Dyson Ruth: Budget Debate 
Dyson Ruth: Budget Debate 
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Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 We can tell when Ministers are enjoying their portfolio responsibilities and their job by the energy and the passion with which they make a contribution to this House. That Minister Phil Heatley did not have any. He has clearly got over his excitement his little puppy-dog love that he used to have for his ministerial portfolio. That was a tragic contribution to this debate. 
I am very pleased to be able to support the amendment that has been moved by the Labour leader Phil Goff. The amendment is: “That all the words after the word ‘That’ be omitted and the following words substituted: ‘this House has no confidence in the National Government led by John Key which has blatantly broken its clear promise not to raise the Goods and Services Tax has pushed up other taxes and increased prices when working people have had their lowest wage rises in more than a decade has failed to implement a plan for jobs lacks any vision for a smart high skill high tech and high wage economy has cut services and assistance to the most needy in our community and has rewarded the most wealthy at the expense of middle and low income New Zealanders.’ ” Given the 100 percent truth in that amendment it is not surprising that the Minister lacked any commitment and any passion in his contribution. 
This has been a Budget of broken promises. John Key himself personally looked straight down at the camera and promised New Zealand that we would not face an increase in GST. This Budget broke that promise. GST is going up. That is the first of the three broken promises contained in this Budget. 
The second was as clear and as personal a commitment from John Key: that National would not borrow to fund tax cuts. That promise was repeated after the election—it would not be borrowing to fund tax cuts. In fact that is the reason that it had to cancel its tax cuts under urgency having previously put them through under urgency because it was not going to borrow to fund tax cuts. This Budget has broken that promise as well. This Budget sees borrowing to fund tax cuts not for low and middle income earners alone but for the people who least need a tax cut the people who are getting more in tax cuts than many people earn over the whole year working full-time. Some people are getting more in a tax cut than other fellow citizens earn working full-time. How can that be fair and how can borrowing to fund those tax cuts be justified? 
The third broken promise in this Budget was that National would not cut the number of public servants would not cut front-line health services and would not cut the level of Government support that people were getting. Every day we have more examples of front-line health service cuts and of cuts in Public Service jobs. 
The National Government has been portraying this Budget as a great fiscally neutral responsible tax-switch Budget. Well actually it has been properly described as a tax swindle. It is making it harder for good hard-working New Zealanders—not the sort that Mr Key dismissed as being just jealous of the important people the rich people—who are on low or middle incomes to get ahead with their lives. It has also been noted that the real winners out of this Budget are the people who are on the highest incomes. I have nothing against people who have a very high income. I say: “Good on them.” But they are not the people who deserve and who need the biggest support from Government particularly in these tough times. They are not finding it hard to pay the power bill every week and they are not shocked when they learn that the power bill is going up. People on very high incomes can manage very well. They do not get to the checkout counter every week or fortnight and hope they have enough money in their bank account to pay their grocery bill. The people who do are now getting more anxious that they will not be able to afford the power increase and that they will get to the checkout with their groceries for their families and not have enough money in their account to pay the bill. 
Those people are as important to our country to our economy and to our society as the people on the highest incomes; they should have got more out of this Budget to get them through the hard times. In fact they will lose out of this Budget—that is another broken promise. Do members remember that John Key started off by saying that all New Zealanders would be better off under this Budget? Then he toned it down a bit and said that most New Zealanders would be better off. Then he toned it down again and said that no New Zealanders would be worse off. Every time he has talked about the Budget his expectations have got lower. But he was still wrong even when he made his lowest prediction because some people are worse off. 
Inflation is running at nearly 6 percent. It will destroy most of the tax cuts and that means that New Zealanders will face an increase of 2.5 percent in their GST with no compensation. Again people were promised by John Key that if GST went up they would be compensated. He did not tell them though that they would face a nearly 6 percent inflation rate as well as the GST increase. If we take an average family with two children and give the income earners in that family a wage increase they will be $55 a week worse off after GST inflation and the increases in early childhood education charges. 
The Minister of Education could not work out those early childhood education charges. She was asked to multiply $1.51 by 40 and let the House know what increase in early childhood education charges that family would face if the increase was passed on from their early childhood education centre. I know that the family is facing an increase of $1.51 an hour multiplied by however many hours their child is in early childhood education; that is the additional charge that family will have to face. I am sure that my colleague Sue Moroney will be asking the Minister to have another go at that question: $1.51 times 40. Perhaps Aaron Gilmore might be able to spend some time this afternoon with his calculator and the Minister of Education explaining how that increase will make families worse off. 
As a result of the Budget we have also seen future health cuts that will make the health cuts of the last 18 months pale into insignificance. As you know very well from your own electorate Mr Assistant Speaker Roy these health cuts have not been fair on individuals and they have not been necessary. In fact they have been cruel. They have targeted the most vulnerable members in our society: people who are frail and elderly often living at home on their own and people who have been getting $20 or $30 a week in home support help have now had that cut because the Minister of Health has told the district health boards that their cuts are not strong enough. He asked them to keep cutting until they got their budget back on track before 30 June this year. 
The Budget that has been presented in this House halves the budget increase for district health boards. They do not know how they will survive and I am certain that older people and more vulnerable people in particular will be feeling the weight of those health cuts. There is effectively a $300 million hole in the health budget. That is how much extra they needed on top of what the Minister of Health announced on Budget day in order to just stand still. They needed that not in order to expand services not in order to give wage increases and not in order to make better sooner and more convenient health services available; that is how much they needed to stand still. That is the hole in the health budget.