Tabuteau Fletcher: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 02 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11650. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): I think I see the strategy: bore us into oblivion—Tim Macindoe: No that’s your job.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: —and hope that we cannot drive the energy to reply to absolute nonsense like that. It is painful painful. Mr Macindoe while you were giving your speech—and it was better than your usual contributions to the House—were you worried as you looked back at the backbench National members there who were so enthusiastic that it was mind-boggling? It was not that good a speech.I have coined a new phrase in respect of Mr Macindoe’s contribution today. I have coined a new phrase. I have called it the “sycophantic bobble-head syndrome”. It is a syndrome. What we have seen over 8 years is a National Party membership sitting there nodding away agreeing with everything that their members say. It is a beautiful sight. It is usually in sync and it is quite entertaining. The sycophantic bobble-head syndrome means that those poor members have come to believe their own spin. Therein lies the problem. If you believe the spin you cannot prepare yourself for when someone actually holds you to account on logic and content.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Let us try some of that then. Back to the bill.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: All you can do is go: “It’s good. It’s good.”Another member—I cannot remember who because that is the summation of the contributions this afternoon—spoke about this Budget reflecting a supposedly strong leadership from the Prime Minister John Key a Prime Minister who is slipping perilously every day in terms of popularity numbers. This was a “Get Stuffed” Budget. This was a Band-Aid Budget that even New Zealand big business could not find much to say about. They struggled to find positive words. I think the most positive contribution I can think of off the top of my head was: “It’s a good start.”We are 8 years into National’s supposed leadership of this country and we should be well passed a good start. In fact the banks and the academic and financial experts of New Zealand have gone so far as to say that the Government has lost its way and the Budget is simply a symptom of a National Party that is living in an anachronistic past. It is trying to move forward by looking in a mirror from the past because Government members do not know and do not have the skill set to move forward and to solve the problems that everyday New Zealanders are living with.This is a Government that stands up and tells us about positive GDP numbers every single day. We dispute those numbers but let us assume we believe them because one might concede that 0.5 percent over the last 8 years is still slightly positive. It is still slightly positive. If we believe those numbers it does not belie the fact that the rhetoric from the Government is not matching the reality that New Zealanders are seeing more and more every day—Brett Hudson: More jobs you mean?FLETCHER TABUTEAU: —outside in the real world which Mr Hudson has so carefully blinded himself to.The evidence is right in front of us: house prices and homelessness and yet wage inflation is static as we move forward into the future. People are not making more money from their incomes. There is exponential growth in inequality in New Zealand and this Government does not know how to deal with it. This Budget is a symptom of a Government that has lost its way. Thank you.