Sage Eugenie: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 29 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10508. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. National’s plan for the economy is to sell off our assets to hope to strike oil and to expand the gambling industry. The Government says it is planning to get its books into surplus but its apology for an economic plan is in fact increasing New Zealand’s indebtedness. This Budget does nothing to improve the health of the overall economy. It means that our current account deficit continues to increase to 5 percent of GDP this year—that is the second-largest in the OECD—when the average is 1 percent and we are looking at an increase to 6.5 percent of GDP in 2017.This is a Budget from a Government that acts for vested interests rather than for all New Zealanders—a Government that gives tax cuts to the top 2 percent rather than implementing policies that are in the interests of all New Zealanders. It is a Budget that is about selling assets that have been built up over generations. It is about changing our laws to benefit those few vested interests at the expense of our shared prosperity and at the expense of common good.It is a Budget that is bankrupt of ideas beyond asset sales exploiting human misery through encouraging gambling and exploiting nature. We have seen it with the sleazy Skycity deal with the changes to the Resource Management Act and with the Budget housing legislation which will increase urban sprawl and allow the Minister to ignore due process under the Resource Management Act and override local democracy override urban limits and push through new subdivision and property development without notification and public submissions. A Property Council New Zealand spokesperson said the changes went beyond his wildest dreams and that is because this Government’s policies are about benefiting vested interests.The Government is happy to use our “100% Pure New Zealand” marketing image to sell primary production and attract tourists—it is able to find another $158 million in this Budget to spend on tourism promotion—but it fails to recognise the credibility gap between the image and the reality. It is not investing in protecting the landscapes the wildlife the threatened species that visitors come here to see and enjoy because in this Budget the Department of Conservation gets a mere $163 million to spend on natural heritage management. Over the last 5 years since 2008-09 spending on pest and weed control and intensive management of our threatened species such as the kākāpō has increased by a mere $4.2 million. The Government can throw an extra $80 million to subsidise irrigation it proposes to spend another $400 million from the proceeds of asset sales but it cannot find anything substantial to increase and improve the prospects for our threatened species and our conservation land. Certainly it reduced the size of the cuts by $5 million and it saved 70 jobs but that is a mere crumb.Steven Joyce in question time talked about $2 million going to develop a broader New Zealand story to promote exports. That is part of the Business Growth Agenda. But that whole Business Growth Agenda which is such a fundamental plank of thisGovernment’s economic strategy focuses very much on the short term rather than the long-term future of this country and of New Zealanders. It is not about protecting a healthy environment. That is why we are seeing posters in Canterbury like the one I am holding asking Mr Joyce the hard questions: where is our water going? Are we looking at this the lakes on this poster that represent our “100% Pure New Zealand” image or at dead fish in our streams?In Canterbury this Business Growth Agenda has seen an expansion in irrigated land since 2007 equivalent to the size of Lake Taupō. That has seen the sort of water pollution that kills fish. It is seen when you drive south in summer and see rivers that are deprived of water. People want answers. They do not want a new New Zealand story that gets rid of “100% Pure New Zealand” because of the yawning gap between that marketing image and the reality. If we had the Greens in Government we would seek to give integrity to that brand. We would have strong rules for water strong policies that protect our environment because we recognise that is the basis of a healthy economy.