This is an extraordinary Budget. It is extraordinary because it is notable more for the problems its own text discloses than for the solutions it offers.

If we look at the Budget tables, the documentation that comes with the Budget, we see that the bad news is set out there.

And the bad news in terms of the big picture facing this country is that our anticipated gross domestic product growth over the coming year is now lower than it was previously expected and forecast to be; that our export volume growth is now slower and more uncertain than it was before, and that the global slowdown that the Minister mentioned in his speech has now become more deep-seated and protracted than was first expected.

The documentation then says that there is, however, some off-setting - allegedly - good news.

The good news allegedly is this: in the short term we can confront these problems because of our strong export growth, which the documentation says is actually slowing. So that is a bit of pretty shaky good news. We have been helped, it says, through this transition because of an abnormally competitive exchange rate. But we actually know that that advantage is declining, as well. We have been helped through this transition because of previously strong employment growth, but those figures, according to the Budget, will become static over the next year or so. Because of the mounting pressures that have been there through employment growth, the Budget also notes that inflationary pressures are mounting and that in the forthcoming quarter at least we will be at the top of the 3% band that the governor has to operate in.

So that is the good news - very qualified indeed.

But if we look at the Budget tables, we see that they reveal other, deeper distortions.

For instance, the top 12% of New Zealand taxpayers - and they come in at only $50,000 per annum or more - now pay 50% of the income tax in New Zealand. The Budget documents show that. That is not a fiction; it is simple addition from the Budget documents. In terms of producing this high-income, high-growth society, these same documents also reveal that three quarters of New Zealanders earn less than the average wage.

So here we are, two decades down the road of major structural reform - from both the left and the right now - yet we have failed in that time to see any significant lift in our growth and performance rates beyond about 2.5% per annum to anything like the 5% plus that we need to be striking constantly if we are to achieve the objective of making this country once more the best place in the world in which to bring up a family.

But our problems are deeper than that. Because we are small and isolated, and therefore cannot our geography or other place in the world, we know, and we have had it drummed into us, that we actually have to be sharper and bolder than most to prosper.

But this Budget shows that we are not and that we do not really have any inclination to be so. In short, we have a society that is preoccupied with its division against itself; where our lack of performance over so many years and in so many areas has left us increasingly embittered and divided; where we are always looking for the next handout or the next offer of advantage from someone else; where we have no coherent vision about what we want to be because we are preoccupied with dealing with symptoms rather than fundamental causes.

The sad thing about this Budget is the message it really sends is that it has all got too hard. The problems are too endemic, so let's forget about trying to address the big picture. Let's just merely concentrate on making things work as well as they can, and that is a very limiting and narrow message. It aligns the Minister of Finance with Emperor Nero.

This Budget is an uncoordinated set of ministerial announcements brought together under a document masquerading as a Budget. There is no vision, there is no strategy, there is no sense of optimism or direction. What we have instead is purely what we could describe as a management document.

I think the fundamental problem that this country faces, which the Budget fails to address, is that because of our history in recent times and the lack of certainty and confidence we feel, there has to be a fundamental realignment of our commitment aimed at restoring the basic confidence of all New Zealanders.

I particularly think that we have to do much more to recognise and reward the contribution of the New Zealand family, which is the cornerstone of our nation, to celebrate their achievements and not for ever see them as just another source of income to be raided, to be tucked away in a piggy bank, or to denigrate their contributions as being simply not worth the country that has borne them so much. New Zealanders individually are legendary for their talents, their skills, and their innovative capacity - the No. 8 fence wire mentality.

Somehow we have to capture that individual spirit and turn it into a national spirit if we are to get above the slump and morale and confidence that has really dogged this country for probably the best part of a quarter of a century and beyond. We are still living in the shadow of our failure to adjust to the major industrial changes that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s when the British entered the European Community.

The need for New Zealand to refocus and readjust has simply got beyond us, and we are paying the price today with this Budget, which really takes us nowhere at all. We need to be looking at ways in which we can build firstly, strong families because from strong families come strong communities, and from strong communities comes a strong nation.

In the light of those figures I quoted right at the beginning in terms of the tax burden now being faced by New Zealand families, we need to look at much more radical ways of enhancing their prosperity to ensure their positive input to the future development of this economy and society. It may well be that the issue of income-sharing or income-splitting that has been raised from time to time needs to come back on to the agenda today as a way of breaking out of some of the problems we have - some of the straitjackets we have got into - with the current benefit-tax mix that we have.

I welcome this aspect of the Budget: we also need to recognise, to a much greater extent, the contribution that the voluntary sector makes to the working of our economy, and I acknowledge with gratitude the $31 million package that the Budget does make provision for in that respect.

Overall, our ambition must be to once again give New Zealanders a genuine stake in their country that is based more on respect for their core values - what they themselves contribute as New Zealanders - rather than this mentality we have developed over a long period of time of transitory handouts, buying off this group or that group, keeping these people happy or that group of people happy, and simply hoping that at the end of the day they will all feel sufficiently inclined to go out and carry on with things the way they are. It is simply not good enough.

I accept the point that the Minister has made that the whole nature of budgeting has changed over the last 20 years - it certainly has. We no long have Muldoon-type extravaganzas, thank goodness, but this Budget goes to the absolute ultimate extreme at the other end of the spectrum in terms of being a nothing document.

We do have an expectation that at one point each year, at least, a Government comes to Parliament, lays before it its vision and its plan, and then we can see the strategy and we can work out where it seeks to take this country over the period of the future. In this instance, we are left lacking that vision.

What we have today, as I said before, is an uncoordinated set of announcements that really could have been put out by way of a media statement rather than a Budget.

New Zealanders tonight who will go home and watch all of this on their television screens will end up drawing two conclusions: firstly, their lives have not changed one iota as a result of today's announcements - not one iota; secondly, they will wonder what all the fuss and all the hype is about and then tomorrow morning they will wake up and life will carry on pretty much as usual and the fundamental problems we have today that we ought to be addressing will still be there and, at this rate, they will still be there next year and they will be there for as long as this lack of vision resides within this Government.

Ends