Appropriation (2017/18 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, Imprest Supply (First for 2018/19) Bill

I move, That the Appropriation (2017/18 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2018/19) Bill be now read a second time.

I thought it might be helpful at the outset to let members know exactly what these two bills are. The Appropriation (2017/18 Supplementary Estimates) Bill makes new appropriations and changes to appropriations in the 2017-18 Estimates to reflect decisions taken by either the previous Government or the current Government since the 2017-18 Estimates were finalised in April 2017 prior to Budget 2017. The Imprest Supply (First for 2018/19) Bill provides interim bulk spending authority for the first two months of the 2018-19 financial year until the Appropriation (2018/19 Estimates) Bill is passed in August.

So, just to be absolutely clear, what the National Party just voted against was making sure that there’s money to pay public servants for the next two months. So just to be really clear on what the National Party—

💬 Hon Member: And beneficiaries.

And people and superannuitants, and enough money for Housing New Zealand, and all of the above, is what the National Party just chose to show New Zealanders that they didn’t want to approve of for the Government to have enough money to run for the next two months. Fortunately, the very unified Government on this side of the House casts the votes to make sure that passed.

But the main thing I want to talk about today is the other bill, the Supplementary Estimates bill. This is, essentially, looking at what happened in the 2017-18 financial year that needs to be tidied up because it wasn’t part of the original appropriations. Because we’ve had a change of Government, there’s rather a lot to do in this area. In particular, the majority of the large changes to appropriations and capital injection authorisations relate to the Government’s 100-day plan, because being a busy and active Government who wanted to get on with the job the moment that we arrived here, there was a certain amount of expenditure that needed to be appropriated and capital amounts to be injected into the economy.

Probably the one of those that’s here in this bill that I want to speak first about is the restarting of Government contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. So the bill makes the appropriation of $500 million within the Supplementary Estimates. That is the first payment from the Government to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund since July 2009—

💬 Hon Member: When?

July 2009, when the last Government decided they were going to put up the shutters on Government contributions to the super fund.

💬 Andrew Bayly: Oh, but you didn’t want us to take on debt, did you?

Now Andrew Bayly may be—I can’t quite interpret, but he may be saying there was a global financial crisis and perhaps that would have been a reason to have suspended Government contributions, and in fact the then finance Minister, Bill English, went on television and he said, “When the Government books get back into surplus, we will restart these Government contributions.”

💬 Hon Member: Did he?

So we might have differed but that was—it’s in here. It’s in here—for this appropriation, the $500 million that we’re putting in here in the Supplementary Estimates. The reason we have to do that is because the previous Government didn’t put those contributions in. They said they were going to do it when the books got back into surplus, but when the books got back into surplus—no Government contributions; not prioritised. So it is good that we are able through this legislation today to make the necessary financial adjustments to reflect that contribution.

The Prime Minister and myself had the great honour of going across to Treasury and going to the big internet bank in the sky and pushing the button that saw that contribution go through. I have to say it was quite a scary moment, actually, just in case we hadn’t got the right account number, because there was some concern that if they’d entered the wrong account number, $500 million was winging its way—actually in fairness it was $70 million; they do it in contributions.

💬 Chris Bishop: Don’t worry, Grant. It’s only money.

Chris Bishop wouldn’t notice an extra $500 million in the bank account out there in Hutt South, but the rest of us would.

I’m sure the New Zealand Superannuation Fund’s very grateful for that. What that means is that across the forecast period of this Budget there will be $7.7 billion extra going into the super fund. By the time we get to the end of the forecast period, the fund is estimated to be worth $63 billion. So the fact that the Government can continue to make contributions under this coalition Government, I’m very pleased about.

The other area I just want to mention within this Supplementary Estimates bill is the money that’s required for this year to get the fees-free policy under way and going. I want to congratulate my colleague the Hon Chris Hipkins on the fact that he was able to pull this together so quickly. It relied upon some cooperation and collaboration with the tertiary institutions in New Zealand, and the amount that we are bringing across here turns out to be around $254 million. There are some ups and downs in terms of costs that we are expecting to face, but in terms of the 2017-18 year, that’s what’s required.

What that policy means is that we are opening up the opportunities not just for young people to go to university but for people who have never trained beyond school before to be able to take that up, be that in the trades, be that doing an apprenticeship, or be that in workplace training. And it is important to note, too, that because of the cost structures that are around apprenticeships, that means that actually it’s worth two years’ free fees for the apprentice and the employer. We want to make absolutely certain that we are giving every New Zealander the opportunity to train and retrain. This policy is an important plank underneath that. Yes, it will help school-leavers, but it is also about looking ahead to a future of work where we know people who work in industries that are changing, that are being affected by technology, need that opportunity to go and do courses and programmes. They won’t be three-year degree programmes necessarily; they may be short, modular courses—six weeks, six months. That facility is provided for in this policy and funded through the Supplementary Estimates that are in front of us here today.

There are also a range of other changes here. The large ones that I should mention, particularly the reinstatement of the Main North Line in the South Island—the $140 million there to help meet the costs, pending KiwiRail’s insurance claim. Now this is very important because KiwiRail is going through the process of one of the largest ever insurance claims that New Zealand has seen for the rebuilding of that line. They do not have that insurance claim back, and the very reason why we have Supplementary Estimates like this is that we can provide that money in the short term to make sure we get on with the job of giving that vital transport link what it needs.

Equally, for the people of Christchurch, there is a transfer around money for Southern Response, who are the insurance body responsible now for all of the old AMI claims down there. There is a need ongoing for funding there and $137 million needs to be transferred across here. There are also the regular changes that are needed for things like IRD to be able to move forward with its work in terms of student loans and the capital injection that it needs as well.

The other item I want to mention is around school property portfolio management, and this is an area where the Minister of Education and myself are well aware that we are facing a situation where the schools in New Zealand did not get the investment they needed for the last nine years. The Minister, during the Budget process, as he uncovered more and more about what hadn’t been funded, has raised with me the importance of us taking a long-term view of how we make sure we have the school facilities that we need. In this bill here we’ve got around $180 million being moved forward for the Supplementary Estimates to make sure that we are able to meet the costs of a number of school property projects where there’s been revaluation. We have to do this here in this bill now for today, but it represents just a small part of what we need to do to make sure that our school property portfolio is up to scratch.

There are several other appropriations that have been put in place here—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: What about tarmac?

Not so much on tarmac in this one, Mr McAnulty. That comes under a different heading. But here what we’re doing is tidying up the accounts so that they are ready to go for the rest of 2017-18, and indeed the imprest supply bill—that will cover us off for the expenses of the Government through to August, when the appropriations come back. I have much pleasure in recommending these bills to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Well, I rise this afternoon, of course, to take a call in this debate on both the Supplementary Estimates and the imprest supply legislation, being, obviously, the bills that both adjust the financial accounts of the Government for the completion of the year we’re currently in, the 2017-18 year, and then the mechanism by which Governments are provided with the authority to spend money for the first part of the coming financial year, the year 2018-19, until, obviously, the formal Budget process works its way through.

But in terms of this House and this debate, what it really is, in a more tangible sense, is the first iteration of this Government’s approach to managing the books. It’s the first iteration of us seeing how the Labour - New Zealand First - Greens Government is planning to use the incredibly strong economy that they have inherited, and what we are continuing to see is that this is a Government that is fiscally incompetent, that was not ready for Government, and that has not moved beyond the sound bites of policy. They have no substance, they are as shallow as a puddle, and as we work through the details and the costings of their policies, more and more that’s becoming utterly and apparently clear.

It’s very easy, actually, for politicians in Opposition—as the Government were just a few months ago and as, frankly, they fully expected to be post the election. That’s clear by the lack of preparation that they undertook. It’s very clear when a Government hasn’t done the work. We see that they have found it so easy to simply say things—“We’re going to build houses, we’re going to plant trees, we’re going to fix the world, we’re going to house the homeless, and we’re going to feed the hungry.”—and then they get into Government and they go, “Oh—expletive—”, and they work out that, actually, they have over promised, they don’t know what it’s going to cost, and they have no idea how to deliver. That is what we are seeing through the Supplementary Estimates, the imprest supply legislation, and the pre-funding of the Budget commitments, because that is, of course, what this bill does.

If you look to the promises made—the extensive promises made by this Government in Opposition during the election campaign and in the Speech from the Throne—they had no concept of what was even possible, they had no concept of what it would cost, and they clearly have no concept of how an economy works and what’s needed to keep growing the engine room of our economy, to keep our businesses strong and productive and positive. You only have to look very lightly at any number of business confidence surveys to see the utterly clear message that businesses are sending to this Government: “We don’t like what you’re doing, we don’t trust you, and we don’t have any confidence that you’re going to get it right.”

Now, we have seen repeatedly from this Government—from Grant Robertson, from David Parker, from Iain Lees-Galloway, from Stuart Nash, from Megan Woods—that they don’t particularly care what the business economy is telling them; they don’t particularly care what the officials are telling them. Anybody who expresses an opinion that doesn’t suit their ideology is dismissed and degraded. I mean, we’ve seen the Minister of Justice, in the House, stand up repeatedly and say every single legal academic and expert in this country is wrong. We’ve seen the Minister of Police saying he doesn’t bother to read advice he doesn’t like, that doesn’t suit his needs. We’ve seen Megan Woods say she’s received advice but she just disagreed with it, so she ignored it. We’ve seen Grant Robertson tell us they haven’t bothered to get advice on the fiscal impact of one of the most significant announcements they’ve made—the announcement to end oil and gas exploration.

This is a Government that patently is not concerned about the long-term effects on the economy, and that should worry New Zealand desperately. It should worry New Zealand because in this legislation that we are debating, we are seeing spending being hard-wired in, in that age-old Labour way. There’s one thing Labour Governments are good at—well, there’s two, actually: taxing and spending. This is a Government that is doing both.

So in the election campaign—it’s not that long ago—we all heard Jacinda Ardern standing proudly on the stump, saying “There will be no new taxes under a Government that I lead.”, yet what has happened? Well, they’ve come into office; the Auckland regional fuel tax that was only ever talked about for Auckland is not only now in place and pushing up fuel costs in Auckland but, in fact, is staring down the barrel of every region in New Zealand, as council after council are lining themselves up to say, “We’ll have some of that free money the Government is handing out, too.” Quite apart from the fuel tax, they’ve put up taxes already, in the first nine months, by $2.5 billion. That’s what’s funding the spending in these proposals—$2.5 billion. That’s only in the first few months, and that’s before Michael Cullen gets his fingers on the full range of new taxes that he is looking at.

The impact of the policies that we are seeing funded through the Budget, through the imprest supply and begun in the Supplementary Estimates, are hurting hard-working New Zealanders. That’s where it really comes home to roost. It’s not actually about the economy or the fiscals or the numbers; it’s about the Kiwis who suffer, and here’s what happens: you have fewer jobs in the economy. Under National, 10,000 new jobs a month were being created. You take the steps that this Government has taken to put the heebie-jeebies through the business community, and do you know what that number’s down to already? It’s down to 4,200 per month—less than half of the new jobs. That hurts Kiwi workers. It means less choice and lower incomes.

We know the cost of petrol is going up. The hardest-working—some of the Kiwis who are doing it the toughest—are now facing more than 25c a litre extra on their petrol under this Government. This Government, who pretended to come in and care about hard-working New Zealanders—one of the first things they do is act to put petrol prices up when they’re already going up. One of the next things they do is drive just about every landlord out of the private rental market and push rents up. You look at the change in rents under this Government. That goes straight to hard-working New Zealanders, the very New Zealanders that this Government told us they cared about.

Of course, when you put costs up for business, when you put the minimum wage up, when you put the petrol prices up—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m not doing any of that.

—when the Government puts the cost of transport up, the very thing that happens is the cost of goods goes up. So New Zealand families, and those particularly at the lower end who are struggling to get by, they lost the tax cut that the National Government had put in place for them, they lost the strong, growing economy that the National Government had in place, and they lost the fact that 10,000 new jobs a month were being created. What have they had so far? They’ve had higher petrol prices, they’ve had more taxes, they’ve had higher rents, and they’ve had higher costs of living. That is the reality of this Government when you get past the sound bites.

I want to look at some of the other spending initiatives we’ve seen in these pieces of legislation, and I want to start with one of the ones that the Minister of Finance talked about in his contribution. He trumpeted proudly that Labour were going to put money back into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. Here’s what he didn’t say: Labour are borrowing to play the stock market.

The money going into the Cullen fund is being borrowed. How many financial advisers in New Zealand would say to New Zealanders, “What you should do is rack up some debt and go and play the stock market.”? Hardly any. “Not many, if any”—to quote Scribe—I would suggest. Yet Grant Robertson thinks that that’s an excellent way to play with New Zealand’s finances.

He is borrowing money to play the stock market, and he stands in this House and says, effectively—and I paraphrase—“Aren’t I wonderful?” That’s what he’s saying. Well, actually, no, Mr Robertson; you’re not. Running up more debt, increasing our debt in real terms when the economy should be growing well, when it should be in the best financial times, and when it has got some of the best terms of trade we’ve seen for many years, is a nonsense. It is a nonsense to be putting up taxes, to be raising debt while the economy is so strong—and why? They overpromised, they didn’t understand the cost of the promises they were making, they paid far too much of a dowry for Mr Peters and his ensemble, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

If there was any truth whatsoever in this nonsense that they are peddling about some crisis in underfunding, why have they funded less into health than National did? Why have they funded less in education than National did? The operational grants for schools are lower this year than they were under National. The increase in district health board funding, as a percentage, is lower this year than it was under National. The total funding to health is lower this year than it was under National last year, and, in fact, it will be lower every year for the next four years. That is not a crisis in underfunding. The same is true in infrastructure spending. We keep hearing about the infrastructure deficit that somehow they need to fix. There is less money in this Budget going into infrastructure than under the National Government.

The Labour Government want to talk about nine years they have to fix. I would suggest to them that they have inherited one of the best economies in the world, and in nine months they have already shown very strong signs that they fully intend to break it and hurt New Zealanders.

Well, here we are hearing from the Opposition, the Opposition with a very large chip on its shoulder, repeating the tired old lines—the tired old lines that certainly aren’t resonating and that keep changing. They keep changing. They can’t have it both ways. We’re either taxing or spending, or we’re not doing anything.

I’m so proud to be standing up here and talking about this Budget and the Supplementary Estimates. I want to start off with education, as well, because this is $310 million authorised for the implementation of that first-year fees-free policy for post - secondary education. It is one of the most fundamentally important changes—and we’ve got a number of them—that this Government has introduced. It’s just the beginning. It’s the beginning of a much bigger strategy around the importance of lifelong learning. That previous Government, now that Opposition with a big chip on its shoulder, could never think beyond a year or two ahead.

This Government is thinking about the big picture. It’s putting in place the foundations for the future for rebuilding the critical public services, for building a strong economy, but it’s doing a lot more than that. It’s actually thinking about what the shape of the future is going to look like in the near to medium term. It’s making sure that we’re putting in place now the ability for people not to be left high and dry and for people to be able to continue to learn and to build the skill sets that are needed for the jobs of the future, so that we’re not having major disruptions in our country and in our society.

That’s why I’m so proud of that policy that was put in by the Hon Chris Hipkins in post - secondary school education, which isn’t just about kids going to university or polytech. It’s about people going and doing trade apprenticeships, but it’s also about people who are in the workforce now having the option and having the ability and the encouragement to be able to go and retrain for the jobs of the future, so that they can have a future. I feel incredibly proud of that.

Our productivity story over the last decade has been woeful. One of the biggest issues that emerged under that previous Government was our low productivity and our lack of ability to be thinking about where the value-add in our economy needed to be and what were the things that needed to be done and be put in place for that. That Government never went there—never went there. This Government is putting in place the foundations so that we can boost our productivity. We can do that volume-to-value story that will mean that our children and our grandchildren will benefit from that. It will be a much stronger economy and a much more unified and inclusive society, and we’re rebuilding critical public services at the same time.

I heard the comments made by Amy Adams around putting money back into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. What New Zealanders can do is trust that this coalition Government is safeguarding the future of superannuation. How can they argue that we are not doing that? This, again, goes to longer-term thinking, which is something that New Zealanders have been crying out for.

I give speech after speech after speech to business audiences in this country, and what they are crying out for is a plan and to know that there is a Government with a plan. [Interruption] Oh, they’re laughing because they consider that the new economy is not—are they not effective businesses? Are they not the businesses of the future? What they want is a Government that listens, a Government that’s prepared to work with them, and a Government that has a plan, and that’s what this Government has.

New Zealanders can trust this coalition Government. It was Michael Cullen who set that fund up and it’s Grant Robertson who has resumed those contributions after Bill English and Steven Joyce ignored it, and that is the hallmark, that is the legacy, of that previous Government. It is that they ignored the future. That decision by National meant that we forwent more than $23 billion for the Superannuation Fund over that period. Our plan for the Superannuation Fund is to contribute $7.7 billion over the next five years, with $500 million in 2017-18, and I’m really proud to be part of the Government that has done that.

On the infrastructure deficit, the infrastructure deficit from the previous Government—the national housing crisis is just a part of that. The infrastructure deficit in education and in local government and the lack, again, of a plan and a lack of forward thinking—we are putting in place the foundations for the future. This Supplementary Estimates bill invests $600 million to invest in the water and roading infrastructure to support the increase in housing supply. Under our infrastructure spending, this Government will invest $42 billion—that’s $42 billion—in new capital and infrastructure over the next five years.

That previous speaker, Amy Adams, had the temerity to get up and say that this Government was not investing as much in infrastructure as they did—$42 billion over the next five years is a Government that has a plan and is putting in place the foundations for the future. We are absolutely committed, and that is what is resonating out there, because people know that this Government will rebuild critical public services and will put in place the foundations for a strong economy.

In the regions, lifting regional productivity—well, my goodness, where was that? Where was the impetus for that under the previous Government? This bill appropriates $124 million to lift regional productivity through the Provincial Growth Fund. This Government is addressing regional productivity—something that that previous Government neglected for far too long. You see it everywhere you go around the country, and you also see the people and the communities that are just so thankful that they have finally got a Government that is listening and a Government that is enabling regional productivity to be a priority and that is seeing the value in regional New Zealand. The $1 billion per year Provincial Growth Fund—it’s the biggest fund of its type in the world per head of population. It represents the biggest investment in our regions in our lifetimes. What that is demonstrating is true leadership as we roll out our plan to make New Zealand’s economy more productive, more sustainable, and more inclusive.

This Government had a 100-day plan, which it delivered on. We’ve delivered a Budget which puts in place the foundations—the true foundations—for a strong, productive, sustainable economy and to rebuild critical services, which resonates with New Zealanders all around New Zealand. We have put a value on regional New Zealand, we’ve put a value on housing, we’ve put a value on education—particularly on lifelong learning—and we’ve put a value on health and the need in health to rebuild critical services in health.

I’m proud to be part of this coalition Government, I’m proud to be speaking on these Supplementary Estimates, and I’m proud that this country can have a future for everyone, because everyone is included in this Government. It’s a Government for everyone, not just for a few.

Oh, that was a long 10 minutes—that was too long for 10 minutes. Actually, the member who’s resumed her seat is the Minister for broadcasting, and I did not hear her mention one word about the $38 million of funding boost for Radio New Zealand that that Government promised and has not delivered on. Thirty eight million dollars—another broken promise.

I actually think it’s an indication of the quality of the Government that the Hon Clare Curran was the second speaker in this debate. I think it pays some tribute to the Hon Clare Curran, but it doesn’t pay much tribute to the Government. And to hear her say that the Labour, New Zealand First, Green Government has provided certainty for the provinces—well, they’ve certainly given a lot of certainty to Taranaki! They’ve, basically, stuffed their economy.

They’ve gone after farmers. They’ve gone after anything that makes money. They’ve spent years talking about dirty dairying. They’ve gone after oil and gas. They’ve taken an industry which has been the biggest payer in terms of wages to ordinary Kiwis who work in that industry of oil and gas, and they have gutted it. And they can sit here today talking about the provinces—they wouldn’t know how to spell it, and that’s the problem.

So you’ve got here a Government—I think, quite unkindly, called the accidental Government—and they promised so big on the election trail and they delivered so little, and I thought in quite a cynical way, really. So if you look at, for instance, the previous speaker from the Government, the Hon Grant Robertson, Minister of Finance—which I have to say does send shivers down most people’s spine who know anything about finance—he cynically stood up in the House today and he said of us in the Opposition, “Well, they’re not voting for this bill. Therefore, they’re not voting for wages for nurses.” I have no idea why he said that.

I looked on my media indications from the Google people, and guess what? The nurses are striking. I didn’t see the nurses striking under a National-led Government; I see them striking under a Labour, New Zealand First, and Greens Government. I didn’t see teachers striking under National, and yet we see teachers striking under this Government. We’ve got strikes happening in the transport sector, in public transport in Wellington and in Auckland, and that’s happened under a Labour, New Zealand First, and Greens Government.

The people striking are the very people who thought that this Government was going to deliver for them, and their response to this Government and their Budget, which would have to be the biggest flop Budget ever—this dud Budget—has been to go on strike. If we all know nurses, in our families and elsewhere, they are the most dedicated people to their work, and for them to give strike notice, it says a lot.

Having listened the other day to one of the people who are leading this particular strike for the nurses, the comment was this: “The Nurses Organisation”—in other words, the union—“have been promising all sorts of things that were going to happen under Labour. The only thing that’s happened is we’ve had to strike.”, and that sums it up.

Then, of course, this Budget is also a big $2 billion for KiwiBuild, which, it turns out, is “KiwiBuy” off the plans from a few developers, hope they know how to build properly, hope they don’t go broke halfway through the build, hope we haven’t given them too much money up front, and hope it’s going to be all right—Phil Twyford, KiwiBuild—and it’s just amazing. So we are now, what, eight or nine months into this Government, and how many of these 100,000 houses that were promised have been built? How many? Any number?

💬 Hon Nicky Wagner: Zero.

Well, the Hon Nicky Wagner knows the answer. The Labour Government’s very quiet on this. The answer is zero.

What do they have to show for all these months? Well, Phil Twyford’s gone along to a developer who was struggling, who was working in my electorate—he loves the fact it’s in my electorate, for some particular reason—and that particular builder says that he was struggling, he can’t get financing, couldn’t do it. And what that really says is this: if someone’s a developer, you can’t get your financing, and you’re not maybe the most financially secure developer, Phil’s your man. Phil’s your man. Go to Phil—he’ll buy it.

What happens once you’ve bought this house? What happens once Phil Twyford’s bought the house? He’s going to sell it on to the KiwiBuild first-home buyer. And what do we know about who can be that KiwiBuild first-home buyer? Well, apparently anyone, as long as they’re a first-time buyer in New Zealand. I don’t know whether or not it’s the first-time buyer by themselves or a first-time buyer in this particular relationship they might be in, not the previous one—no detail has been forthcoming from Phil Twyford. I’ve asked parliamentary questions. I’ve asked written ones; I’ve asked oral ones. We’re asking Official Information Act questions. No answers from Phil Twyford, because nothing has been agreed.

That tells us that we’ve got a Minister with $2 billion, with no idea what he’s doing. He’s moved from “We’re going to build all these houses and we’re going to build them in our first 10 years.” to now saying, “Oh, we’re going to buy some houses.”—apparently, not build any houses at all, because he hasn’t got any carpenters, plumbers, electricians, or gib-stoppers; the people that you need to do this—and they’re going to buy them off developers, in many cases where the developments have been failing.

And why should anyone buy a KiwiBuild house? You’d like to think that you’d want to do it so that someone got a start in life—that, actually, the asset that they’re buying might at some stage have a bit of value added to it—and, at the same time, you’d like to hope they were going to have a nice neighbourhood full of people who are aspirational, trying to get ahead, looking after their properties, looking after their neighbourhood. And what we have from the same Minister, the Hon Phil Twyford, is that State house tenants under his watch—now, we have a no-eviction policy for antisocial behaviour. So that means that if you’ve bought your KiwiBuild property, you’ve been in the ballot, it’s great news, you’ve got your KiwiBuild property, and you pay for it, next door, Phil’s got one of his houses and there happens to be some antisocial tenants. What happens then? You move, apparently, according to Phil Twyford.

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Who moves?

You move.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, not me.

Not unless, Madam Deputy Speaker, you wish to buy one of those KiwiBuild houses, which I’m sure you’re not silly enough to do.

So should the KiwiBuild homeowner have a tenant problem with Housing New Zealand, what we’ve heard from this Minister today and previously is they’re on their own. They’re on their own because Housing New Zealand now has a no-evictions policy for antisocial, gang-connected behaviour from tenants. As long as they pay the rent eventually, at some stage—possibly in the future—it’ll be just fine.

And this is a Government that has overseen the biggest jump in the State house waiting list of any. So after all the carrying on, all the talking in Opposition about what they were going to do for State house tenants and people who needed a house, that waiting list has grown by 2,000, by the Minister’s own admission in the select committee the other day—2,000 under his watch. He’s only been in the role for eight or nine months. Imagine what could happen in a year. There are 2,000 people now on the waiting list.

💬 Hon Clare Curran: Tired, old Opposition. Tired, old line.

And that member over there—somebody; I don’t know her name—has called out something about tired, old—

💬 Hon Clare Curran: Lines.

Don’t talk to me like that—an unknown person. What I would say to that person is this: don’t make out you’re going to deliver to people. Don’t tell people they’re going to get $38 million at Radio New Zealand, Clare Curran, and then fail to deliver.

This Government will be a one-term Government. It will be a one-term, and we will make sure of it.

Thank you for the opportunity, Madam Deputy Speaker, to speak to the Imprest Supply (First for 2018/19) Bill and Appropriation (2017/18 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, which I’m not sure former Minister Collins was actually doing, or the person before her, or the person before that. So I’ll take the opportunity to address some of the comments made by the member opposite, although I’ll start by contrasting the styles of the two Governments.

What the imprest supply and Supplementary Estimates bills highlight to me is this is a Government that is willing—and, in fact, more than willing; ensuring—that the people of New Zealand and their representatives are actually talking about the issues. We’re actually talking about them, and we’re dealing with them, as evidenced in these pieces of legislation. I say that because, in contrast, only a year ago there were six stopwork strikes under the previous Government’s control, but you didn’t really notice it because what that Government was good at when they had the reins, as it were, was suppressing this information. Not stopping it, because people need the ability, and it’s one of the strongest and most powerful ways of people having their voices heard, but—urgh! It’s frustrating listening to the contributions from those opposite.

Amy Adams, for example—my understanding is she’s the spokesperson for finance in Opposition. Apparently they want the New Zealand public to believe that the National Government never taxed anyone. We know, in contrast, they never spent on anyone in New Zealand, but they keep throwing up this whole tax and spend argument like they never did it. It’s just unbelievable, and quite sad to watch as they make the argument, when, yes, they taxed. They increased petrol taxes in their time. They did it constantly and consistently. They increased GST in their time, despite actually saying that they wouldn’t. It was that party that introduced the brightline test, capital gains, to New Zealand’s legislation books, yet somehow they’re telling the public that it is this Government that did that.

One of the examples that Ms Adams used was around this whole tax and spend argument, and then in the conclusion of her contribution she made the point—and it was a very interesting one, which is highly debatable. But the point she was trying to make was they spent more on hospitals and homes, and she listed—it’s really hard to talk about because it’s so hard to believe, but her final argument was that party spent more than we are now.

💬 Darroch Ball: It doesn’t make sense.

It just typifies and is a great example of the arguments coming from that side of the House. They’re inconsistent and contrary. They don’t make any sense.

💬 Hon Paul Goldsmith: It’s not our fault you can’t figure it out.

You’ll hurt my feelings if you say that, Mr Goldsmith.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I won’t.

Despite Ms Adams’ calls of the sky falling in, unemployment continues to fall in New Zealand, whilst incomes rise in a steady pace. Our forecasts say it, but OECD forecasts have steady, sustainable growth in New Zealand over the next year at over 3 percent, all the while—in contrast to the kinds of National Party - sponsored business confidence surveys—our businesses are increasing their investment on non-residential fixed assets. For the Opposition’s benefit, in non-residential fixed assets you’d include transport equipment, plant and machinery equipment, those assets that are growing the business, improving productivity—investment in the business. All the while that they’re decrying lack of business confidence, those very businesses in New Zealand are spending more than they ever had in investing in their businesses in New Zealand.

So it’s an interesting time that we live in, because unemployment’s falling. Wages are going up, which apparently—I won’t go there. That was another argument from Ms Adams. But she decried the spending on our provinces. She said the Provincial Growth Fund was a waste of money. I am not quoting her literally—those were her words to that effect. Our provinces deserve so much better than the now-Opposition provided them in their time.

These communities, these people, are the lifeblood of this country, and this is a Government that has stood up and said we will invest in those provinces, because we know if we do that, it’s good for everyone in New Zealand. They, disproportionately more than any other part of the country, provide a return to New Zealand’s economy more than anywhere else, and this Government’s investment now will empower that, will accelerate that, will grow that, and the nature of the investment is such that it is being done by a great team of people who are working with the communities. In fact, thus far it is the communities themselves who are coming to the Government and saying, ‘This will be good for us—not just good for us; this will create jobs. This will create sustainable jobs. This will grow our communities, this will grow our local economy, and this will be good for the people who live in our provinces.” That was a promise we made to them leading into the election, and that is a promise that we have kept and are delivering on every day as a Government, and I’m proud to play a small part in that.

I just wanted to touch on some of the key Supplementary Estimates that have been raised in this legislation, because, as I started with, they highlight that this is a Government that is addressing the issues, that is willing to engage and talk about issues that the previous Government—that National Party—never wanted to talk about while they were in control of the Government.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Oh, rubbish—just rubbish.

So education and training—I’ve hurt Mr Smith’s feelings, so there’s one little win for the day. Thank you, Mr Smith. This is very important. So just in this legislation—just in the Supplementary Estimates—we’re talking about $310 million being spent in education and training, and some of the previous speakers on this side of the House highlighted the fact that a lot of that actually is in the capital and the infrastructure of our schools that had been neglected over nine years such that some of those teaching environments were unsafe. It was, again, one of the 100-day plan policies, and the New Zealand public knows that in that 100-day plan we kept the promises that we made, and in this legislation today we’re ensuring that we can continue to do that as we wait for the Budget to be passed in the House. I think that’s in August.

So education—what we’re saying, and what perhaps isn’t obvious for those opposite in this House, is that this is an investment in the long term. There are now 80,000 people who are eligible for the fees-free programme, and—as was pointed out earlier again, but is worth repeating—in doing this we are empowering those who are looking at trade training, not just universities or polytechs but those in apprenticeships and trades, and that’s incredibly important to get that fundamental groundwork. Actually, there’s quite a lot of money to be made at the moment in those professions.

💬 Hon Paul Goldsmith: Come on, this is waffle.

Wait your turn, Mr Goldsmith. This bill invests $600 million in water and roading infrastructure for timely increases in housing supply. Despite what the Opposition is saying, this Government is on its way to building more homes, and we’re getting the job done—a job that they knew needed to be done in their time, but they went on a tour of Auckland to find suitable sites to build homes, and some of those sites were power exchange sites and graveyards, from memory. It was an unbelievable example of that previous Government in action. Anyway, Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you for the opportunity. It’s good enabling legislation. It’s obviously timely, and it’s a pleasure to support. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We’re speaking, obviously, about the Budget that has been passed by this Labour - Greens - New Zealand First Government, that is wreaking so much havoc in this country and this economy. But when we look at the overall Budget there’s no question that it represents, as the last Budget did and the Budget before that, a huge investment on behalf of all New Zealanders in health, in education, in innovation, in keeping our people safe through the justice sector, and in all the many ways in which Government contributes to the lives of New Zealanders.

Interestingly enough, I was watching that well-known political commentator Anika Moa on TV recently when she interviewed Winston Peters. Winston Peters, who, as everybody knows, is, effectively, the Prime Minister at the moment and will be for the next few weeks—it’ll be the first time in New Zealand’s history that the leader of a party that has garnered so few a vote, about 7 percent, ends up as the Prime Minister of the country for an extended period of time, but that’s all by the by. Winston Peters was explaining his understanding of the New Zealand economy. His two basic points were that it all went wrong in 1984 and, secondly, that subsequent to that there was a massive free-market experiment that has led to all sorts of terrible consequences for New Zealand—excessive and uncaring capitalism.

I just wanted to sort of make those points because, obviously, he seems a little bit—

💬 Darroch Ball: What are you speaking on?

I’m talking about the Budget and the context to the Budget.

💬 Darroch Ball: You’re not talking about the legislation.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I decide. The previous speaker spoke for three minutes without mentioning the Budget, all right? So I decide.

Thank you. So the acting Prime Minister says 1984 was where it all went wrong. He forgets that before 1984, we had a totally unsustainable economy, high unemployment, and massive Budget deficits and we couldn’t carry on the way that we were doing because we couldn’t, ultimately, pay our bills. Subsequent to that, we had reforms.

Now, when you look at this Budget, and you look at the Budget of last year and all the Budgets of the previous National Government, there’s no way that any honest assessment of that could be made which says that this is a hard right capitalist country that we live in where we’ve gone according to the trickle-down theory and somehow we don’t care about people. If you look at the Budget and you look at last year’s Budget under the National Government, most of the Governments spending has been about taking money off better-off New Zealanders and giving it to New Zealanders who are struggling. There’s massive redistribution. If you look at the papers in the Tax Working Group, you’ll see that, basically, half of the population of New Zealand receives more in services—whether it’s free education, free health, Working for Families tax credits, and grants—than they put in, and a relatively small group, a third of the population of New Zealand, pays, by far and away, the largest proportion of tax.

So, fundamentally, what this Budget represents is a massive redistribution of wealth and income from those who are better off to those who need it, which is right and proper. But you have to have a very warped view of the world, if you look at that and say—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don’t.

Sorry. Any commentator, such as the acting Prime Minister, Winston Peters, would have to have a very warped view of the world if you were trying to categorise that as trickle-down economics or some hard right, free-market, extreme example of capitalism. So we don’t have that in New Zealand, we haven’t had that in New Zealand, and in New Zealand we invest very heavily in ensuring that all New Zealanders have access to the opportunity to live a full and healthy life.

Now, you can have arguments about whether you should spend even more or redistribute even more, and this Government has talked a big game about doing that. We haven’t seen a huge amount of evidence of it. Yes, they cancelled the very modest tax adjustment that would have seen wealthier families receiving a small or modest tax cut, but there was no coherency in the way that they went about it, because they then went and turned around and spent $2.8 billion on middle-class welfare in terms of giving free access to tertiary education. It probably means that the overall effect of the Budget is less redistributive than it was before, so they’re muddled and confused in their thinking. But, certainly, there hasn’t been a fundamental shift to what the New Zealand Budget is all about.

But what we have seen since they have been in Government is a series of decisions that have undermined the business confidence of this country. We know that the economic development Minister thinks all those surveys are junk, and we just heard from the previous speaker, Fletcher Tabuteau, who said that they’re National Party - sponsored business surveys. I’m sure the ANZ will be thrilled with that characterisation of their work, but that’s how it was described. And that arrogant view, that more than 1,500 business leaders who were asked about what their investment plans are for the next year, what they’re planning to invest in—and the answer to that question by 1,500 leaders was they don’t know what they’re talking about, according to the economic development Minister, because the results are pure junk, according to him. I don’t think they’re junk. I think what they indicate is that all those business leaders and would-be investors are putting their hands back in their pockets and they’re not spending and they’re not investing because there is an enormous amount of uncertainty about what this Government intends to do.

We all know that there’s 122 reviews going on about what they should be doing, the biggest of which is around tax policy. This Budget that we’re debating today didn’t include the introduction of a capital gains tax, but the Government has signalled that they want to do that. The ideological leader of this Government—not the Prime Minister, not the acting Prime Minister, but David Parker, the most ideological Minister in this Government in the economic sense of view; there’s all sorts of strange ideologies in the other areas of the Government, but in economic terms—desperately wants to introduce a capital gains tax and will do so, and it will probably affect people’s KiwiSaver accounts and all sorts of other things that will surprise people when it comes up. But when people are trying to make a decision about whether to invest, to hire people, to buy new plant, to buy a new business, or to take a risk, they’re all sort of asking themselves, “Well, am I going to be paying a capital gains tax or not?” They don’t know, and as a result of that and all sorts of other uncertainties that this Government has introduced, there is less government going on.

Anyway, time rattles on. There’s been over the last couple of weeks this Estimates process, whereby we on the Opposition side have had a chance to question Ministers. It has been a rather dispiriting period because we haven’t got any decent answers. We had, for example, Shane Jones come in to talk about the regional economic development portfolio and the $1 billion a year that he is meant to be spending on the Provincial Growth Fund. We call it the political survival fund, because it turned out that the vast majority of the spending so far was going to one region. Northland had asked for about $55 million worth of projects. They’ve got $61 million, so that was good for them—they got more than they asked for. But the rest of the country had asked for $240 million, and got $42 million. So there would seem to be a bit of a bias in the way that the fund was operating.

So we asked him some questions about that—got no answers. One of the most fundamental questions we asked was: is this actually $1 billion that you’re spending as you talk about—is it new money? It turns out in the Budget figures that, actually, a quarter of the $1 billion is not new money at all; it is what the previous Government were doing. So it’s actually $750 million new funding for the provinces. But, even worse, it turned out that of that $750 million, actually, $250 million - odd of it was funding for forestry over 10 years. So it’s not actually $1 billion that’s being spent next year. A quarter of that is existing spending, and a quarter of the rest of it is actually going to be spread over 10 years.

We asked some basic questions about how that money is going to be spent and he didn’t answer, refused to answer, and fudged. We all know, in this House, that that Minister has a very strange approach to answering a question. He speaks in complete gibberish most of the time. Today in the House he was talking about planting seeds and impregnating things, and I didn’t know what he was talking about, but that’s how he operates. So we haven’t got any clear answers about exactly how much money we’re spending in the Provincial Growth Fund, and it’s a disgrace.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to get to rise and to debate the Supplementary Estimates 2017-18. I just wanted to pick up on some of the comments that the previous speaker, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, was making.

There’s a debatable point, I think, about the nature of business confidence surveys and how they affect the economy. I think it’s entirely legitimate to say that, you know, it’s a well-run survey, it asks people their opinion, and it’s therefore a statement of what people think. The issue that we’ve had with using business confidence surveys as some kind of barometer for economic performance, as opposed to actual economic performance as a measure of economic performance, is that business confidence surveys tend to be high when there is a National Government and tend to be low when there is a Labour-led Government, regardless of what’s actually going on in the economy. So, absolutely, there’s no relationship to what’s going on in the economy.

The last time business confidence surveys were this low was when Sir Michael Cullen was running 10 years of surpluses, making massive investments in things like the Superannuation Fund, getting debt down to zero—all of the things that the National Party thinks are absolutely terrific, all of those actual things that actually take place in the economy that National are so, so keen on. Business confidence was really low during that period of time. It bore no relationship to the actual economy, which is why now, every time they bring out one of these business confidence surveys to say, “Business confidence hasn’t been this low since the last time Labour was in Government.”—well, Labour happened to be running an incredibly strong economy during that period of time.

So it’s all very good to pull out somebody’s opinion, but it doesn’t actually match the reality of what’s going on in the economy. I just wanted to start by picking up on that point, because it is nonsensical. They do keep trotting it out all of the time, because it’s the only piece of data that they’ve got to grasp hold of, even though it doesn’t bear any resemblance to actual reality.

I just wanted to pull some highlights about some of the things that are in the Appropriation (2017/18 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. As Grant Robertson said when he opened this debate, because there has been a change of Government which does have different priorities to the old Government, there have been a number of significant things that have changed that have shown up in this Estimates bill. From the Green Party’s perspective, in our confidence and supply agreement with the Government we’ve classified three areas—that is the sustainable economy, a fair society, and a healthy environment. This appropriations bill brings out a number of things in line with that confidence and supply agreement, and I’ll just pick three each in each of those three categories.

The first is in relation to the sustainable economy. As someone who was an Opposition spokesperson for a long time, I kept banging on about the need to invest in the long term and in the health and well-being of our economy over multiple decades, particularly when we have a demographic bubble in front of us. I remember having a real go at the National Government at the time for completely focusing only on the short term and ignoring the long term when they refused, even when things started to recover post - global financial crisis and post-earthquake, to start reinvesting in the Superannuation Fund. So one of the things I am most proud of in this Government is that in this Supplementary Estimates we have restarted payments to the Superannuation Fund.

One of the things that I keep hearing now Opposition members saying is “You shouldn’t borrow to invest. Who borrows to invest? Why would you borrow to put money into the Superannuation Fund? You know, it doesn’t make any sense.” Well, let me tell you who borrows to invest: everyone with a mortgage, everybody who buys a house, every single business that ever borrowed money to be able to build plant and to get extra trucks on the road, or whatever it is that they do for a business. Every single business borrows to invest. Every homeowner borrows to—that’s who borrows to invest. So if you have to do a little bit of that in order to make sure you’ve got long-term income for this country, then I’m down with that, particularly at a time when you’ve got historically low interest rates.

Now, having said that, we’re actually not, because the other thing that we’re doing is we’re continuing to bring down net debt as a portion of GDP. The thing that the National Party finds, sort of, hardest to get their heads around is the idea that you actually can walk and chew gum at the same time. You actually can invest in the long term as well as pay down your debt, as well as invest in social services, right? This is former members of that previous Government who insisted that the only reality that you can possibly have is not to invest in the future, to not just cut debt but also cut spending as a portion of GDP, like that was somehow going to make sure that we had a long-term future, and I think it did anything but.

The second thing that I’m particularly delighted about in the domain of the sustainable economy in this bill is the shift in transport spending. We’ve gone from a situation where, literally, 350 kilometres of gold-plated motorways in urban areas won out over every other mode of transport, won out over regional roads and road safety; won out over ensuring that there was any kind of rail, freight or passenger rail; and won out over mass transit in our most congested cities—in particular in Auckland, which suffers from $1.6 billion a year of lost productivity due to congestion charges. Finally—finally—we have a Government that is prepared to make the investment decisions to rebalance the transport portfolio, to decongest our cities, and to make sure that our regions have got the kinds of local roads that they need to move people and freight around the country. I think that is the second thing that I’m most proud of in this, in relation to the economy.

The third thing—and one that’s very, I think, dear to the hearts of every New Zealander—is actually to start to solve the housing crisis. It is interesting to me that the now National Opposition uses the phrase “housing crisis” now that they’re in Opposition, because there wasn’t a crisis when they were in Government, apparently, but now that they’re in Opposition there is. So they’ve finally woken up to the reality of the situation that there is a housing crisis, if not woken up to the reality that they’re now in Opposition.

There’s been a lot made of KiwiBuild and other parts of the housing portfolio. One thing that I just want to focus on from this bill is putting some funding into setting up a rental warrant of fitness for homes, because I don’t think anybody previously in the debate has mentioned this yet. I think it is absolutely fantastic that finally—finally—in order to rent a house, you have to guarantee that it won’t kill the resident. That’s pretty remarkable, right? That’s not actually a huge standard. It’s been standard for a long time, for many decades, that if you want to rent someone a car, that car has to be roadworthy. It has to be able to survive an accident and has to not kill its driver or its passengers, but the same has not been true of our homes, and we have had tens of thousands of unnecessary winter deaths and tens of thousands of kids in hospital with entirely preventable respiratory diseases as a result of really shoddy rental homes. So, finally, we’ve made a tough call, and this appropriations bill actually makes it possible for us to finally put in place some minimum standards around our rental properties. So, for that, I’m tremendously proud of this Government.

So it is, I think, a great pleasure for us to support the Supplementary Estimates bill, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to take a call in this Supplementary Estimates bill debate. After today’s appearance at the Estimates review, I think the list of Ministers of this Government that’ve demonstrated that they are completely out of their depth can have a new name added to it, and that is David Clark. Today, we exploded the myth of the $8 billion of underfunding—remember that? This is a health spokesperson and a health Minister that has crusaded around the country, saying that the health budget had been underfunded by $8 billion over four years, and that’s what this Government was going to do to remedy it. They campaigned on that being Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update (PREFU) 2017 plus $8 billion. They misled the public into believing that this Government would do $8 billion more than what a National Government would do.

💬 Chris Bishop: That’s right.

Quite right. Only that’s not what the reality is, because what we heard confirmed today by the Minister was that nothing could be further from the truth. Simply turning and keeping the lights on in our health sector over the next four years, whatever Government was in place, would have cost $8 billion. And do you know what this Government’s going to do more than that?

💬 Chris Bishop: What?

Nothing. Not a single thing. In fact, what we have is a seriously long list of broken promises. It started really early, and it started with the GP visits.

Remember that Dr Clark went with Jacinda Ardern to the Māngere market in August last year, to a hero’s welcome, to say—because the previous Government had already just announced a significant package of improvements to GP prices for Very Low Cost Access practices. I can’t remember the exact money—it was about $300 million over four years. It was very significant. It was going to help another half a million New Zealanders. And they said, “We can do better than that. Every single New Zealander will have a reduction in their GP fees—every single one.” They said, “We’ve worked it out, we’ve consulted with the GP community, and this is our promise: $250 million - odd a year.” But where is it? They’re now crowing about the fact that 580,000 New Zealanders are going to get—that’s actually a contested number, but let’s say that it’s right; 580,000—discounts on their GP fees, only they told the New Zealand public it would be over 4 million. That is a broken promise, and it’s one of many.

I want to remind the House what David Clark said after Budget 2017. He said, “District health boards this year need at least $650 million just to stand still, and they’re $200 million short of what they need.” That was a year ago, and he got the chance to fix it. He became Minister of Health. He inherited coffers that were higher than the PREFU had. The numbers are looking better. They wanted to borrow more. They wanted to do more. He said $650 million last year—that’s what they needed just to keep the lights on. He gave them $549 million. He could not even meet his own lofty expectations for himself. He let himself down by $110 million plus inflation, and it’s no wonder that the district health boards (DHBs) are squirming over the massively high expectations that are being set for funding that cannot be met. The best manifestation of the effect of that failed expectation is in the very sad news that the New Zealand Nurses Organisation have now issued a notice of their intention to strike on 5 July, and I’m very sad about that.

I respect the fantastic 30,000-odd public hospital nurses and the other 25,000 nurses in other parts of our health sector who go to work every single day and do a fantastic job. It’s a measure of their frustration and disappointment at the expectations that were raised by this Government that have not been met that they have to take the first strike action of their union in nearly 30 years—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: How long?

—and they can sheet that home—nearly 30 years, Dr Smith, since there was a strike. I believe it was under a previous Labour Government—I’d need to check that—and it’s no surprise when the talk is big and the delivery is zero.

Here’s a really interesting factor: they go on about district health board (DHB) deficits, but the analysis of DHB deficits in the last 18 years—until the change of Government—makes very interesting reading. I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth noting again because we’re seeing a new trend emerge since this Government came to office. The average deficit between 2000 and 2008 by DHBs was $66.8 million per year. That’s a lot of money, but bear in mind the DHBs have had in that time probably $8 billion and $10 billion of funding appropriated. Between 2009 and 2017, without even adjusting for inflation, it was 5 percent lower than that. The vote was higher; the deficits were lower. The previous National Government funded DHBs better than the previous Labour Government did.

So the lofty promises come. They come in and they go, “We’re going to fix deficits.” Do you know what’s happened to the forecast deficits since they came to office? In the six short months since they have been in control, it has gone up by 50 percent—50 percent.

Treasury are now forecasting $211 million of deficits. It was $140 million. It was high—it was uncomfortably high. It’s gone up 50 percent since November, and I think we’re going to need to get used to more and more bad news from a Minister who is completely out of his depth.

The lofty promises have been met with the reality that rescue helicopters in Hamish Walker’s electorate and in Scott Simpson’s electorate of Coromandel are at risk. The Lumsden Maternity Centre is about to close. The Rural Health—

💬 Chris Bishop: What about Dunedin Hospital?

Well, good question, Mr Bishop. I’m leading to the big hit, but thank you for your excitement over the list. The Rural Health Alliance have lost their funding. What about the Roxburgh children’s camp? This is a fantastic facility that has been providing care to our most vulnerable tamariki for generations. What did this Government that wanted to do more, be more—

💬 Chris Bishop: That’s right—compassionate.

—more compassionate—gone. Absolutely gone. And then, Mr Bishop, we have Dunedin Hospital.

Now, I have run a gauntlet, and the previous Government was actually criticised by Treasury for going too fast, not too slow—not that you would have that understood by the previous spokesperson, Dr David Clark. How much money was appropriated for the actual build of Dunedin Hospital, a hospital that he petitioned the Health Committee on, imploring the previous Government to start the construction before the last election? Zero. There’s money for design, but not a skerrick of money can be found in this Budget for Dunedin Hospital.

There are so many other disappointments of this Budget, and we are debating a Supplementary Estimates bill and here’s why I think that’s relevant: because there’s no doubt that David Clark will need to come back, cap in hand, to the Minister of Finance and go, “We pared it back too much. We talked a good game, but we didn’t appropriate enough. We didn’t control the spending.” The $8 billion, Minister of Finance, was a myth. The net increase in the vote was zero. In fact, it was lower this year than the previous Government’s appropriation for health in 2017.

This is a deep, deep disappointment, and the biggest disappointment is that such lofty expectations were raised and they weren’t met, and I think we’ll be hearing a lot, lot more. Time doesn’t even allow me to go into the debacle that is Middlemore Hospital, when they created the myth—

💬 Hon Members: Ha, ha!

Oh, laugh if you like. Laugh if you like, but when a Minister phones a chair and says “Shut the hell up. And you’re fired because you embarrassed me over buildings, but, by the way, if you stay quiet, we’ll give you another job.”, there is a word for that. They can laugh about Middlemore Hospital, but there’ll be a postscript. There’s more to come, and so sit up and listen, because these guys are going to learn a great lesson—that is, when a Minister overreaches, they get into big trouble. So chuckle away, Ms Curran, but there’s more to come over that.

This is a split call—five minutes.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tuatahi, he poroporoaki tēnei ki tētahi wahine toa o te atamira kapa haka, ko Talei Morrison tōna ingoa. Ko tēnei te rā nehu mō te wahine rā, te manu tīoriori o te kapa haka o Te Mātārae i Ōrehu. E hine, ka tangi taku ngākau ki a koe mō tō whānau hoki; haere, haere, haere atu rā ki Hawaiki nui, Hawaiki roa, Hawaiki pāmamao.

Rātou ki a rātou, tātou ki a tātou; tēnā koutou e Te Whare.

[Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Firstly, allow me to farewell a champion performer of the haka stage, Talei Morrison. Her funeral is today, and she was one of the celebrated leading female voices of Te Mātārae i Ōrehu. My heart goes out to you and your family; farewell, farewell, farewell as you go to Hawaiki nui, Hawaiki roa, Hawaiki pāmamao.

Let us leave those who have passed on and return to us who are the living; greetings to the assembly in the House.]

Thank you for allowing me to contribute something small to the Supplementary Estimates legislation. Aren’t we doing well—aren’t we doing well? Aren’t we doing brilliantly? We are doing a great job, and if you would believe the other side of the House, you’d think that the world was going to crash. You’d think that the sky was falling in, and it’s not that bad.

In fact, they just need to cheer up a little. Cheer up team. Start looking on the positive side of life, because there is a lot going on. And if you just step outside this gracious building of ours, you’ll find that there are plenty of people all around New Zealand that are celebrating this Government—that’s right—because they are becoming people that are going to benefit from our policies. This coalition Government, with our confidence and supply partners over here, the Green Party of Aotearoa, we are doing a brilliant job, and they are telling us so, day in and day out.

Let’s talk about a few of those things that they are celebrating alongside us, because coming up on 1 July, it is going to be a momentous day. That is the day where our superannuitants who are sitting there in their very, very cold houses, trying to wrap up warm so that they can keep themselves alive this winter, will actually be able to access the winter energy payment—that’s right—where they will be able to access some funding to help with their heating costs, because it’s a real pressure when you get to their age. They’re telling me, “Tamati, thank you. Thank you for putting that in there. You’ve heard our plea. We’ve been freezing for the last nine years, and thank you to the Government for throwing us a bone and giving us something to look forward to.”

On top of that, what they’ve realised is that we are a future-focused Government. When we talk about superannuation and the fund that’s been sitting in stalemate for quite some time, they’re saying to us “Thank you for restarting those contributions to the Superannuation Fund.” because—you know what?—they haven’t been. It’s been sitting there dormant for quite some time, and they’re afraid that with the influx of people that are coming through that are going to be collecting their super very soon, maybe the country won’t be able to afford it. So they’ve been saying thank you again to us for that. Our plan for the Superannuation Fund is to contribute $7.7 billion over the next five years, with $500 million from the get-go.

💬 Education: education is winning out of our Budget, and, although the Opposition might pooh-pooh the whole idea of spending some money on tertiary education, the students are happy. The students are happy because they get to go and they get to not have that barrier that is cost to their education. It wasn’t so long ago—and I would even theorise that quite a few members in this House took advantage of a time when here in New Zealand, tertiary education was free. That’s right, it was free. It was free once upon a time, but then one day it stopped being free, and, unfortunately, students of our generation were the ones that had to go through and start paying—and not paying a little bit; actually paying a lot—to the point where it became a barrier to their further education. So I am proud to stand here and give the kids of today an opportunity and say, “You know what? This Government is looking after you. This Government is contributing to your well-being, so that you can be circuit-breakers for your whānau and go back and help educate them.”—move them on to further education.

Māori are happy about this because—you know what?—Māori rates of tertiary education are not that great, they are not that high, and anything that can reduce barriers to Māori to be able to take up tertiary education has got to be a good thing and you just can’t dispute that. You just can’t dispute that. So that’s why $310 million was authorised for the implementation of the first year of fees-free post - secondary education. This is a brilliant, brilliant Budget.

Well, thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to focus in this contribution to the debate on the absolute disarray that the police portfolio is in. Minister Stuart Nash and the coalition Government have gone up and down the country talking about 1,800 front-line cops coming in three years. Let’s just run through what has been revealed as we’ve unpicked that over the last six months, because it’s all very well to talk big—and Stuart Nash is very fond of talking big, talking a good game—but let’s just actually walk through that.

Well, first of all, almost the moment he got his ministerial warrants, Stuart Nash was in the paper talking about, “Oh, maybe we’ll have to bring in some foreign imports. We’ll go back to the days of bringing in foreign police officers.” Well, that lasted about 24 hours before Nanaia Mahuta said, “Mate, we won’t be doing that. Last time we tried that it wasn’t a very good idea.” Also, he probably got a call from the Prime Minister, who said, “We’ve just run an entire election campaign demonising foreigners. It’s probably not the world’s greatest idea to start talking about bringing in foreign police officers the moment after you’ve got your ministerial warrant.” So that went out the back door.

Then we found out that of the 1,800 police, 880 of them were actually funded by National—right—through the Safer Communities package. So every single new police officer on the street right now—there’s about 350 of them; they’re coming through the police college right now, they’re going out on the street—is not funded by the Labour Government; they’re funded by the National Government, and that’s actually in the Supplementary Estimates we’re talking about. So the 881st officer, the first genuine new officer, they’ll probably roll on to the street maybe halfway through 2020, maybe—let’s see.

Then we revealed through questions in Parliament that of the 1,800, only 1,100 of them are front line; 700 of them are working on organised crime. Very important work, none the less, but Stuart Nash has turned up to Parliament and he says—get this, colleagues—“A police forensic accountant is a front-line officer.” Now look, police forensic accountants do very important work.

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: I’m an accountant, and I do important work.

Michael Woodhouse says he’s an accountant and he does work—they do very important work. They’re going to help smash the gangs and all the things Stuart Nash talks about. But, look, when there’s a family harm incident, when there’s a burglary, or when there’s an assault happening out there, I don’t reckon you’re going to call a police forensic accountant and say, “Mate, get down there and sort out that incident.” I don’t think you’re going to call that. So I don’t think we can call them front-line officers, nor can we call the authorised officers—250 of them within the 1,800—front-line officers either.

What else can we reveal about it? Well, the other interesting thing is Stuart Nash sought $515 million through the Budget—we know that from the leaked Cabinet paper that he doesn’t want anyone to know about, but we know that he did; $515 million—and he said, “$515 million—I can do 1,800 police in three years.” He didn’t get that. Then he said, “In the alternative, if I get $346.4 million, I can do the 1,800 police in four years.” Well, do you know how much Grant Robertson gave him? He gave him $298.8 million. So he’s short, and he admitted this to the Justice Committee. He’s short $220 million, and what that means is either he’s going to have to go back later on next year for more money, blowing out their Estimates, or, secondly—and this is the far more likely scenario, actually—the new police are going to come out over five years.

Well, he says he’s got assurances from Grant Robertson that he’s got the money. Well, the way the Treasury rules work, if he’s got assurances, it’s in the Budget documents. If Treasury and Grant Robertson have told him the money’s coming, well, Parliament has to appropriate that—that’s the way the Treasury rules work. So someone’s doing a bit of misleading, and we’ll wait and see who it actually is.

We know he received advice about getting the new police over five years, because he told me he did. And do you know what he said when I asked him about that in the Estimates? I said, “What did you do when you received the paper phasing options for 1,800 new police over five years?” He said, “Didn’t even read it.” I kid you not. I’ll just repeat that for the House. He said to the parliamentary select committee about advice from his own department about his flagship policy—1,800 new police, in the coalition document—“Didn’t even read it”. “Not even interested”, he said. I said, “Hang on a minute, Minister, this can’t be correct. You can’t be telling the select committee you didn’t even read the paper.” “Not even interested”, he said.

Not even interested—they’re not looking up and they’re not interested, because they know that, actually, to do that to a parliamentary select committee is treating taxpayers with contempt. For a Minister not to even read a paper—disagree with the advice if you like; Ministers are entitled to do that—is, frankly, treating Parliament with contempt.

I think it’s worth a reminder of what we are debating today, and what this particular debate is actually about.

💬 Hon Carmel Sepuloni: I could do with a reminder.

I thought you could, Carmel! It’s an appropriation bill on the 2017-18 Supplementary Estimates. Now, what that’s based around is the Budget that was set in May 2017, and, since then, stuff has happened: Government departments, in some areas, have had to spend a little more money than they thought they were going to need to, particular needs have come up, there’s been an election, and we have a new Government. All of that means that somehow government expenditure is changing—and it has changed—from the Budget that was set in 2017. As I’ll talk about a little later on, it’s not just the numbers that have changed but the values, too. So here today in Parliament, as part of our role, we are examining the Supplementary Estimates, making sure that they’re OK, testing them, and engaging in our role of scrutinising the finances of Government.

You know, I don’t think many people actually read the Supplementary Estimates. For those of you who are watching, here are the Supplementary Estimates—A4-sized, 457 pages long. If you’re listening, I’ll tell you that it’s 4 centimetres thick. It’s a lot of reading.

💬 Hon Carmel Sepuloni: How long did it take you, Deborah?

I haven’t read them all, and I suspect no one in this House has read them all. But here I want to pay tribute to the excellent public servants who have worked on these Supplementary Estimates, who have kept an eye on the money, and who have done all the figures. We owe a great debt to our public servants, and I think we should express our gratitude to them from time to time.

You see, government is not just what happens in the Cabinet room. Government is not just what happens in this House. It’s not just what happens in the select committees. It is also what happens in the ministries, the departments, and the agencies helping us to run this country, and I, for one, am very grateful to the public servants who enable us to do that. That is what we’re talking about today: all the work that they have done on these Supplementary Estimates. For that reason, I do want to sort of engage with some of the arguments that the Opposition have given us—in fact, the mistaken ideas that they have presented us with. I’m going to say “mistaken” because, surely, no one would say these things in good faith.

Let’s start with Amy Adams, who made the extraordinary claim—the extraordinary claim—that the former National Government had spent more on health than our current Labour and New Zealand First Government, supported by the Green Party. You see, it’s a really straightforward thing, and it’s got me really worried about Amy Adams, actually. You see, the only way you can reach those figures is if you count the TerraNova settlement. So let me just go to the exact figures—let me give you the exact figures. You see, in Budget 2018, the coalition Government allocated $750 million for health capital spend compared to Budget 2017 from the then National Government, which allocated $150 million. She’s just got that wrong, because $750 million is bigger than $150 million.

Let’s talk about the operating budget. If we look at the operating budget in health, we’ll see that in Budget 2018 the coalition Government allocated $3.2 billion of operating health expenditure. In Budget 2017, the amount that was allocated by the then National Government was $2.3 billion. Perhaps she just got the figures a little bit mixed up in her head—$3.2 billion is bigger than $2.3 billion. We could expect that of someone who didn’t know how to back out the TerraNova settlement. Frankly, it worries me that that is the capacity of the person they have as their finance spokesperson. Part of the job of the Opposition is to examine what the Government is doing, and you would at least hope—I would at least hope—that the person doing it knew how to manage figures.

💬 Hon Nicky Wagner: You are a bitch.

So we have—Mr Assistant Speaker, I’m sorry. I believe I heard an unparliamentary word.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): The member needs to take a point of order.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would like to ask the member on the other side of the House who used an unparliamentary word in response to me to withdraw and apologise.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Which member, sorry?

I believe it was Nicky Wagner. I may be mistaken, and if so I apologise, but I do believe I heard an unparliamentary word.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I didn’t hear the interjection, but I would ask the Hon Nicky Wagner, if she did use an unparliamentary word, that she would withdraw.

💬 Hon Nicky Wagner: I will withdraw and apologise.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Thank you.

Thank you. Let me carry on. I want to speak just briefly about what Mr Paul Goldsmith had to say, fantasising about taxes—fantasising, speculating about what taxes might come along. He was speculating outrageously. You see, we have introduced a Tax Working Group who are going to engage in a really well-thought-through structure for our tax Act and think about how our taxation system should be structured. Then we will be taking it to the electorate, unlike the former National Government, which simply imposed an increase in GST without taking it to the electorate in 2010. The people who engage in fantasy are not us.

I want to turn to what the Supplementary Estimates say about us and our values. What they say is that the coalition Government, supported by the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, is a Government that builds for the future, that doesn’t take the short-term temporary decisions but looks well into the future. As my colleague Mr James Shaw so beautifully pointed out, this Government is investing in the future by restarting contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund—the fund that is sometimes also called the Cullen fund, in reference to the foresight of the man who got it going, the man who was a Labour Minister making those courageous decisions for the future. We need that New Zealand Superannuation Fund because we know that with demographic changes, we are going to need to spend a lot of money on New Zealand superannuation in the future, and we are going to start providing for that now. That’s the kind of foresight that this Labour - New Zealand First Government has—prudent, sensible, valuing young people—because we will not impose burdens on them that we should be bearing ourselves. That’s exactly what is going on in education, as well.

We have introduced in these Supplementary Estimates a year of fees-free education for tertiary students—so that’s students at universities, students at polytechnics, students in trade training. It’s a year of fees-free education for young people as they leave school. This is from the Labour - New Zealand First Government that echoes the Government that removed the interest on student loans. Why are we doing this? Well, for starters, we do not want to burden our young people with huge debts. We want to actually value those young people and say, “We want you to have an education.” It’s also a commitment—a tangible commitment—to the value of education itself.

This side of the House believes in education, it believes in education for all, and it believes in free education. Why? Because the only way to have a decent society, the only way to run a great democracy, and the only way to ensure that each citizen can participate is to ensure that those citizens are educated so that they are able to be part of our country, to be part of our system of Government, and to be part of our community. That’s why we value education on this side of the House, because it is an enabling action. It enables people, and that’s why we think it should be free so that everyone may access it. We are committed to that kind of forward-looking, that values-laden spending.

Not for us the minginess, the cutting, the pruning, or the sort of just refusing to look to the future—we’re not into just mere management. This side of the House believes in Government—Government of the people, by the people, for the people; a real living, breathing, active democracy—and that is why we are investing and building for the future. That is why I am so in support of the spending that we have engaged in, in health, in education, in welfare—all the things that make this a decent country.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on the Appropriation (2017/18 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2018/19) Bill. Of course, I think we’ve heard today that these two bills are basically about ensuring that the Government gets sufficient funding to fund the variations to appropriations in terms of the Estimates bill, and the imprest bill relates to new financial spending in the first two months of the financial year until the Estimates bill is passed. Of course, we’ve seen similar sorts of situations where this doesn’t happen, particularly in the US, where, basically, Government closes down. So it is an important couple of bills that we’re talking about tonight, but principally it directs itself towards the money supply of the Government and what it intends to spend its money on.

I’ve got to say, when you look at the range of spending, some of it is good and some of it’s not so good. In terms of some of the key aspects, we’ve got the Rt Hon Winston Peters’ $700 million package for the curtains and carpets for the Stockholm embassy that, apparently, is the most important embassy to open in all of the world—$700 million for all those wonderful curtains and carpets. We’ve got the Hon Shane Jones’ $1 billion Provincial Growth Fund for the “Champion of the Regions”. Well, interestingly, today I heard in question time he had elevated his status. He’s no longer the “Champion of the Regions”, no; “Champion of the Country”—of the country, no less. Now, I’m just wondering what the Prime Minister might be doing when she’s sitting at home—and I hope she’s well. But when she may have seen that at question time today, she may have just asked herself whether she’s still as relevant as she thought she might have been, because I don’t know where you go beyond becoming the “Champion of the Country”.

💬 Todd Muller: The universe—that’s next week.

Oh, the universe, OK.

I think some of it provides a bit of clarity. I think one of the things that does provide clarity—we all heard about how the New Zealand First Party was going to look after superannuitants, and, of course, we had their proposal of a $700-a-week winter payment to superannuitants—

💬 Hon Clare Curran: Energy payment—winter energy payment.

Winter energy payment, if you want to have its full name—yes, that’s right. And of course in the Budget it was highlighted: 700 bucks for couples and how important that was. But what this shows—in fact, they’re not going to get $700; no, they’re not. They’re only going to get, roughly, about $350 to $380. That’s because there was some sort of technical issue that was somehow not worked through previously when they made that promise. There’s only three months, so in some ways it’s pretty easy: rather than spread it over five months, all you could have done is just gross up the value and pay even more over a certain monthly period, and still pay what you promised to pay, which is the $700. But no, when you get down to the detail, you find it’s a lot, lot less; in fact, for an individual it’s even worse.

I think the thing that struck me most of all that was missing in this Budget, and in these accounts, is the issue that there is no money, no appropriation, for mental health. I think that is the greatest oversight in this Budget. For all the work that had been done involving people like the Chief Science Advisor ,Sir Peter Gluckman, and a whole range of individuals who had worked on a range of packages to deal with mental health—we appropriated $100 million, and that has been removed. That has been put into, now, a new working group that will not report back until probably, at the earliest, early next year. By the time the Minister goes through and looks at it, there will be no new programmes implemented for at least two years, in my view. I think that is probably the travesty of this appropriation and Budget.

So I think one of the things we need to look at is the environment we are currently discussing this Budget around. I think the biggest thing is the decline in confidence. It’s no different from a non-performing or poor-performing Cabinet Minister. Once they lose their confidence—once they have lost their confidence—then that becomes a killer, and it’s the same for business confidence. When people and individuals start to lose their confidence, they choose not to invest. When they choose not to invest, they stop spending. Unfortunately, we’re starting to see the signs of it. There is an irrefutable connection between the loss of confidence and growth, or declining growth.

So it’s interesting looking at the Westpac survey recently. They’ve come out and said—this is their recent pronouncement—that the New Zealand economy will continue to underperform its peers for the next few years. Rather damning, I would have to say, particularly when that same bank, only a few months ago when it was under National, described New Zealand as a “rock star economy”. Then, on 19 June, there was an article that highlighted the consensus of a whole range of economic forecasters, including people like—not insignificant organisations, I’d have to say—Treasury, the Reserve Bank, BNZ, ASB, Westpac, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, and ANZ, all who are saying, and the consensus is, that they expect GDP will weaken across the New Zealand economy over the next two years. We had the Auckland Chamber of Commerce show that over half their business members—and, of course, business people employ people—expect the economy to deteriorate over the next six months.

Then we’ve had the Hon David Parker describing the ANZ survey on business confidence as junk—junk. Well, I’d say to you that one commentary that may be different from the others—you might accept it as not being valid, but when you get a complete raft of professionals and economists all saying the same thing, that, I believe, is something you need to turn to. Rather, we heard the finance Minister, I think on Tuesday, talking up the Truckometer and all those sorts of really professional surveys as being evidence that he thinks the economy’s still growing.

So what’s happening? That means it’s rather slightly alarming at the moment, and I hope it doesn’t continue, but we’re seeing rents going up on average by $20 a week, which of course hits lower-income people and also hits those people saving for a new house. We’re seeing food go up as a result of the increase in minimum wages and fuel prices, and there was a report on 19 June—I heard someone across the way saying—that healthy food prices for a family of four in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch have risen by up to $21 a week. Of course we’ve seen the fuel prices, and of course we’re going to spend more time tonight talking about the regional fuel tax, which, together with the new tax that this Government has imposed, will mean that in Auckland every person, whether you’re rich or whether you’re poor—and of course it will affect the poorer members of our community much, much more, by 25.3c a litre every time they fill up their tank, which, on average, is $15 extra every time they fill up their tank. That’s on the back of an increasing petrol price.

A couple of things in this Budget really worried me. One of them is that we’re talking about housing, and building and construction. Now, you’d think if we’re going to try and build all those additional houses—100,000, and, again, I hope the coalition agreement actually achieves an objective—you would expect that if you’re going to double the number of houses being completed every day, there would be a need for more people in training in building and construction. You would. If you want to double it, you would, even if you assumed some efficiency gains. Well, guess what? In this Budget, not one extra cent was devoted towards increasing training for building and construction, or the trades—or the trades. Well, it’s a disgrace.

If you want to try and achieve something, you actually need to set about doing something and being clear about it and putting your money where your mouth is. I just believe that’s, again, another travesty in this Budget.

Tēnā koe, e Te Mana Whakawā. Well, goodness gracious me! Where is the volume switch on this debate? There’s lots of noise but not much sense in there. As for sense—well, there was not only no sense; there was nonsense, because Andrew Bayly suggested that there had been no action on mental health.

Well, at the very same time he was saying that, I was doing a couple of jobs on my tablet here, and this message popped up. The first message came on 22 May from a social worker who is involved in the Mana Ake pilot in primary schools. She says, “I’m one of the social workers involved in getting this off the ground. There are certainly some challenges in the Hornby cluster.”—that’s a fair comment. Then what she said a day or so later was, “We’re getting the schools on board. We’re in the stage where we’re meeting with the key people. Our project manager at the district health board is doing a great job rolling this out.” So that was great—that’s in May.

You know what? On Sunday, she messaged me: “Hey, Duncan”—that’s me—“Just to let you know, Mana Ake is up and running in the Hornby cluster. We now have families to work with. It feels very real. Thank you.” That’s what we’re doing in Christchurch and that’s what we’ll be doing around the country. We will be having mental health professionals in every school there. So that’s what we are doing, absolutely.

This isn’t a Government that’s going to sit on its hands and watch New Zealand incrementally fall apart; this is a Government and this is a Budget that cares. This is a Government which is going to seize itself of the issues which are ahead of us and take care of them. This is a Government that is going to get on and fix the things that are wrong with New Zealand, and this is the Budget that we’re going to do it with.

It’s worth looking at these appropriations—and I don’t want to shout like the previous speaker; I just want to look at what’s actually going on. I want to just do a bit of a case study of Christchurch, because Christchurch is a really good example where some of these supplementary appropriations are simply things which naturally roll over, building on some good work that was done previously, but some of them are new. So $500,000 was appropriated, of course, as soon as we got into Government. We did this straight away. We didn’t wait for a Budget round; we did it, and now we’re going back and appropriating $500,000 for the Christchurch acceleration fund—an acceleration fund that’s been needed for a long, long time. That’s for the planning for that fund, as the former member for Christchurch Central, Nicky Wagner, should well know.

So we’ve now appropriated the $300 million and we’ve planned it in advance. Ōtākaro Ltd, an appropriation for the management of the anchor project—well, you need to appropriate some money to manage them once they get off the ground. So now we’ve got the Metro Sports Facility under way, and the concrete was poured, of course, on the Christchurch Convention Centre shortly after the election.

Of course, it’s worth recognising that there’s a significant appropriation there—$137 million—for Southern Response, and we’ve got to recognise that this remains an important problem in Christchurch and that we’ve got to resolve those outstanding claims. Southern Response, the wind-down company for AMI, which failed—the former Government did bail that out, as it should. We’re going to manage it to conclusion, and we’re going to put in a whole lot of frameworks around it to make sure that those outstanding claims are settled justly and in a timely fashion, because that didn’t happen.

We’ve set up an Earthquake Commission (EQC) inquiry. So money was set aside to form that inquiry as well, and that inquiry is badly needed because EQC has gone wrong, and you know what? We’ve got to make sure that doesn’t happen in future. We look around New Zealand, we look to Rangitoto, we look to Taranaki—which was in the news today—we look to the earthquake fault that this city lies on, and we know it’s going to happen.

I must say this: Christchurch is best placed to understand what those challenges are. We’re having a symposium in Christchurch very soon to revisit the symposium which the last Government deferred because it didn’t want to look at these questions. Well, we’re going to be really open and transparent. We’re going to look at those things and learn the lessons that need to be learnt, both from within New Zealand and from overseas. We’re going to examine that and share it so that this nation is prepared and resilient for the challenges that lie ahead, and they are substantial.

Of course, the member across the Chamber did do a lot of work around the Christchurch Cathedral, that icon of Christchurch, and there is, in all, $25 million set aside for that—a $10 million grant and a $15 million suspensory loan. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to move Christchurch ahead, and this Budget does it. It shows that this Government is a Government that cares, that manages, and that gets on. Thank you, Mr Speaker.