Hughes Darren: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Hughes Darren: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14147] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Deputy Leader of the House) 
: 
 I am very pleased to stand in support of Helen Clark’s Prime Minister’s statement which she delivered to Parliament this afternoon. We have just heard from Phil Heatley. It was a rather animated speech from the member for Whangarei I think it would be fair to say. He was acting as though he was contesting to become the next leader of the National Party and getting ready for when the leadership eventually changes. Phil Heatley was out there really trying to show his fellow colleagues what a grasp of detail he has when it comes to policy and trying to show them how charismatic he can be when he speaks in the House. It reminded me of the Republican primary with Phil Heatley as Mike Huckabee. It was about as good as it got with regard to the kinds of things we heard from Mike Huckabee. 
Unfortunately I missed Mr Heatley’s first question. I was not paying a huge amount of attention to it but I took down questions two to eight. He wanted to know why wages in Australia are higher than in New Zealand. Well I will tell him. It is because Australia has a record mining boom that is drawing workers not only out of New Zealand but also out of New South Wales and Victoria to Western Australia and Queensland where they are able to sell off minerals at the most extraordinary rate ever seen. So the Australian economy is going gang-busters at the present time. That is one of the reasons why wages are higher in Australia than in New Zealand. 
In New Zealand we have done two things that have been important. We have pushed up the minimum wage year after year which National has opposed every single time to try to make sure that working people had a higher rate of pay. That is not just because we want people who earn the lowest wages to earn more. We know that it has an effect right across the wage cycle as all wages have gone up over the 8 years that we have done it. National opposed every single one of the minimum wage rises made by this Labour-led Government that has tried to address that wage challenge. 
The second thing that the Labour-led Government did in New Zealand to try to address the wage gap was to get rid of the Employment Contracts Act. It was a very unfair industrial law in this country and it did one thing to the wage gap between New Zealand and Australia: it made it worse. The National members sitting over there in Opposition support their party’s record when it was in Government and it had that law on the books. What happened when that law was in effect? Wages went down in New Zealand compared with those paid in Australia. It was only when John Howard tried to introduce similar employment contract law in Australia that he was kicked out of office and the Australians brought back a Labor Government. So that is the answer to one of Phil Heatley’s questions. 
Then he wanted to know about tax cuts. He said Labour is cutting taxes this year only because it is election year. The Minister of Finance has announced that there will be a programme of personal tax reductions starting this year. But I thought I was sure there had been more than that. Then I remembered of course that there had been more. Since 2004 Labour has been cutting taxes for working families in New Zealand. The Working for Families package delivers for three out of four families with kids in this country and they pay less tax to the Government because of that programme. Every single stage of Working for Families was opposed by the National Party which has voted in Parliament for our families to pay more taxes. Then I thought of savers. We are trying to boost the savings rate in New Zealand. One of the ways we have done that—one of the tools and mechanisms we have used—is to reduce taxes on savers. We brought a bill to Parliament to do that and the National Party voted for savers to pay higher taxes than those the Labour Government is ensuring that they pay right now. 
But the doozy of them all had to be this one. Last year in the Budget—it was not an election year; I point that out to Mr Heatley because he does not seem to be an intense follower of politics in New Zealand—we cut the corporate tax rate from 33c in the dollar to 30c in the dollar which is the same rate as Australia’s. Forty-nine Labour MPs voted “Yes” for that. The Whip voted on our behalf and made sure that our votes were counted and recorded in the  
Hansard 
 as being in favour of lower corporate tax rates. But where did the votes of the 48 National MPs go I ask Dr Wayne Mapp the representative of the well-heeled suburb of North Shore in Auckland? Did the member vote for or against a 30c in the dollar tax rate for our businesses? 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: We voted against your Budget. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: The member says he voted against it. The National members came to Parliament and voted against lower taxes for business which the Labour Government has delivered. So Phil Heatley’s question about why there are tax cuts only this year is wrong. It has been wrong since 2004. Not only is the National Party wrong in fact but it is wrong in principle because it has come in here and voted for higher taxes for people in that category. 
Then Phil Heatley wanted to know why hard-working kids cannot afford to buy homes. One of the things the member would have heard in the Prime Minister’s statement if he had been listening is that we are transfixed by the issue of affordable housing and are trying to make sure that we can get more New Zealanders into homes. We have come up with a range of policies from Welcome Home Loans—opposed by National—to modifying superannuation savings by way of KiwiSaver to make sure that that programme is able to help people with a deposit on their first home to introducing an affordable housing bill to Parliament before Christmas. All of those measures have been slammed by National as being useless and hopeless so I am not quite sure how concerned National members are about trying to get people into affordable homes. Of course I cannot criticise their housing spokesperson’s policy on this issue because in his 10 minutes he did not mention it which is an unusual way of trying to propose new policy while the member is in Opposition. 
Then the member asked us why there are more emissions in New Zealand than there were previously. Well in last year’s speech the Prime Minister set out why sustainability was very important. We have introduced an emissions trading scheme. We have actually taken climate change seriously since the first day we came into Government with a Minister responsible for policy in that area. The National Party spent the entire campaign period prior to the last election going around making infantile jokes about a thing called a “fart tax” and its current leader said that climate change was a hoax before he did a U-turn a flip-flop and came to support it. So we are trying to address the difficult issues around climate change and the National Party has opposed that denied that there is climate change and ridiculed that and now climate change is one of Phil Heatley’s big questions here tonight. 
Then Mr Heatley asked what has happened in health. He said that billions of dollars have gone into the sector and nothing has happened. Well that is the most ridiculous comment of all time. What has happened in New Zealand under this Government’s health policy is that first of all we have been able to retain workers—a difficult thing in itself—by making sure that people are being paid more to work in the public health system. But the crowning achievement of this Labour-led Government is not in hospitals but in primary health care where hundreds of millions of dollars every year go into helping ordinary people to go to see a doctor and to pick up $3 prescriptions from their local pharmacies. That is a major change in the way we address health policy in New Zealand and the member is so ill-informed about it that he is not even aware of health policy in that regard. 
Of course Mr Heatley failed to mention that last year in September the National Party was sprung about its health policy which is that the National Party wants people to pay more to go to see a doctor than the Labour Party does. That is the simple open-and-shut case of it. The National Party wants to reduce Government spending and reduce taxes and wants to make sure ordinary New Zealanders pay more to go to see a doctor and Labour says: “No way. We’re going to make sure people pay less to go to the doctor and pay less by providing them with cheap pharmaceuticals as well.” 
I think I have dealt with some of the things that Phil Heatley said in his speech. It just goes to show that when one relies only on the research unit for one’s notes comes into the Chamber and just mouths off without having any idea of what one’s party has done previously one will be open to this sort of thing. 
One of the things about Waitangi that amazed me the most is that we have rows and rows of new National MPs many of them list MPs and some of them provincial members of Parliament who were elected in 2005 on the back of Don Brash’s dog-whistling red-neckery and they know it. They know that is how they were elected. They took votes off people who do not like many things to do with Maori and that drove them right into Parliament. This term because the National members have decided they want to change tack we suddenly have speeches given by Georgina te Heuheu actually saying that National stands for tino rangatiratanga! Well that will come as news to everybody in New Zealand and especially to the National Party but National is so devoid of principle at the present time that its members all sat there and said nothing. We used to listen to Don Brash’s droning speeches in Parliament and the words “tino rangatiratanga” did not come out all that often—certainly not pronounced in that way I might add. John Key has continued in that vein and is now trying to align himself with people like Tame Iti. The National members sit there and do not want to say anything about it even though they know they have done a massive U-turn. 
The best thing about today’s speech from the Prime Minister was the fantastic news that the people who work in the community and voluntary sector who provide essential social services and who do real work in our electorates will now get full funding for the services they contract with the Government for. They will get volume increases in terms of their budgeting. That is a technical term I know but what it means is that the more work they do to help the community the more they will be paid to do it. That will free them up to keep transforming our communities right around the country. The interesting thing for me about today was that when Helen Clark said that over $400 million— 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Band-aid stuff. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: This is the single-biggest investment and increase for our non-governmental organisations ever to have taken place and Dr Mapp is so out of touch with constituency work that he calls it a band-aid. Women’s Refuge is getting more money; Barnardos is getting more money. There are budgeting services parenting programmes and mentoring programmes for kids. Those are real things that are happening and making our communities better off. 
The interesting thing is that when Helen Clark announced that programme today the National members were silent. None of them said a word and when John Key got up and spoke in a vague way about personal taxes they clapped like the fawning seals they are because that is all they care about. They want personal tax cuts for themselves because they all earn over $60000 a year. It is funny that they criticise some Government department staff for earning over $100000. Those members all earn over $100000 and they are all useless but we pay them anyway. They would not clap the Prime Minister’s great announcement for the non-governmental organisation sector. 
This is a good Government. We have changed New Zealand. We will keep on changing New Zealand for the better because this country needs a progressive Labour-led Government.