English Bill: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
English Bill: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Sitting date: 26 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3363. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 I move  
That the Appropriation (2011/12 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2012/13) Bill be now read a second time. 
 This supplementary estimates legislation carries on in the same tone as Budget 2012 with more sensible fiscal management in difficult times. It is another means by which the Government can continue on the path to getting better results for public services. 
It was fascinating to see over the last couple of days how the political Opposition reacted to the Government announcing 10 results that it is going to be chasing for better public services. I think it was described by one prominent Labour member as pretty well all meaningless stuff—pretty well all meaningless stuff. 
Mike Sabin 
: Mr Parker did the same thing this morning. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Oh did Mr Parker do the same this morning? “Pretty well all meaningless stuff.” Actually for the Labour Party it is. Getting results is exactly what it does not want because getting results means smaller government. Imagine if more teenagers stayed on the rails and did not get in trouble. That might mean perhaps fewer social workers. It might mean a smaller Government department somewhere. Of course in the Labour Party’s world that is failure. It is failure. If you end up with smaller government because the community is working better then that is a failure. 
The Labour Party now represents only one thing and that is the industrial interests of some parts of the public sector. That is it. In our interaction with those people who are providing public services more and more of them do not want to be represented by the Labour Party because those people on the front line want to get results and the Labour Party does not. More and more public servants now understand that and some of their traditional allegiances are therefore weakening. 
This Government is determined to pursue the notion of getting results and in this context can I compliment the Prime Minister. He is the first Prime Minister I can recall who has been willing to go out in public and say: “Here are 10 things we want to achieve for public services.” and say exactly what they are. I do not think—well I know that the previous Labour Prime Minister did not do that. She did not do it. She never actually went out and said: “Here are 10 things we want to do better.” That is actually a much more difficult thing than going out to say: “Here are 10 things. We have got more money and we are going to spend it on them” which is what usually happens. 
The Labour Party says: “You know we care because we got another $30 million.” Well if that worked why after a decade of a Labour Government with more money than it knew what to do with did we end up with worse intractable social problems at the end of that decade than we had at the start? I mean that is the measure of it. Why were crime rates worse at the end of that decade than at the start of it? Why was long-term welfare dependency worse despite the best economic decade the whole world had had in two generations? Why was long-term welfare dependency worse at the end of that decade? The reason is that you can spend endless money on these things and show you have got more public servants to do it but if you do not focus on getting results and adapt when you discover that the programme is not working then you are not going to get results; you are just going to spend an awful lot of money. 
Hon Annette King 
: Give us some results. Give us 4 years of results. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well I will tell the member one very good result. For the first time in a generation we are going to close some prisons. There is nothing that saves money like closing prisons. Look I know it means fewer prison officers. I know that is a failure! It means fewer prison officers which means fewer members of the prison officer union paying their fees to the Labour Party. We think that is unfortunate for the prison officers and we are going to try to get them jobs elsewhere. But it is not worth keeping a prison open to employ the prison officers. That is the difference between the National Party and the Labour Party. Labour would rather keep the prison to keep employing the prison officers. We would rather have fewer prisoners reoffending and close the prison. It is pretty straightforward. 
And we would rather have some performance in our public services. If we take the justice and the law and order areas the Government has negotiated a world-leading contract with I think the consortium that is going to run Wiri Prison which focuses on reducing reoffending. Along with another example immunisation rates these are things Governments have talked about for years without making any appreciable progress and without making any real difference. So the kinds of results that the Government announced the other day are not new. It is not as if these are a different set of aspirations from what has been articulated by Governments for decades. The difference is that we are taking it seriously. We are going to put these results into the performance expectations of public sector chief executives. We are going to have real-time total transparency for the public to examine whether we are making progress on these results and we are going to put ourselves to the test. 
We would hope—and I would guess actually—that the Labour Party is interested in reducing the number of assaults on children. In fact I know it is—I take it for granted. But I hope it will support the changes that go with that. I suspect that it will not do that. I suspect that those members will say: “We want to reduce the number of assaults on children but if you do anything different with social services that’s bad. That’s the mean nasty National Government.” Well actually I think the public has moved on—well ahead of the Labour Party. The public accept that in order to get results we will need to change things. In fact we have been changing things. In the last Budget there are $4.5 billion of new initiatives funded from $3 billion of savings. 
The best things for fiscal policy are the things that are the right results for the community: a teenager who stays on the rails a prisoner who does not reoffend a vulnerable child who is not assaulted. That is how we save money and this Government has set store by getting better results in order to get back to surplus not by going around cutting services. 
That fits in the broader picture of an economy where we have to focus strongly on competitiveness and on productivity. The world is making it harder to rebalance this economy away from consumption and debt and towards investment and savings and a highly productive export sector but that does not mean we are going to stop trying. In fact what it means is that we are going to have to try even harder because if people want higher incomes and more jobs and more job security then we need to have a steadily growing economy. The supplementary estimates are being delivered in the context of more dark clouds on the horizon around the world. It is our view that by taking considered and consistent decisions about both our fiscal progress in getting to surplus and our drive for productivity and competitiveness New Zealanders can look forward to moderate growth that will help underpin their job security and give them the opportunity— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. His time has expired.