Newman Muriel: Budget Debate 
Newman Muriel: Budget Debate 
[Volume:608;Page:5924] 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (ACT NZ) 
: 
 The 2003 Budget is an utter disgrace. It cements New Zealand on a path to failure. We are facing the most uncertain uneconomic time in recent decades and Labour’s response is to bend to ignore the major constraints to growth and squander taxpayers’ money. We have the America’s Cup Maori television treaty education and now we hear that Labour wants to slug the poor old taxpayers with a new $200 million power tax to bail it out of the power crisis it helped to create. 
I heard on the news this morning what is going to be a beginning trend caused by Labour’s meddling in local government—a 300 percent increase in rates for Aucklanders. This is a tax-and-spend Government. It taxes people to the hilt and then asks them to spend more in user charges stealth taxes and regulatory fees. 
I say to the Labour Government that a core responsibility is to ensure that conditions are in place to allow a country to grow to enable an economy to prosper to raise the standard of living and to increase opportunities. But what has Labour delivered in this Budget? It has delivered a halving of our growth from 4 percent to 2 percent so that working families who are struggling to pay the bills and feed the kids can look forward only to a harsher future under this Labour-United-Green coalition Government. On behalf of the taxpayers of New Zealand I say to Labour that that is simply not good enough. Taxpayers deserve better. Hard-working families deserve what the Australian Government delivered to them last week—a tax cut. Small businesses also deserve a tax cut. 
We have done a survey of taxpayers in New Zealand. We have had thousands of responses to our petition. One of those respondents said: “As a small-business owner I would like to be able to offer employment for two or three more people if I were given some tax relief.” Another said: “Give small businesses a break. We are the backbone of the country and we’re being hammered by over-governance and growing compliance costs.” 
 The reality is that a tax cut would boost the economy. With tax cuts we could achieve a 4 percent growth rate and a rising standard of living especially if it were combined with a bonfire under the bureaucratic compliance costs that this control-freak Government is introducing as it regulates the free market to death. 
The fact is that the values of this Labour Government are out of step with the values of New Zealand families. It is a Government obsessed with power and control. As one of our petitioners stated: “You do not own the citizens of this country. We are free individuals. You have no right to determine how our wages are spent. That’s a decision solely for the rightful owner of those wages—the individuals who earn them.” 
Since being in Government Labour has created a culture of racism lawlessness and dependency in this great country of ours so that a growing number of New Zealanders have now had enough. 
Here is another quote: “Like many people I am tired of working 60 hours a week to support more and more people who are being paid by the Government to do nothing.”; and another quote: “As the sole income earner in a family with a young child I am crippled by tax to support non-workers. Something needs to be done about our welfare State—too few workers supporting too many unemployed; it can’t be sustained.” 
Before Labour changed the welfare system in the early 1970s there were 28 full-time workers to every full-time person on a benefit. Today there are 4 full-time workers for each beneficiary and the Budget figures show that that situation will get worse. But I have to say that the information is not easy to find. The Government left the welfare numbers out of the Budget. If it had not been for Treasury posting them on its website we would never have known that welfare spending is set to increase by $2 billion over the next 5 years and that all categories of benefit are set to grow with the sickness benefit and the invalids benefitset to sky rocket. 
This soft-on-welfare Labour Government has signalled that the next Budget will be a welfare Budget as it prepares to buy votes for the next election. But along with the United Future party as each day goes by this is a Government that is increasing welfare dependency. For every person whom Labour entices on to welfare in the long term that is a Kiwi life it ruins and children whom it damages. 
The Government’s own research shows that children and families dependent on welfare fail to do as well in all areas of life as those with parents who work and that children and families without a father are at even greater risk. That is why it is outrageous that Labour and United Future have failed to tackle the problem of 32000 New Zealand children who do not know who their father is because their mothers who are on the domestic purposes benefit choose not to name the fathers of those children. ACT believes that every child has a right to know who his or her father is and we would make naming of the father a condition of domestic purposes benefit eligibility. 
Labour and its United Future puppet try to pretend that they care about families and children with the $28 million bureaucratic monster the Families Commission. Well they are misleading the public because if they really cared about families and children welfare reform would be their urgent priority. I want to use this opportunity to put on record that ACT’s plan for welfare reform is based on the belief that those who can work should work and that only work should pay; that we need to help the unemployed overcome the barriers they have to work with childcare assistance transport help and the like so that when they are offered a job there are no hurdles. But our priority is to reduce long-term dependency reinforcing that welfare is not a lifelong right. 
We would introduce time limits to create a sense of urgency with guaranteed job placements for those who reached their limits. We also believe that the welfare system should replicate the real world of work and we would require that those who are able-bodied take part in a 40-hour-a-week programme of work training and organised job search to help them develop the skills habits and disciplines of the workforce. 
If welfare is modelled on the workforce it sends a very clear message that welfare is there to provide a temporary helping hand in times of need. But in return we ask that those on welfare have an obligation to have the same 40-hour workweek as the rest of adult society. That plan would turn round the lives of the poorest New Zealanders because everyone knows that common sense tells us that the only way out of poverty is through work. 
But there is another compelling reason to introduce real welfare reform and I hope that the Government is listening to this. It is not very politically correct to talk about it but it is the real link between welfare and crime. If one talked to the police one would be told that over half of all criminal offences are committed by a person on a benefit. The majority of those people committing those crimes come from families without a father. But it is not only that. The majority of all of the victims of crime are poor families on benefits. So the fact is that Labour’s soft on welfare and soft on crime agenda is hurting the most vulnerable people in society. In fact it is hurting its own voting base. 
The Budget shows that there will be more family breakdown over the next few years more children will be growing up without fathers and there will be more welfare dependency. All of that tells us that crime will rise. What has Labour done about that? One looks in the Budget and what does one find it has done to support the police? To my astonishment in spite of the police being understaffed overstressed and outnumbered by the gangs in New Zealand by three to one the police budget has been squeezed. When Labour took office 1.9 percent of all Government spending was spent on police. In this Budget 1.6 percent of Government spending will be spent on police. That is a 15 percent decrease in spending on the police by this Government. 
That means that when Labour was voted into office in 1999 it ignored the 92 percent of New Zealanders who said to get tough on crime and to put more resources into upholding the rule of law—into law and order issues. What has Labour done? It has slashed police funding. It is no wonder the police are overwhelmed. It is no wonder they cannot investigate basic crime any more and are telling people to try to do it themselves. It is no wonder the methamphetamine crisis is running out of control and gang problems are escalating. This Labour Government has failed the people of New Zealand.