Goff Phil: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 28 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10434. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I would like to answer a few questions posed to the House by the gay icon on the other side. I want to bring a few facts into it. Maurice Williamson knows this. He knows it and he will smile when I give him the answers because he knew them already. First of all if New Zealand came out well from the global financial crisis it was because of the state that a Labour Government after 9 years left this country in. If he does not accept my word for this I am quoting from a document from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Treasury and the State Services Commission. Produced in November 2011 it is called Better Public Services and it said this: “Although New Zealand entered the global economic downturn with a stronger financial position than most OECD countries …”. Bill English said it did he not just after becoming Minister of Finance? He said: “This is the rainy day that [New Zealand] has been saving for.” What was he talking about? He was talking about a Labour Government because he had only just become the Minister of Finance.Why was New Zealand in a good shape Maurice Williamson? It was in a good shape because we had paid down our debt when you Mr Williamson were talking about spending it on tax cuts. So we had net zero debt for New Zealand when we went into the recession. We had the lowest rate of unemployment in the OECD. One other thing Mr Williamson: we had just signed a trade agreement for free trade with China and the ASEAN countries. Our exports have trebled since I signed that agreement in Beijing—trebled to $6 billion. We were safe from the worst effects of the downturn in Europe and the United States. That is why this country is in good shape: 9 years of surpluses from a Labour Government—9 years of surpluses—net zero debt the lowest unemployment rate in the Western World and trade agreements with China and with Asia. That is the answer to your question Mr Williamson; not what you were making up as you went along.You ask about the capital gains tax as if this was something extraordinary. We are almost the only country in the OECD that does not have one. The Reserve Bank has proposed it. Treasury has proposed it. The International Monetary Fund has proposed it. The World Bank has proposed it. In his heart Maurice Williamson knows it is the right thing to do—knows it is the right thing to do—and he is smiling now because he knows I am telling the truth. That is enough of Maurice Williamson.I want to talk about the things that are really important to New Zealanders. You know New Zealanders do not ask for much. They do not actually even expect much and even so they have been disappointed by what this Government has delivered them. What do they want? They want a job they want a home they want a good education for their kids and they want a fair go. None of those things are unreasonable but that is what the ordinary Kiwi wants: a job a home a decent education for their kids and the Government to give them a fair go. This Government in this Budget has delivered none of those things.Let us go through them. Regarding jobs 146000 New Zealanders are out of work—146000. In my city of Auckland it is 7.3 percent but in the parts of the electorate where I have Pasifika communities living it is around 15 percent. For their kids it is one in three not in work. This Government has not delivered on its promises. The 2010 Budget promised 170000 jobs and John Key mimicked the Budget. He said: “We will deliver 170000 jobs by 2014.” He made the same promise in 2011 as did the Budget. Twice in a row—170000 jobs. When he went to the people of New Zealand at the election in 2011 what did he promise? He promised 170000 new jobs. What does Treasury tell us in this Budget? What does it tell us Mr Coleman? It tells us that you are breaking the promise and that you will fall short of that target that you promised three times through your leader and your finance Minister by 61000 jobs. Three times they promised it every promise a broken promise and one-third of the teenage Pasifika kids in my electorate stay out of work.The answers are not rocket science. Why are we importing tens of thousands of skilled tradesmen into this country when tens of thousands of our kids are out of work? Why will the Government not turn the dole into a payment to encourage employers to take on apprentices? Why will we not give jobs to our young people who are on the dole out of work without hope? Because this Government—what did it do with skills training? It cut skills training. It did not grow it; it cut it.Then about manufacturing in New Zealand—manufacturing has got a really important role to play and what has this Government done? It has jacked up the dollar value to a point where our manufacturers are going out of business because they cannot compete with a dollar that is overvalued Treasury says by 20 per cent. Where is the guts in this Government to actually say that we need a new approach to monetary policy? We need to say that the Reserve Bank should be looking at jobs and it should be looking at the exchange rate not just the inflation rate. It will not change the monetary policy by broadening the objectives and the representation on the board of the bank.Then there is the question of investment policy. Where are people putting their money? They are not putting it into Mighty River Power. Mighty River Power is selling for less than what you floated it for a couple of weeks ago. They are putting it into speculation because it is easy to put money into housing. You can make a lot of money out of it and you do not pay tax when you sell it so you have a tax-free income. It is a speculator’s paradise in New Zealand. It is great for the speculators. They are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and who is paying that money? The low-income families with their kids desperate to actually achieve the New Zealand dream of a home of their own. What happens to those families? When I bought my first home the price of that house in Auckland was three times my annual wage. Today it is 10 times the average wage of that young family desperate to get into a home of their own. What is the Government and this Budget doing about it? Absolutely nothing. There is no commitment to an affordable housing policy and no commitment to cracking down on speculation through a capital gains tax.Why are we not getting jobs? Because there are not the savings. I heard the Prime Minister this afternoon talk about KiwiSaver as if it was his idea. I think National votedagainst it. Certainly it has done nothing to make it universal which would create an investment basis for jobs in this country.But I want to come back to housing. If you get a housing programme going it does two things. Firstly it gets people into homes of their own. That used to be a National Party principle—the property-owning democracy. Now you cannot do it. The speculators will own 50 houses and the young families will not get a chance for a home of their own. Labour is talking about KiwiBuild setting up a fund funded by homeownership bonds rolled over that would allow us to create 10000 houses a year with all of the jobs and all of the skills training that that involves and the opportunity for people to own their own homes. Labour would put a warrant of fitness on rental housing.The Government comes out with its insulation policy. I can get cheap insulation for my house on my income but most of the low-income families in our country live in flats. The lowest take-up for insulating homes was from rental properties. Those are the families with low wages living in cold damp and unhealthy conditions with absenteeism from work because they are sick too often and absenteeism from school because they are not well and they fall behind in their learning. Why has the Government not done something about that as a warrant of fitness for rental housing? That would really make a difference.The other thing that is obvious is lower power prices. You know the Wolak report said that the power companies were making a killing out of power prices. They were gouging to the extent he said of $4.2 billion. When will the National Government realise that the Bradford reforms have failed? Simon Bridges got up and said that they have not had long enough—they have not had long enough. They have had 16 years and they have failed. It is time that we actually gave some of the dividend back from the power stations that our forebears and my father-in-law helped build by giving it back to New Zealand consumers by way of cuts to the price of their electricity. What difference would it make to a low-income family to have their power bill cut by $300 a year? A huge amount of difference and we will do it.