Shaw James: Budget Statement — Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: Budget Statement — Budget Debate[Sitting date: 26 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11344. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green):E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe ki a koutou huri noa i Te Whare ngā mihi o te wā ki a koutou katoa.[Greetings to you Mr Speaker and to you collectively throughout the House acknowledgments of the moment to you all.]I do not often agree with the Minister of Finance but when he said that this Budget was going to be boring—well Bill I am right there with you. We have all been waiting for the big idea the deep raid into Opposition territory and the headline-grabbing idea that was going to grab the headlines for the next few days. Well where is it?When New Zealanders needed homes this Government has given us toilets. The extent of this Government’s vision for New Zealand is $40 million worth of toilets for tourists and presumably for those New Zealanders who are sleeping in cars. Budget 2016 has shown yet again that in response to the great challenges facing our nation all this Government is willing to do is plaster over the cracks when it could have been building houses. For 8 years now we have had a Government that has put together its Budgets on the basis of what polls well rather than on what will fix the problems that we face. This eighth and with any luck second-to-last Budget shows just how much this Government’s first and only true commitment is to stay in power; its only vision for New Zealand is that it continues to be governed by the National Party.Today the Government could have used its considerable powers to solve the great challenges facing New Zealand—to leave a legacy not just a length of tenure. But it has chosen not to. This Government has done as little as possible rather than everything it can. Budget 2016 as with every other Budget for the last 8 years tries to make it look as if the Government is changing things for the better when all it is doing is preserving the status quo. This Government is the political equivalent of Milli Vanilli: lip-syncing when it should have been leading. This Budget does not solve the housing crisis but it does pretend to. It does not create the sustainable clean jobs that New Zealand needs—the ones that will pay enough for families to thrive—but it pretends to. It does not protect our rivers or our wildlife but it pretends to.So what will be John Key’s legacy? What will be remembered about this National Government and how it used the enormous powers that New Zealand gave it to create lasting and meaningful change? Well what have previous Prime Ministers left us? Michael Joseph Savage was the architect of the welfare State. Peter Fraser created a world-class education system. Keith Holyoake abolished capital punishment not because it was the popular thing to do at the time—and it was not—but because it was the right thing to do. David Lange—nuclear-free New Zealand. Helen Clark gave us KiwiSaver Working for Families and the Superannuation Fund. And John Key’s Government? It will be remembered for this: for record numbers of homeless people for children suffering from Third World diseases because of the condition of their homes for the biggest decline in homeownership ever for two-thirds of our rivers being so polluted that they are not safe to swim in for the highest ever rate of greenhouse gas emissions for native wildlife inching closer to extinction and for the conservation estate crumbling.After 8 years and eight Budgets the National Government has squandered the opportunities to create a meaningful legacy one that leaves New Zealand in better shape than it inherited. National has chosen to do as little as possible rather than all it can.The Green Party had three big hopes for Budget 2016. First that it would fix New Zealand’s housing crisis give first-home buyers a look-in and get homeless families out of cars and into houses. Second that it would herald the start of a transition to a low-carbon economy with jobs that pay enough for families to thrive. Finally that it would save our endangered wildlife clean up our rivers and cut our greenhouse gas emissions. Let me take a look at how Budget 2016 stacks up against these three concerns—these three transformational shifts that the country and the economy need to take.On our first measure that this Budget would fix the housing crisis in New Zealand this Budget is a fail. I cannot see a single new State house in this Budget or any meaningful steps to enable young families to move into their first home. There is not one new initiative to make homes more affordable for those who do not already own one or two or 11. When more homes need insulating to keep kids healthy and safe Budget 2016 has the smallest allocation for home insulation in years.The other day the Minister for Social Housing Paula Bennett said that there was a housing crisis “for some people”. Well she is right. It is a crisis for people who do not already own their first home it is a crisis for people who are not millionaires it is a crisis for people who are not the children of millionaires it is a crisis for the governors of the Reserve Bank who point to our present housing bubble as the single greatest threat that our economy currently faces and it is a crisis for families who are living in cars and garages. Over the last few weeks we have all been affected by the daily stories of families many living with parents and working minimum-wage jobs who are locked out not just of the housing market—they are locked out of a house. These are families like that of mother-of-three Rhiannon who joined us last week at the launch of the Green Party’s policy to free up Housing New Zealand to respond to the emergency that is facing us.Ms Bennett says that the homeless have always been with us. Well that may be true but only once before in our history have so many New Zealand families been forced on to the street. It was during the Great Depression and guess what happened next? New Zealand elected the first Labour Government and a Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage who built thousands and thousands of State houses. It was a heroic effort to make sure that every New Zealander had at the very least a roof over their heads. They made no excuses about how the homeless have always been with us. They were not interested in plastering over the cracks to make it look like they were addressing the problems whilst at the same time doing everything that they could to appease the property investors’ lobbyists. They actually wanted to solve the problem—that was their vision. That was their commitment. It was not a commitment just to staying in power for its own sake but to using Government to transform the country for the better.But this Government will not do that and that means that while one set of Kiwis is growing wealthier at a staggering pace the homeless families who are victims of this crisis are now in debt to the very Government agency that is supposed to be helping them out. More than any others Māori suffer disproportionately from the failure to fix the housing crisis. Their challenges will not be solved by Treaty settlements alone; good social policy is also needed.National pretends that there is nothing we can do other than to build more houses on farmland on the edges of Auckland but there are much more effective decisions that it could make. National could have taken the simple step of restricting foreign buyers from speculating in our small housing market and pushing up housing prices. National could have started addressing the supply side of our housing crisis simply by building more houses—affordable energy-efficient houses.If we want to fix the broken housing market it is time to change the Government. It is time to put families first to ensure that every New Zealander has a warm safe house to call their own. As Mickey Savage knew the Government has the power and money to ensure that every New Zealander lives in a warm dry safe home. National just lacks the will.On the second measure that Budget 2016 would hail the start of a transformation to a low-carbon economy this Budget contains one baby step forward and several very large steps backwards. Budget 2016 mentions climate change just once which to be fair is once more than all seven of the previous Budget speeches put together. A long-awaited investment in research and development is a win for those who like the Greens have been pointing to New Zealand’s under-investment in innovation as a real barrier to our ability to make the transition. The end of the one-for-two emissions trading scheme subsidy is long overdue because it has contributed enormously to the 19 percent growth in New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions since this Government came to power 8 years ago.On the downside the Government is actually reducing the amount that it is spending on climate research at the exact time that it is most needed. After 8 years it is pretty obvious that this National Government just does not get climate change. It is the single greatest threat to our long-term prosperity and collective security and National does not want to even talk about it let alone fight it. In December it signed the climate agreement in Paris and then immediately—the next day—started undermining the pledges that it made on our behalf. What has it done since signing up to the Paris Agreement? It has committed to keeping the Huntly coal-burning power plant open spewing millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the air. It has invited more oil companies to prospect in our seas reopening and extending the bloc offer. There are a total of 1200 electric vehicles on our roads and nothing that Simon Bridges has announced will make the transition any faster than it was already going to be. Eight years on and not a single Crown car is electric even though the fleet has been replaced twice in that time.David Bennett: What’s your car?JAMES SHAW: I walk. And it has repeatedly refused to include our most polluting sectors in the emissions trading scheme. It is no wonder that New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions last year were the highest ever on record.Looking across the House today I cannot see a single person on the right who is strong enough to break the mind-set of a Cabinet that is dead set on protecting vested interests over the national interest. If New Zealand wants a clean economy it is time to change the Government.The third hope that we had for Budget 2016 was that it would protect New Zealand’s natural heritage. The Green Party has been campaigning for years and years and years to pay attention to the polluted state that our rivers have been falling into. National will crow about the $100 million clean rivers fund its Battle for our Birds and its wilding pine funds but it will pay for it with swingeing cuts to the Department of Conservation (DOC) estate and other areas. As the DOC estate crumbles and our wildlife inches closer to extinction funding DOC’s natural heritage protection has gone down in this Budget by 14 percent. It is robbing the Pīwakawaka to pay for the penguin. National’s spending on conservation has been on average $56 million less per year than the last Labour Government’s. That is $336 million that DOC has missed out on since John Key moved into the Beehive. We have the know-how and we have the resources to clean up our rivers to reduce climate pollution and to protect the wildlife that we love so much in this country. We say: let us make it happen.This Budget shows that John Key and his Ministers honestly have no interest in leaving a transformational legacy for New Zealand and that denies all of us the opportunity of a better country. Today we can rightly ask: where is the equivalent of a Kiwibank in Budget 2016? Oh that is right the Government is selling it off to itself for half price so that it can sell it back to itself for full price later. Where is the vision and the compassion that drove Mickey Savage when he kicked off the great State-house build? Where is the bravery that was shown by David Lange when he stood up to the superpowers and banned nuclear ships from our waters? Where is the moral authority that led Keith Holyoake to abolish the death penalty in New Zealand? The sad truth—the sad truth—is that National has no vision for a legacy other than another term in Government.We need more than a few toilet blocks and more than the plaster through which the cracks are becoming so painfully obvious. National’s legacy will be poisoned rivers more extinct wildlife and a nation divided between those who seek to own their home and those who own several. National has chosen to do as little as possible rather than all we can. The Green Party has a vision for a cleaner a fairer and a stronger economy; this National Government does not. It is time to change the Government and change is coming. Nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.