Hutchison Paul: Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
Hutchison Paul: Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:13518] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 If ever there were a bill whose title was a misnomer it would be this Labour Government’s so-called Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill. We know that this is a bill where the future direction is more and more taxation—and more and more locked-in dependency—by the Labour Government. If this bill had an appropriate title it would be something like “The Labour Government is Desperate to Win an Election Bill”. 
That is summed up perfectly by the front page of the  
Dominion Post 
 which says: “The centrepiece of the Budget is a Working for Families package worth $221 million this year but rising to $664 million next April—in time for the election.” I see Dr Cullen sitting there with his hands steeple-ing and I ask him: what else is it? Will he take a call and answer? The article then goes on to state: “It will cost $900 million and then $1.1 billion in the next two years which Labour is likely to use as a carrot to win re-election.” As I said if ever there were a bill more incorrectly named in terms of the future direction for New Zealand it happens to be this bill. 
Perhaps another appropriate title might be the “Labour Government Working for Some Families but Neglecting Many Others Bill”. That is backed up by the very fact that there are in the order of 25000 young children automatically excluded from an entitlement of 20 hours’ free attendance at early childhood centres. Members have heard the Labour Government crow about the 300000 families who are covered by this bill but we know in actual fact that only one in five households in New Zealand will be helped in any way by it and that 80 percent of households have been utterly neglected by Dr Cullen and his friends from the Labour Party. Is that the sort of future direction this country wants? Undoubtedly it is not. Looking at the 25000 young children who will be excluded we realise that that means about 1000 privately operated early childhood centres and the children going to them are absolutely ineligible. Working mothers who use private early childhood centres will be surprised to find out that the Government values their children less than others. If ever there were a directed piece of blatant electioneering it is encapsulated in the title of this bill. 
Dr Cullen knows very well that what he should have been doing was working on what he set out to do 4 years ago—the achievement of sustainable economic growth for this country. But no he has reverted to form. After 4 long years what has he come up with but a blatant election bribe when he knows very clearly that he should have been taking advantage of those 4 years of reasonably good economic growth. Instead what do we see now but a big spend-up—a huge spend-up—and Treasury predictions of continually falling economic growth. This Government came into power when there was a rate of 4.9 percent economic growth and the record shows that it has fallen gradually ever since. 
Another appropriate title for this bill could be the “Steve Maharey: Let’s Complicate the Social Security Act Bill” because Steve Maharey was the very man who said: “Look we want to simplify social security.” Well as we go through Part 2 we see that it is nothing more than a classic Labour Party beat-up on how to complicate a bill.