Dunne Peter: Budget Statement — Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDunne Peter: Budget Statement — Budget Debate[Sitting date: 26 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11356. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): At first glance this is a pretty boring Budget but only a fool would dismiss it as faddle and only a racist would dismiss it as being all caused by rising immigration. The reality of this Budget is not so much in the baubles it delivers in the short term but in the transformation it sets in place for the longer term. How often have we heard various Governments lament genuinely I think the plight of the vulnerable—the fact that we have this huge problem with family violence in New Zealand with at-risk children with families who are dysfunctional? We pour more money in year after year and the statistics get worse.What this Budget and the social investment strategy that it heralds are all about is saying that we want to target our interventions much more directly and clearly to those who are genuinely at risk. The work that is being done by the Minister for Social Development to bring together a replacement for Child Youth and Family which has clearly failed and to bring together a coordinated approach to family dysfunction which this Budget helps fund is I think one of the most laudable achievements of any Government of recent times.How often have we all said in this House that we want a better deal for the families and the children of New Zealand? I have heard members opposite talk about putting children at the centre of policy making. This Budget and these changes do that. I guess the sad thing is that the consequences will not be immediate—these are generational shifts we are ushering in—but it is important to be making the stand now. It is important to be ensuring that the statements we have uttered over the years about kids getting the best start in life do actually come to mean something and we can turn round the horrific statistics that some of us were protesting about in the weekend with regard to family violence for example.It is important that we can deal with dysfunction at its earliest stage with good parenting skills and with support for families who are vulnerable and need help and by ensuring our services are not tailored to suit the requirements of the bureaucracies but are to be wrapped around the families they are designed to be servicing. That is I think one of the most important constructs contained in this Budget. Although it might sound pretty boring on the face of it because it is long term it is actually fundamental. The way we get good economic growth a stable society and productive individuals for the future is to lay the foundations properly right at the beginning and I believe that is what this Budget is all about.Unfortunately I do not think it goes far enough in the area of housing. We are making a number of moves that are around the fringes—important individually peripheral certainly but not linked in to an overarching national strategy. I believe that the idea I floated earlier in the week of having a national housing summit is relevant because it would bring together the Government local government the construction industry the banking industry and the social service providers to not just nut out a strategy but more important agree on a plan for its consistent implementation.There is something wrong in my view with watching on television night after night various building companies advertising “We will build you the home of our dreams” or “of your dreams”—probably “our dreams” is more correct—while at the same time we have people who are homeless and who are struggling to get accommodation and while at the same time we have a generation of people rising who say: “Homeownership will never be for me because I will not be able to afford it.” We have the resources; we have the capability. What we need is the leadership to bring it together into a coordinated national strategy that will see a significant impact on the housing problem in New Zealand.While I am at it let us not get waylaid by the canard that this is all the fault of mass immigration. Immigration flows go up and go down. If one looks at the international literature and if one looks at New Zealand’s long-term trend line the old story of what goes up will come down will be borne out. So the short-term blame game of “It’s all the fault of immigrants.” will be pretty quickly exposed for the very vicious and nasty fallacy that it is and those who promote it will be similarly exposed as frauds as bigots and as unacceptable in the context of our society.One of the things I do want to talk about—because again I think it goes to the heart of where New Zealand stands—is good quality services. Good quality social services and community services were mentioned by the Minister of Finance in the Budget statement and I want to say a word or two about the changes for which I am responsible as the Minister of Internal Affairs relating to the reorganisation of the Fire Service. I will be bringing legislation to this House in the next couple of months to provide for what will be the biggest single change to our fire services in around 70 years—the establishment of a unified national Fire Service with appropriate regional representation and good support for our paid staff for our volunteers and for our rural fire fighters all brought together into a single agency for the first time.At the moment we have 60-something different rural brigades and we have hundreds of volunteer fire brigades around the country and we also have a national Fire Service two pieces of legislation and a very confused and archaic system. It is going to change and it needs to change because actually what the modern Fire Service does is very little about putting out fires. It is a lot about vehicle extractions medical assists and as we saw so valiantly in the case of the Christchurch earthquake profound work in the urban search and rescue area. But here is the rub: technically the Fire Service today has no mandate in law for all of the other activities that it covers. So we are going to make that change give our communities greater confidence about their security and ensure that that emergency service is resourced to meet the needs of the modern time.I want to say a word about one small area in the Budget that does give me some concern. There is an entry in the Budget of approximately $179 million for intelligence and security services. It is not explained and I want to draw the House’s attention to comments by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security just 2 days ago that are very relevant here. Inspector-General Gwyn observed that the security services in New Zealand are still less transparent in their operations than the security services in our “Five Eyes” partners. It strikes me as a little unusual that we are getting an increase in its funding that is substantial with very little explanation at the same time as the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security is pointing out that it is still not as transparent as it could be and still not as transparent as those in the comparable nations with which we work. So I say that the funding comes with a price tag and the price tag has to be greater transparency the price tag has to be greater accountability and the price tag has to be greater cooperation and if you like revelation in terms of exactly what is going on.It has been a privilege over the last number of years to work with my colleagues in the ACT Party and the Māori Party alongside the National Government to achieve a series of policy changes. We have not always agreed nor should we but we have always worked constructively and respectfully with each other. I think the gains that various parties can claim from this Budget demonstrate that point very well. There was a statement contained late in the Minister of Finance’s speech about how New Zealanders value and deserve stable government. That is right. One needs only look at the situation in Europe at the moment to see the consequences of political uncertainty and political instability. Let us make sure they do not come to this country.This Budget will not set the world on fire but that is not important because that is not its mission. It lays a solid framework for future achievement when the surpluses start to build up when the Government then faces the more vexing problem of managing surpluses. If it thought managing deficits was difficult managing surpluses will be even more difficult because it will be much harder for Ministers of Finance to say no when there is more money. But that is the aim we need to be working towards to ensure that we get this country back on to a sustainable prosperous certain course and to give the assurance that within that structurally we can cope with the next natural disaster or the next major global economic crisis and we will not be plunged into the depths of depression as we have been in the past as a consequence of those activities. This is fundamentally a good Budget even if it lacks a little on the excitement front.