Speaker’s slip enlivens Budget debate

Press, 4 August 1983, Page 8

Speaker’s slip enlivens Budget debate

PA Wellington The Opposition exultantly shouted in Parliament last evening that the Government had fallen, after a slip of the tongue by the Speaker, Sir Riichard Harrison.

Sir Richard accidentally said the “ayes” had won a confidence motion put by the Labour Party during the Budget debate. He quickly corrected himself to say the “noes" had won, but in the intervening seconds, there were cries of “the Government’s gone,” and “resign” from the Opposition benches.

Labour members cheered loudly and laughed.

Sir Richard demanded order, and added: “Even the best of us can make a slip of the tongue from time to time.”

The confidence vote also saw the Social Credit leader, Mr Beetham, caught by surprise. The Opposition was expecting Mr Beetham to speak to the motion so it would stay on the Order Paper during the remainder of the Budget debate. But Mr Beetham stayed seated, despite frantic attempts by Labour members to alert him to the chance

to speak. He eventually responded to their shouts and beckoning, slowly rising to his feet, but by that time Sir Richard had put the vote.

Mr Beetham said later during the Budget debate that the Labour Party should not expect him to be part of their strategy. “Certainly when I’ve not been fully informed about it.”

The confidence motion came on the second night of the debate, with the Opposition citing the need for the Government to explain why the Budget “does not tackle the desperate economic problems of New Zealand.” The Opposition is expected to try to lodge the motion again, and have another speaker rise before it can be put to the vote so that it stays on the Order Paper until the end of the debate.

Labour’s finance spokesman, Mr R. 0. Douglas (Manurewa), who put the confidence motion, said the Government was determined to fiddle the books

and hide the true size of the internal deficit, which is forecast in the Budget as $3.1 billion. The Government “is determined to use every loophole available to it to hide the level of current expenditure being paid out of loan money,” he said.

The Minister of Energy, Mr Birch, said the Opposition was critical of the deficit, but did not offer any alternative policies. “What would the Labour Party do if it was in government?” Mr Birch asked.

“Would it put up taxes, decrease expenditure? Would it cut the health vote, cut education, cut National Superannuation?” Mr Birch said the big difference between the Budget of the last Labour Government and the 1983 Budget was “that inflation today is running at 1 per cent per quarter, about 5.6 per cent on an annual basis.” In 1975 the annual rate had been 15.7 per cent, and inflation was rising, he said. Mr Beetham said the

Government was lost and had no real answers. “Like the Labour Government before it, it is sinking into the quicksand in its pathetic attempts to borrow its way out of debt,” he said.

The most alarming feature of this year’s Budget had been the ballooning public debt and the amount now required to repay it annually. “In 1983, for the first time, it passed the billiondollar mark.

“This year for the first time the total interest bill has overtaken not only education but also health spending to become, after social welfare, the second largest area of Government expenditure,” he said. Mr Beetham also had harsh words for the Government’s record on unemployment. The latest figures showed that the Government’s attempts to choke inflation out of the economy was choking the economy itself. He called on the Government to scrap the unem-

ployment benefit for schoolleavers and use the money to instigate “meaningful part-time work schemes that will end the destructive nonsense of paying our young people to sit around doing nothing.” The National member for Awarua, Mr W. R. Austin, defended the Government’s record on unemployment, saying it compared very favourably with other countries.

The rate was about half that of European countries such as the Netherlands because the Government was prepared to bear the cost of a large deficit.

New Zealanders had to decide what they wanted — higher unemployment or a lower deficit, he said.

Mr P. Neilson (Lab., Miramar) asked how big the deficit actually was. “The Prime Minister last year attended a meeting of accountants and told them when he was active in the profession they always had three sets of accounts: one set for the shareholders, one set for the Inland Revenue Department, and the real one.

“The problem I find is that we never get to see the real one,” Mr Neilson said.