Cunliffe David: Debate on Budget Policy StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Debate on Budget Policy Statement[Sitting date: 12 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16580. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition):In this Budget Policy Statement National will say: “We are the party of business.” The truth as we can all see laid bare is that to National politics is a business. It is a business where the coinage of the day is its relationships with the rich and the powerful—the interests of the few which it defends. It is seen in the big things like Warner Bros and Skycity and MediaWorks. It is seen in what might initially have looked like littler things like a Minister’s visit to China where she happened to endorse the products of a company of which her husband is a director and that gave her party a tidy $56000 donation. But then it gets more complicated because as usual it is not the initial pitfall that takes National out; it is the way it deals with it. The way it has dealt with this is to hide from the public to obfuscate and to delineate between what the public should know and what it has been prepared to say. The Prime Minister has got to the point where No. 1 he has told untruths to the country—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! We have just had an hour and a half’s debate an urgent debate on the matters that you are talking about. I just ask the Leader of the Opposition to come back to this debate. It is on the Budget Policy Statement 2014. So this is what we are actually debating and I ask the member to come back to that.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: The numbers contained in the Budget Policy Statement are the outcome of economic and commercial processes that respond to the rules set by this Government. They have been set by this Government in the interests of some of the most powerful members of the business community not in the interests of all New Zealanders. I will not go on for the whole of this speech about the mishaps that the Minister of Justice has faced or committed. I will not go on about the fact that the Prime Minister has misled the country or that he should have sacked the Minister today but he could not summon the courage to do so. I will not go on about that. But I will conclude this part of my remarks by making clear that this is not the first time that this National Government has fallen for the interests of the powerful and it will not be the last.This is the tip of an iceberg known as crony capitalism and it is wrong. It is wrong in its effect. It is wrong for its victims and their names are everywhere. They are the one in four children in this country growing up in poverty. One in four of our children is growing up in poverty while this Government protects the interests of the wealthiest few from the normal processes of business or the normal conventions of good governance. It has got to stop and it will stop. It is going to stop on 20 September 2014 when New Zealanders get a new beginning and a new start and a new Government.The Government crows that it might finally for the first time in 5 long years get the books in the black. Well we remain to be convinced because for the last 3 months the actual numbers have been nowhere near the projections. They are $600 million short so far this year. But even if the Government does get the books in the black we ask the question: who would not? It has a 20-year high of dairy prices and a $30 billion insurance payout for Christchurch. Frankly a trained monkey could balance this Budget because it ought not to be hard. But I have forgotten—Labour ran nine surpluses in a row; National has run four deficits. National members would not know a surplus if they tripped over one.But the worst of the Government’s problems are actually not what it has done and that takes some beating—those tax cuts for the rich remember and the GST for everybody else. The worst of this Government’s problems embedded in this Budget Policy Statement are what it has not done. Business people say to me that even if you give the Government credit for taking the ship through some rough waters in the global financial crisis it has no plan for the future. The Government has no strategy. It has no vision. It does not know where it is going so the rest of the country does not know either.Where does the Government need to be going? It needs a plan for better jobs and higher wages. It needs a plan to take New Zealand from thinking about volume to thinking about value and to work with our primary sectors to increase investment to increase innovation to increase skills and to increase productivity so that we can increase returns and increase wages. That is the strategic approach that the incoming Labour-led Government will take.What are the core elements of that approach? Firstly let us recognise that we live in an economy that is starved of capital and is year upon year building up net international debt to a point where it is now around the whole of New Zealand’s GDP—75 percent. It is a shocker. And what it is made up of is roughly 85 percent private debt and only 15 percent Government debt. So even if National manages to fluke its way to a Government surplus that would not change the answer—the economy is still going backwards. The only way to save that is with a savings system that increases our savings rate with a superannuation system that is sustainable and with a tax system that encourages innovation not speculation. That means a capital gains tax an essential platform for taking New Zealand forward because it backs out of distortion that favours property investment at the expense of business investment.Hon David Parker: Why won’t they do that?Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Well maybe Oravida will not let it or maybe it is people like Oravida or the property speculators who are driving this Government. We have to get this economy moving on its stalled journey from volume to value.Maggie Barry: Secret trusts—“No Credibility Cunliffe”.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Oh well there is a member who is conveniently turning a blind eye to the fact that there were apparently 21 donors at an Antoine’s Restaurant dinner. While this member says to any donors: “Open up and be frank with the public or you have your money back.” John Key says: “No I won’t reveal a single donor. I won’t give a single dollar back.” Why would he? He has got his Ministers scouring the world doing favours for companies and taking money on the backhander. That is a shocker—that is a shocker. If that member cannot recognise a conflict of interest when it walks like one talks like one and stinks like one well she just needs to watch the 6 o’clock news tonight because it will be writ large for everybody in New Zealand to see.New Zealanders demand better standards from Ministers than John Key does and they demand better standards from a Prime Minister than he is delivering. If he is so out of touch with New Zealanders that he thinks he can get away with a blind eye and a wet bus ticket to a Minister of Justice who is neither ministerial nor just then he has got another think coming.Hon David Parker: An economy which works for everyone.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: We want an economy that works as my excellent finance spokesperson and deputy leader has said for everyone not just for the few. That has to be an economy with fairness and opportunity for all—for the kids growing up in poverty as well as for the kids growing up at the top end of town. That is opportunity and fairness for every New Zealander. It means a good school. It means a warm dry roof over their homes. It means an affordable house. It means a health system people can count on. And it means opportunities for training and above all for good jobs—for good jobs that lead to better wages.New Zealanders are sick of this Government’s dead-end economy. This is a Government that cares more about its own books than New Zealanders’ books. It is a Government that is feathering its own nest—those of its friends its families and its party—not New Zealanders’. This Labour-led Government will be a Government for change a Government for social justice and a Government for development. It is time we had a long hard look at the New Zealand economy if we want the next Budget Policy Statement to be better than this one.