Barry Maggie: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Barry Maggie: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
[Sitting date: 02 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:1887. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore) 
: 
 National of course has a plan and it is the right plan for these very hard economic times. We are determined to build a more competitive economy that will grow and support real jobs provide higher incomes and assure New Zealanders that we are paying our way in the world and holding our own. Yes the Budget that we deliver in about 3 weeks’ time will be a zero Budget—the second that we have delivered—and we are doing that not because we have any problem with our plan but because we have the courage determination and tenacity to take the hard decisions unlike Labour of course. In all of the good financial years— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is a long-held Speaker’s ruling that one does not question the courage of individuals or parties in the House in the way that that member just did. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you. I have to say I missed that but if the member referred to courage that is out of order. I call the member to order and to continue her speech. 
MAGGIE BARRY 
: The lack of tenacity and determination that Labour showed in its 9 years in Government is something that New Zealand could not sustain. Let us look at Labour’s failed record. Spending like sailors the Public Service grew into morbid obesity and we are trying to bring that back under control. Cullen spent an extra $3 billion every year for the last 5 years Labour was in office. Flogging off State assets of course is something Labour knows a great deal about. Some of the people who are on the Opposition benches were not around in the 1980s but day after day in my former role in the media they came into the studios and they talked about flogging off the family silver to pay for the groceries. They had to. They sneaked in a very broad-ranging plan that New Zealanders were not in any way expecting. They sold off everything lock stock and barrel.  
When we look at the mixed-ownership model which we are doing very closely now we have learnt from Labour’s mistakes. We are looking at prudent control of these assets. We will retain the 51 percent control. We will raise enough money so that we do not need to borrow to invest to keep our health and education at the world-class standard that it is now. We will be open about it and that is why we signalled it nearly a year out from the election. We do have a mandate. The people of New Zealand knew what we were doing and they continue to support what we will enact.  
As far as our policies and reforms are concerned let us look at some of the things that will be coming up in the next 3 weeks. We heard today in response to a question I asked of the Minister of Finance in the House about the intention to strengthen the Public Finance Act 1989 that it is going to be looking at limiting spending. This is something of course that the people on the other side of the House do not know a great deal about but it is about a cap on spending and about transparency so that when a Government is thinking of spending like sailors increasing taxes and so forth there will be restrictions on that. We are going to move away from excessive public spending. This Government has a determination to do that.  
The Opposition claims that our economy is going backwards. Let us look at this in an international context. The UK is back in recession. We had the collapse of the Dutch economy. If we followed the failed policies of the people on the other side of the House we would continue to borrow we would continue to spiral downwards into debt and we would continue to fund things that we really cannot afford. Paid parental leave—well it is a pretty good sort of an idea on some levels if you are completely flush but we are not and it is not the sort of policy that we would ever support. We need to grow the economy. We need to also look at ways of restricting the amount of spending that we are putting on things.  
The Prime Minister signalled the other day that we were going to do some fine-tuning over student loans in our Budget. We remain of course absolutely committed to keeping them free but we are determined to reduce the cost of the overall loan scheme to the taxpayer. This is the prudent thing to do. The scheme is very large. Not that long ago the Government was effectively writing off some 49c of every dollar that was lent. With previous changes we have made we have brought that back down to 45c and we intend to get it a bit closer to 40c in the future by continuing to chase the overseas borrowers the people who have left the country and who perhaps think they have left their responsibilities behind. If we give them the benefit of the doubt it may be that they feel that they are away and they will get to it in due course. But in the meantime the country has an enormous debt around us that needs to be addressed. So we will get it closer to the 40c and there needs to be faster repayment of those loans. Ultimately of course it is so much better for the person who has borrowed the money. They are getting rid of that monkey on their back earlier than they perhaps thought they would. Younger people perhaps tend to think they can put things off for ever and a day but that is not the case. By speeding up for example the process of repayment—not to an unaffordable level but to something that has more momentum than it does currently with many of the borrowers—that is going to be an excellent thing for the New Zealand economy.  
This Government is about personal responsibility and about people stepping up to the plate and saying: “Yes I borrowed. Yes I’ll pay it back. I have an individual choice and I will exercise it but I will deliver on what I say I will do.” There is no sense for me to see people going overseas and not actually continuing to pay back their debts. I think that it is very important that we all take responsibility for these things—the cradle-to-grave dependency and the constant handouts that not everyone needs actually. This Government is focused on putting the money where it needs to be focused. We target it to those in need. We give them the hand up and not the handout.  
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: That line was tired in the 1980s. It was tired in the 1980s.  
MAGGIE BARRY 
: These are things that are philosophically not terribly much in keeping with some of the rowdier brayers on the other side of the House but I would have to say that we have a plan. It is the right one and that is why we were elected and others were not I assume. The people of New Zealand are not silly. They recognise that the failed policies of 9 years of Labour did them no good. They bear with us in the hard decisions that have to be made because they know that we have to get back on track. Who can afford to run their houses in the way that Labour used to run the country? If you have not got the money you do not spend it. You do not keep borrowing everything up to the max. People do not keep borrowing up to the max—not you Mr Assistant Speaker of course. I am sure that you are fiscally prudent in all ways as I would wish that all New Zealanders were because that effectively is what we are asking people to do: to be more prudent and to accept that there has been overspending and that there has been an amount of money allocated to things that actually does not need to be there. So we do need to tighten up. We are doing that in the Public Service and we are doing that in a raft of other measures.  
I think that with Budget 2012 this Government is going to signal very strongly to the voters of New Zealand that we are determined to get the books back on target and in surplus. I think a zero Budget is an act of courage. I remember back to the days when people feared the Budget. They would go out and fill up their cars and buy their beer and baccy if they were their poisons and they would brace themselves for a Budget that was going to sting them. Ours is going to be a Budget that will be fair but will also continue the message that we have been sending since the start of the campaign: that we actually do need to watch what we are spending.  
When we look at campaigning and we look at the solutions there has been a paucity and a scarcity of them coming from the Opposition benches. What exactly is Labour’s plan? OK taking GST off vegetables and fruit. That will get dropped. It was not a particularly vote-winning idea. There was $5000 tax free—the first $5000—is that gone yet? It was never really going to fly anyway was it? These are the sorts of things that are not going to serve anyone well. When the capital gains tax if I recall correctly was announced on the campaign trail Labour’s popularity went down by about six points overnight. It was not popular with its own people. It was not something that we would have brought in.  
New Zealanders as I said are too smart to fall for these tricks. They know that we are in trouble. They know that the world economies are in trouble and that we do not want to end up in a situation where we are defaulting. We do not want to lose the standard of living that we have and we do not want to see our young people leaving in droves. We need to make this a strong focused economy that will keep our young people here that will grow jobs and that will use smarter measures to actually do what we need to do.  
I am a member of the Bluegreens group the National advisory group on conservation and environmental matters and I am someone who has a lifelong passion for flora and fauna in this country. They need protecting. We have not got much money at the moment so what do we do? Do we shelve all of our conservation projects? Indeed not. What we do is we look for smarter ways to fund important projects. A couple of days ago the new tourism conservation partnership was announced. What a fantastic idea. Kate Wilkinson has negotiated a deal with Air New Zealand so that the two will work together to promote our flora and fauna. We will under the Air New Zealand arrangement be able to fly our endangered species to new breeding sites around the country and to invest directly in conservation programmes along the Great Walks. These are great things to do. Tourism and conservation they go hand in hand.  
This country absolutely is defined by its land and its people but we need to look at the things that have been successful. They have not cost money. We did not borrow millions of dollars from offshore as others have done and would continue to do. We are approaching businesses and asking them to help out with the kakapo for example. We have got the aluminium smelters and the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society all involved in that. People are working collectively in partnerships to get the best outcome. There is the Million Dollar Mouse campaign as it is known. We have a big-business man—Gareth Morgan—joining forces with the Department of Conservation and trying to get to the point where we are saving an endangered species. These are the sorts of initiatives thinking smarter that this Government is doing and is very proud to do and I am very proud to be part of it. I am proud of the policies that we put forward and I am looking forward to the Budget in 3 weeks’ time. Thank you.