Newman Muriel: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Newman Muriel: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I stand on behalf of the ACT party to vote and speak on this Social Security (Long-term Residential Care) Amendment Bill. The ACT party will not be supporting the bill. However it is important to remind listeners and the Government that when a political party campaigns on a promise such as removing income and asset testing which the Labour Party campaigned on in the lead-up to the 1999 election then the public of New Zealand should be able to expect that promise to eventuate. We have to look back and ask whether Labour did anything by the last election. The answer is no—absolutely no. Here we are almost upon the next election and it has introduced this bill on long-term care but does the bill remove income testing? No. Does it remove asset testing? No. Is it good legislation? No. Should it be supported? No. What will the bill do for New Zealand? It will put an enormous cost burden on younger New Zealanders forever because once Parliament brings in these types of laws it is very very difficult for future Governments to repeal them. 
This bill is a cold clinical political move by the Labour Government to buy the retired voters of New Zealand. It is the most clinical legislation that has yet come through this House. It is not driven by any passionate desire of Labour to bring in laws to sort out a problem based on need. No the legislation is being brought in to sort out a problem based on voter support at the next election. 
This essentially means that this Labour Government will take money off families who are struggling to pay for the residential care of people who in many many cases could well pay for it themselves. One has to ask oneself whether that is fair. Should laws be fair? Yes they should. Is this a good fair law? The answer is no. 
If one thinks of those New Zealanders who at the moment are having a bit of a tough time—I tend to think of those who are coming out of universities polytechs and training programmes with big student loans; they cannot even afford to have children or buy a house—it is those people who Labour wants to pay more and more tax to fund New Zealanders who could care for themselves. It is not based on need. That is the problem. If laws are based on need then I think most parties believe it is fair to support them. This one is not based on need. 
If we look at the numbers we see that the costs will be $110 million in the first year and $126 million in the second year. It has been estimated that 15 years on this law change will cost $350 million. The number of New Zealanders who are retiring every year is about 15000. In 30 years’ time that number will almost quadruple. It will be almost 60000 a year. One would have to say then that the cost of this policy will be more than $1 billion a year. Can the country afford it when we have an ageing population and our birth rate is not even keeping up with the number of people who are moving out of the workforce? The answer is no. This is a policy that will help bankrupt this country in times when we do not have an economy as buoyant as today. 
This bill makes a huge rod for the back of taxpayers. In question time in Parliament today we heard that the average household in New Zealand today pays 46 percent of its income in tax. Forty-six percent of everything the average family in New Zealand earns today is paid out in tax and that is without this bill in place. When the impact of this legislation bites hard we will find families paying well over half their income in tax to the Government and that will not even include all the other charges that families have to pay such as rates petrol tax and all the other levies and hidden stealth taxes that Governments like the Labour Government introduce. 
When will the burden stop? When can working families think to themselves: “Thank goodness we haven’t got a greedy Government that will try to take more and more of what they earn.”? The only time that will stop is when we have a change in Government. So for people out there right now who feel they are struggling who feel they are working harder and going nowhere the only answer is a change in Government. 
Already we have 62000 New Zealanders on waiting lists waiting for operations. Why does the money that this Government is putting into ill-advised legislation not go into helping those people on hospital waiting lists get fixed or into getting the health care they need? But no the Government is happy to see them in pain and suffering because it wants to buy the elderly vote. 
Ordinary people around New Zealand are fearful. They are afraid at night and go around their houses checking that all their windows and doors are locked. The reason is that New Zealand is one of the most under-policed nations in the Western World. We would need another 2500 police to match the policing levels in Australia. Why does the Government not put some of the money that is going into bad legislation into funding the police properly so that New Zealanders can feel safe in their streets? 
If Government members sneer at that then I want them to know that in Whangarei where I live this year alone we have had 14 armed robberies and that is in a town that has had only one armed robbery over the last number of years that anyone can remember. Since February there have been 14 armed robberies in that town alone and that is during a time when the Government has chosen to take three police officers off the beat reducing the number to one and when it is disestablishing the drug squads. We know that the problem is the methamphetamine epidemic that is taking over New Zealand. This Government should be putting money into initiatives to keep New Zealanders safe instead of putting it into legislation that will bankrupt our country in the future and that has no sound principle except a huge huge election bribe driving it. 
This is intergenerational theft of the worst order. This Government is making working New Zealanders who are struggling to raise families and to pay mortgages student loan debts and all the other bills they have pay for people who are at the other end of their life. Elderly people may have $150000 sitting in their bank and we are not asking them to contribute to their own care. I think the Government should stop and think about what it is doing. The Committee of the whole House is ahead. It could still pull this bill realising that it is not fair to burden New Zealand with the cost of this legislation. 
I finish by asking whether we can trust this Government. I want it to tell us what has happened to the $7 billion surplus from the last Budget. Where has the $7 billion gone? I think it has squandered it away. I think that that money has vanished with nothing to show for it. This is a Government that one cannot trust. It is putting through legislation that will be too expensive for a small country like New Zealand to cope with especially when we have an ageing population and a shrinking workforce. If this Government cared about those elderly New Zealanders it would cut taxes and allow people to plan for their own retirement so that when people did retire they would be wealthy and well able to cope with what lay ahead.