Douglas Roger: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Douglas Roger: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:655;Page:4523] 
Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT) 
: 
 New Zealand has two classes of citizens. In New Zealand we all pay taxes yet some people get a bad deal for the money they pay. The people who get the rawest deal are those who are the least well off and the least able to provide for themselves when the Government fails to deliver. We have two classes in New Zealand not because the Government is not doing enough for the poor but because what the Government does for the poor denies them choices destroys the incentive they have to get ahead and subjects them to political abuse. The past 80 years of political control has achieved a larger welfare budget more people on welfare and barriers for those at the bottom to get ahead. Personal taxation in New Zealand takes $25 billion; 54 percent of that amount goes to health a third goes to superannuation and 13 percent goes to welfare. 
Let us look at some of those areas. Superannuation costs everyone one-third of the personal tax we pay. For people who earn a little above the average wage that is almost $4000 a year. Superannuation is not free; it costs and it delivers poor results. Despite the average person paying $4000 every year in tax for superannuation a single pensioner gets $311 a week and a married pensioner gets $239 a week. They pay in well over $200000 during their lifetime for a miserable pension. Our superannuation scheme is designed so that people pay today for the retirement of their parents. If we simply adjusted the system so that the money people pay went towards paying for their own retirement most would get a cushy retirement. If that money was put in the bank and was earning 7 percent nominal interest and 5 percent real interest then the average worker would retire with $1.8 million in the bank. It would like winning Lotto and then retiring. The interest on that money would give you far more per week than you are currently getting. After tax the weekly income of a superannuitant would be around $1210 a week. The difference when compared with current Government superannuation is around $900 and that is without any capital contribution. The present system creates second-class citizens. So why do National and Labour not alter this when they are in Government? It is because National and Labour want to make the people of this country dependent upon them. If the average citizen had $1.8 million in the bank he or she would not want politicians interfering in their lives. 
Let us look at health. Of your and everyone else’s personal tax 54 percent goes towards health care. Saying that it is 54 percent can hide what this means. If you earn the minimum wage you will pay about $2500— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: You have brought the Speaker into the debate a couple of times now. I indicate not to as I am impartial in this matter. 
Hon Phil Heatley 
: He’s a new member! 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am on my feet. 
Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS 
: If a person earns the minimum wage he or she pays $2500 every year for health care. If people earn the average wage they pay over $6396 in health care every year. People say we have free health care. To me it seems that free health care has never been more expensive. When health care costs the average person $6000 a year and costs a two-income family over $10000 a year one would hope that it would really deliver. However it does not deliver. Despite the enormous cost we ration health care. People who are sick get placed on a waiting list and people on waiting lists get worse not better; some die. The suffering that takes place on the health waiting list is rationalised away as if the goal of equality justifies denying health care to people who desperately need it. 
The most pernicious effect of socialised medicine is how it creates second-class citizens in this country. The first way it does so is through a bizarre mixture of subsidies. Some medicines are fully subsidised some are partially subsidised and some are not subsidised at all. Decisions over what medicines one can take are determined not by the patient or the doctor but by some bureaucrat here in Wellington. The second way it creates second-class citizens is how pressure can be applied to get treatments performed. Doctors patients and politicians can all pressure the system to get certain operations performed at the expense of others. If people can get their stories on  
Campbell Live 
 they can be sure they will get a treatment. If people can form a pressure group to get Herceptin subsidised then they will get that treatment. But in socialised health one’s treatment comes at the expense of someone else’s and because the affluent tend to be more politically connected more influential and more organised treatment for the rich comes at the expense of the poor. The third way it creates second-class citizens is the fact that wealthy people can afford to pay twice. They can afford to pay tax for health care and then buy health insurance on top. The very people who are denied this opportunity are the very people whom universal heath care was meant to help. While the poor die on waiting lists the rich pop down to the private hospitals. 
No one would seriously contend that the system treats people equally and the solution to this problem is the same kind of pathetic snake oil we hear from all the political parties in Parliament: that all the problems could be solved if only we would spend more money. What rubbish! When will we wake up to that lie? Under Labour health spending increased in real terms by 50 percent. Despite that huge increase in real expenditure the productivity of doctors declined by 15 percent and the productivity of nurses decreased by 11 percent. Overall the drop was 8 percent. It was only 8 percent overall because the productivity of cleaning and orderly staff surged and those services were outsourced to the private market. This gives a hint of the kinds of benefits that could be achieved if we dropped the pretence and lived up to the reality. Socialised health care has failed. If we simply gave people on the average wage the $6000 they currently pay this would enable them to buy catastrophic insurance put money aside for their health care and retirement and pay for their day-to-day health care needs at the doctor. 
When we look not at the goals of the welfare State but at the actual performance we see that the results are depressing. In the last 80 years we have grown far wealthier than we once were yet there are more on welfare today than before. We have created a system that gives options to those who can afford them and denies choices to those who most desperately need them. We have created a system that taxes and regulates opportunity for the poor out of existence and conscripts them into poverty. We have created a system with two classes of citizenship in this country and at the very same time the solutions put forth by all the other political parties in this Parliament except ACT are more Government spending on health more Government spending on education and more Government spending on welfare. Only ACT stands against the philosophy that is creating two types of citizens. When will we wake up? On its own terms the welfare State has failed.