Faafoi Kris: Budget Debate 
Faafoi Kris: Budget Debate 
[Volume:673;Page:19221] 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak in this Budget debate. Just before I start I will touch on an issue that the previous speaker Dr Jackie Blue and numerous National MPs have raised during this debate: that this is a Budget for our times. I would like to know which reference group “our” is. When I am out and about in Mana I do not hear anyone say this is a Budget for our times. I do not hear anyone saying that. I hear them say “This is a Budget for their times.” There is nothing in this Budget for us here in Mana. When I hear the people in Mana talking about the Budget they say they are worried about the cuts to KiwiSaver the asset sales and the cuts to Working for Families and that is not a Budget for our times. That is not a Budget for New Zealand in 2011. 
The previous speaker also said this Budget was about protecting the vulnerable. Ha ha! That is a comedy act. Taking $600000 away from Women’s Refuge does not protect the vulnerable. Let me look that up on Google and see whether that protects the vulnerable. Making cuts to early childhood education does not sound like protecting the vulnerable to me. Also taking $120000 out of a mental health care unit in Waitangirua called New Avenues leaving those community-based mental health patients with nowhere to go does not sound like protecting the vulnerable to me. It does not sound like protecting the vulnerable to me. 
I have the Minister’s Executive Summary of Budget 2011 here in my hands and I am seriously thinking of entering it in the fiction section of next year’s New Zealand Post Book Awards. This and the volumes that accompany it should go right next to the Warren report because just as no one believes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted in isolation when killing John F Kennedy no one believes anything in the volumes of this Budget. No one believes anything in this Budget. Its author—National’s deputy leader Bill English—should be commended for the creativity in this Budget. And the chief storyteller—John Key the National leader—should also be commended for his effort at selling this Budget to the people and thinking that it is good for them. It is not. 
There is much that is unbelievable in the Budget like the promise of 170000 jobs. Wow! Where will they come from? Can someone show me right in here where those 170000 jobs will come from? They will not come from early childhood education or national standards as the National leader John Key said in this House yesterday. They will certainly not come from there. Where will the 4 percent forecast wage growth come from? Where will it come from? Where in this Budget is there a plan to make sure that 4 percent wage growth actually becomes a reality? I do not think it is anywhere in there. And this is a good one: no one believes that there is a $4 billion gap between what the Inland Revenue Department and Treasury say is the forecast revenue out of this Budget. 
Something is missing from this publication and it is called a plot or a plan. There is no real plan: no coherent plan to create jobs for economic growth or to help Kiwis who are struggling at the moment. This is not a Budget for our times. There has already been a review of this publication and the Acting Secretary to the Treasury said the growth forecasts in this publication are too optimistic. So maybe it has no show of winning next year’s fiction award in the New Zealand Post Book Awards. Maybe it does not. 
The other thing that is fiction about this document—and this fiction comes from the members on the other side of the House—is that this Budget is prudent. Ha ha! This Budget has $16.7 billion of deficit in it. The audacity of the members from the other side of the House is such that they say our plan is to borrow and hope! You are borrowing and hoping right now. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: Order! 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: The Government is borrowing and hoping right now. Excuse me Mr Assistant Speaker Roy; I apologise for that. This Budget is fiction and it fails to address the major problem right here in New Zealand society which is how to help hard-working Kiwis who are struggling to make ends meet. 
Earlier in this debate I heard Melissa Lee an MP from the other side of the House say this Budget is about savings—this Budget is about savings. So why did the Government cut $2.6 billion from KiwiSaver? I know that when I have been out at street corner meetings—and when I went to the Ekalesia Faapotopotoga Kerisiano Samoa Church last Sunday—one of the questions I get there regularly is why is the Government making cuts to KiwiSaver? People say they made a deal when they signed up to KiwiSaver that they would put in a certain amount and the Government every year would put in around $1042 so they could over a long period of time build up a nest egg for themselves and their family so that when they reached retirement age they would be able to support themselves. But in this Budget the member tax credit has been cut in half. The Government is tinkering more with the KiwiSaver scheme so that the member tax credit goes from $1042 a year as I said before down to $521. 
I know that definitely in Mana from right across the spectrum—whether one is from Cannons Creek Paekakariki or Raumati South—people are really concerned that this Government has broken its promise to the people of New Zealand. John Key made that promise. He said National would not tinker with KiwiSaver. Lo and behold in Budget 2011 what do we get? The Government claims it is borrowing in order to pay for KiwiSaver but that is not the truth at all. It is borrowing in order to pay for the tax cuts that it brought in last year of which—and this is the truth—42 percent goes to the top 10 percent of earners. The argument has always been that people on low and middle incomes at the moment are struggling to make ends meet yet the Government’s ill-advised and ill-planned tax cuts went to those who did not need them as much as those people. As I say this is a broken promise from this Government—a broken promise from John Key not to tinker with KiwiSaver. I think another speaker from this side of the House said earlier that this repeats the mistake of the Muldoon era of tinkering with the confidence that Kiwis have in a robust superannuation scheme. 
What else do we have in this Budget? Asset sales. When we start to talk about asset sales the members on the Government side of the House go quiet. They know just how unpopular asset sales are. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Good policy. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: Nick Smith says it is a great policy. Well let us see how that goes out on the hustings and how that went in the  
New Zealand Herald  
2 or 3 weeks ago. A great policy! The best line that this Government has about asset sales is that it is selling the assets to mum and dad investors. Well mum and dad investors already own them and I am sorry to say that at the moment mum and dad investors are struggling to put food on the table. Can someone on the other side of the House please tell me how those mum and dad investors will be able to afford to buy shares in assets that they already own? 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: KiwiSaver. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: The Government has already gutted KiwiSaver. 
The four power companies that are owned by those mum and dad investors right now bring in $700 million. What happens to those profits if—what is the line they use? The mixed-ownership model? The mixed-up ownership model! What happens if that profit starts to go overseas? Well that constant flow of revenue that New Zealand taxpayers receive to make sure that we are paying off debt and that we are paying for the things that Kiwis rely on will go overseas. Government members say they will not sell off all of the assets. Well let us see what happens when Don Brash enters this Parliament. If—God forbid—he does enter Parliament it will be completely absolutely 100 percent guaranteed that those assets will go overseas. 
But what is the reality? We have had the fiction; what is the reality? The reality is that Kiwis are struggling to make ends meet. That was borne out in the  
Kapi-Mana News 
 a couple of weeks ago when it said: “More turning to food bank”. There it is in black and white: “Three years ago we had 20 families ask for parcels last year it was 32. Our cupboards are very bare right now. There seems to be so much more pressure on people today the wages are not there while prices for food and other things like rent and power keep going up.” There it is in black and white. What about this week’s  
Kapi-Mana News 
? There is a half-page advertisement asking—pleading—for people to take food to the food banks because they are so stretched. The earlier edition of the  
Kapi-Mana News 
 says the St Vincent de Paul’s shop which has been in Porirua for 26 years for the first time in 10 years has run out of food. Not only has it run out of food but it has also run out of people to bring food to its shop because the supply and the demand are going absolutely nuts—absolutely nuts. 
So what do we need? We need to have a Government with a plan a Government that realises that prices are rising faster than wages and a Government that makes sure we can give hard-working Kiwis a break. We need to have a Government that will stop asset sales so that we can keep our power prices under control and also so that we can make sure that the mum and dad investors that the Government is talking about who actually already own those assets can continue to own them. We need to have a Government that will take some bold steps like making the first $5000 of income tax-free—that is a real step towards making sure that people can make ends meet—and taking the GST off fresh fruit and vegetables. You know that move will cost us about $300 million but when we are spending half a billion dollars on obesity-related diseases I think that is a very wise move.