Reti Shane: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeReti Shane: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 07 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11738. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It is a pleasure to speak to this Budget tonight—a sound solid fiscally responsible Budget. I want to focus on three particular components: education health research and smoking. In the education space this Budget strongly supports our overall investment in education with $14.4 million for more apprentices $9.6 million for Māori and Pasifika trades training and an extra $1.4 billion in education—that is nine new schools and 480 new classrooms.Whangarei Girls’ High School is a beneficiary of some of these 480 new classrooms. We saw the commitment last week when Minister Nikki Kaye visited Whangarei Girls’ High School to announce the 10 new buildings. The principal Anne Cooper told me today that Whangarei Girls’ High School has a burgeoning roll currently sitting at 1350 students and these buildings are absolutely essential to them. It is a roll that is growing because the school is doing well. It has a solid reputation there are new people to the region and students are staying longer. There is an increasing awareness among students that education is the tool to advance and improve their outlook. A solid fiscal programme like this allows for these 10 new school buildings which are going to be used for arts commerce and student support. All of this is under the umbrella of a new model learning environment. The school’s motto is “Fideliter” which means faithfully and just as this school has faith in its students so this Government has faith in the school.I want to turn to health research funding. Health research funding is also a beneficiary of this Budget with an increase of $97 million over the next 4 years. The annual amount available for health research through the Health Research Council (HRC) increases from $77 million to $120 million.The HRC boxes above its weight and one of the HRC’s success stories for me is the Liggins-Howie story. In 1972 they published an article called “A controlled trial of antepartum glucocorticoid treatment for prevention of respiratory distress syndrome in premature infants”. Now any woman anywhere in the world today with a pre-term infant can thank the HRC and these two doctors for the likelihood that their baby will survive. You see what Liggins and Howie found was that the lungs of premature infants do not expand. They have got surfactant and they just cannot take air in. What they found was that if you give steroids to premature infants and give them at least 24 to 48 hours those steroids mature the lungs and the babies’ lungs are able to inflate. So where before pre-terms might have died at 32 33 34 weeks with this new knowledge funded by the HRC and with its own expertise New Zealand was able to lead the way and it is now standard protocol across the world. It was a really seminal finding and we think that it may have saved 10000 premature New Zealand babies—the Health Research Council in cooperation with an academic university.The last thing that I want to talk to is smoking and the tobacco tax increase. I want to focus on one particular area that interests me and that is around youth smoking. We know that in New Zealand the average youth starts smoking at 14.6 years of age. What interests me is that cigarette smoking and the use of marijuana and alcohol have what is called co-occurrence—the two tend to go together. So it interests me that if we increase the taxes on tobacco what does that do to marijuana use and maybe alcohol use? International studies across the world have shown several things: first of all if you increase tobacco taxes you decrease tobacco consumption—we know that; that is why we are doing it. What it also does is it decreases the number of youth smoking marijuana and it also decreases the amount of marijuana consumed. Let us apply that same thinking to alcohol which also has co-occurrence with tobacco. What we find is that if we increase tobacco taxes we decrease tobacco consumption—again that is our principle—but it also decreases alcohol consumption. Imagine then if the tobacco measures in this Budget in some maybe small and indirect way could also reduce alcohol- and drug-related harms such as drink-driving and domestic violence.I have focused on these three small areas from a very wide-ranging Budget with a lot of breadth and I have made the case for many other benefits that accrue beyond the immediate visibility of this Budget. It is a solid Budget it is a sound Budget and I commend this Budget to the House.