Source:
Mr Speaker,
Intro
I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of this Budget.
Let’s start with some simple truths about all Government Budgets.
When the Government spends, it takes from the firms, farms, and families that make up our great country.
A dollar spent by the Government can’t be spent by a family paying their groceries or renovating their house. It cannot be invested by a business creating another job, or a farmer buying new equipment. Nobody else can spend it, because the Government has it.h
Government spending has a diabolical power: Time travel. The Government can spend money now and put the debt in a fiscal Tardis. Into the future, goes the debt, one day landing on taxpayers who might just be starting on their ABCs this afternoon.
Every Government has an obligation to stop the fiscal Tardis. For the sake of future generations, every Government must return to surplus and pay down debt.
Another fact, this Budget isn’t the one ACT alone would bring.
If you’ve read the ACT Party’s Alternative Budgets in years past, you know this Budget spends more than ACT would. But I can tell you something else: It spends much less than a budget without ACT.
I’m proud of the role ACT has played questioning spending and finding savings. Collectively our party has saved current and future taxpayers billions.
This Budget has another great feature. It wasn’t written by the post-modern unicorn chasers of the opposition benches. It signals another year of stable Government for New Zealand.
The Greens have helpfully shown us their alternative budget. They would increase annual Government spending by $22 billion. For that they promise to end poverty.
It got me wondering. Has anything like this happened before? Well, last time the Greens were in Government, annual Government spending increased by $52 billion.
They cannot have it both ways. Either $52 billion of extra spending was enough to fix our problems, or $22 billion won’t be. They are intellectually bankrupt. If they ran a Government, it would be financially bankrupt.
Green bankruptcy doesn’t end there. The Greens are also morally bankrupt. Societies succeed when we push each other up instead of pulling each other down. But the core message of the Greens is that your problems are caused by others’ success, and your salvation lies in taking their money with new taxes.
There are two other Parties in opposition. Te Pāti Māori probably don’t know what a budget is. They show up to Parliament for Tik Tok, not for the good of all New Zealanders.
Then there are Labour, whose whole electoral strategy is to avoid ever taking a position on anything. That’s dangerous, a party desperate for power that won’t tell you its policies. An opposition of unicorn chasers, tik-tok wannabes, and dodgers should never be allowed near your money.
ACT’s Values
ACT’s supporters, Ministers, Members of Parliament and I are proud to stand with a Government that is saving to invest, and boosting the productive capacity of New Zealanders.
We have a simple set of values that work, the world over. Any Government is only a group of people. So is the rest of the population. Some say the Government can solve your problems. I ask: If a group of people ensnared in the politics and bureaucracy of Government can solve your problems, imagine what you could do without the politics and bureaucracy?
That’s why the Government that governs best governs less. That’s why any Government’s goal should be unleashing the creative powers of a free society. Its goal should be freedom under the law, so that people can make a difference in their own lives and the lives of those they care about.
Politicians and their grand Government schemes cannot make New Zealand flourish, because nobody can be forced to flourish. But a country can flourish when each of us are free to be ourselves and achieve in our own way.
The Values of this Budget
This Budget reflects ACT’s values. It is reducing the share of the nation’s economic pie consumed by Government, and ACT’s fingerprints are all over it.
Inflation is currently 2.5 per cent and the population has grown 0.9 per cent in the last year. That means our country’s inflation plus population growth is 3.4 per cent.
If the Government’s Budget grew by 3.4 per cent, it would grow by $4.9 billion. The question is, does this Budget increase spending by $4.9 billion?
No, it does not. It increases by a fraction of that. This Budget increases spending by $1.3 billion. That’s a 0.9 per cent increase.
When the Government reduces its share of the economy, there is more for the firms, farms, and families of this country to consume.
That is true, but it’s not the whole story. Budgets are about more than who gets what. Budgets are also about values. This Budget ensures there is more reason to flourish, to act.
Most importantly, if businesses invest in new plant and equipment, they can write off 20 per cent of the value right now.
If you’re a farmer buying new milking machines to increase your output.
If you’re a start-up investing in lab equipment to develop your product.
If you’re a restaurant upgrading a commercial kitchen to serve more people faster.
If you’re a logistics company investing in better enterprise resource management to get stuff to the right place faster…
It’s not up to any politician how this policy is used. It’s up to creative people. Whatever you’re trying to do, the new 20 per cent capital asset deduction will reduce the tax drag on investing to increase productivity and wages.
Treasury forecasts that, by the time the youngest Kiwis today enter the workforce, wages will be 1.5 per cent higher thanks to this policy alone.
This Budget doesn’t just hose money at what is politically popular. It sets the foundations for growth. It benefits New Zealanders who may not be able to vote yet, but will look back and thank today’s Government for this policy.
Less tax matters. If people can keep and reinvest more of what they make, a virtuous circle starts to turn.
Investment leads to productivity.
Productivity leads to higher wages and higher profits.
Profits can be reinvested, leading to more productivity.
Higher wages empower workers to become investors themselves.
Productivity rises some more, and all the Government needs to do is less.
The Regulatory Standards Bill
When the Budget Debate adjourns, we’ll see the Regulatory Standards Bill debated and sent on its way to become law. I said at the start, any Government’s goal should be unleashing the creative powers of a free society.
Less tax is half the equation to human flourishing. It’s not enough for the Government to just tax less of your property. The Government must also restrain itself from restricting how you use the property you have left.
For too long, politicians have come to this House and trampled New Zealanders’ rights to use and exchange their own property. They do it for political reasons.
They ban people from using buildings to show they care about earthquakes, even if no lives will be saved at the cost of billions.
They ban oil and gas exploration to show they care about the planet, even if the result is burning more coal.
They give every Tom, Dick and Hone the right to object to you building a house, to show they care about the planet, but the result is a generation without habitats for humans.
Democracy demands politicians be held accountable for bad lawmaking, and that’s what the Regulatory Standards Bill will do.
It will require lawmakers to publicly declare what problem their law seeks to solve. It will require them to show the effects on peoples’ liberties and property rights. It will require them to weight the costs and benefits of the law. They’ll have to publicly state who pays the costs and reaps any benefits.
That sort of transparency and accountability will not stop bad lawmakers. Parliament remains sovereign. What it will do is help voters identify and punish bad lawmakers when their vote.
Over time, this change of incentives will change our country. Justifiable and necessary regulations will remain, but many others won’t.
The builder who takes longer to get consent than to build the thing, will spend more time building homes for the next generation.
The educator who wanted to open children’s minds will have more time to do that and less time on paperwork.
The lawyer conveyancing property will spend more time articulating their clients’ interests, and less time checking their identity again, and again.
The Church organising an ANZAC day will spend more time preparing to honor the fallen, and less time asking permission to walk on the roads their congregation paid for.
That is the world of empowerment with less red tape and regulation that this Budget and the Regulatory Standards Bill herald.
Investment
The Budget also invests more money in things that matter.
What matters most is our basic security. The half a billion-dollar boost in Defence and foreign affairs are sadly necessary in a changing world. ACT long campaigned for two per cent of GDP to be spent on Defence.
It is a form of insurance. We hope to never use it, but the chances are higher than ever that we might. Big countries talk about peace through strength. A better option for a small country like New Zealand is peace through alliances.
This Budget allows New Zealand to take seriously our ancient ANZAC alliance. It allows us to be part of a network of like-minded democracies committed to the defence of a free society.
We also need security from thugs at home. Some Government spending just sells itself. Few things are better value than locking up criminals. Nearly half a billion dollars locking up criminals sounds expensive, but if you think crims are expensive in jail, imagine them out on the streets, robbing, raping, and murdering. Locking them up is the best money we’ll ever spend.
The Government is investing in the ultimate resource, human creativity. Better education, including $140 million more on school attendance, will help us transfer skills from one generation to another.
When children get to school, the learning support and maths help will be there. Just imagine where the Government’s books could be today if that maths help was around when Grant Robertson was a at school.
Today parents who save and sacrifice get some long overdue recognition.
Those who scrimp and save to give their children a better future at a private school pay taxes like anyone else. Their children deserve an education like anyone else. And yet, they pay more GST on their school fees than they get back in Government subsidy. The Subsidy has been frozen for fifteen years.
Savings
All the above policies are possible only because we have been prepared to live within our means.
In the reckless years of the previous Government, any problem could be solved by throwing other people’s money at it, or so we were told.
If Labour sold T-shirts they should say, ‘I voted Labour and all I got was a $100 billion of debt.’ That is all we got, and for those who blame COVID, the splurge went on far longer than that.
This Government has had to do what firms, farms and families had to do in the hungry years Labour created. If we want to spend more, we need to save somewhere else.
It makes no sense for the Government to borrow money your children will need to pay back, with interest, then put it in your Kiwisaver so you can invest in shares. That is what’s been happening, and it’s nuts.
ACT’s alternative budget proposed stopping the practice. We’re thrilled to be part of a Government that is at least halving it, and means testing. That is something future generations will thank us for. It’s also just good basic financial management.
I said Brooke van Velden saved the taxpayer billions and the Budget for the Government. Today it’s been revealed how much that saving was, it is $12.8 billion over four years.
However, I also said that she left a fairer, more affordable, more sustainable pay equity scheme. That is true. Thanks to Brooke van Velden, the emphasis on growing wages is back to the actions that economists tell us grow wages.
I heard people say they’d been ‘working’ on pay equity cases for years. Newsflash, that’s not work. That’s litigation, and it does not make the boat go faster at all. The fact that people thought that was work tells us everything we need to know about the left and the union movement.
There are not only fiscal savings from the pay equity changes, there is a proud declaration that we don’t get wealthier arguing with ourselves, we get wealthier from investment, innovation, and genuine hard work.
Of course there are many other savings. The $18.4 million reduction in RNZ funding should focus the organisation of high-quality news, the way its competitors are forced to do in challenging times for the industry.
EECA has always been silly. People already know energy is expensive and it’s good to save it. There’s no need for a Government department to do it. Over four years this change will save $56.2 million.
Ending the mad experiment of Kahui Ako, or Communities of Learning, that were actually communities of teachers taking time out of the classroom, it’s gone. The saving is $375.5 million dollars.
Crazy research grants, ‘climate resilience for Māori,’ whatever that really is, and ‘bilingual towns and cities funding.’ It’s all getting cut to save taxpayers’ money. People who work hard in the real world, treating others well, and taking each person as they find them… They are the winners when government stops taking money for identity politics fantasies and applies it to practical services that matter.
The Government will be tightening benefit eligibility for 18-19 year olds. This will save $163 million. Parents want them off the couch. The last thing they want is the Government taking their taxes and paying them to stay there.
Personal responsibility can save money in other ways. The Government is going to be far more aggressive in chasing up court fines and legal aid debt. The basic idea that your efforts should make a difference cuts both ways, and saves the Government money, too.
These are just a selection. It all adds up. Altogether the Government is saving $4.9 billion per year. $4.9 billion of taxpayer money put to better use. Saving to invest more, so that our free society can see economic growth.
Conclusion
This Budget doesn’t go as far as ACT would, but we’re proud to support it because it’s pregnant with our values. It is a Budget supporting human action, not political action. It give more resources and choices to the people, compared with government.
It focuses on growing the New Zealand economy, rather than government spending. It gives a ray of hope, that New Zealanders can achieve their potential in a place where your efforts make a difference.
In that there is hope that our pioneering spirit rises again. The country that we and our ancestors came to these islands to build will deliver its promise of opportunity to each New Zealander.
Thank you, Mr Speaker.