Hipkins Chris: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 31 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11477. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): That was a contribution from a Government that has simply given up. It has given up on the plight of hard-working New Zealanders. It has already run out of material to talk about. When Government members spend most of the time in their Budget speeches talking about the Opposition because the Budget gives them so little material to talk about it is clear that they have completely given up. When the best that Gerry Brownlee can do to come up with some humour for his Budget speech is read the Twitter feed of the parliamentary press gallery and simply start reciting back the lines that were tweeted by journalists hours ago you know it is a Government that has run out of ideas and run out of new material.All Gerry Brownlee could do in his speech was to tell New Zealanders how the numbers in the Budget are wrong: the oil price figures in the Budget are wrong the migration numbers in the Budget are wrong. What confidence can New Zealanders have in the Budget when one of its most senior Ministers gets up and devotes his Budget speech to questioning Bill English’s numbers? That says everything about this Government. This Government has given up on the major issues facing New Zealanders. I was waiting all the way through Bill English’s speech for the big announcement on housing. Everyone in New Zealand wants to know: what is this Government going to do about the housing crisis? And there was nothing. Then there was an urgency motion and I thought “Here it comes. Here it comes. It is coming—the big announcement on housing.” and again there was nothing on housing. It has given up.Do you remember that this was a Government that was going to close the wage gap with Australia? Who remembers that promise? It was going to close the wage gap with Australia and instead it has delivered a Budget that sees New Zealanders’ wages falling in real terms. That is wages going backwards for most New Zealanders under this National Government—so much for closing the wage gap.It is a Government that has given up on health care—given up on health care. The health system needed another $600 million just to stand still and what did it get? It is $55 million short in this year’s Budget. Pharmac needed $103 million just to stand still. It got $50 million. In other words in health care things are going backwards.Let us look at education and what this Budget delivers for education: another drop—another drop—in the number of people undertaking post-school education. That is fewer apprentices. It is fewer people at university and fewer people at polytech—numbers going down under a National Government. We have seen school operations grants frozen—school operations grants frozen—which means parents are going to pay more. Parents will be putting their hands in their pockets to pay more for their kids’ education because this Government is not willing to prioritise early childhood education and schooling. We already know that schools are under enormous financial pressure because principals up and down the country are saying that they are cutting programmes. They are cutting programmes they are cutting extracurricular activities and they are cutting curriculum resources for teachers because they have not got the money and this Government responds by freezing their funding. What does a freeze mean? It means the money is actually going backwards.How do we know that schools are not making ends meet? Let us look first of all at the money they are asking for parents to contribute. That has gone up 30 percent during the tenure of this National Government. Who remembers Bill English when he was in Opposition decrying the fact that the then Labour Government was not putting enough money into schools and that parents were having to pay more? Since he became Minister of Finance that problem has got 30 percent worse. He has done nothing to actually address that financial pressure and in fact he has made it worse.Let us look at early childhood education because that is actually probably the part of the education system that has been clobbered the most under this National Government. As child numbers continue to go up the funding continues to go down. The dollar spend per child per hour has consistently gone backwards under this National Government. So who pays? Either parents pay or the kids pay. Parents pay through more cash through more fees and kids pay through a lower quality of care in early childhood education and care. That is simply not good enough. So much for Bill English’s investment approach; so much for investing in kids early on to address issues before they become big issues. If the Government’s spending on early childhood education is any indication and I believe it is it does not actually prioritise investment in our kids at a young age.This Government has given up on the notion of safer communities and we can see that because the police needed $300 million to reverse all of the funding cuts that this Government has made. What did the New Zealand Police get in the Budget? It got $46 million—$46 million—and it needed $300 million. The Government has given up on the notion of safer communities through better policing. The police are under enormous financial pressure. They are closing police stations and reducing police officer numbers around the country and it is not surprising because the Government is not giving them enough money. So let us look at the National Party and let us judge this Government based on its overall track record. Wages have been stagnant under this Government. Wages have been stagnant. People have seen their real disposable income in real terms—their purchasing power—going backwards under this Government.What is its solution? What is its answer for that? Blame someone else. Blame the global financial crisis. Blame everybody else but this Government. What about homeownership? It is plummeting under this National Government. More and more people are living in rental housing under the National Government. Fewer and fewer New Zealanders are owning their own home. What is the Government’s solution to that? Blame someone else. Blame the Auckland Council. That is its latest excuse—blame the Auckland Council as we see homeownership rates plummeting under the National Government.The number of students as I have already mentioned in post-school study is plummeting under this National Government. Its answer is to blame the students and say they are “pretty damned hopeless” as Bill English did. As we are seeing participation in post-school education plummeting Bill English’s answer is to say that those young people are “pretty damned hopeless”. There are 46000 New Zealanders under the age of 25 who are doing nothing. They are not in education. They are not in training. They are not in employment. They are doing nothing.What is the Government doing to target those people? Well we know: Bill English is saying that they are “pretty damned hopeless” and that we need more permissive migration because he does not think they should be able to get jobs and those jobs should therefore go to other people from other countries through migration. That is actually what Bill English said. He was actually honest about that and he meant it. He was honest about that. He was caught out telling the truth. He was caught out saying what he actually thinks. He thinks that those 46000 young New Zealanders should simply be written off; he thinks that they are not valuable to the future of New Zealand.He could not be more wrong. I do not think that those young New Zealanders are hopeless; I think that they need opportunity and they need support. Education would be a really good place to start and that is what the Labour Party will do. That is why we have announced a plan for 3 years of free post-school education for all New Zealanders so that when they leave school they can actually go on to do something meaningful and we will not have 36000 people under the age of 25 sitting at home and doing absolutely nothing as this National Government is quite content with—in fact it has simply written them off. This Government has completely forgotten why it was elected to office and what it promised to New Zealanders.Remember the brighter future that John Key and Bill English promised New Zealanders? That has not eventuated has it. Remember all of those promises it made about how incomes would be going up how the wage gap with Australia would be closed how it was going to be doing all of these wonderful things. Has it delivered? Eight years down the track has it actually delivered? The answer to that question is simply no. It has not delivered on the promises that it made. It has simply given up on the big challenges. It has no answers to the housing crisis. We have seen a further fall in post-school education participation. There is more financial pressure on parents to pay because the Government is not paying. This is a Government that thinks that a shortfall in Government funding for essential social services—like education like health like housing—should be met through charity rather than through an increase in Government funding.I agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr who stated in 1904 that our taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society. Instead what we are seeing under this Government is that essential public services are being cut to the bone. New Zealand citizens are paying more and more for their vital social services so that Bill English and John Key come next year’s election can try to bribe them with their own money in the form of tax cuts to get themselves re-elected.I think that New Zealanders are smarter than that. I think that New Zealanders have higher hopes for the future than that. I think that is why you will see New Zealanders voting for a change of Government at the next election because they know that this Government has run out of steam. They know that this Government has run out of new ideas. They know that this Government has simply given up.