Horomia Parekura: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Horomia Parekura: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 30 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2703. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA (Labour—Ikaroa-Rawhiti) 
: 
 Talofa lava.  
E mihi kau ana ki a ratou i roto i te Ropu Maori e tautokotia atu te mahi o te Whanau Ora te mahi o te kamura mihini me nga cadetships. E tautokotia atu tera engari he itiiti atu te nui o nga take e pa ana ki te pai o tatou a ngai Maori.  
[ 
I really acknowledge those in the Maori Party and endorse the work of Whanau Ora and carpentry engineering and cadetship initiatives. But in terms of how well off we Maori are as a whole there is really very little there. 
]  
I just want to recognise a couple of the decent things that have happened in the Budget but overall for Maori and most of all for all New Zealanders this is a shocking Budget. The member Shane Ardern who has just sat down talked about madness. Madness is infused in one person’s progress through a jumbled mind and that is what has happened to a whole lot of the people in this country because he drove Myrtle up the parliamentary steps. He believed that that would be the correction for the economic panacea that he has huffed and puffed about but it made no common sense whatsoever.  
Over the last four Budgets a fascinating thing has happened pre-Budget. There have been these great statements statements of grandiose promising everything—milk and honey. You see there has been a lot of fibbing in this. That member said that lycra is made out of milk. That is a whole lot of rubbish.  
Shane Ardern 
: I never said lycra is made out of milk. 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: So he did not even know what he was saying.  
In the first Budget from National this is what the Prime Minister said: “I think by the end of 2009”—blah-blah-blah—“we’ll … come out of [recession] and I think actually starting to come out of it reasonably aggressively”. In the next Budget he said the Government would “start making the long-term changes that National promised … and needed to lift New Zealand’s long-term economic performance”. In the next one he said: “This Budget is about growth. It is not about looking back and there will be jobs developed and you will see that grow in the economy.” In 2011 he said: “The Budget is likely to see very strong growth in real wages … very strong job growth”—blah-blah-blah—and this year we had a zero Budget. So growth has been on the Government’s mind.  
Mr Speaker you and I worked together in entrepreneurship and all of that stuff in the past and it was wonderful. We were innovators of the modern time. I certainly recall those things like starting the Art Deco event the World of Wearable Arts and all of that stuff that has become so fashionable now that people make out it is some corporate plan. This Budget is all of that. It mirrors the corporate plans that finance bluffers—people who bluff in the finance world—use. We certainly know what happened to that big company—what was its name? 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Merrill Lynch. 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: Oh Merrill Lynch. We know what happened to that.  
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: The Bank of America had to buy it up. 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: The Bank of America. This Government has the worst growth record in the last 50 years—the worst growth record. We have 1000 New Zealanders going to Australia every week like my great colleague Rino Tirikatene said. That is a disgrace. Why would they want to go over there? And I will tell you what— 
Shane Ardern 
: How Labour would keep them in New Zealand? Tell us how Labour would keep them here. 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: We kept them here in the 9 years we were in Government. We had the lowest unemployment rate for 32 years. People going into employment were four times better off then than they are now and that National Government has added 52 percent to the unemployment number. For every two who were unemployed when it came into power it put another one on to the number. That is where the growth is. The growth is all negative indices. That is where the growth is and National makes all these excuses huffing and puffing about everything else. Of the fact that there are nearly 35000 kids living in poverty you should be ashamed. It is shameful. It really is shameful.  
Then the member dared to mention the labour market. I will tell you what is driving the labour market at the moment. It about sitting down and listening to families in Wairoa where the parents say they are having only one meal so their kids can eat. What a shameful thing for any Government to enact on people. It is because of National’s labour market nuances and its crazy ideology which is about kicking the workers out making them suffer and putting the minimum wage up by 50c— 
Nicky Wagner 
: You know better than that. 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: —no no no Nicky—then the tax has increased so the minimum wage has gone up by 20c. Mr Tremain can snigger because he is on “cosy seat”. He knows that in Wairoa where he used to turn up with me they were unemployed and those members have done nothing. He is sitting there doing nothing and we put them into the jobs. Well I will tell the Government what happens in the labour market. You invented the 90-day bill. You invented the 90-day bill and it is very interesting how you have calculated— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! Do not bring me into the debate. 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: That lot over there Mr Speaker which I am sorry you are part of because they work with you invented the 90-day bill. This is what the 90-day bill does. It shortens work opportunities it becomes an added single figure on the labour force numbers and percentages and the Government makes believe it has invented all these jobs. It has invented so many jobs that it is saying that the number went up by 9000—that 9000 dropped off the unemployment. But what it has not added to that number is the 18000 people who came into the labour market. So it invented the 90-day bill the poor old meatworkers get stung and then there is the big game of the nasty companies— 
Shane Ardern 
: Where are there meatworkers in this country being stung? 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: —that that joker defends over there. There are some good companies but the nasty ones are trying to corral everybody into a 3-month employment package. That is low-down cunning. That is low-down dishonesty.  
Talking about this international economic downturn the Government knows every reason why it is happening wrong in Alaska or over in Norway or anywhere else but it will not fess up to what it is doing here. There are some very interesting things that Mr Ardern who is a farmer talked about. He talked about the commodity export prices. This is what is happening. On average around the world the dip in the percentages is 4.5 percent in the sense of moving towards negative pricing. This country is consistently down at 13 percent. How can you explain that when we are getting the best prices we have ever got for cattle sheep beef and crops? We are failing miserably. That means that those members are not running the books straight enough and they are not getting enough innovation to make things move.  
 We have heard all this business about the rheumatic fever. The reason you get rheumatic fever and you start heading towards having a Third World country ideology is where you put the families. That is why the Government has slammed the money in for rheumatic fever. Its members should hang their heads in shame for the last 4 years of letting rheumatic fever grow in this country. It is happening in the families where there are poor kids and in the families who are on benefits and those members think it is really great.  
As for the Families Commission you know Mr Speaker this slashing and burning is not good and I find it hard to believe that you are part of it.  
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Uh-uh.  
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: Sorry. Well anyway the Families Commission. The Government has cut seven commissioners off and left one and it has knocked its budget out—nearly 90 percent worth. That is how much it cares about families—that is how much it cares about families.  
Hon Nathan Guy 
: How long has he been here?  
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: You think about the shearers and the rousies though mister and make sure that they get helped out because you ain’t doing it. It really is a disgrace.  
As for KiwiRail the Government is putting more money into that road north of Auckland. Everything is about that damned road up there near Omaha or Omahu or whatever you call it. I wonder who has got their holiday baches there. Never mind the Gisborne to Napier railway line. The Government wants to close down the KiwiRail thing and stop it from stopping at 12 small towns—going to be a lot of exiting over there. Why do those members want to do that? It is because they are out of control. They think they have unbridled power and they certainly are not giving the people a fair go.  
You know with the research and development thing that they are huffing and puffing about when they came in they removed the total tax credits. They removed the research and development tax credits and the money that they have injected back in they are saying is a huge amount but it is still only 32 percent of what they took away. You know it is like the great magician: give with this hand; take away with the other. I see you frowning Mr Speaker and I will sit down on that note. Thank you very much.