Hide Rodney: Budget Statement — Budget Debate 
Hide Rodney: Budget Statement — Budget Debate 
[Volume:663;Page:11058] 
Hon RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 The ACT Party is proud to be part of this Government. We are proud to support it on confidence and supply and we are pleased to vote for this Budget. Along with the majority of all Kiwis we are pleased that we have a Government that is addressing the scandalous abuse of taxpayers that we saw over the past decade. 
We are pleased that we finally have a Government that understands that every dollar that it spends either comes from some hard-working taxpayer or is an attempt to put the tab on our children and grandchildren. We are staggered that after 9 years of grotesque wasteful spending Labour members Phil Goff and Darren Hughes have the cheek to stand in this House and urge yet more spending and more borrowing. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: A picture of restraint! 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: The answer to the debt problem I say to Mr Hughes is not more debt yet that is Labour’s only solution. 
We are pleased that we are seeing action across a wide range of portfolios. The previous Government did nothing about leaky homes even when the global boom blessed us with fiscal surpluses but the current Government is addressing this problem. We are fixing the financial crisis in accident compensation we are getting better value for money in health and we are addressing our poor infrastructure building the roads that are essential to moving our people and our products around. We are looking at common-sense options to utilise our mineral resources better to give jobs and wealth to New Zealanders and to help fund essential social services and we are cutting red tape. We are getting more transparency and more accountability in local government and the Government is addressing longstanding problems in Auckland—issues that the previous Government ducked. We are creating one strong voice for Auckland. Because of ACT’s “three strikes” legislation we are sending a message as a Government that repeat violent crime will not be tolerated. This Government will work to keep our communities safe from the violent predators. 
This Budget is a welcome attempt to get New Zealand’s fiscal problems under control. The Minister of Finance is to be commended for his attempts to restrain Government spending. In just one term of Government he will leave New Zealand in much better shape. We should contrast that with the previous Minister of Finance’s legacy which turned out to be a tsunami of debt. As the cyclical economic decline came Labour increased spending at an even more frantic rate to forestall its political decline. It was irresponsible foolish reckless and entirely typical of Labour. 
I commend the moves to structure the tax system to encourage work and savings but I have to say that the ACT Party would prefer to do more. We would prefer to attack wasteful spending more vigorously because there is still plenty of it. If we did so we would not have to match income tax cuts with tax increases elsewhere and all New Zealand households would be better off. We need more competition and choice within the vast creaking and crumbling State monopolies that dominate our health and education sectors. We could look to the new British Government which is about to introduce ACT’s education policies. 
Although there is much to commend in this Budget and much more yet to do there is one gross and glaring failure. There is one elephant in the room which threatens to undo all the good work that is being done by Government Ministers. We are tuning up the car for peak performance—putting on new tyres getting a tank full of gas and removing any aerodynamic impediments—but someone has locked the handbrake in place. That handbrake is the emissions trading scheme. The rest of the world—every one of our trading partners—has that handbrake off but we have it locked firmly on. We are the only country with an “all gases all sectors” emissions trading scheme. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: What about the European Union? 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: Dr Smith calls out: “What about the European Union?”. Well he knows that that applies only to carbon dioxide. He knows that it does not apply to agriculture. He knows that it does not apply to households. He knows that it does not apply to small business. He knows that it is riven with so many exceptions and so many outs that it is hardly an emissions trading scheme at all in practical effect. 
Hon Georgina te Heuheu 
: Why are you worried about it? 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: Well I am not worried about the European emissions trading scheme; it is the one here that worries me. Our emissions trading scheme worries me. Georgina te Heuheu is absolutely right. 
The only thing that we can say about the National Government’s emissions trading scheme is that it is not as stupid as the one that Labour had but it is still a damaging and incomprehensibly foolish imposition on our fragile economy and our hard-working export sector. It is stifling our ability to create jobs and to generate higher incomes for working people. Having an emissions trading scheme here but not in Australia will stop our ability to catch Australia and will see more of our young people depart across the Tasman. The emissions trading scheme is a folly on the scale of past National-inspired disasters. This is up there with Rob Muldoon’s attempts at central planning and it matches and surpasses Bill Birch’s disastrous Think Big. 
The emission trading scheme is an act of total financial economic and environmental folly. It will take over $1 billion from struggling households and businesses and bestow that wealth on forest owners whose forests were planted long before the emissions trading scheme was ever contemplated. Have the foresters had too much of an influence? Absolutely. Has the fox been in the hen house? Yes and we know for sure that farmers and other hard-working Kiwis have been in the outhouse. The costs are about to hit on 1 July this year. The emissions trading scheme is an assault on the agricultural sector. We will have higher energy costs and it will bite into the profitability of all our processing industries. It is a bigger hit than the increase in GST. 
The ACT Party opposes the emissions trading scheme and will continue to oppose the emissions trading scheme. I am pleased to say that the membership of the National Party from one end of the country to the other opposes it. Two Saturdays ago the central North Island National Party conference was attended by 300 delegates. They passed a remit to defer the emissions trading scheme. The Manurewa and Tamaki electorates are proposing a joint remit for the northern regional conference of the National Party to defer the emissions trading scheme and I say to those National Party members: “Good on you! Keep at it!”. They should make their employees particularly Dr Nick Smith listen. They pay his wages; they support him in this Parliament. 
We can stop this madness we can stop this self-inflicted wound and we can stop the handbrake on growth jobs and incomes. I say to the brave decent and honest National supporters who are simply urging their party to do in Government what it promised in Opposition—to align with Australia’s policy on climate change but not get ahead of it—that we in the ACT Party are for them. In fact if those members gave their support to the ACT Party they would get the National Party that they thought they voted for.