Lees-Galloway Iain: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 20 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18138. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I find that the best way for finding out what is important to people in my electorate is to head down to our local markets every weekend. We have got the Albert Street market on Saturday and theCloverlea market on Sunday. When I talk with people at those markets I hear some pretty clear things about what it is people want out of life. They want a place to live. Most people want to own their own home but everybody wants a warm dry safe place to live. They want a job. They want a decent job that pays decent wages. They want to know that that job is secure and that that job will be available for them tomorrow next week next month next year. They want to know that their family is safe. They want to know that their family will be healthy. They want to know that their family is going to get a good education. They want to know that their family has opportunities in life. They want a future for themselves. They want the opportunity to get ahead. They want the opportunity to advance in life and they want their kids to have better opportunities than they had when they were growing up.Those are some pretty basic things but I think that is pretty much what everybody in New Zealand wants. That is what people want out of life and those are the kinds of things that people expect their Government to support them in. Labour backs them in that. Labour has the policies to help people get ahead in life. But before we can do all of that stuff we have got to make sure that the books are balanced that the country is being run in a sensible manner and that the Government’s books are in good shape. Labour has a good history on that with 9 years in Government under Helen Clark and 9 years of surpluses. There was zero net debt by the beginning of 2008. Labour ran surpluses and Labour paid off the debt. Labour got the Government’s books into a position where when the rainy day came there was room for the National Government to move. There was room for the National Government to borrow and it borrowed $54 million over 5 years—Dr Rajen Prasad: $54 billion.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —$54 billion I should say. If only it was only $54 million. That had to happen—it had to happen—but of course the Government squandered a lot of that on tax cuts for the very rich. It put GST up for ordinary working people it put the prescription charges up for ordinary working people and it put the general practitioner fees up for ordinary working people to pay for those tax cuts that went to the top 10 percent. That is what happened while the Government was borrowing that $54 billion.What people were looking for in this Budget was a sign that the Government had control over the finances. That is why this Government has been so keen to try to convince people that there is actually a surplus. But we know the surplus is made up.We know the surplus is absolutely made up because if the surplus was not made up the Government would be making cuts to the ACC levies this year not waiting until next year not putting them off until the following year. In this Budget year there would be ACC levy cuts. Of course there should be cuts to the ACC levy because the Government put your ACC levies up when it claimed that there was a crisis. National created a phoney crisis when it came into Government and what was the result of that? ACC made a $5 billion surplus. That is your money New Zealand. That is your money that the Government has taken from you to try to create its phoney surplus this year with its fudged numbers. That is where your money has gone.Most of this surplus has come from the motor vehicle account. Everybody who owns a car everybody who owns a motorbike and everybody who drives for a living is being overtaxed by this Government so that it can create its phoney surplus. New Zealanders want the Government to get the books back into good order but they want to see real evidence. They want to see the economy growing. That is how they want to see the Government get the books back into surplus not by overtaxing them and overcharging them in every manner it possibly can. The poor old paper boys—remember that? The Government decided to tip the poor old paper boys on their heads and get every little bit of loose change out of their pockets. That is how this Government has created its phoney surplus.What this Government failed to address with this Budget was the issue of housing. Housing affects absolutely everybody. If you own your own house then you are going to be pretty worried about interest rates going up even though general inflation—if you take the tax increases on cigarettes out of general inflation—is absolutely nil. The only thing that is driving prices up is the tax increase on cigarettes and yet interest rates are going up. Why? Because that Government has failed to address the housing crisis in Auckland. If you are planning to buy your first home then the Government has just made that a lot harder as well because we have got these loan-to-value ratios whereby people now have to get a 20 percent deposit to buy their own home. It is not just in Auckland where there is a housing inflation crisis and not just in Christchurch where because of the rebuild house prices are going up but all across New Zealand. In my own city of Palmerston North people cannot afford to buy their first home now because they have to put that 20 percent deposit together.I was talking to someone about a month ago who has just moved into a senior management role. They are in their early 40s. They have got a couple of kids. They studied they got a good job they worked all their life and they have done everything right. They have tried to put the money together for a deposit for a first home. They thought they were just about there. They were just about there and then the rules changed and the dream of homeownership for that family who have done everything right is again just out of reach—thanks very much to this National Government.If you are in a rental house then the quality of rental housing has been completely overlooked by this Government. Yes it has done a little bit of work around State housing but most people live in private rental accommodation and the quality of that is going down while the rents keep heading up. Woe betide if you live in a State house because you are probably just about to get kicked out of your State house and of course what we know is that up and down the country this Government is getting rid of State houses. Five hundred State houses are to be taken out of the city of Palmerston North and an extra 100 are to be taken out of IanMcKelvie’s electorate in the widerManawatu.If you drive down Rugby Street in Palmerston North at the moment you will see State houses being knocked down. If you drive along Botanical Road in Palmerston North right now you will see land that has been empty for years where State houseswere taken away and nothing has ever been done with that land by this Government. If you drive around Farnham Avenue in Palmerston North right now you will see boarded up empty State houses that are deteriorating in quality—having the hot-water cylinders stolen out of them and being covered in graffiti because that Government over there has shut down so many State houses across the country is doing absolutely nothing with them and is devaluing one of the largest State-owned assets in this country. That is the record of that National Government.It can be a lot better. It can be a lot better and under a Labour Government things will be a lot better. We have ourKiwiBuild plan to build 100000 homes across the country. That will take the pressure off housing affordability in Auckland. It will mean that the loan-to-value ratios will not have to be applied in the provinces where people are being hammered by them. That is a bold plan and that is what Labour wants to do. We have some bold plans for monetary policy as well. It is not good enough that interest rates are being driven up when there is no inflation in New Zealand. That is not good enough but David Parker has actually been thinking about this—thinking is not something that is the strong point over in National—and he has come up with this brilliant idea of making sure that KiwiSaver is compulsory first of all so that can be used rather than increasing interest rates to take some heat out of the economy but also there would be variable KiwiSaver rates. Rather than having to pay more money to the bank you actually get to put more money into your savings and that will be available when you retire. That is smart policy. That is thinking policy and those are the kinds of policies that we are coming up with over here in Labour.We need to make sure that we put a bit of a lid on offshore speculation in the housing market in New Zealand. There is no value in having foreign capital go into residential housing. Where foreign capital creates innovation where foreign capital creates jobs or where foreign capital creates better opportunities for New Zealand that is a good thing but there is no value from foreign capital being poured into our houses. It just pushes the prices up and it makes the dream of owning your own home that much further out of reach for ordinary Kiwis. There is a clear difference here between a Budget that delivers nothing for ordinary New Zealanders and a Labour Party that wants to put people first and put people at the centre of our policies—