Little Andrew: Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate[Sitting date: 18 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5853. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): I begin with a very solemn duty to the people of New Zealand and principally to those many people from overseas who may be interested in investing in New Zealand which is to point out that that believe it or not was the nation’s Minister of Finance and that is the best he could do. If there is one thing that has become patently obvious in this Budget which was obsolete on the day it was delivered it is that this Government does not have a plan. It has nothing to say to the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who are doing it tough who have been squeezed and who are looking for a future. Well they will not find it on that side of the House and they will not find it in that person who parades as the Minister of Finance because the Government has no plan. Actually that is not quite correct. We have discovered in today’s question time and in that speech that there is one plan emerging and it is all around tourism.We have not heard about tourism for most of the last 7 years but now a new tourist opportunity has opened up. It is going to involve weekly visits to the Cabinet room and the Government is going to call it “Fantasyland Tours” because that is all it has got left. Government members have lived for the last 7 years with their heads buried firmly in the sand with a rising tide of indebtedness by the Government concern by the people and falling dairy prices and they have nothing to say about any of it. It was a Budget as I said that was obsolete on the day it was delivered.The Government’s sole claim to fame is that on 1 April next year after years of poverty by those who are doing it the toughest those who are dependent on a benefit to get by it is going to increase benefits by $25 a week—well some of them anyway. This follows its great strategic decision in 1991 to slash benefits harshly and it now claims credit for half undoing what it did wrong 20 years ago. That is its plan. That is all it amounts to. There is no morality no principle and no real looking after of those who are doing it the toughest. That is all the Government has to say and do.Just remember what the underpinning of the expectation of this Budget was: that unemployment would fall to 5.6 percent by March. What is happening now? It is rising. Government members said that unemployment would be 5.1 percent by next March. Westpac is now saying it is going to be 6.5 percent. The Budget forecast the milk price to be over $3000 a tonne by now and now it is less than half that. This is the Budget that got it all wrong. This is the Government that is getting it wrong for New Zealanders every day. There is no plan there is no idea and the Government does not know what it is doing. There is spin there is rhetoric there is dissembling and there is obfuscation. That is all it has got left—and Mike Hosking. That is the other part of the plan. It has got him as well. He will look after those members for a while. He will look after them for a while but it will not last. The truth is this: New Zealanders are far too canny for that. They know a dead man walking when they see one. They see it in that Minister of Finance and they see it in this Government.We know that Government members are desperate because all of a sudden 7 years into their Government when they have stood on the sidelines cheering on dairy cheering on wood prices and cheering on the things that they have had absolutely nothing to do with—reducing interest rates a stratospheric exchange rate and high dollar—they have started talking about diversification but they talk about it only when they get the patsy questions in Parliament. They talk about it around here for the first time only because they have not done a thing about it. They have ignored it. They have ignored what has been happening in New Zealand.They have ignored for far too long what has been happening around the world and the impact that those things have been having on the New Zealand economy and now the chickens are coming home to roost. Hard-working New Zealanders are now paying the price. They are losing their jobs. They are losing their jobs in the hundreds and Solid Energy workers are just the latest. Who knows what is going to happen to Landcorp workers when the Government starts flogging off bits of that successful enterprise.The truth is this: when this Government took office it had the strongest balance sheet in the OECD. That is what it had in 2008—zero net debt and the lowest unemployment in the OECD. My how things have changed. It has been a long 7 years—a long 7 years. The Government has not diversified the economy. It promised that it would lift the proportion of the economy given to exports; it has gone down. The Government cannot even get that right. The Government has scrapped research and development tax credits. It introduced unaffordable tax cuts. It has made housing unaffordable for more people and property speculation is now running rampant. This is the legacy of Bill English. This is the legacy of the most ideological Minister of Finance we have had since Ruth Richardson and he was around at that time as well. He obviously learnt a thing or two.The Government ignored the Goldman Sachs reports last year that predicted a dairy glut that would last the next 5 years. Steven Joyce dismissed it because the Government just does not want to face up to the truth and now we have had a collapsing dairy price and nothing else to show for it. Well I can tell you this: what has become very clear in the last few weeks and the last few months is that New Zealanders are sick and tired of the spin and the obfuscation. They are sick and tired of the Government trying to put them off the scent. They do not want a flag referendum. They do not want to spend $26 million on a distraction; they want a Government that is going to deal with the answers to the economy today. They want a Government that is going to stand up for the people who are doing it tough who now include a large number of dairy farmers who traditionally voted for National. They are the ones who are looking for answers. They are the ones who are looking for the leadership that this Government has proven incapable of providing.I want to say this also. I want to tell members what the people of New Zealand are also sick and tired of. They are sick and tired of Government support parties that parade around the country criticising a Government that they are part of telling people that they can do better criticising it for all manner of things moralising proselytising and saying that it would never happen with them but then going ahead and supporting the Government. So the challenge is very clear to the support parties to this Government: stick to your own word. Stick behind your words. Vote against this Budget. Show this Government that you stand for something. Do not say one thing to the people of New Zealand and then come around here and slink around and do a different thing in this House. Think very carefully because New Zealanders are looking for leadership and most important they are looking for honesty. They want an honest picture about where things are at. They want an honest picture about their prospects and their hopes because they are not getting it from here.The country is calling for a different path. People are calling for a different approach and they do not want State houses—which are there for the most vulnerable for those who are doing it the toughest—sold off. They do not want Landcorp sold off. They do not want Crown business after Crown business run into the ground by negligent reckless Ministers who are asleep at the wheel turn up and get the salaries and drive the cars but do nothing for it.New Zealanders are looking for something different. They want a Government that cares about this country and its economic prospects. They want a Government that is thinking about the future the future of work and where those work opportunities are going to come from. They want a Government that is thinking about future investment opportunities. They want a Government that cares about job generation and new investment and investment that generates new wealth. They want a Government that cares about the incomes that New Zealanders are on. They want incomes that mean they can live in dignity and fulfil their dreams and aspirations because for far too many people that is slipping by.There are so many New Zealanders now thousands of them who cannot afford to buy a house in the city in which they live and work—Auckland—and that is a disgrace. What do Government members do? They bury their heads in the sand: “Not our problem; we do not have an answer.” Actually what they are saying is that they just do not care. New Zealanders are sick and tired of being treated by this Government as though they do not matter. New Zealand needs a better job. It needs a better Government and it is on its way.