Hobbs Marian: Budget Debate 
Hobbs Marian: Budget Debate 
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Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I rise with justifiable pride to support this Budget. Labour has delivered on its commitments many of which it made during the election campaign. Over the seven Budgets that have been made since Labour formed a Government New Zealanders have learnt that Labour delivers on its promises. One of the reasons the country moved to Labour and away from National was the memory of National’s broken promises to older people—to Grey Power and to any number of people in society it promised much and then whipped away what it had promised. Labour has not done that; it has delivered on its promises. It extended Working for Families to approximately 85000 more families and removed the interest on student loans. 
A young student was in my office the other day—a young Wellingtonian—who owes $100000 in loans. She is a medical student in her sixth year. She will go overseas after about 5 years but she now wants to spend time in New Zealand practising and learning on the job and setting up networks because she knows now that she can afford to do so. She knows that probably she can break over half of that loan and pay it back within 3 or 4 years. Labour has kept that promise and will deliver to New Zealanders. 
As the member for Wellington Central I am particularly happy with aspects of this Budget. We have transport woes—maybe not as great as Auckland’s—and the transport package delivered to us. Before the Greens say that it was all about Transmission Gully I say that it is also about railways railway stock the purchase of Wellington Railway Station and those sorts of issues. In education Labour’s work in Modern Apprenticeships is having a real effect on industries here in Wellington. I heard the speaker before me Katherine Rich—who has just left the House—say there was not a skerrick in this Budget for business. How on earth does business get goods to market except on roads and rail? I would have thought transport infrastructure and things to do with telecommunications and broadband had an awful lot to do with business. I do not know where National is but if that is not a skerrick for business then it must have a very big skerrick to give out at some time. 
Labour is also on about supporting firms and finding markets. Of course for Wellington there is huge input in the Budget for driving innovation through science. [ 
Interruption 
] Now Wellington—the member who speaks such an awful lot and so many times may not know this—has more scientists per head of population than anywhere else in New Zealand. It has all the Crown research institutes most of them centred in here. 
David Bennett 
: No it hasn’t. 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS 
: Hamilton has one but Wellington has about four others. Wellington also has the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research and a number of other institutes and tertiary science. The commercialisation of science that is coming from this is really superb. So as a Wellingtonian I am very happy with this Budget. But as a member of the human family I am most delighted. 
I wonder whether members could stop because there is something pretty serious here. We are in here because we care about people; at least I am. We want to lead lives enhanced by love and enjoyment of our families. This Budget gives us the leg-up to be able to do that. Poor health can put great stress on family relationships particularly in relation to the responsibility we feel for the older generation. So we have put $126 million into this Budget to improve residential care and home-based support services for older New Zealanders. I see members over there shaking their heads. How can National even think of putting anything close to $126 million into helping older people when at the same time its members want to give tax cuts to John Key? It does not make sense; it does not add up. That is why we won and that is why I won Wellington Central—just on the argument alone that it does not make sense. The civil servants in here understand that. People can promise tax cuts but then they cannot deliver health care to the elderly. They cannot go out there and extend the primary health care strategy. 
A man in Karori stopped me one day and told me he had a heart condition. He was aged 54 and he said that going to the doctor was extraordinarily costly. Going to the pharmacist was extraordinarily costly so he asked when we were going to do something about delivering on that. We have delivered on that—and is that not good news? 
Now I come to something fairly personal which is about being overweight and about the Healthy Eating - Healthy Action plan. I am going to make a pledge here: by the time this session ends in 2008 I will be 20 kilograms lighter. I have already reduced weight by 17 kilograms because I believe that this is about walking the talk. Now we are no longer regarding the weight problem as something frivolous out there; it is something very real and the Government has put money in to back it up. 
We have talked about the elderly we have talked about people of my age but we also have the school medi-checks for kids. Kids cannot learn if they are not well. Kids cannot learn if they have hearing difficulties and the work we have done on that with the universal screening programme is particularly important. This is about families this is about the value of life; this is about health; this is about education. Those are the important things in the development of a healthy society. So I come again to education and look at the money we are putting in there because we happen to believe and to know through research that early childhood education is the means by which we will reduce the deficit of illiteracy. We are doing the work about literacy and about illiteracy in the workforce because of the years and years of neglect for certain sectors of the population. But getting into early childhood education and ensuring we have 20 hours there for people is very important. 
As well a considerable amount of money has been put into the Budget for children who are disruptive. Children who are disruptive in classrooms damage not only themselves but the other learners in their rooms. That is a real problem for many people. In the past way of life the practice was always to expel those kids and to drop them out into the community. But then we had the cost of prisons and everything else that goes with that. This work with disruptive children is not about throwing kids out on the heap; it is about working with the children their families and their teachers so that we do not lose those children. When I was a principal I thought I was a failure if I ever had to expel a child. I probably removed more teachers from the payroll than I did students from my school 
David Bennett 
: Oh you were hard. 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS 
: I worked extremely hard to make sure that kids were able to learn. I walked the talk I tell that member—I do not just talk. 
Now we come to the matter of being safe. Actually part of being healthy and being able to love and enjoy our families is to feel safe at home to know that our older parents are safe at home and to know that our young kids will be able to come back through Cuba Mall get on a bus come home at night to Karori and feel OK. We are going to increase police numbers. We have made that commitment—it is out there. We are doing it in no uncertain terms with the help of New Zealand First just as I have had the help of that member there to get the funding for Transmission Gully. 
We are also doing the work on something we are deeply ashamed about in this country—that is the issue of violence in our families. That is something we have huge shame about and again we have to walk the talk. Again we have to find some solutions to that problem. Part of the solution I think has been—I have always hoped—for people to be employed to have jobs to have their self-esteem rising and to go forward with that. But it is obviously not enough. We have generations of neglect that we have to fix so we have to move on in this way. 
Then there is housing—2000 extra houses. New Zealand is home to all of us in this Chamber. We love it or we would not live the lives we do fighting to make it a better place. Unfortunately for us we know New Zealand probably better than most people do. If we run clinics we know it warts and all. We know the problems in our society. There is much we can do as a community to make society even better. I would never stand here and say that we have reached the perfect nirvana in New Zealand; we have not. We have problems in our families; we have problems with the health of our elderly; we have problems with our young people. But this Budget just like the preceding six lays the steps down for moving forward so we move forward inch by inch on behalf of the whole community. Progress is not about individual tax breaks; it is for the whole community. That is the only way we can be safe; that is the only way we can move forward; that is the only way we can ensure that we have a community that excels in love peace looking after each other and caring for each other. National members may sneer at that and they may want to go down the selfish road but I believe—and the people on this side believe—that the community is the strength of Aotearoa New Zealand.