Dyson Ruth: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2984. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills):I am sorry that I interrupted the member Jonathan Young in his flow. It was quite an interesting speech but the bell had rung so if I wanted to get a call I had to stand up and take it.I am pleased to be contributing in the debate related to the Canterbury earthquake recovery. I just want to note that a number of my colleagues have been talking about the “third-term-itis” of this Government and about how arrogant it has become how out of touch it is and how it is ignoring the big issues for New Zealand. I do not think anybody personifies that more than the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery. It is a bit of a steep competition in Cabinet I know but Minister Brownlee has generated so much spin in Canterbury about the pace of the recovery and the vision for the future that actually people are dizzy. Nobody can see anything happening that is his responsibility—it has all been good private sector investment and risk but he takes the credit for it.Somebody said the other day that John Key comes down to open an envelope and somebody else said: “But he closes the post office on the way out.” which is exactly how it feels to us. You cannot of course ignore the fact that we had a series of horrific earthquakes and they caused massive amounts of damage but insurance money and taxpayers’ and ratepayers’ investment into the rebuild does not make an economic recovery. And that is what John Key and the National Party promised the people of New Zealand. They promised an economic recovery. They promised a Budget surplus—not just in passing but throughout the entire 2011 election campaign and then again throughout the entire 2014 election campaign—and they promised that this year 2015 would be the year of the Budget surplus. That is called another broken promise. Add it to the big long list actually—a big long list of broken promises.Now the Prime Minister says: “Oh that’s just an artificial target.” Well actually during the 2011 campaign and the 2014 campaign when some members opposite stood on platforms promising to deliver this he said it was going to be a Budget surplus not an artificial target. This time last year this surplus was going to be half a billion dollars—this year’s surplus in the Budget next month. Now it is going to be a half-billion-dollar deficit. Where do those members stand? Where is their integrity their personal credibility and their basic honesty with their constituents? How are they going to front up to those people whom they said one thing to and now are delivering another? I guess there will be another round of spin and excuses but people will see through it. They are not as stupid as John Key and the National Party want to make out.National has borrowed a million dollars an hour since it became the Government—a million an hour. It is spending $10 million a day in interest payments on its borrowing. How is this good financial management? We have more gross debt as a percentage of the economy than any New Zealand Government since the 1930s. “Bill the borrower” is exactly the hashtag that he deserves. Yes we have had a recession; yes we have had a global financial crisis; and yes we have had a series of earthquakes but we have also had some disgraceful wastes of taxpayers’ money. It is not Government money. It is not the Government’s generosity that allows it to spend on things that it determines. It is taxpayers’ money. It is our money that we contribute for the public good.The Government gave $5 billion worth of tax cuts to the wealthiest 10 percent of New Zealanders—sorry not the wealthiest but the highest income earners who declared that for the purposes of paying tax because that is different from the wealthiest. The top 10 percent of income earners in New Zealand got $5 billion worth of tax cuts in the same Budget that Bill English cut home support for older New Zealanders. What are the priorities of this Government? Through its asset sales programme we have lost nearly a billion dollars already in lost dividends and that loss is rising every day. We have had corporate bailouts and handouts: Rio Tinto with no guarantee that it will stay going and most recently Skycity. Those corporate bailouts and handouts run into billions of dollars. They have borrowed more than any other Government.