Alexander Marc: General Debate 
Alexander Marc: General Debate 
[Volume:627;Page:22058] 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 What do we say about a Government that after 6 years has a Minister come into this House and refer to people who commit benefit fraud as “clients”? That Minister called them clients. They are not clients; they are criminals. Let us get back to what people who commit crimes against their fellow New Zealanders really are. They are not clients; they are criminals. 
So what do we say about a Government that after 6 years has gone down that track? I say that it has lost the plot. The Government is hell-bent on grabbing as much of any higher income as possible in taxes to the point where those on higher incomes will be an endangered species all of its own. What do we say about that? 
The Government says that people on higher incomes are being greedy and do not need the money. But it is not for the Government to decide how much people are worth; that is for the market to decide. This Government has taken over $60 billion more in revenue than it needed to over the last 6 years but it does not consider itself to be greedy—not at all. The Government will look at itself in the mirror and see itself as being fiscally responsible. But it has not been; it has been the greediest Government of all. 
The strange thing about it is that this Government then turns round and says it does not have money for this or that. It certainly does not have enough money for law and order. It certainly does not have enough money to treat criminals as criminals but rather wants to refer to them as clients and look after them—in fact it helps them along by passing legislation such as the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act which applies the full force of the law in allowing people to cover up their criminal offending. People can lie with the State’s backing and this Government has given that its blessing. 
The Government is telling people that if they want to achieve if they want to succeed if they want to be on higher incomes they have two choices: either they can grin and bear it and pay the contributions expected of them by this Government—contributions that are far in excess of what they should be paying—or they can leave the country. And 600 are leaving every week because they can find better overseas. 
That is sad because those people are the engine for the future economy of New Zealand but this Government does not value them. In fact it sees them only as slaves to its socialist machinery and tries to reclaim as much money from the slavery of their work as possible in order to fund its social engineering practices—its rearrangement of income based not on people’s contributions but on vote-gathering exercises. 
Suddenly the Government has found $300 million that it had not earmarked before. In fact we heard in this House today that the Government did not have that money before. But suddenly when it found itself behind in the polls it found the money for a $300 million shameless bribe to the students of this country condemning them through an inducement to higher loans the cost of which will be paid out and borne by hard-working taxpayers. 
Income tax is considered by this Government to be equally a bribe. It is not; it is returning to people what they have created in the first place. How is that a bribe? It is a return of the money that this Government has thieved from them. 
Let us look at some of the other legislation that this Government has or has not advanced. We did not see 92 percent of the population wanting anti-smoking legislation or civil unions. We did not see 92 percent wanting prostitution reform or even the bringing in of the Supreme Court. But in a country that suffers from 4600 assaults 13000 cases of child abuse 95000 burglaries and 70000 sexual assaults a year 92 percent said that they wanted something done on law and order. 
Yet this Government has turned van Gogh’s ear to them; it has been utterly and totally silent. It has done nothing. The much-vaunted 2002 sentencing legislation resulted in an average increase in incarceration time of only 6 months. So much for tougher sentencing—and most of that increase was at the high end with people like Bell and so on. 
So what this Government is actually doing is effectively thumbing its nose at the population and saying that despite what people demand and want the Government knows better and will do something else better. Come to think of it when it comes to the reintegrative services the Government is so keen on pushing why has the PILLARS evaluation still not come out?