Calder Cam: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Calder Cam: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 20 May 2010. Volume:663;Page:11133. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 I compliment the previous speaker David Parker on his sartorial elegance. This Budget is the Budget of a Government that is committed to creating a strong economy that is built on and led by sustainable growth and value-added exports which will underpin jobs and create opportunities for all New Zealanders to realise their hopes dreams and aspirations. This is a Budget of a strong and courageous Government that believes in acknowledging and rewarding the pursuit of hard work and excellence. This Government is a perceptive Government. It understands that the positive can-do attitudes of every New Zealander are our edge in competing and ensuring our country’s future success on the highly competitive global stage. 
This Government is a standard-bearer for unlocking the potential that lies within the heart of every New Zealander. We are working relentlessly for every New Zealander to share a sense of purpose and a feeling of belonging. We have no time for the politics of envy. We will not rob Peter to pay Paul. What good is there for any of us if Peter or Petra is a neurosurgeon a skilled sparky a committed effective teacher a nurturing nurse or a competent carpenter who decamps to Australia or further afield in pursuit of greener pastures? John Key’s National-led Government is principled and pragmatic and it believes in creating a brighter future with all New Zealanders for all New Zealanders and of all New Zealanders right here in our homeland of Aotearoa New Zealand. 
This Budget with its across-the-board tax cuts to help families get ahead and more money for education and health will lift long-term economic growth responsibly reign in past fiscal profligacy and massive public debt and encourage better front-line public services. This Government’s resolute decisiveness is a stark contrast to the looseness of the last late unlamented Labour administration. It was an administration that has turned into a group of loquacious lobbyists whose only concern is legislative languor listlessness lassitude and lethargy. This Government is a stark contrast to that cavilling caucus where the words “hope” “enterprise” and “ambition” are heard as rarely as “Mine’s a Laphroaig” at a temperance conference. However one must give Labour members their due. In some respects they were virtual prestidigitators of fiscal policy and conjurors of economic underperformance. 
The maladministration of the previous administration managed to parlay the best economic conditions since World War II into year after year of decline in the performance of our tradable sectors—our exports which are the drivers of our economy. They managed to turn the longest spell of global economic golden weather in modern memory into years of localised thunderstorms hail rain and sleet over the whole of New Zealand. They hamstrung our economy. It is our economy that underpins the quality of life for all New Zealanders. It allows us to educate our young people to provide world-class medical care for our sick and injured and to protect the most vulnerable. That dance of the desperate and dateless dispensed fiscal doom and despondency because of blind adherence to a borrow-and-spend dogma. There was a remarkable record of failure by the last Government. I ask how effective Labour’s illiterate economic policies were. They were as effective as a papier mâché demolition ball a one-legged man dancing the cha-cha or an empty can of air freshener in an abattoir. 
The global economic framework is still fragile and there may be some bumps ahead but here in New Zealand this Government’s effort over the short time we have held the levers of power has seen the right sort of recovery. It is one that is export led rather than based on the previous model.