McClay Todd: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcClay Todd: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 05 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10754. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): The last speaker in this debate on the Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill the Hon Ruth Dyson started her intervention by attacking my hard-working and very intelligent colleague Chris Auchinvole. She mentioned that she thought he could do so much better at his speech. Well his speech was an excellent speech about the great job this Government is doing under extremely difficult circumstances. I only wish I could say the same of the last member and that she too could make a better speech than the one she has just delivered. In fact her whole speech was about what is wrong not with New Zealand and not with this Government but what is wrong with Labour members their view of New Zealanders and their lack of desire for New Zealanders to get ahead—their lack of ambition for all New Zealanders.This Budget was one of the best Budgets that Bill English has delivered on behalf of New Zealand. We have had the great fortune on five occasions to stand up and say to Mr English: “This is a very good Budget for the times.” We have got to remember that when we came into Government we inherited books that were going in the wrong direction with great debt spiralling and that around the world economies were crashing—the global financial crisis. Mr English has said to New Zealand that we have a plan. He worked very hard over the first 3 years of this Government to put in place some of the building blocks to fix the problems in the economy we inherited.Come the election a year and a half ago we came forward to New Zealanders and reminded them of the plan. We were re-elected. This year Bill English has delivered another Budget that is part of that plan to build a stronger economy a better economy and an economy that will do much more for all New Zealanders and put us in a much better place in the world. This is just part of that plan that we move on with. I think that members of the New Zealand public get this. Certainly when I am out talking to them in different parts of the country they know we have come through difficult times and they are grateful for the strong leadership our Minister of Finance has shown.This is a Budget that builds on the momentum that we have created over almost 5 years now. It has four key priorities including responsibly managing the Government’s books and I am certainly going to talk more about that in a moment because we hear the opposite from Ruth Dyson and from many—not all—members opposite. They do not want to manage the Government’s books responsibly; they want to tax everyday New Zealanders much much more and spend on their behalf—tax and spend. Well we have had enough of that.A second priority is building a more competitive and productive economy. Many members of this House agree that that is what we have got to do. Where we have great difficulty in this Parliament is agreeing on how to do that. Can I say to you and to our Minister of Finance Bill English that the plan he has put in place over the last 4½ years is starting to show a great benefit in the areas of competitiveness and a productive growing economy.A third priority is to deliver better public services for New Zealanders because New Zealanders deserve those better public services. I want to touch on a few of these in a moment in particular the great work that Tony Ryall has done in health and the excellent levels of achievement that we are starting to see—the job has only just started—from Hekia Parata in education. Finally the fourth priority is rebuilding Christchurch. That is so very very important to all of New Zealand but particularly to the people of Canterbury who have gone through such very difficult times.Under unbelievably difficult conditions Budget 2013 has freed up a further $1.5 billion by redirecting spending to where it matters most for New Zealanders. This takes the total reprioritisation of Government spending between Budget 2009 and today to $14.9 billion. That is $14.9 billion which had the Labour Party still been in Government would have been spent in areas that were not productive for the economy. And woe and behold heaven forbid under a Green-Labour coalition Government that figure of almost $15 billion would have been so very much more because Russel Norman and his mates have already got designs on more than $15 billion of spending of hard-earned money by New Zealand taxpayers that they want to take off them and tax recycle and print a bit more to spend.At a time when the Government’s finances are tight reprioritising spending allows significant additional funding for new and improved initiatives and there have been so many of them. This Budget was about spending well not spending up—spending well not spending up. If Mr Norman has his TV on wherever he may be I bet you he has just turned it off because he does not understand that. He understands spending more money and printing more money; he does not understand that it is about better spending.In the economy we have a record that all New Zealanders can be proud of. It is not good enough yet we need to do much more work but compared with almost every developed country in the world New Zealand is punching above its weight with the exception of one and that is Australia. Have we not seen over the last little while that things are not as rosy across there as they were? Can you remember over the last four Budgets before this one? Bill English got on his feet and delivered excellent Budgets for the time for New Zealanders and the Opposition members were screaming and yelling: “Why can’t we be more like Australia?”. Well I can say to you Mr Assistant Speaker and to members opposite that if it were not for the great work of Bill English they would have got their wish.The Australian economy is going in the opposite direction from us now and our economy would be so much more like theirs. Indeed we have a 3 percent—3 percent—GDP growth rate forecast over the next couple of years. There are so many countries of the world that wish they were in a position to have a 3 percent growth. In Europe is still negative and in America it is floundering. In many parts of the world 3 percent is something they only dream of. Of course we know that mortgages are at a 50-year low. Well that is very easy to say but for those New Zealanders out there working hard through difficult times who are earning their money paying their taxes and paying their mortgages they know there is real benefit to them with interest rates being at a 50-year low because that is money in their pockets that they get to spend.Debt is under control. It is higher than anybody would want but when we came to office in 2008 the forecast was that debt to GDP would hit 60 percent by 2020 under the policies that were in place during the 9 years of the Labour Government. Remember that that Labour Government had $20 billion worth of surpluses $20 billion of extra money and when it went out of Government most of the problems that it accuses this Government of doing not enough about—and can I say that we work very hard for New Zealanders—were actually still there. They had not got better in those 9 years. The best we could say about the Labour Government was that at least it did not get as bad as itcould have been. But after $20 billion of surpluses and all that skiting from the Labour Government most of the great challenges were still there and this Government inherited them. They were no better; perhaps they were even worse.Well under this Government and Bill English’s plan debt to GDP will be at just under 20 percent by the year 2020. That is a saving of $60 billion of debt to the taxpayer. Under Labour and its policies there would have been around $120 billion of debt and no possibility of any Government surpluses any time at all. Under the work that Bill English has done—being careful about how we spend money delivering better services for taxpayers and unapologetically asking our civil servants to deliver more with the money that the taxpayer has earned and provided to them—our debt to GDP level will be 17.6 percent. We are on track in 2014-15 to a modest surplus of $75 million. The Opposition is already working out how it will spend that if it became the Government.The surplus is modest but guess what. This year the amount that we will have to borrow is about $2 billion. So our Government deficit will be about $2 billion. In Australia the deficit is more than $20 billion. That is the country that Labour said over four Budgets that we must be more like. Labour members said: “We must be more like Australia. Why can we not be more like them?”. Well actually the Australians are now wishing that they were a bit more like New Zealand. I think they wish that they had Bill English as their Minister of Finance to put in place a plan to be very careful with Government spending to make sure they would get back to surplus and to make sure debt levels would not grow. So we are on track back to surplus.I want to touch on one thing that I think is so very important to New Zealanders and this shows you the great difference between the Labour Government of 9 years and the work we have done in 5 years. When we came into Government an elderly lady in my electorate wrote to me saying: “Mr McClay it looks like the Labour Government has ruined ACC. I know times are tough. You can have my little payment that I get back so that we can make it survive.” That tells me that ACC is very important to New Zealanders; it is important to this Government.Remember those billions of dollars of losses those great challenges we had with ACC? Well not only has the Government been able to turn that round but we have signalled in the 2015-16 year that there will be $1 billion of levy reductions to New Zealanders—$1 billion going back to them because ACC is now in great condition financially. We have 40 percent of lower ACC levies signalled for families and businesses. That is fantastic work.Hon David Parker: Why not now?TODD McCLAY: The member asks: “Why not now?”. It is because we have a plan; we need to stick to it. It is not about borrowing and spending as that member’s party would do. Thank you.