Lotu-Iiga Sam: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Lotu-Iiga Sam: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Sitting date: 30 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:10197. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
2. 
PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: How will Budget 2010 ensure taxpayers’ money is spent responsibly? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 Budget 2010 will continue the process of cleaning up the mess left by the previous Government and improving the quality of Government spending. It is important that this Government focus on better front-line services and on not wasting money on bureaucracy strategies plans and workshops as the previous Government did. This Government intends to honour the confidence that taxpayers have shown in the Government’s ability to use their PAYE dollar wisely. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: How will the Government improve the quality of spending? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: It will not actually be very difficult to do so because in the past 5 years under the previous Government one-third of all Budget vote areas received funding increases of over 50 percent and two-thirds received increases of over 30 percent. These very large increases made very little increase in the effectiveness of public services. In Budget 2009 we directed about $2 billion of lower-value spending to the front line of public services and we intend to redirect a significant amount in this next Budget. 
Stuart Nash 
: What is his response to the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who earlier this week talked about the consequences of not doing enough to protect jobs in a recession saying: “Look at the unemployment rate in New Zealand just across the Tasman … If that unemployment rate was replicated here in Australia hundreds of thousands of people would not be with jobs today”? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: That question is a bit rich coming from a party that opposes mining which has been the largest source of new jobs in Australia. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: Has the Minister seen any reports on alternative approaches to fiscal management? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Yes. I have seen reports of the long list of unfunded commitments Labour left behind when it left Government. When we add them all up we see that the previous Labour Government had made $6 billion of commitments for which there was no funding at all. I am pleased to say that in last year’s Budget we got rid of most of those commitments and in this year’s Budget we will continue to eliminate the waste that Labour built into the system. 
Stuart Nash 
: When he said yesterday that jobs lost in the recession were “not real jobs” which aspect of the jobs was not real—the steady wage or people’s ability to pay the bills and support their families? Does he simply believe that those 168000 people are not really unemployed? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: What I said yesterday was that instead of crying crocodile tears Labour should take responsibility for the problems it has created in the economy. It promoted a housing bubble it fed consumption in the economy with excessive Government spending and people who thought they had long-term sustainable jobs did not actually have long-term sustainable jobs. We are trying to clean up that mess.