Auchinvole Chris: Budget Debate 
Auchinvole Chris: Budget Debate 
[Volume:639;Page:9578] 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National) 
: 
 Having listened to the previous speaker and indeed to the speakers before that from the other side of the House I have for members a very apt quote from Oliver Cromwell who called himself Lord Protector and who seems to be a model for the modern Ministers on that side of the House. It is a quote we can apply to the present Government. It is: “You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart I say and let us have done with you. In the name of God go!”. 
I rise to join in the Budget debate which is the second reading of the Appropriation (2007/08 Estimates) Bill. What is the best way to describe this Budget? It is a sad Budget. It is a bad Budget. It is a mad Budget. It is a dad’s Budget. It is an “Ever been had?” Budget. It does not really do what it could have done and that is very sad indeed. 
If we look at why it is sad we see it is because—I am sure—it represents the best efforts of the present Minister of Finance to produce what he thought would be received as a spellbinding Budget. Well the only spell it casts over the New Zealand economy and New Zealand society is one of mediocrity. 
Indeed when the Labour Party public relations company is asked and analyses what the legacy will be of Dr Cullen’s and Helen Clark’s governance I guess that ultimately history will judge it as a long period of mediocrity. That is what this Labour Government likes that is what it enjoys that is what it produces and that is what it is comfortable with. The only trouble is that it presumes everybody else will have the same attitude towards it—that we will be just as enthusiastic as it is. But the people are not enthusiastic so this is a sad Budget. 
John Hayes 
: Deeply depressing. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Well this Government does think it knows best. Again though it is a sad Budget because it represents an opportunity lost—the opportunity to have a Budget based on production and a productive economy which is what National would have produced. It is sad that the present Minister of Finance has worked so hard to achieve so little. I think I have said before that in my mind Dr Cullen is to Helen Clark what Hugh Watt was to Norman Kirk: he does the work and she allocates the blame. The trouble is that for all the work that has gone in the result has been one of sad mediocrity. 
In the last 6 years there was a time when tax cuts were an opportunity to be had. There was a time when infrastructural spending was affordable. There was a time when the gap in the top half of the OECD could have been closed. The opportunities were there but they have been lost and we are now heading in the wrong direction. All those opportunities are presented only for a while. Although I would never pretend to be an economist I have been involved in business for long enough to appreciate that when opportunities do present themselves one should not expect them to stay around if one does not take advantage of them. That is what has happened to this particular Government in this particular Budget. 
Like other speakers from this side of the House before me I join in saying that this Budget is for a wind-down economy for a retiring economy and for a country of future retirees without doing anything for present retirees. It is using the levers wrongly and I suggest that Dr Cullen and his Associate Ministers have pulled the levers and opened the trapdoor under their own feet. 
John Hayes 
: Pulled the plug on the taxpayer. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Quite right. The sad thing is that the whole country now falls through the trapdoor. So it is a sad Budget. 
But it is also a bad Budget. Why is it a bad Budget? 
Chris Tremain 
: Why is it a bad Budget? 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: I will tell the member. The reason is that although it is a time of pretending to increase export opportunities the reverse appears to be happening. Entrepreneurialism does not respond to the endless proclamation of regulations. Entrepreneurialism measures risk timing and mood and moves fast to achieve those opportunities. I am not sure whether New Zealand wants the Government to be particularly entrepreneurial but I will tell members that this Government is not and it has not been over a period of tremendous entrepreneurial opportunity for this country’s development. 
Let us look at the country as a business. 
Christopher Finlayson 
: They hate business. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: As Mr Finlayson says the Government hates business. We have just been through say 6 years of larger cash incomes than any Government has ever had in New Zealand. To put it in a business capacity if one has a small business that business has just done far better than it has ever done before year on year. So surely that is the time to invest in the business to improve its infrastructure to enhance its assets and to use one’s capital to maximum advantage. Has this Government done that? 
Hon Members 
: No! 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Has it done it? Well the infrastructure is not particularly rosy in terms of roading health or indeed schools. And please do not even allow me to start talking about the Grey Valley school changes introduced by the Hon Trevor Mallard. He could not even get it right to fix a school in a small community of a few hundred people. Lord knows what would have happened if he had had his way with a waterfront stadium. Even in things like conservation the West Coast - Tai Poutini conservation area still lacks a strategy after 11 years of being told it should have one. 
Christopher Finlayson 
: How long? 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Eleven years I say to Mr Finlayson. This is a bad Budget because over the entire period of well-being and improved commodity prices Labour has treated the economy as a cash cow regularly milking it. It has missed so many opportunities. 
So it is a sad Budget and it is a bad Budget but it is also a mad Budget. 
Chris Tremain 
: Why is it mad? 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: It is mad because savings alone do not do much. If we look at Japan which has been through a period of deflation for decades with huge levels of savings we see that it did not produce productivity or profitability. Let us go back to the little company analogy. If one has a little company and puts all of its money into the bank how on earth will it expand its profitability and earning capacity? 
It is a sad bad mad Budget but it is also a dad Budget. I use that term because it is a sort of elderly father’s Budget that one might do for younger people. It takes no account of the sheer vibrancy the enthusiasm and the energy of modern young New Zealand which wants to get into business. It simply says: “No no put it away so that you can use it for your retirement well-being.” Surely retirement should not be the nirvana of success. Surely it is a wind-down after a great period of success. It looks to me as if this dad Budget—with dad having grey hair—is denying a whole generation or perhaps two younger generations the opportunity to benefit from an expanded level of well-being within their own time. 
Finally it is an “Ever been had?” Budget because it puts the money into a situation where one cannot use it. Fifty percent of workers get nothing from the Budget. The working poor get to subsidise their better-off workmates and they probably will not get pay rises or tax cuts ever. They have been had. Those nearing retirement get nothing and everyone gets low-quality public sector spending. Indeed a new spectre was introduced by Gareth Morgan writing in the  
Press 
. He stated that the Government should make KiwiSaver safe before savers are seduced by tax benefits and Government subsidies and protect them from fund managers contracting out of fiduciary positions of trust. 
The tide will continue to change. The tide is very much against Labour. The tide will continue to ebb and flow but the flows get stronger and Labour’s ebbs get weaker. The most tragic thing about this Budget though is that ultimately it will fall short of the expectations of its own author. I am sure that in putting this Budget forward it was seen as protecting the people of New Zealand. 
Dr Cullen talks of the redemptive power of the State. I am put in mind again of Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector of the State. The pamphleteers after Cromwell started to do Budgets wrote that the Protector was King spelt big and that that was a Protector’s Budget. I wonder whether Dr Cullen might reflect on Oliver Cromwell’s plea to the intransigent Scots—and I will cut out some of the quote that might be offensive—when he said to them: “I beseech you … think it possible you may be mistaken.” So as a Scot to the self-proclaimed Protector I echo that back and I beseech Dr Cullen to consider the possibility that in this Budget he may be mistaken.