Deputy Speaker, Minister, it would seem as if I am going to speak as an adversary and opponent. I don't wish to do so. I have great respect for the Minister. Minister, we all recognise that you are trying very hard. I read attentively what you say in between the lines of your policy speech. I think that history, when properly written, will recognise your warnings and efforts and what you contribute to this Republic.
But nonetheless, my job is to call a spade a spade and to look into this Budget. The impression that one gains is that this talk about alignment with the National Development Plan, NDP, is nothing more than talk. I do accept, Minister, that that is not your talk because in your Budget speech you have been careful in stating that it is moving in that direction but that it has not been done. The committee has taken it one step back and made the statement that it is implementing the NDP. Why? How? It all remains to be seen.
The way it would seem is that we have the basic, same budget structure where legislature after legislature wears a different frock over a body which is becoming larger and more out of shape. The first frock was the RDP, which then became Gear, then the New Growth Plan, and now the NDP.
The nature of this body is that of a welfare state struggling and aspiring to become a developmental state. We all endorse the notion of a developmental state but we must look at things the way they are and not how we wish them to become.
The reality is that the bulk of our budget goes into sustaining an ever growing number of people who by necessity or incentives of the budget are becoming dependant on the state - 18, possibly 20 million people. The reality is that the machinery of the state is transferring ever greater measures of resources from the state to the industrial apparatus and is forcing consumers to transfer ever greater measures of their own resources to the industrial apparatus.
It is economic growth driven by government subsidies, private subsidies, forced in an environment in which government alters the rules of free- market enterprise, and artificially increases the prices of goods and services in the South African market.
The hard solutions are available. And it is not with greater taxes, surely not with the carbon tax - the window tax of our time. It is with cutting budgets, promoting real efficiency within government. The solutions are obvious, at least to someone like me. Get rid of the Department of Public Works and Public Enterprises, privatise South African Airways, sell off Denel and break up Transnet into two competing companies. Break up the Infrastructure Company, Infraco, into two competing companies, so that we can finally have some proper internet access at a comparable rate, as in any of the other countries in the world - one on the east side and one on the west side.
It is not the way of creating ... [Interjections.] I wish Mr Jeffery were not so annoying. It is really difficult to concentrate. Minister, you are going to have a constitutional problem in taxing people within one area on a different level. It is ... [Time expired.]