Fenton Darien: Budget Debate 
Fenton Darien: Budget Debate 
[Volume:631;Page:3288] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I am proud to have the opportunity to speak in the Budget debate. Budget 2006 is a fair and responsible Budget that only a Labour-led Government could deliver. It is a Budget that invests in our future; it builds on the progress of our country over the last 6 years; it delivers on our promises; and it provides solutions that will help drive the economy to the next level of transformation. We on this side of the House are loyal to our country. We put it first. We have pride in who we are and confidence in our people and our future. We work together for the good of everyone in a society that is fair. We build on our core values of fairness security opportunity and reaching down and giving those in need a hand up. 
But what do we see from Dr Brash and the National Party? We see Australian envy ocker jealousy foreign-poppy syndrome and talking New Zealand down again. Well first it was America and now it is Australia. If Dr Brash wants to put up billboards around the country about Australia let us at least have the truth. Australia’s tax cuts are good but only if one is rich. What about the little people—the Aussie battlers as John Howard likes to call them? Working people earning up to $70000 a year get only between $7 and $10 a week and that is on top of $1.50 to $6 a week in tax cuts under his previous two Budgets. 
The National Party should come clean. Are those the kinds of tax cuts that Dr Brash plans for New Zealanders—lots for the well-off and nothing much for everyone else? Australian families are getting only an extra $5 to $10 a week unlike New Zealand families under the Working for Families package. There are no plans to tackle Australia’s skill crisis and on top of that the nation is facing one of the worst assaults on workers’ rights in its history under Australia’s ironically named Work Choices legislation. Miserly tax cuts mean nothing to the workers who are seeing big drops in their take-home pay. Tax cuts mean nothing to workers who are getting the sack. Australia has come late to the Employment Contracts Act but we will see the same devastating consequences as we saw in New Zealand. Real take-home pay will drop jobs will increasingly be casualised and the gap between rich and poor will grow further. 
Most serious of all the new Australian industrial relations laws is the one that allows employers who employ fewer than 100 workers to sack them for no reason. In the first days of Australia’s new laws there was a rash of sackings and these have continued right across all spectrums of work. Workers are being fired and re-employed as casuals on lower wages with no sick leave no paid annual leave and no public holidays. One worker was sacked by text message. Another worker was fired then rehired on a contract that pays $200 less a week. Another worker had his pay docked for doing a whip-round for the widow of a mate who was killed on the job. All around the nation Australians are feeling firsthand the real costs of their Government’s new industrial relations regime. 
So are Dr Brash and the National Party seriously suggesting that New Zealanders will up sticks and head off to Australia for a miserly $7 a week tax cut where if they are unfortunate enough to find work with an employer who employs fewer than 100 workers they could be sacked for no reason with no warning and with no come-back? It is a little bit like Dr Mapp’s forlorn belief that his 90-day probationary period bill will promote growth and productivity—yeah right! No skilled worker will leave a secure job knowing that he or she could be sacked from his or her next job without reason. 
The Australian Government’s tax cuts have been targeted largely at high-income earners—[ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member but I say to members on my left that as we all know politics is the art of possible. The possible today is good order. I refer members to Speaker’s ruling 57/3 which states that running commentaries are out of order. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: The Australian Government’s tax cuts have been targeted largely at high-income earners and have provided little relief from rising prices for average working families. In fact low-income Australian workers with average incomes of around $35000 a year are paying proportionately more of their income in tax than they were 5 years ago. During the same period working families with high incomes that average more than $140000 a year have enjoyed cuts in proportion to the income they pay in tax. 
The message I hear from Aussie mates asks why any thinking New Zealander would want to go to Australia right now. In fact I think the Australian industrial relations laws will drive many Australians over here and many of our own back here as well. I think Dr Brash draws a long bow in saying that tax cuts will mean New Zealanders head for Australia. New Zealanders emigrate for a variety of reasons and Australians emigrate too. As we heard from my colleague the number of Australians emigrating has reached the highest level ever. The interesting thing about those statistics is that overwhelmingly the Australian-born who are emigrating are emigrating to New Zealand. Of the overseas-born emigrants from Australia 83.7 percent were New Zealanders returning to New Zealand. 
The trend for immigration is affecting all countries and is likely to continue as a result of the increasing internationalisation of labour markets and the global demand for skilled workers. New Zealand has had a net outflow from New Zealand to Australia almost every year since 1960 so to suggest that this is a new phenomenon is disingenuous. We continue to gain population from migration. We replace departing New Zealand citizens with immigration of non - New Zealanders and our immigrants are higher-skilled than our existing population. Studies show that those going to Australia are not concentrated in the higher-skilled categories. As Treasury stated in a 2001 paper about migration to and from Australia rather than a brain drain the evidence seems to suggest a “same brain”—a consequence of a common labour market with Australia. 
 A large community of New Zealanders and Australians live offshore on a permanent or long-term basis and these people are important to New Zealand as well. Relatively speaking this group are prosperous well educated well connected highly employable and well disposed to New Zealand. They have not turned their backs on New Zealand. They play their role in the world heading up business international organisations cultural institutions and teach at some of the world’s best universities. That is as much about our national identity in the face we show to the world as anything else. It is also about our economic wealth. Our expatriate population projects our image offshore. They help to develop links between New Zealand and its trading partners by facilitating access to overseas markets for New Zealand goods and services and when immigrants return to New Zealand they often bring back new skills knowledge and productivity. 
So rather than seeing migration as a threat as the National Party does we need to see it as a reality in a modern world of highly mobile people and labour markets. I suspect that many of us in this House at some stages in our lives particularly when younger decided to travel overseas. I for one left home for 2 years and lived and worked in England Hong Kong and India. My son who is a highly skilled computer scientist is planning his OE right now. He is not leaving for more money or a tax cut he is leaving because we live in a little country at the bottom of the world and it is in our genes to explore the rest of the world. He will come home again. 
New Zealanders are proud of their country. They do think we are doing well. They like the fact that this Budget invests in the things that matter most to Kiwis. Most of them are not clamouring for tax cuts—except of course the National Party’s very rich friends—and they do not want to see tax cuts at the expense of everything else we hold dear. They do not want services cut while the rich grow even richer. But just like a broken record National members continue to play the same old tune—no new ideas just last century’s failed policies and the politics of envy. They are out of touch; but this Labour-led Government is not and this is a Budget to be proud of.