Anderton Jim: Budget Statement — Budget Debate 
Anderton Jim: Budget Statement — Budget Debate 
[Volume:672;Page:18880] 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 This Budget signals that National has decided to preside over a dying economy. Why? Because the most important social and economic investment in the future of any country is its investment in education. We just heard the Maori Party congratulating itself on that. It should look at the facts. 
This Budget says that over the 4 financial years coming up from 2011-12 to 2014-15 Government investment in education will increase by $197 million. That is less than $50 million a year in a Budget of $12000 million. That is a 0.004 percent increase in education in each of the next 4 years. If that is a triumph for the Maori Party I would hate to know what a failure might look like. Provision for welfare benefits—that is unemployment sickness and invalids benefits—in the same period is not a $197 million increase; it is a $3153 million increase. There is $197 million for education and $3153 million for unemployment sickness and invalids benefits. That is why I say that this Government has decided to preside over a dying economy. Twice as much money is provided for welfare benefits than the total provision for health and education combined. These facts would be simply ludicrous in any Budget that offered itself for the future of the country if they were not so tragic. 
Let us look at the economy that this Government inherited. In 2008 unemployment was the lowest in the OECD. It was 3.5 percent of the labour force. Because there were jobs people moved off benefits in record numbers. In April 2008 just 3 years ago 17 percent of children in New Zealand lived with someone who was reliant on a benefit. Today after 2½ years of a National Government unemployment is back up again to the levels last seen the last time National was in office in the 1990s. Benefit numbers are up again as well because the real jobs are not there. More than 32000 more children are reliant on benefit families today than in April 2008. 
Because New Zealanders are not in work and earning money the books have turned to a sea of red. In 2008 the Government had a fiscal surplus of $2.7 billion. In the fiscal update just before the 2008 election the Government accounts were forecast to remain in surplus for the forecast period. The Crown was contributing to the Superannuation Fund and had no net debt whatever—none. Today the Government announced a fiscal deficit of $17 billion. But look where the deficit has come from. The income tax cuts on 1 October last year cost $17.8 billion over 4 years. The top 10 percent of income earners alone got an income tax cut worth $44 million a week. I wonder how many of them were Maori. The Government is borrowing $2.5 billion a year for tax cuts for the top 10 percent of income earners alone. 
This Government likes to blame the state of its books on the previous Government. I am sick of hearing that because it is simply not true. Its problem is that it cannot take personal responsibility. It has been there for 2½ years. When on earth will Government members start to put their hands up and say it is them not the other guys before them? They have to find someone to blame because they cannot fix the problems. They blame the global crisis; they blame the earthquakes. Those events made things worse that is true but bad management has made the economy worse still. 
The National Government was going to catch up with Australia. Bill English and John Key were going to close the wage gap with Australia. Yeah right! Australia went through the global financial crisis just as we did. Australia has been hit by devastating national disasters too like floods and the unprecedented hurricane in Queensland. Here is what the Australian Treasurer had to say about his Budget delivered last week: “Our economy has been hit in the short term by the recent natural disasters which have devastated families and communities.” But he went on: “Growth is strengthening … Unemployment is low and is set to fall even further. We’ve seen over 700000 jobs created since we came to Government”—National cannot say that; it has lost jobs—“and we expect to see a further half a million jobs added by mid 2013.” Not all of those jobs will be in the mining industry I can tell members. He further stated: “Our public finances are in relatively good nick. We’ll be back in the black in 2012-13”. So much for New Zealand catching Australia. 
All that this Government has to say about why Australia has weathered the storm is that Australia has mining and that is all there is to it. That claim ignores the fact that we have been enjoying the best commodity prices in our history. We have had the most favourable terms of trade in our history. 
The problem is that National has no idea how to fix the economy and it still has not. It announced that to us in bold terms today. John Key came into office promising tax cuts that everyone would share in and promising that those tax cuts would help us catch Australia. Yeah right! His Government has failed on every one of its own targets. Most New Zealanders did not get a net tax cut; they got a small cut that was cancelled out immediately by the rise in GST and the subsequent price rises that soared ahead of their incomes. 
Imagine if the National Party had produced an election manifesto in 2008 that said: “If you vote for us we will increase GST to 15 percent cut Working for Families cut student loans and give tax cuts costing $44 million to the top 10 percent of income earners.” National would not have dared to set out that plan before the working people of New Zealand but that is how it has governed. It was elected on promises that it could not keep. Governments in the 1980s and 1990s did exactly that and they were thrown out. It is interesting that John Key was not here then. He was dealing in the money markets around the world many of them speculating against the New Zealand dollar as a matter of fact. 
National did not trust New Zealanders enough before the election to tell them the truth: that tax cuts meant spending cuts and deficits. That is what they mean. Today the Government does not trust New Zealanders enough to tell them the truth about the cause of the deficits now. The sort of Government that is too weak to front up to the truth is a Government that is too weak to make the changes New Zealand needs. 
There is a predictable outcome to this failure: people suffer. The more vulnerable they are the less resilient they are and the more they suffer. A health report on young children in New Zealand was presented recently and some parliamentarians went to hear it at a morning breakfast. We found that children are being admitted to hospital for diseases that are clearly linked to poverty in greater and greater numbers. There were an extra six hospital admissions for infectious diseases and respiratory diseases every single day in 2009 compared with 2 years before and the figures are now worse. When families do not have adequate incomes and jobs their children live in poor housing conditions they lack nourishment and they are not warm enough. Their health suffers and their opportunities suffer even more. How much harder is it for children in the increasing thousands of poor homes this Government has created than for a child in one of the affluent and privileged homes that are already heavily favoured? This Government should be ashamed of itself in that regard. 
In 2008 the main breadwinner was unemployed in about 7 percent of Maori and Pacific families. Today that figure has doubled: 14 percent of Maori and Pacific families do not have someone to work and bring home a wage or a salary. I heard the Green Party applauding the Maori Party when it was saying how great it had done. It has not done great at all; it has done appallingly badly. That is the Maori Party’s legacy for supporting National. Its members are deluding themselves if they think otherwise. 
What does it mean in practice? Half of the kids whose families are living in severe hardship do not have suitable wet-weather gear because of the cost; one-third do not have a pair of shoes in good condition; they miss out on the experiences of growing up such as owning a bike or a personal computer; two-thirds miss out on school outings or involvement in sports; and half miss out on school books or a visit to the doctor because of the cost. None of those things are provided for in this Budget. In fact the health budget is an appalling document which shows that the health of New Zealanders—in terms of primary health care in particular—will go to hell in a handcart. 
This Budget is a return to the failed policies of the 1990s. Those policies failed people then and they will fail them again. They will fail to create jobs to lift incomes and to create a stronger future for New Zealand. This is a miserable excuse for a Budget and one of the worst I have ever seen in my experience of politics.