Cunliffe David: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cunliffe David: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2456. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 The test of a good Budget is not only what is in it but also what is not in it. Here we are in urgency we are debating but we have deferred the main Budget debate. We are taking away the main select committee process and this bill the Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill is retrospective. What could be so important that we are doing all those things? I know: we are picking the pockets of paper boys—picking the pockets of paper boys—and that is the best this dreary Government can come up with. You know it would be laughable if it was not so sad.  
Is this the secret base-broadening measure that Bill English and John Key were talking about the measure that would bring fairness to the tax system the measure that got the journos thinking they were going to do a capital gains tax after all? No no; nobody guessed. Penny-pinching pickpocketing of paper boys—that was the big deep dark Budget secret. Were they going to do something brave like I do not know reinstate capital gains tax or research and development tax credits that would turn our companies into engines of innovation? Were they going to do that? Nope they are going to pick the pockets of paper boys.  
You know it is laughable—because it can only be a joke—that the Government’s top priority was retrospectively pinching pocket money from our children: 68000 children lose their pocket money because this is the Government’s top priority on Budget night. It suspended the Budget debate so we can pickpocket our kids. But I think it is actually quite sad. Sad because it is a lost opportunity and sad because of all the New Zealand families that are working hard playing by the rules and trying to get ahead and this Government is absent without leave absent on the job. It ought to be lifting the standard of living for New Zealanders instead of picking the pockets of paper boys. But are they doing it? No.  
Where is the vision in this Budget? There is not one. It is a zero Budget by the Government’s own admission: zero vision zero hope zero plan zero new exports zero new jobs and zero future. And that is why 50000 New Zealanders a year 1000 a week are heading for the airport departure lounge because they have given up on John Key’s National Government and sadly given up on their homeland. How many grandparents do we know around the country who are worried that their grandchildren are going to be brought up in a country not their own because these clowns think the top priority is taking pocket money off paper boys?  
It is just so ludicrous is it not? We suspended the Budget debate to take pocket money off children. That is going to turn the boat round and members opposite are squirming. They are squirming in their seats. Mr Bennett with his three dairy farms sitting pretty; he knows that this is not going to turn the boat round. The “member for Vodafone” Mr Lotu-Iiga; he knows it is not going to turn the boat round. Mr Ryall sitting there knows he has not given the health system enough to keep going. He knows people are going to get sick and die because of this Budget yet the best they can do on Budget night is pinch the penny pocket money off paper boys—pinch the pocket money off paper boys.  
John Key continues to overpromise and under-deliver. Every year growth is just around the corner every year there are going to be 70000 new jobs except not this year. This year the Government has finally admitted the truth: there are not going to be that many jobs. This year yet again it has had to push back the growth because it is not happening. It is not happening because Christchurch is too slow it is not happening because there is no growth plan—it is not happening.  
The Government trumpets science and innovation in this Budget. Megan Woods knows that this was the big new spend. Do you know what? The Government took away three times more out of economic development than it put into science. It took away $120 million out of economic development and put $40 million a year into science and that is supposed to be vision. Here is a so-called pro-growth Government that is killing off the Ministry of Economic Development building a new  
Titanic 
 for Steven Joyce and pinching the pocket money off paper boys as its top priority.