Hobbs Marian: General Debate 
Hobbs Marian: General Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:21149] 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 New Zealanders have a choice. They have a choice between a Prime Minister they know Helen Clark who tells it how it is and who makes difficult decisions and a National Party leader Dr Brash who hides his agenda. Dr Brash makes vague promises. By contrast the Prime Minister’s commitments are stated and differently they are budgeted for. 
In May 2005 Dr Brash began backtracking on his famous tax cuts before Christmas and he said: “We have got to work through these numbers carefully to make sure they will add up. We hopefully will have to deliver on them”—the policies—“and we will announce our policy shortly within the next few weeks.” That was a few weeks ago; there is still no detail. There are only billboards saying: “Tax. Cut.” Right so the choice promoted by Dr Brash is for people to get a tax cut but to face automatic cuts in the services provided by taxation. 
The problem is that Dr Brash hides the details: what tax cuts and for whom? Will they be $6 a week as the Australians got $23 a week for those on $30000 or $33 a week for those on $100000? The problem is that New Zealanders do not know the details. Dr Brash loves working in the dark. He wants to keep the agenda hidden. We do not know with what we are comparing our targeted package Working for Families. 
The exemplar family Sale and Barbara earn $52000 a year. We should note that Barbara is not being forced out to work to get the support she needs. Sale in working 40 hours a week is paying a mortgage of $385 a week. He has three children aged 5 9 and 12. That family’s increases through accommodation supplement and family assistance will equal $169 a week by April 2007—or if we want it closer $139 by April next year. Right now the family has benefited by $55 a week. Under Dr Brash it would be $30 a week which would make little difference to the lives of Barbara and Sale but $169 a week will make an enormous difference. I would rather opt for the detailed budgeted and already partly delivered commitments of the Prime Minister than those vague hidden promises of Dr Brash. 
Dr Brash is even more evasive. We have no detail on those tax cuts promised before Christmas. We have no detail on what will be cut to pay for those tax cuts. Tax cuts of $30 a week would cost $1.9 billion a year. I ask Dr Brash where the details of those tax cuts are. 
There are hints of what might come. Dr Brash said in May 2002: “For my part I don’t care who owns the schools.” For me a person who has worked in education all her life education is a service; it is not a product. It is not baked beans. It is not out there to be owned or to be profited from. It is a service delivered to our country. But Dr Brash would want to abandon our equitable education for all. He would go down the Australian route where 40 percent of schools are private as against our 4 percent. 
The conflict in the National Party is always apparent. Dr Brash does not care who owns the schools but will he undertake to guarantee the provision for the Special Education Service that I know Mr Key is always asking even more for? Will he guarantee the extra staffing delivered by the Minister sitting in front of me the Hon Trevor Mallard to schools over the last 3 years for the already increased workload that has been alluded to by Mr English? We need transparency; we need details. 
Would the cuts to fund that $1.9 billion each year come from health? Dr Brash wants a health system only for those who can afford private health insurance. He said: “I have had private health insurance for a long time. I want the choice of having faster health-care than is available in the public health system.” So Barbara and Sale would face losing $169 a week under the Working for Families package and maybe gaining a miserable $30 a week—we do not really know—through some tax cut but they would have to use that $30 to pay for private schooling and for private health insurance.