Sir Roger Douglas: Budget of Broken Promises
Budget of Broken Promises
Sir Roger Douglas speech
to Budget 2009; Parliament
ACT New Zealand
Thursday,
28 May 2009
This is the budget of deficits. A deficit of spending, a deficit of the current account, a deficit of courage, but most importantly, a deficit of imagination.
Why do I say a deficit of imagination? Because Prime Minister John Key and Finance Minister Bill English, like all people who lack the guts to do what's right, have taken the soft option. They have decided to borrow and hope.
The best thing I can say about this Budget is that it’s as good as any of the nine that Labour’s Michael Cullen delivered. Then again, that’s hardly the standard any decent Finance Minister should hold themselves to.
After all, during Cullen's term, total Government spending increased in real terms by over $5,500 for every person in New Zealand. That’s how much could have been left in your pocket every year had he not ramped up Government spending.
For a family of four that’s $400 a week.
And what did you get for Cullen's spending?
Some of it was wasted on the bureaucratic
health, education, and welfare empires.
Some of it was
taken off you and then used to turn most New Zealand
families into welfare beneficiaries under the Working for
Families programme.
Mr English has continued in this
vein, increasing health spending by over a billion dollars
– an increase of around 6 percent.
And what happened to Bill English’s line by line review, which was meant to cut Government waste?
Well, he managed to find $301 million. Let’s put that in context. $301 million is just 0.4 percent of total Government spending. Was that seriously all he was able to find after Cullen increased Government spending by $18 billion?
National missed an opportunity to cut Government waste by scrapping some Government departments completely. The Families Commission, the Ministry of Economic Development, and the Charities Commission are obvious candidates for immediate abolition.
But what has Labour's response been to modest cutbacks?
Outrage.
To Labour, every area of Government is
underfunded.
Having spent up large for nine years, it
believes it can always find new projects to waste money on.
I worry that Labour might be right.
When Labour say it
would not cut spending, what it’s really saying is it
wants higher taxes.
Over nine years Labour tried to tax the nation to prosperity. The only effect was to slash productivity growth, helping us slip further behind the other nations on the OECD ladder.
Our productivity growth
under Labour was a third of what it was after the reforms
implemented by the fourth Labour Government.
The
difference to the average New Zealander is that they receive
25 percent lower wages today than they would have if
productivity growth had been maintained.
After nine years
of tax abuse are National much better?
Let’s look at
their deficits. The annual deficit, in real terms, is a
third what we were running back in 1984. Back then, the
Government managed to create a surplus within three years.
But that’s too hard for Bill English. Although the
deficit is a third what it was then, it’s taking us 11
years to get back to surplus.
The reality is that
National did not have to go down the debt path. National had
choices.
One choice was to do what National has always done - that is to take all Labour’s policies as a given, tinker at the edges, and hope to manage the system better. It could be the conservative Party it has always been.
The
other choice was to look to the future. The Party that
looks to the future always sets the real political agenda.
When Labour looks to the future, it sees a larger state,
higher taxes, and more control for meddling politicians in
Wellington – so that's what we've ended up with.
When National looks to the future it sees itself administering Labour's programmes more efficiently. It is bereft of vision. National suffer from a deficit of courage, and a imagination.
If it wanted a vision, National could have
looked towards a future of low taxes, personal
responsibility, personal freedom, and prosperity.
Instead, it has chosen high taxes, Government ownership
and delivery of social services, and more power for
politicians and bureaucrats.
National has continued the
trend since 1993 for Governments to take the soft option
deciding once again to borrow and hope.
National
promised that it wouldn’t touch health, education, and
welfare. But those areas make up 66 percent of the
Government’s budget.
Saying that it will not even look
at ways to open these areas to competition and other reforms
is to give up on fiscal prudence and to sentence New Zealand
to low productivity growth.
Making cuts to Government spending does not mean denying anyone access to health education and welfare. All it does is change the way we go about offering help to those who need it.
One way to help is to shovel money into the bureaucracy, and hope like hell that it eventually reaches people in the form of decent education, quality healthcare, and welfare that helps rather than harms the poor.
But as we have seen through Labour’s health spending, not all of it goes towards those who need it. There was a 15 percent decline in doctor productivity, and 11 percent decline in nurse productivity. In fact, the only increase in hospital productivity was for orderlies and cleaning staff, and they were outsourced to the private sector!
The other way is to give the money back to those who earned it, and encourage them to purchase their own education, their own health coverage, and their own insurance against risks like job loss, accidents, and sickness.
The most obvious difference between these two
systems is who has the power.
In the status quo, the
bureaucrat is all powerful. It decides where your child
gets educated, it decides whether your medical treatment
will go ahead, it decides what level of income assistance
you require.
The recipients of handouts – be they
parents, patients, or welfare recipients – are treated as
children to be managed by a bureaucrat who knows very little
about them, and cares even less.
Is it surprising that
within this environment, more money does not deliver better
outcomes?
The only way yet discovered of improving outcomes while keeping costs down is to restore control to the individual.
Unfortunately for us all, National suffer from the tyranny of the status quo. The only thing they know is to spend and if spending means borrowing, then they will continue to borrow and hope.
ENDS