Mackey Moana: Budget Debate 
Mackey Moana: Budget Debate 
[Volume:631;Page:3292] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 For the benefit of those listening to this debate at home I say that the previous speaker was Dr Wayne Mapp the “exterminator”. Once again as we have heard in all these Budget speeches he was searching for any possible reason as to why we should not target tax relief to those people who need it the most. It is targeted for the very logical reason that if we do that we can give those people more because we are not spending hundreds of millions of dollars on giving tax cuts to people who do not need them. 
Of course if National had been giving this Budget the National MPs and all their mates would have benefited by about $100 a week and they acknowledge that. But they were willing to make that sacrifice for the sake of the people of New Zealand—to take one for the team. They would have taken the $100 tax cuts even though they did not really want them because that was the only fair way to do things. Had this Budget been delivered by a National Government we would have been sitting here and listening to National members tell us about how good it was for the workers of New Zealand who would have received practically nothing. Any benefit would have then been obliterated by interest rate rises and by some of the things we have seen happening in Australia. 
The National Party has no idea what motivates people and that is what has struck me as I have sat here listening to all the Budget speeches. The National Party thinks the way to motivate rich people is to give them more money and the way to motivate poor people is to give them less money. That is why when National was in Government in the 1990s in just about every policy area it was an abysmal failure. One of its policies was to treat beneficiaries so badly that they would get off the benefit. That policy worked; beneficiary numbers went up! Under Labour 100000 fewer people overall are on benefits compared with when we came into office in 1999. We have had a drop of over 70 percent in the number of people on the unemployment benefit yet National still tells us that we are not doing it right. If Labour is not doing it right then I would hate to see what doing it wrong is. 
We heard from Dr Wayne Mapp that our expats living overseas have no role to play in New Zealand. This is what I mean when I talk about the National Party not understanding what motivates people. Labour members know that people will go off on their OE. It is part of our culture and our national identity that our young people will go off on their OE and then will come home. The challenge for a Government is to work with that and to ask how we can make sure those young people do come back here bringing back with them all the skills and experience they have gained while on their OE. It appears to me from Dr Wayne Mapp’s speech that National’s solution is to ban the OE—that if we get rid of the working holiday visas then we will get rid of the problem. He thinks that if people do not go overseas we will not have to worry about bringing them back. 
I am very proud to stand up in this House and talk about Budget 2006. This Budget is about investment for New Zealanders. It is about stability. It is about saying to New Zealanders we have done well for the last 6 years—we have grown our economy and more people are in jobs than ever before—and the Government is not going to turn track suddenly in mid-course as has been the case so often in the past. We have heard a lot about economic transformation. This Labour-led Government is absolutely committed to that agenda. 
In transport $1.3 billion will be given over 5 years for infrastructure development. We have known for a long time that one of the bottlenecks in our economy is infrastructure because successive Governments of all shades and colours have not invested enough in New Zealand’s infrastructure. Now we are at a crisis point but this injection of cash—this bold move—will make a real difference to infrastructure and therefore to the economy. 
Bob Clarkson 
: You’ve only had 6 years. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Mr Clarkson is going on but his area is to receive a whole lot of funding. He should be thankful. But no National is never happy. If Labour puts more money into something National is not happy. If we do not put enough money in National is not happy. National is calling for $11 billion worth of tax cuts and it still wants us to double triple or quadruple the spending in every single area. 
I ask members whether we will ever see an alternative Budget from National. 
Darren Hughes 
: Not a chance. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: No of course we will not. National is the party that went into a general election without a health policy. The biggest area of Government expenditure is health and National had no policy on it. National’s policy was that it would review health after the election. How can National put out an alternative Budget when it has no policy in the single biggest area of expenditure? The Hon Tony Ryall gets up in the House every day and talks about health but he has never once told us what National would do. We have never seen National’s health policy. 
National says it will get rid of bureaucrats following the next election. Who do National members think will carry out the reviews in every single area of policy? They said they would review each area of policy after the election. Who do they think carries out reviews? We know that in terms of health policy the doctors and nurses do that. The Hon Tony Ryall has told us that National wants doctors and nurses to have flexibility. We know what flexibility means: it means doctors and nurses will answer phones schedule operations and do their own typing. That is what flexibility would mean for the 5500 extra doctors and nurses that this Labour-led Government has delivered since 1999. In that context 1500 extra administrators are needed to cope with the extra workload. There are 20 percent more case-weighted discharges now than there were in 1999 and the extra workload that comes from having more doctors and nurses requires additional people to answer phones schedule operations and type so that doctors and nurses can get back to the business of actually treating patients. 
That contrasts with the 1990s when doctors and nurses spent all their time doing administration for the overly bureaucratic Crown health enterprises. Yet National members now stand up with a bold face in this House and accuse us of being bureaucratic in the health system. There is a word for that—[ 
Interruption 
] Oh waste! National was unable to tell us its policy during the entire election campaign. It came up with a small amount of funding that it could save and in order to pay for the $11 billion worth of tax cuts it needed to find only another $10.999 billion. The National members have never told us who would lose their jobs or where the cuts would be made. [ 
Interruption 
] Oh the highly cerebral David Carter’s interjection is up to his usual high standard but he is enjoying himself and that is what is important. Where were the cuts to be made? They could not tell us. When we asked whether cuts would be made to various things we were told no or that there would be a review after the election done by the people whose jobs were to be cut. 
We should expect more in a Budget debate than we have had from National and expect more in an election campaign from the major Opposition party than we had from National in the last election campaign. In the last election campaign National hoped that just saying it would provide $11 billion worth of tax cuts without telling people how it would pay for them would be enough for it to win and it was not. National needs to look seriously at where its vote came from. It did not come from mainstream New Zealanders; it came at a cost to National’s support parties. That is where that vote came from. Mainstream New Zealanders were not sucked in by the National Party in the election campaign. That was probably because they saw that what was meant by “mainstream” was the Exclusive Brethren and they suddenly thought they should reconsider whether they formed part of that mainstream. 
Is it not funny that race relations was a major plank in National’s campaign policy last year? National members have a real problem with the status of women in Maoridom but they do not seem to mind as much about the status of women in the Exclusive Brethren do they? They are happy to take $1.2 million off the Exclusive Brethren and not to help out from their handbags at any meeting involving the Exclusive Brethren. 
This is an excellent Budget for New Zealand and it looks even better when we consider what the alternative would have been had Labour not formed this Government. We are putting money into infrastructure and into upskilling our workforce. In 20 years’ time when we are in a position to pay for all our retirees because of Dr Cullen’s Superannuation Fund we will be at a serious strategic advantage over the rest of the developed world which is not making the plans we are making now. Although National members say they support that fund now I am not so sure about that. I have been burnt by National in the past. 
New Zealanders are not moving to Australia in any greater numbers than they did in the 1990s under a National Government. They are not leaving for overseas in any greater proportion than that of the Australians who leave Australia. I have friends in Australia. I talked to them over the weekend and they said that if the National Party thinks tax cuts for the minority of people—the minority who earn the most money—will bring people back to New Zealand it is dreaming. If National ever gets into Government it will be to the detriment of the future of this country. May that never happen.