Prasad Rajen: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 21 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18220. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): I am pleased to take the other half of this call on the Budget. What I was looking for in this Budget was its vision. What vision does it reflect of contemporary New Zealand society and contemporary issues facing our people? I was asking myself the question: does it put people first? If it did then I would take the Budget seriously. People after all are the most important. If we do not put our people first if we do not develop them well if we do not give them the opportunities then we all pay for it in the end. We pay huge amounts of money to correct those problems that are created when we do not put our people first. That was not the vision of this particular Budget. Its vision was somewhere else. Its vision was of a divisive society. It was not a vision of treating our most vulnerable well.Then I asked well what does it do—this is one of the most serious questions facing New Zealand society today—about one of the most serious problems? This is the problem of inequality. [Interruption] I say to the Hon Todd McClay that this is a problem that is facing New Zealand society. I do not think anybody in this House doubts that inequality is awful and that it ought to be addressed particularly when that inequality has very serious impacts on our children. And yet we know that the Budget did not address those inequalities. The Budget really began to say: “Well do you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to select a small group of the most vulnerable and we’re going to target some services towards them.”I know that Paul Hutchison will soon talk about targeting but when there is such a big group Mr Hutchison—285000 children who are living in poverty—where is the morality and where is the ethics of addressing 30000 of them? Where is the morality? How do you work that out Mr Hutchison? In a sense it is condemning the other quarter of a million children to poverty. What that does Mr Hutchison is it simply creates another generation for the welfare system to cope with for the health system to cope with and for the justice system to cope with. We create bigger problems down the track Mr Hutchison. And yet we know that for children that moment of their lives that 0 to 3 years is what sets them up on their development trajectory for the rest of their lives. That is what does it. Every piece of science we know says that that is where we should target. So everybody in this group ought to be targeted.But when it is 285000 children Mr Hutchison and we are targeting 30000 children what is this silly game we are playing? It really is condemning the most vulnerable toeven more miserable lives. There is plenty of evidence to show that we have not applied the kind of morality the decency for creating a society where all boats are lifted. Here we are wanting to advantage a small group of those children and that is where this Budget fails abysmally. Our alternative ideas around children in Best Start begin to address very systematically each step each segment of what it takes to lift all those boats and to give those people a better start in life.This is my last Budget speech and it is a brief one. I make it with some sadness because I came into Parliament after a life of working with the most vulnerable working with children and families for 45 years. I say with some sadness that we now see a period here when we are not addressing the most vulnerable. Much of what Nick Smith said was really just discounting 9 years of very positive development. There were 9 years of economic management that gave this Government the headroom to manage the headwinds that came. If it was not for that it would have been in dire trouble. But Government members do not have the decency to acknowledge that. It was all designed simply to create the Crosby/Textor - type spin that throws those figures around. But their own performance is really immoral. It is immoral when looked at from the perspective of putting children and families first. Thank you.