Goodhew Jo: Budget Debate 
Goodhew Jo: Budget Debate 
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JO GOODHEW (National—Aoraki) 
: 
 I rise in support of the motion expressing no confidence in the Labour-led Government. Far from whingeing and whining on the Opposition side of the House we are simply pointing out the realities of this Budget and the state of New Zealand at the moment under a Labour-led Government. We are in big trouble. 
As a newcomer to Parliament I had a plan which was to come to Parliament and advocate not only for the people of Aoraki but also for all hard-working New Zealanders. Who are the hard-working New Zealanders? Mums and dads are hard-working New Zealanders. Sometimes one of them is in the paid workforce and the other at home with the child or children and sometimes both are working. So are sole parents who sometimes juggle work with the vitally important role of raising children. There are also hard-working couples and individuals without children who go to work and endeavour to get ahead in life. That is a very important point; let us not forget about those people. Older people whose children have left home and who are trying desperately to put aside some money for their retirement are also hard-working people. I include in the list students who often work part-time and strive to complete higher education in order to get good jobs and reap the benefit of their graft. 
Some New Zealanders through no fault of their own find themselves on a benefit—a sickness invalids widows or unemployment benefit. Some of those people will never move from those benefits and that is why our caring New Zealand society provides for them. However some New Zealanders desperately want to be free of their dependence on the State. Those people under Labour are not optimistic about being able to do that and the Budget did not make them feel better. Employment law under Labour does not encourage employers to take the risk of taking those people on—to give them a chance. The Budget gave those people no more hope that would happen. 
Even more insidious is the growing number of beneficiaries. Some members on the Government benches may dispute that claim but I will explain that according to the March 2006 benefit data under Labour the aforementioned beneficiaries—sickness widows invalids and unemployment—number almost 191000 people. Of those 104046 are on the domestic purposes benefit. Members may add to that the approximately 350000 families that have signed up for the benefit called Working for Families—that extra benefit. Those are hard-working New Zealanders but Working for Families is their handbrake. No it is actually worse than that; it is a brick wall. 
Members can take the example of a family that earns $40000. Improved skills and longer hours give that family a chance to add $10000 to its income. But members should wait for this. Ordinarily the family might rejoice at that but instead it finds out that because the parents are Working for Families beneficiaries no less the difference that $10000 will make to their income—to their take-home pay—is only $2000. 
Simon Power 
: That can’t be right. 
JO GOODHEW 
: Unfortunately it is right. So it a case of whack! That family hits the brick wall that the Labour-led Government has created in the form of the benefit called Working for Families. Members should not get me wrong. I do not dispute that those hard-working families need to be given a break. But they do not need a benefit; they need a tax break. They need the opportunity to keep more of what they earn in their hands. 
But there are more disincentives out there. Several of the hard-working groups I mentioned before are feeling seriously left out as the Government pours billions of dollars into benefits for families as a leg-rope or a shackle. Those who are feeling left out include older people who no longer have children at home but are still working hard. Those folks do not matter. Also left out are the trapped beneficiaries who pay high marginal tax and feel helpless and hopeless and couples and individuals without children—because they do not matter either. Those people could well feel they are lesser beings than others. Why do they not matter? They still work hard but they continue to pay too much tax and they are sick and tired of it. Those groups are looking hard across the Tasman and feeling that a short jump across the ditch may prove to be better for them than staying here. Does saying that mean I am not patriotic? Am I happy about that? I am not promoting Australia. Those people simply recognise that living in Australia may be better for their families and for them as couples than living here. Whom do those people owe their allegiance to? To themselves of course. I would ask them to please stay but what can I offer them? Nothing—not until National is the Government. 
My spokesperson roles are in aged care and rural health. What has this Budget offered to those sectors? Not much—not much to show any true commitment that this Government is dealing with the real issues. I will sum up those issues firstly in aged care. New funding has been described by the aged-care sector as a drop in the bucket. The exact wording from HealthCare Providers New Zealand was: “We strongly disagree with the Minister that this funding increase will allow a significant increase for those working in the sector.” It seems that even though the figure was dressed up as many millions of dollars over 4 years the sector was not fooled. The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services welcomed the money but added there was “still much to be done.”—and how right it was. 
The union that represents many of the workers was stronger than those organisations in its condemnation of the Government. I will dare to quote from a union which is amazing. Its press release is entitled: “Budget leaves aged care out in the cold”. Letting the unions down is a bad sign. It seemed that the Minister was on a different planet from that of the sector when he described the new funding as a “heavy investment in aged care”. Workers will still be poorly paid and the future will still be bleak and uncertain. Hundreds will still leave the sector each time the petrol price rises. 
I turn to rural health. The people of Twizel are worried; so are the people of Waimate and Kurow. For many years those towns have struggled to recruit general practitioners to their practices. For too long they have faced the reality that general practitioners do not usually want to come and work in those places and that because there is a shortage of general practitioners they do not have to. The  
New Zealand Doctor 
 magazine reported last week: “The Government says it wants more people in the rural health workforce then turns a blind eye to the struggles faced by those trying to train that workforce.” 
What is the problem exactly? The Government has funded 40 extra places at the Otago and Auckland medical schools for students from rural backgrounds. That sounds well and good but the Government forgot to get those 40 students back into the rural general practices to give them some experience there. If they do not have such experience by the time they are in their 5th or 6th year then they are much less likely to go back to those particular practices. The director of Te Waipounamu Rural Health Unit at Otago University Dr Pat Farry is feeling really really unhappy about that and he expressed his dismay in the article: “This looming crisis in health care in the rural area and the rural workforce is not being addressed in a serious manner by the Government.” What did the Budget bring the rural sector? Nothing—unbelievably nothing. The Government has not noticed there is a huge risk to its primary health strategy associated with not making sure there will be general practitioners in rural practices in the primary health area. 
The other thing Dr Farry articulated in that article was something that gave him some hope. The only problem was that he was articulating hope before the election—hope that National would win it. He wrote about expanding the postgraduate training programmes for general practice to include an additional 38 places for general practitioner registrars—the difference being that they are further along in their training—and for rural hospital registrars as well as a student loan write-off for health professionals in designated hard-to-staff areas. But still the Minister sits on his hands. 
Added to that is the crisis in elective surgery. Thousands of New Zealanders have recently received a “Dear John” type of letter telling them they will not be able to have their first specialist appointment. That is enormously worrying to them as they have been sent back to a general practitioner who will have to find some other sort of health care to give them. 
This Government is intent on hiding its wasteful spendthrift ways. It is happy to accept the problems in the health sector and it wrongfully believes in throwing in more ill-targeted dollars at the problem—$10 billion so far and people tell me they cannot see where that money has gone. This Government and its boring Budget which is short on ideas have not achieved anything for the sectors that I care so much about. In my parents’ day Budgets were exciting things but this Budget was a boring one. I have no confidence in the Labour-led Government.