Cosgrove Clayton: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCosgrove Clayton: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 30 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10603. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): I will tell you what this Opposition will say no to. It will say that no it is not good enough that there are 146000 people unemployed. This Opposition will stand with New Zealanders and say that no it is not good enough that there are 90000 young people not in education or training. This Opposition will say that no it is not good enough that this Government did not get off its backside and utilise what is a disaster in Christchurch but what is also a major opportunity and what is also the world’s biggest training scheme to train the 30000 or 40000 apprentices say that we need in Christchurch. Three years from that disaster they would have finished their apprenticeships and be the tradespeople we need rather than businesses as they do now because they cannot wait for this Government to wake up having to import our Irish brothers and sisters our Filipino brothers and sisters and others to come to fill the skills gap because this Government was asleep at the wheel and would not take advantage of the opportunity out of that tragedy. So we say no to that member Jami-Lee Ross to those things.In 2008 when that crowd over there took office it said that we were going to have—remember—the brighter future. There was a grand plan. There was a vision. Remember all those wonderful little commercials with the Prime Minister at I think it was the local private school—ironic though that is. At the same time as it throws a couple of million bucks to kids who need a feed in the morning it gives 11 million bucks in the Budget to private schools. That is one thing. But remember the vision. Remember the brighter future. This apparently is the party of sound financial managers. This is the party it said that understands our new business. This is the party that could run businesses like State-owned enterprises. Well I am glad the Minister for State Owned Enterprises is in here. That man could not run a bath let alone a State-owned enterprise with his mismanagement of for instance Solid Energy. He grins away over there in his little Cheshire cat way. You sad little man. That man was asleep on the couch in his office in the Beehive as the Crown Ownership Monitoring Unit and Treasury kept telling him for over 2 years that Solid Energy which under a Labour administration was an export award - winning company returning tens of millions of dollars to the taxpayer every year was in trouble. He could have woken up picked up the newspaper and worked out that the international price of coal was going down the gurgler. He could have then picked up the phone and called his former mate—his former mate after he was shafted—Mr Palmer and said: “What’s plan B? How are we going to consolidate this asset preserve it and make sure that it is OK for the taxpayer in these tough financial times?”.Well the truth is that that Minister just like this Budget tinkered around minced around did not listen to the advice knew it and possibly did not read the reports and as a result we now know that his Government and his Prime Minister are now considering letting the whole show fall over. If that was not bad enough there is $395 million and counting down the gurgler thanks to his mismanagement and over 500 jobs lost. The last speaker talked about job creation and he talked about some programmes—a convention centre. But he also was going to list for us all these jobs that have been created. Remember the cycleway? I think there were a fish and chip shop and a bike shop that got a few jobs out of that. That went out the window. New Zealand was going to be the international financial centre of excellence—remember that? Well that went out the window as well. So there are 146000 people on the scrap heap in a two-speed economy in this country—some of the people doing very well; many of our people doing very badly and scraping for it—as a legacy of this Government. There are 500 Solid Energy workers and counting down the gurgler. No more can Tony Ryall or John Key or Bill English ever claim to be sound financial managers when they went to sleep and watched a company the people’s asset go down the gurgler. The last speakertalked about an auction. Well I predict this. Solid Energy will be the biggest fire sale that we have seen in our time as they allow that company to tip over.It is true that New Zealand is in a two-speed regime a two-speed economy. It is the case that we now have the haves and the have-nots—big time. Let us look at jobs and the amount of jobs created. Well since Steven Joyce became tertiary education and employment Minister the Government says that there have been a few thousand jobs created. Where were the brighter future and the grand plan to actually assist the 146000 people who are on the scrap heap thanks to these guys? This is a Government that inherited zero Crown debt. The last speaker—I cannot remember his name—talked about debt. Well I will tell you what the Government inherited: zero Crown debt and 9 years of surpluses—not projections not rumours not spin but facts—zero Crown debt and 9 years of surpluses which the Government then mismanaged and squandered. So those members cannot stand up today and crow about being sound financial managers when you look at their litany of disasters particularly the State-owned enterprise Minister who will go down in history as the worst State-owned enterprise Minister in living history. Since the promulgation of State-owned enterprises as a piece of legislation he is the worst and biggest mismanager of State-owned enterprises. He sat there and twiddled his little thumbs he did not listen to the advice he did nothing and people are paying for that of course.Then we look at things like housing affordability which is skyrocketing all over the country. We cannot blame the earthquake for what is happening in Auckland or other parts of the country. If you look at the earthquake in Christchurch and the so-called grand plan I say to those members over there that 3 years down the track there is still a large number of the population where I live who are hurting because they cannot get their Earthquake Commission claims because they cannot unlock their insurance money and because they cannot actually take charge—not through inability or through laziness or anything like that—and they simply cannot get their hands on the levers to take control of their own lives.But what does this crowd do in the Budget? Well not a lot—a bit of money sprinkled here and a bit of money sprinkled there. In some ways you could call this Budget a bit of a “Holyoake Budget” because old “Kiwi Keith” was known to be a tinkerer. He tinkered around the edges. I think he is a sort of hero for the Prime Minister. But “Kiwi Keith” and Sir Keith Holyoake’s Government took the record for just tinkering around the edges doing a few populist things not actually upsetting the apple cart and just mowing along—you know “She’ll be right. We can hoodwink the people.”Look at child poverty. Child poverty is a disgrace in this country. We have five measures I am told—five I believe—to actually gauge and measure the extent of child poverty although I do think that if you walk around the streets of many of our cities or most or all of our cities you can get a pretty good gauge very very quickly. It is a disgrace. There is a saying that if you measure it you can do something about it because you actually know the quantum of the problem. But this crowd gets up and will not even use a measure of child poverty. It will not even take the abacus out in Gerry Brownlee’s case or the calculator and actually say: “We will measure the quantum that is child poverty. We will put a definition around it we will measure it we will front it and we will do something about it because we know the extent that it is.” These guys will not do even that. They get up in the House day after day and just simply refuse to use any measure to calculate the disgrace that they have put in place in this country in respect of child poverty.Action is needed we know around superannuation. Superannuation costs have already increased from $7.3 billion in 2008 to $10.2 billion this year. We know that thecost of superannuation will exceed the cost of primary secondary and tertiary education within 2 years yet what is the Government’s answer to that? I have been in the United States recently with colleagues from across the House. It is a huge issue in the United States. That country is just starting to grapple with how it deals with its key entitlement programme. Here this Government believes that the way you secure superannuation is to just let it go and let it blow out whereas we on this side of the House say that it needs to be reformed it needs to be protected and it needs to be stabilised. But we have got to make a few hard decisions for people my age and a wee bit younger in terms of what contribution we make.So I ask where is the vision? I say to the Minister for State Owned Enterprises who will jump up in a second and take a call that this is his opportunity as the worst Minister for State Owned Enterprises in our history who has presided over more mismanagement than any other to actually explain why it was he was asleep at the wheel why it was—the wrist will be OK mate—that he did nothing why it was that he took no advice why it is that he will not be accountable and why it is that he will not even front to the media with some answers because Minister people want answers. They want to know why it is that there is $395 million that they will have to cough up and why over 500 people and counting are unemployed because of his mismanagement.