Cunliffe David: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
Cunliffe David: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
[Volume:666;Page:13350] 
6. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: Does he stand by his statement: “we’re getting the right kind of recovery if you take a longer-term point of view”? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 Yes. Although the recovery has been patchy there are early signs that the imbalances that have handicapped this economy through the last 5 or 6 years are unwinding. Those imbalances are pretty straightforward: too much of our resource and borrowing has financed an increase in non-tradables—that is domestically focused activity—and not enough of it has gone on growing our export capacity. When one is a trading nation export capacity is pretty important. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: How was the longer-term point of view improved by cutting KiwiSaver incentives and deferring for a decade contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Because we did not have any cash to put into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund—in fact this financial year the New Zealand Government is running a $13 billion cash deficit. If the member is worried about the state of the economy and what has caused it normally I would tell him to look in the mirror but he does not need much encouragement. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: If there was insufficient cash to pre-fund the retirement plan for New Zealanders why was there enough cash to give tax cuts to his wealthy mates? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The member has clearly arrived from some other planet— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The House will display some courtesy. I am extremely disappointed with the quality of questions being asked today and some of the answers being given. The Minister made a very unhelpful comment at the end of his last answer which I ignored; maybe I should not have ignored it. To start the answer to a question with an attack on the questioner is simply not acceptable. It does not show a Minister on top of his or her game at all; it shows a Minister stooping to attack another member of this House instead of demonstrating his or her skill at being on top of the game and answering even a poor question—and I am not saying that that was a poor question—as well as he or she can. 
I must say that today I think the quality of questions has been very poor. They have been more political statements than questions. I could apply the Standing Orders and rule a lot of them out of order and the House would possibly be a lot better for it. I do not want to do that but if members are going to continue to just make political statements instead of asking questions I may have to do it. The quality of question time has to improve. Today has not been a high-quality question time. It is not helped when a Minister simply attacks a questioner like that. It is unacceptable. The Hon Bill English will come to the question asked. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: That question is rather unusual given that this House has spent 3 or 4 months debating a Budget where about half of the funding for the income tax cuts comes from GST increases. I thought that the member knew about the GST increase because his party is campaigning on it. There was also revenue from other sources which made the package broadly fiscally neutral. The result of that package is that 75 percent of earners in New Zealand now have a top statutory tax rate of 17.5c in the dollar. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: How can he expect to reduce overseas debt through savings when he is planning to further liberalise the overseas investment regime making it easier for foreigners to buy New Zealand land and assets? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The Government has actually signalled its understanding of the concern about overseas investment and assets. But we need to bear in mind that because we do not save enough in order to have jobs in New Zealand we need overseas investment or we simply will not have the capital coming in to create jobs. We have to strike a balance between our need for overseas capital because we do not provide it ourselves and protecting those things that are very important to New Zealanders.