McClay Todd: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcClay Todd: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 21 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18221. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Revenue): This is a very good Budget—New Zealand is heading in the right direction—and it is a confident Budget for a confident country. That statement sums up the difference between this side of the House and that side of the House—a confident Budget for a confident nation.I want to be charitable after listening to the last two speakers. Rajen Prasad said that this will be his last Budget so I will resist the opportunity the challenge or the temptation to do anything but wish him well in his many many years ahead. But can I say that we need to be optimistic in this House. We need to focus on the good things that happen in New Zealand. We need to be fair and reasonable and when we are in Opposition we do not just have to oppose absolutely everything. What must it be like after 6 years in Opposition to feel that everything is wrong with this country and that the members opposite are right all of the time? Well let us wait and see.For two elections in a row New Zealanders have had a choice and those New Zealanders decided that they did want a brighter future and they did want to choose a New Zealand that was heading in the right direction. What they have been saying to us through the media on the airwaves as they call the radio stations and in our electorate seats is that this is a confident Budget for a confident nation. And when the members opposite stop talking and listen to New Zealanders they will actually see what it is that New Zealanders are interested in.Let us contrast—not just our speeches and how aspirational we are compared with members opposite—the Budget delivered by Bill English in New Zealand last week with the one that was delivered in Australia the very same week. But before we do let us remember 3 or 4 years ago when these very members who have been quite vocal in this House were saying: “Why aren’t you the National Government more like they are in Australia?”. They asked why we were not more like—and they used the term—the Lucky Country Australia where all of those New Zealanders were going. Well guess what? They were leaving under the Labour Government and yes when we inherited such a mess from the Labour Government after 9 years they continued to go. But we have not heard now have we or last week from the Labour Opposition: “Why aren’t you more like Australia?”.Can I say to New Zealanders that when they face the choice on 20 September of this year of who will govern them if they choose a Green-Labour Government coalition then they will get the wish that the Labour Party has asked for: they will be much more like Australia in this country than we are today. The reason for that is that in Australiapeople are facing very difficult times. In Australia the Government has made cuts. It has cut its welfare it has cut its Public Service and it has increased taxes. It has got a special deficit tax. After all of those changes and all of those cuts the costs going up when people go to the doctor across the board it is going to have a NZ$32 billion deficit in this next year—a NZ$32 billion deficit.That may be all right for members opposite in the Labour Party and the Greens. Maybe they think that that is OK but I am not sure that is the feeling in Australia right now. How come we are not hearing from them now about why we are not more like the Lucky Country? Compare that with the job that Bill English has done and the hard work that New Zealanders have done over this last 5 years on what we must recognise as being a very difficult time for New Zealanders—a deep recession.As one of the members opposite always says it has been the worst this and the worst that over 50 years. Well there was a very steep recession a global financial crisis a challenge in Christchurch because of the earthquakes and we have a modest surplus coming to New Zealand—$372 million. It is a very modest surplus but that is so much better than the deficits that were forecast by Treasury when we took over the Government benches and so very different from what is happening in Australia.There is a forecast of a growth rate of between 2 and 4 percent over the next 4 years—one of the first countries in the Western World not only to get back to surplus but to have sustainable levels of growth which will help grow the economy and grow incomes for New Zealanders. It is such a great difference between our two countries.This was a Budget focused on growth jobs and prosperity. But it was not just about the economy. There was much more to it than this and I think this is what hurts the Opposition the most: we are helping children and helping families. There is a $500 million investment in children and families in New Zealand. There are free general practitioner visits and free prescriptions for all children under the age of 13. I think that is an excellent policy and I congratulate Bill English and Tony Ryall on making this possible. Without the hard work the dedication and the caution around Government spending over the last 5 years it would not have been possible to do this with a Budget surplus. There are free general practitioner visits and free prescriptions for every child in New Zealand under the age of 13. There is 4 weeks’ extra paid parental leave extended to caregivers and other parents. That will be welcomed by parents and the other caregivers of children in New Zealand.There is an increase in the parental tax credit of $70 a week bringing it to $220 per week. There is $155 million extra going into early childhood education. More money is being spent on early childhood education every year under this Government than in any year before and guess what the taxpayers—mums and dads and their children—are starting to see a return on this investment in children: $155 million extra in early childhood education. Members opposite reject that and do not support it.There is $33 million extra to support vulnerable children—$33 million extra to support vulnerable children—to create eight new Children’s Teams. I won the seat in my electorate of Rotorua 6 years ago. I was re-elected 3 years ago and I will work very hard for every single vote there this year. We had a Children’s Team delivered to us 2 years ago. It empowers the community and all of those groups to come together to focus on those vulnerable children to put them first and to make their lives better. Already we are starting to see the community growing coming together and working through that. So we have that in Rotorua already. It started a few years ago. We have worked hard it is starting to work well and now we are able to use those things that we have learnt and that were demonstrated and roll them out to eight other parts of the country at a cost of $33 million. Members opposite would say it was a cost; on this side of the House we see it as an investment of $33 million into vulnerable children to make theirlives better. Well done to Tony Ryall and the rest of the team for excellent work around helping children and around families.The other thing I wanted to talk about—because if one listened to only the Opposition one would think that there was no work done here at all—is health. What more have we done in health? All of those statistics all of that extra money I mentioned that we spent around families we get to do that and we also can run a modest surplus this year—so different from Australia. “Better sooner more convenient care”—there has never been a time when that statement was truer. There is $110 million extra for elective surgery. That is knees and hips—knees and hips for New Zealanders. They are getting operations.When I became the member of Parliament for Rotorua 6 years ago a number of complaints in the community were that people were not getting their operations. They were not being treated by hospitals they were being put on waiting lists and then they were receiving letters saying they had been knocked off the waiting list. The Labour Government at the time said they were doing a great job not by delivering operations but by knocking people off waiting lists. Well now there are more operations every year in Rotorua and in other parts of the country than ever before.There is $112 million for disability support $96 million for increased home-based support care $90 million for free general practitioner visits $40 million in additional support for the elderly $33 million for faster cancer treatment $20 million to help fight rheumatic fever and $6 million for cochlear implants for children.This is the Budget of a caring Government—a Government that has worked hard over 5 years to move New Zealand out of recession to get us back on track to back New Zealanders and to get us back to a modest surplus which will grow in the years ahead. This is a Government that has worked hard with New Zealanders to deliver for New Zealanders and I think it could not be a better Budget coming into an election.I say this to you that if the members opposite want to revert and be like Australia or other countries then they should keep making the pledges they are making in the Labour Party and the Green Party about how they can just spend money on anything they want with no accountability. The public saw that over 9 years. They did not like it. They rejected it. We will make a case as a confident Government. We have got a confident Budget for a confident country. This will be a very good year to go to an election. This is a caring Budget. It is a caring country. It is a caring Government. I commend this Budget to the House.