Martin Tracey: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17957. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Just to quote for a moment from theNew Zealand Heraldfrom way back in March 2014: “A study just published by theJournal of the American Medical Association … found obesity rates among 2- to 5-year-olds in America had dropped an impressive 43 per cent over the last decade.” partly attributable to mothers breastfeeding for longer. We are talking about front-ending the investment. We are talking about front-ending the investment and certainly every party in the House is supporting the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill because we all believe in parents. Like Mrs Upston I am also a mother of three children. Unlike Mrs Upston I was able to make a choice to stay at home for 15 years as a parent and—Louise Upston: I made a choice.TRACEY MARTIN: Exactly. We both made—Louise Upston: Mothers should have a choice.TRACEY MARTIN: Mrs Upston is now actually choosing to create an argument about who was better than what and there is no argument here. I merely was saying to Mrs Upston that I was drawing a parallel in the fact that we are both mothers of three and we both had an opportunity to make a choice. Mrs Upston seems to have got upset about that fact but that is the reality. We both had an opportunity to make a choice and where I am going to is—Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It used to be a tradition in this place that people did not speak or screech as they walked around the Chamber taking advantage of their role as whips. Mrs Upston just did that continuously screeching as she went from her seat and out the door. I think that you should have pulled her up.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well it has been a reasonably spirited debate. The member is quite right. Members should not be walking around the Chamber and—Ihave probably neglected that but in the course of the debate I have probably neglected a few things. I apologise. Let us have a bit more decorum.TRACEY MARTIN: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. So the point I was trying to make is that both Mrs Upston and I had choice. Part of that choice in my case was about the fact that my husband earned over $65000 a year as a winemaker so we were able to actually have one parent at home—one of us at home. There was no paid parental leave for me looking after my children at that time in the same way that Mrs Upston talked about the fact that there was no paid parental opportunity for her and those were the times that we were in.But times have changed quite substantially for families where we are today and where I am coming to is to the regulatory impact statement at point 7 on page 3: “The [family tax credit] and the [in-work tax credit] are currently abated at 21.25 cents in the dollar when annual family income exceeds $36350.”—$36350. “The [parental tax credit] is also abated at 21.25 cents in the dollar; however the amount of the abatement is calculated against 56 days of annualised income rather than a full year’s worth of income; this creates aneffective [parental tax credit] abatement rate of 3.26 cents [in the dollar].” and this means that this will happen “dollar for dollar until a family’s income reaches $21216 after tax.”Why do I raise those figures? Why are they in the regulatory impact statement? Because there are changes in the family tax credit and the in-work tax credit ratios and abatement rates that are going to kick in at the same time as this bill goes through. The reason I raise those figures is that that is actually what the National Government believes are low to middle income earner rates. But let us give the Government a little bit more benefit of the doubt shall we? Let us give it the benefit of the doubt that it actually believes that $50000 gross annual middle income—and what it has done quite carefully and quite interestingly is made a large announcement about the fact that the payment rate rises from $110 a week to $200 and something - odd a week. I am sure that one of the National Party members will be so completely au fait with the numbers in here that they will be able to stand up when they take a call and make sure that what I am saying is correct.For lower and middle income working families the parental tax credit increase is $220 per week for the first 10 weeks following birth and currently it is $150 a week for 8 weeks. But this change starts to pay it back faster on a dollar for dollar basis from the moment that that income starts to get towards $21216 after tax. I think that we have not had enough time to study these numbers. We have not had enough time to study these numbers because this bill has been dropped on us. But that is a really interesting change and I would suggest that somebody out there needs to really crunch some numbers while we are down here in the House until midnight talking about the bills that this Government is going to push through under urgency.So although an extension to 18 weeks is good news it is crumbs. It is crumbs once again about which this Government is saying: “Be grateful to us New Zealand. Be grateful to us.” Let us not forget as quite rightly it has been pointed out before that this Government is the Government that in its first year increased by millions of dollars the funding to private schools. And in one of its first Budgets it did a tax swap by cutting the tax rate for the highest income earners and shifting that—yes it was fiscally neutral according to the Minister of Finance—tax loss on to those low and middle income earners who are the same low and middle income earners who will be affected by this clause.So that is why it is important for everybody to realise what is middle income according to the National Government because that is not being altered—that is not being altered. As times have got harder that threshold has not been moved upward. Somiddle-income New Zealand needs to have a very good look at this overnight and tomorrow and then come back and make sure that it understands what is going on in this bill.Can I also say that one of the other reasons why—and we are trying to get across to the National Government that actually everything is about money in this House at the end of the day. It is not our money and we all understand that—it belongs to the taxpayers of New Zealand. But it is about making sure that what you spend in one place is a good investment so that you end up actually saving money in the long term. Just like a $359 million top-down - driven Budget item for education instead of front-ending the spend so that children of 5 and 6 are actually supported in their schools once again the Government has been tight-fisted at the front end of life at the beginning of life. We already see—and the reason why I started with the quote—that the savings at the other end are so great. So it is disappointing that there is again this short-sighted vision.If you have a look at some of the Budget documents—and there are people trying to do that right now trying to catch up on what has gone on because we have only just received it—you can look at some of the very interesting spend there. It comes out of two different pools agreeably but there are millions of dollars being set aside for a PaCT tool in the education budget that could very easily have been shifted over to actually support the parental tax credit going to 26 weeks. There are some very interesting spend decisions in this Budget that have not been in the Minister of Finance’s speech that New Zealanders need to have a strong hard look at to see whether what is being offered to them this small piece that the National Government actually wants you to be grateful for is truly the ability that it has to give to you of your own money—of your own money.The National Government likes to talk about its largesse. It likes to talk about its spend of $10 million here and its spend of $10 million there. The Government has no money but that which belongs to the taxpayer and the taxpayer has made it perfectly clear—Mike Sabin: Or in some cases the ratepayer.TRACEY MARTIN: —perfectly clear—through the very hard lobbying the incredible lobbying that was done by families and mothers and people without children who said: “We actually want to stand up for newborn babies in this country. We believe that truly to provide an option we need to support increasing this to 26 weeks.”Mr Sabin of course has given us his wisdom over there from the other side of the House ranting on saying: “Goodness me! We would not possibly want to support babies and children for a year.” Of course Mr Sabin is completely uninformed with regard to the Nordic nations and the amazing job that they do of supporting their children and the support that they put into their education systems and the high success that they have. But Mr Sabin is not interested in that. Mr Sabin will follow the party line. Like he did for Kaipara he will follow the party line. He will not fight for the people of New Zealand; he will follow the line that the National Party tells him to follow.