Ardern Jacinda: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 01 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11565. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): The Minister who just resumed his seat Nick Smith spent the last 10 minutes telling us that this was the best Budget of a generation. Any young person who might have had the unfortunate pleasure of having watched that speech just now would surely be asking themselves the question “Which generation?” because it will certainly not feel like theirs. When you have the lowest homeownership rate since the 1950s people of this generation are not patting themselves on the back and saying: “How lucky we all are.”When it comes to employment opportunities we have over 87000 young people who not only are not in employment but are not in education or training and are desperately looking for opportunities so they can put a roof over their heads—[Interruption]—and I would add Minister Tolley that that is 25000 more than when your Government took office. That group of young people is not saying that this feels like the best Budget of a generation. In fact what is the measure of a Budget? What is the measure of a successful Budget? You cannot sleep under the roof of a graph of GDP.People will be measuring the success of a Budget for themselves. How will they feel better off if at all? When you have got a situation where wages are not looking to rise according to the Government’s own Budget in the next 2 years and when you have got a Government that has borrowed more than Muldoon—more than Muldoon—which generation is Nick Smith talking about? And for all of the platitudes about how relative to other countries New Zealand is in not quite the same shape as other places that thanks goes to Helen Clark and Michael Cullen because they were the ones who got net Crown debt to almost zero before this Government came into office. They set us up for a rainy day—they set us up for a rainy day.I will give some applause to Nick Smith. At least he talked about the Budget. The last few speeches I have heard from Ministers did not even touch on some of the Budget initiatives. In fact I have heard more creepy discussion about The Bachelor from some of those Government Ministers—all of them male I have to point out—than I have heard about the Budget itself and maybe that is because this Budget did not present a vision that was worth talking about and I have sought that almost every single Budget. Budgets are a Government’s opportunity to tell the people of New Zealand where they are going and how it is going to tackle the big issues that New Zealand is facing.Not only did this Budget not present a vision but it did not even address the here and the now. I should have expected that because recently when the Prime Minister was asked about his view on the fact that people were sleeping in cars what was his response? “Those people should go to Work and Income.” Any Prime Minister or any MP who has done constituency work knows what a ridiculous statement that was. We all have people coming through our office doors day in day out who have been to Work and Income and have been turned away either because they did not fill in a form properly or there was a bit of information missing or there was some little part of an obligation that they were not quite aware of.There have been according to Work and Income workers whom I have spoken to more changes to the welfare system in the past year and a half by policy direction than there were in the welfare reforms a year ago and all of them are discretionary little blockages to stop people getting the help they need. Any Prime Minister who is talking to his own electorate office staff or to people—or to people—would know that. I feel the same way about the housing issue that we are facing now. Any Prime Minister worth his salt would know that the need for the 3000 State houses that this Government has sold is coming back tenfold now that we have this housing crisis.I challenge Nick Smith I challenge the Prime Minister and I challenge any National member to go and visit Te Puea Marae where they have done what needed to be done for their community. They opened their doors and they gave people who were desperate a bed. For the Minister to stand up in the House today and say that one of the families that has been referred to which has a brand new baby was denied housing because family members did not fill in their forms properly and tell Housing New Zealand they had a baby on the way—well that just speaks to the problem. They were homeless they needed a place to live and naturally they were scared that if they talked about having a baby on the way someone might take their child away from them because they could not find a roof.That is the reason we should be absolutely making sure nothing stands in the way of having a couple like that let alone a couple with a child housed. To instead explain it away as a rational reason why they now find themselves at the mercy of being housed by social agencies—and not social agencies; a marae that simply is responding to need—is simply not good enough. I met that little baby and I would challenge the Minister to tell me that simply the incorrect filling in of a form is a good reason why that family is not housed. He needs to visit them.I would challenge all of those members to do the same with education—go and talk to a principal and ask them whether the targeting of 150000 students leaving behind more than 600000 is adequate. The Government has frozen the education budget. Health is pretty much the same. It needed $600 million just to tread water and anyone who has had a family member show up at a hospital recently would have seen how much pressure our health services are under.One shining light—and I will acknowledge this one shining light particularly while Anne Tolley is in the House—is the $36 million that in the next year will go into Child Youth and Family to ease the pressure on these front-line services. That is welcomed. The expert advisory panel that wrote about Child Youth and Family modernisation and reform acknowledged that it was facing a deficit that could have been as big as $38 million. It needed that cash injection but we also need decent investment and early intervention if we are going to improve the outcome for kids.Those are the big ones but perhaps what also deserves some headlines is what is happening in some of the portfolios where the Government is hoping that people will not be noticing—for example the cuts being experienced in conservation. Also there has been a reduction of about $10 million per year going into water quality but then again if your aim is only to make your rivers wadeable instead of swimmable perhaps you do not need to spend as much money on water quality. Perhaps that is how you make your savings.And for the arts community I have to respond to that as the shadow portfolio holder. On Budget night we had Minister Barry crowing about the investment into the arts. It equates to about $2 million per annum.Hon Maggie Barry: What’s that member ever contributed?JACINDA ARDERN: What have I ever done? Well surprisingly I am not on the Treasury benches Maggie Barry. If I was I would have done a damned sight more than that Minister did. There is $11 million coming out of Creative New Zealand—$11 million being cut from Creative New Zealand—and the Minister’s response was to find a small amount of money for three organisations that were all going backwards. They were stopping touring and were about to cut performers because of the state they were in and the Minister was having salivatory selfies when other arts organisations are going to face cuts of 10 percent. She crows that she has done more than me. Give me 1 week in your portfolio Minister Barry and I will show you. I will show you what you should do with an arts portfolio.Overall this Budget could have done so much more. It should have presented a plan on housing. It should have presented a plan on poverty. It should have invested in education. Ultimately this Budget needed to be about people and it was not.