Peachey Allan: Budget Debate 
Peachey Allan: Budget Debate 
[Volume:673;Page:19095] 
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 This afternoon we have heard three of the so-called heavy hitters of the Labour Party front bench on today’s Budget. What has been particularly troubling to the country is that two of those so-called heavy Hitlers—heavy hitters sorry; that was a Freudian slip—two of those so-called heavy hitters are considered contenders for the leadership. 
Hon Members 
: No! 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: Two of them are considered contenders for the leadership and it will not have gone unnoticed how poorly they debated the economic issues facing this country this afternoon. I will make one prediction now: the pair of them—Messrs Cunliffe and Parker along with the yet-to-arrive and may-not-even-make-it-here Mr Little—will each have their turn at leadership in the next 3 years and the only debate really is going to be in which order they will be anointed and how quickly they will fall over. What is becoming increasingly apparent in this debate is how jolly difficult it must be to be a socialist at the moment and how extraordinarily difficult it must be to be a member of the Labour Opposition. The problem that the Labour party has is that it cannot live down its past. However hard it tries it cannot live down its past. It cannot escape the fact that this Government has been in office for less than 3 years. It cannot escape the fact that in that time the economy of this country has been transformed. It cannot escape the fact that the incoming Labour Government in 1999 inherited the best of times and squandered them. 
In 2004—and I invite the next Labour speaker to get up and deny this—New Zealand entered an export-led recession. That previous Government covered it up. It covered it up with continued excessive spending. It cannot hide from the fact that in 2000 for no reason but the fact that the Labour Party is a big-tax policy party unnecessarily increased income tax and took money that New Zealanders were better able to spend for themselves. What is coming out of this debate is that they want to do it all over again. What this Budget debate is demonstrating in spades is the failure of leadership of Mr Goff. 
Mr Goff needs to explain to this House how it can be that in 2011 removing GST from fruit and vegetables can be a good thing. How can it be that in the late 1980s when he sat in the Cabinet that introduced GST he accepted all of the arguments that GST in order to be fully effective had to apply across the board? I ask Mr Goff the question: what has changed? What has changed between those years in the late 1980s and 2011 that suddenly it is good taxation practice to begin excluding those products from GST? Mr Goff needs to explain that to this House. What has changed? 
In all humility I could perhaps offer my explanation as to what has changed. What has changed is we have a Labour Party leader under immense pressure from young new backbenchers who are economically illiterate who have no ideas as to how business operates who are desperately in fear that they will lose their seats in November and will be forgotten very quickly as one-term MPs. They are putting enormous pressure on Mr Goff to make what are basically inconsistent statements and ones that he knows he cannot stand by. 
The other thing Mr Goff has been unable to do of course is explain how he will replace the $250 million in Government income that would be lost with the removal of GST from those products. That is the other dilemma that the socialists have. They want to spend but they do not want to tell us where the money is coming from. I invite the next Labour speaker to get on his or her feet and tell this House how the $250 million will be compensated for. Or will Mr Goff just borrow it? Thank heavens we will never know because Mr Goff will never have the opportunity to deal with that problem. Thank heavens we will never know whether Mr Cunliffe’s four pillars that he referred to today—I am trying to think what they were; I do not recall them as being particularly economically profound—work as he will never get the opportunity to find out. You see New Zealanders have figured it out. This Budget debate has confirmed in their minds that the Labour Party has no future in determining the way this country will develop economically—no future at all. It is devoid of ideas it is devoid of sound economics and it is devoid of common sense. 
Amy Adams 
: Devoid of leadership. 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: As my wise colleague says it is totally devoid of leadership—totally devoid of leadership. This Government has delivered to the people of New Zealand three Budgets in sequence each of which dealt with the particular economic circumstances of the time each of which was well accepted by the people of New Zealand and each of which—and above all else I stress this point—amounted to sound economics. That is the bit that the Labour members do not get. They do not get sound economics just as they cannot figure out why in areas like Glen Innes—in the electorate of Tamaki which I represent in this House—which they consider to be their strongholds the people are turning against them. 
Let me tell the House why the people of communities like Glen Innes have given up on the Labour Party and why they do not see the Labour Party as holding the key to their future. It comes down to one word: aspiration. This Government delivers Budgets that aspire to better for all New Zealanders regardless of their circumstances—for all New Zealanders. Labour MPs opposite will discover that the people in what they used to think were their strongholds have found them out. Nine years of failure were followed by 3 years of good economics. The future of this country rests on good economics. Thank you.