has been a 174 percent increase in funding in early childhood education. I am sure even Nathan Guy who has a young family goes home secretly to Levin—he is looking forward to getting back to farming later on after the next election—and says: “Thank goodness that when I’m back farming I’ll be able to get the kids into early childhood education because of the wonderful Labour Government’s 174 percent increase in funding.” 
We have Child Youth and Family lifting funding. There has a been a $260 million boost to older New Zealanders’ superannuation for the next 4 years. That lifts it back to 66 percent. The previous National Government cut that last time. I can see why Mr Brownlee is so focused on this. He can see that as the National Party has sat there we have been building social policy properly. We now have a Families Young and Old strategy which unites around major issues like obesity non-governmental organisations housing family violence and trying to lay foundations for lifelong learning. In this Budget we are now in a position where we have increased education spending and social development and employment spending. There have been huge increases again in health spending in justice spending in accident compensation in Maori affairs and in housing. 
I will finish on this note. There have been fantastic solid real increases in this Budget and Mr Key says he will agree with all of them. He says: “I don’t care what you say. I’m going to agree with it. I’m going to take Gerry Brownlee with me. I don’t care if I have to make Maurice Williamson eat dead rats and sit there and accept market rents. I don’t care that Judith Collins is not going to be allowed to beat up on sole parents—I’m going to agree with them. I don’t care that Mr Ryall wants to privatise health—I’ll say I won’t. I don’t care that Mr English says that low-decile schools are awash with cash—I’ll say I’ll give them more. I don’t care that houses used to be something we thought we should sell off—I’m going to say we’re not. I don’t care that ACT wants us to roll KiwiSaver into superannuation—I’ll say I won’t. I don’t care that Pansy Wong wants to privatise ACC—I won’t do that.” 
On this side of the House and around the country I guess we are saying: “How do you trust that?”. How does one trust it when Mr Key agrees so easily with every single question that is put to him? How come he can do that? This is the thing that really worries me: members should imagine that Mr Key is sitting there now and surrounded by Mr Coleman the extreme right-winger; Mr Brownlee the extreme right-winger; Mr Power the extreme extreme right-winger; Mr Williamson the extreme extreme extreme extreme right-winger; and Mr Blumsky the off-the-scale right-winger. They are all waiting for Mr Key—“Mr Cuddly”—to try to deliver them to Government so they can rush in and get the real National Party agenda going. No one trusts National members to keep Mr Key’s word because every single one of them is a hollow man or woman.