Woods Megan: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 07 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11712. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call in this Budget debate. I do note that we are getting towards the end of this debate and the obsession that members on the Government benches have with talking about members on this side of the House is just becoming more and more obvious. I think this speaks to the fact that this Budget was a do-nothing Budget. There is very little to talk about for those members. The member who has just taken his seat Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi is probably the only speaker whom I have heard since mid - last week who has not used the opportunity to share with the world their obsession about the memorandum of understanding signed by this side of the House. Well I say to the National members on that side of the House that you are a party in Government with three other parties that you have memorandums of understanding with—an arrangement that my colleague Kelvin Davis has very eloquently dubbed the “ménage à whā” of this House. That is the side of the House that is trying to manage a four-way relationship and keep it in check.In this penultimate Budget that we have heard from the Government—what have we heard from members when they stood up? Is it with pride that they speak about what this Government is going to do what the vision is? No. What we are hearing about is ghost constituents and what they are saying on the streets of Ōtaki. Very tellingly we are hearing of the slip into a first-past-the-post mentality of people naming their constituencies and of the pork barrel politics that we saw at question time today. This is the sign of a desperate Government that is on the run because it knows it has failed to deliver in Budget 2016.Budget 2016 did not focus on the things that matter to middle New Zealand. It did not focus on the things that most New Zealanders worry about and concern themselves with. Instead this was a Budget delivered by an increasingly arrogant and out-of-touch Government that really does not have an idea of what is happening in the real world.There is no greater epitomisation than the issue of homelessness. In the last week we have heard the member from Auckland Central Nikki Kaye say that people pop into her office to discuss the fact that they are quite happy being homeless. We have had the Prime Minister just making things up about what social agencies are doing and the Minister in charge of social housing having to take the bullets for the fact that the Prime Minister has been very very frugal with the truth when it comes to this matter.This is a Government that does not—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to warn the member. I think she probably just went over the line twice with her “making it up” and “frugal with the truth” comments. I think those are not parliamentary terms.Dr MEGAN WOODS: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. What we have is a Government that is failing to address this very real issue and look at the things that matter. We have a Government that has nothing in this Budget to fix the housing crisis be it homelessness or be it people getting into their first homes and having the ability to save the money to do that. We have a Budget that has cuts in real terms to health and education—the very things that parents concern themselves with for their children and the future of their children the kind of future they are going to have in this country. It is what we used to refer to as the Kiwi Dream. That is the idea that you get a quality education and access to a world-class health care system and that one day you would be able to afford to own your own home and that that would not be the preserve of the very few at the top. That is what most New Zealanders strive for but that is something that is increasingly out of reach. What we are seeing is most New Zealanders—middle New Zealand—getting a smaller slice of the economy and what is on offer.We see that when we look at the issue of health. We have a health Minister who would not even front up to the Opposition spokesperson on health today to answer questions and he transferred those questions away. If you look at what has happened to funding in our health system in real terms $1.7 billion of funding is missing in action. Put this into real terms and what this means to ordinary New Zealanders.If we have a look in the area of Canterbury just for example what is happening there? We see that over 29000 Cantabrians have been denied operations despite being referred by their GPs since 2010. That is 29000 people in just one province in our country who are having to live their days in pain and that is because this Government has failed to take into account the population growth. When the Minister of Health stands up and talks about the extra money going into health he fails to take into account the fact that we have more people. If we are going to have an adult grown-up conversation about funding in this country let us actually do it in a meaningful way and talk about how much people are being funded per head of population.If we look again at my region we see that our local district health board has $33 million less in real terms. This is the Canterbury District Health Board which has had to deal with the psychological fallout of a major natural disaster. This is a region that is having to deal with an unprecedented level of anxiety in its population. It is having to do that and it is finding itself being funded $44 less per person than in previous Budgets.When the Minister of Health tells us that there is additional funding most New Zealanders know that that is simply not true because I think you would be very hard-pressed to find someone who has not been touched by the cuts in health funding. I know that on this side of the House we are constantly having constituents come into our electorate offices who simply cannot get access to operations who are being denied that. There are elderly patients who are living their final days in pain because this is a Government that refuses to put in the additional funding. They are not a priority. Middle New Zealand and most New Zealanders are not its priority; instead it is the few at the top.We are being told and the last speaker talked about the growth that we see—but what this Budget has forecast is shamefully weak per capita growth in GDP over the next two fiscal cycles. We have seen 0.5 percent forecast for the 2015-16 financial year and 0.9 percent for the 2016-17 financial year. This is low growth. It is not the kind of ambition that we need from a Government. It is not the kind of aspiration that we want to see for New Zealand. We want to see a Government that has a vision that has a plan that wants to invest in its people that wants to grow its economy that wants to create jobs with high-paid wages and security and that will not be content to let people flounder—to let people out there be on the scrap heap without access to health without access to education and without access to housing.I also want to turn my attention briefly to the issue of Canterbury and the Canterbury recovery in this Budget because what we saw in this Budget was yet more evidence of how Canterbury is slipping down the list of priorities for this Government. The Government’s commitment to the Canterbury recovery is wavering. You will hear that figure of $17 billion being bandied around. Well let us unpack that figure. Let us have a look at how much was insurance payout. Let us have a look at how much actually was Crown investment because I can tell you far too many Cantabrians are still living—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will resume her seat. The senior Government whip will just take a seat for a second please. The whips get special privileges in their movement around the House to talk to members. They do not have the privilege of walking along and yelling at the same time and the member will not do that.Dr MEGAN WOODS: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. What we are seeing in Canterbury is too many people living in broken houses. We have seen 1500 people in the last 4 months who have had to go back and ask for their dodgy repairs to be re-inspected—and that is in only the last 4 months.What I have big concerns about is that we have seen the fiscal liability around Canterbury rise from $262 million in last year’s Budget to $1.9 billion. There are a number of explanations around why this is the case. It may be around the land payouts but I want a reassurance from this Government that this is not smoke and mirrors to create a surplus. This is not the kind of recovery that Cantabrians need. This is a Budget that has failed middle New Zealand. This is a Budget that most New Zealanders will not benefit from.