Jones Shane: Budget Debate 
Jones Shane: Budget Debate 
[Volume:639;Page:9561] 
SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker. As is my wont I will not indulge in the rhetoric and hyperbole that we hear from the other side of the House. I shall begin by referring to the fact that today Mr Assistant Speaker is your birthday. Aotearoa has received a great birthday present in the form of the Budget. In fact candles are being lit up and down the motu from the four winds celebrating the final arrival of security through extended savings initiatives and progress through business incentives. I want all the listeners in Aotearoa to know that the Assistant Speaker is having a birthday this evening. Nga mihi nunui ki a koe harihuritau. 
 [ 
Huge greetings to you and happy birthday 
.] 
Mr Assistant Speaker you will be around for many birthdays to come watching Dr Cullen and others deliver Budgets of a similarly fantastic nature from this side of the House. I have to point out that I am not allowed to note the absence of a member from the House but I do note the absence of the good doctor who is in the parliamentary rugby team. We toiled away we knew that he had gone home— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I just say to the member that the absence of a member cannot be referred to because we actually have to leave the Chamber sometimes. 
SHANE JONES 
: I note your counsel Mr Assistant Speaker. However I was referring to the fact that Dr Coleman despite his expending a great deal of air—it has disappeared like a puff of smoke—has offered not one constructive element as to what National proposes to do as an alternative Budget. I was commenting on his interest in rugby. We lamented his absence but we won in spite of it. 
However let us come back to what New Zealanders are really saying. There are no ideas no policies and no remedies from the Opposition side of the House. [ 
Interruption 
] No there are not. There are predictable criticisms hackneyed phrases and tired shibboleths; that is what we find. National members are hoping to sleepwalk their way to the next election. That will not happen. The fact is that our Budget is growing not only in stature but in popularity. 
Some facts cannot be changed. The demographic fact cannot be changed. We are confronting an ageing population. However in the form of Mr Clarkson I accept that his brilliant crop of grey hair is reflective of the deepening ageing process in his intellect and we wait to hear him declare that he will stand again in Tauranga. He will not. Every single Tauranga family and whanau are wandering around wringing their hands and wondering what on earth possessed them to send such an ineffectual politician to Wellington. 
I will give Mr Clarkson his dues. He knows the back end of a bulldozer he knows how to deal with the bank manager and he also knows how to offer remedies to boy street racers hoping to sell tickets so they can take their clapped out cars to his racing rink. But one needs a hell of a lot more than that to represent New Zealanders in this institution. That is why every time Mr Clarkson opens his mouth there is not one single word or sentiment that adds substance to what he said when he came here—“I’ll go to Wellington and teach the buggers a lesson. I’ll go to Wellington and teach them about the real world.” He has been reduced to following David Bennett who I earlier said was Borat without the intellect or the looks. When we hear from Mr Clarkson we know that it is a poroporoaki—a haere ra—because his party will not let him stand he has embarrassed it and it now regrets the fact that it cannot see him off as quickly as it saw off Don Brash. 
Let me come back and offer testimony as a young parliamentarian to the brilliant Budget put forward by Dr Cullen. I have a question for my friends on the opposite side of the House. Some of the members opposite are my friends because in a parliamentary sense there has to be a certain level of consensus. We accept that no one can be friendly with Dr Nick Smith because he is the only one who belongs to the Scientology religion. We cannot be friendly with Mr Ryall because he is incapable of speaking the truth when it comes to race relations. But others— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member can never challenge a member’s veracity when it comes to truth. The member will withdraw. 
SHANE JONES 
: I certainly withdraw. Mr Ryall can certainly not be regarded as a friend by us and every word he says is inversely related to the development of the health system or the advancement of our people. 
To come back to our Budget I say that I have just come back from a brief session with a group of businessmen. They are over the moon about the 15 percent entitlement in relation to research and development. They are the ones who are reciting the fact that National never cut company taxes despite the existence of that gargantuan figure Bill Birch and others in the past. Of course they are all gone and replaced by pygmies none of whom are intellectual—I refer to Lindsay Tisch. None of them are willing to admit to the fact that over the period of time since the mid-1960s they have never moved to reduce company taxes—never—and they have had a lot of opportunity to do so. 
Jill Pettis 
: 1966! 
SHANE JONES 
: OK sorry. It happened when they were living in the world of pounds and halfpennies. It happened before dollars and cents. That is so long ago that a new generation has come forward. That new generation is afflicted by an insecurity as to whether it has a stake in the future. The reason their affliction is subsiding is that the last Budget actually reduced the amount of the interest bill on student loans and this one lays down the platform for No. 1 employer contributions towards savings; No. 2 State contributions towards savings; and No. 3 the enhancement of an ethic of savings. It is possible that Mr Bill English is saying that National’s plan is to strip away the savings scheme and replicate what Muldoon did in the past. 
I say to all Kiwis that this Budget gives them an opportunity to back a team that is investing in their security and will not offer initiatives that will suddenly be snatched away as has happened in the past with our friends from the Opposition. Business and corporate leadership know that we not only have invested successfully in social infrastructure but are enabling the pools of capital to grow because enterprise knows that it needs access to capital. More foreign capital has the effect of increasing our reliance on the international lenders of the world. More domestic capital allows us to manage better our current deficit and have a more positive influence as a country on the nature and the level of our dollar. Those are two key things that people are already beginning to respond to us positively about. 
Of course we are reduced to hearing not only predictable but very destructive contributions coming from the other side of the House. They are mostly from those members who either nurse a wound in the form of Mr English and I could put in that group Mr Power or they are the young ones whose ambition is inversely related to the content of their speeches. They have inordinate levels of ambition but they are not allowed to admit to what policies they might bring forward. No they are hoping to leave that until the period of time when the next election is very close. 
The fact of the matter is that New Zealanders will not fall for that. New Zealanders realise that Labour has laid down its kaupapa—its programme. It will deal with business and it will deal with infrastructure. It is dealing with savings and is pro-social development. It also contributed $170 million towards Maori development. In Rotorua people at the craft and science institute at Whakarewarewa are carving abacuses so the Maori Party can add properly. Kia ora tatou katoa.