Curran Clare: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 21 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18240. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Tonight there are thousands of people throughout New Zealand either watching Parliament TV or listening to Parliament on the radio. I acknowledge what my Green colleague said before that once upon a time there would have been hundreds and hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders tuned in tonight to this debate to listen to the important Budget discussion. That is not to say that the discussion is not important. It is to say though that the powerof Parliament to communicate to our country has changed. I think that is something important for us to reflect upon tonight. Parliament TV is almost 7 years old and it is a really important institution in our country. I hope that this Government is not going to try to destroy it as it has destroyed public broadcasting in this country.This is supposed to be an honest debate. Unfortunately it does not feel like an honest debate from listening to some of the comments and the speeches tonight from the other side of the House. This Budget is being framed by this Government as being a Budget about jobs and a growing economy. I have just got off the phone tonight from a call from one of the 101 workers in South Otago who were made redundant yesterday. This person is part of a group of 180 people who have been made redundant in the last month from a forest industry enterprise in South Otago that has four different plants spread across four different towns—Mosgiel Milburn Milton and Balclutha. This worker told me tonight: “It sucks. It sucks what’s happening to us.” He has been working in that plant for 12 years. He is a good honest solid working person just like the many hundreds and thousands of good solid working people who have lost their jobs in regional New Zealand under this Government. This is through no fault of his own and in an industry that should be expanding growing and thriving rather than contracting and putting people in regional New Zealand out of work.This person told me tonight that he does not know where his future lies. He has got three children. They are settled in schools. He may need to leave town to find a job somewhere else. I would like Government members to get up and tell me tonight what the future is for him and the other people in that industry. I would also like the list member for Dunedin to speak out and stick up for his city and his region and say where the job growth is going to come from in that region. We have just seen 180 jobs lost from South Otago in the last month. If that is the sign of a Government that is focused on growth and jobs then it is a fairy tale. It is a fairy tale; it is an absolute fairy tale.One of the important things to note in this debate though is that under a Labour Government the forest industry and the forest-processing industry will be a priority because we actually have a plan for that industry as we do for a number of industries. I have not seen a plan for any industries under this Government. There is rhetoric—there is lots of rhetoric. But when it comes to an actual plan for industry development and growth and actual jobs where is it? Under a Labour Government however the forestry industry and the forest-processing industry will be a priority.In a region such as Otago and Southland this makes a huge difference. Our region contains 11.8 percent of New Zealand’s forest plantations which is by far the largest area in the South Island and it is the second-largest in the country. But of the $4.5 billion per annum that that industry is worth half of those exports are raw logs that are being processed offshore. That is why we are seeing 180 jobs go—the latest set of jobs. Since 2013 40 sawmills have closed resulting in the loss of 1700 jobs across the country so I do not think we have seen the last of the demise of this industry in this country under this Government. Under a Labour Government it would be very different.I would also like to address the rhetoric that has been spouted on the other side of the House that this is a Budget that is focused on health. Well when you look beneath the surface this actually represents a cut and it certainly does represent a cut in our region. There is a 2.3 percent cut in real terms; that is what this Budget means in health funding. When Tony Ryall the Minister of Health hyped up the Budget saying it was the biggest funding of the health sector to date he neglected to admit that when you take into account demographic and population changes which any responsible Government would do it put a massive extra strain on the health sector and district health boards.In the Southern District Health Board area which is the whole of Otago and Southland as I understand it from looking at the Budget figures it is going backwards. It is a 0.2 percent cut and it is going to mean extra strain on the staffing which is already under stress; on the services being provided to the community; on primary health care; on the numbers of people who are being referred by their specialists to be getting operations and are not actually ending up on waiting lists; and pressure on the Dunedin Hospital which is well out of date for being upgraded and replaced—extra strain essentially on the whole of the health service throughout that whole region. Again I say to the list member for Dunedin sitting across the House who is very busy doing his work that this is actually a critical area for him to address and certainly one that he will be held accountable for in Dunedin.I would also like to reinforce my support for the petition that my Dunedin colleague David Clark has put out there tonight to keep the National Poisons Centre phone line going. All you have to do is go to the Labour Party website—which is labour.org.nz and it is right on the front page; really easy to connect to—and sign that petition. That is the poison phone line that you ring if you know someone who has been taking the psychoactive substances and is suffering the health effects of that. As I understand it because I have stood in this House on numerous occasions the numbers of people reporting effects from those substances have increased extraordinarily in the past months. To axe that poison phone line would be disastrous an absolute backward step and it is gobsmacking to understand why that would actually happen.This is a Budget that takes us backwards. It is a Budget of inequality. It is a Budget that is not focusing on regional job growth. It is a Budget that is taking us backwards in terms of our health care. It is not a Budget that any Government could be proud of.