Annual Review Debate — Annual financial statements of the Government and Finance and Government Administration Sector

There are two questions in this next debate. The first is that the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the annual financial statements of the Government for the previous financial year be noted. The second is that the reports of committees relevant to the finance and Government administration sector be noted.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak to, principally, the second of those questions: those annual reviews related to the Governance and Administration Committee, a very hard-working committee—very capable members—and one which I feel absolutely privileged to chair.

💬 Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: And well chaired.

Thank you very much, Mr Bakshi—very kind of you to say that; I was going to say it myself and, in fact, did. So, in keeping with the spirit, and more importantly the Standing Orders, this will be a very non-controversial contribution from me. I do know that members from this side of the Chamber will have some comments to make on some of the reviews that we undertook, but there are some factual elements which can and will be raised in this contribution.

I’d like to begin with the State Services Commission. The State Services Commission is one of the best reviews to conduct, principally because sometimes members have commented that officials—chief executives, presenters—will take up quite a bit of time summarising the year before the committee. I wouldn’t call them cynical, but some people feel that that is sometimes to chew up time. The State Services Commissioner has a unique approach to dealing with these annual reviews. We say, “By all means, give us a summary of last year’s performance and then we’ll have some questions.” and he just says, “Thank you; I’ll take your questions.” So the summary is as short as it can possibly be, and we get plenty of time to quiz the commissioner about the things they’ve been doing.

One element which members on this side might choose to raise, and I’d welcome Government members also raising, is that we did notice in the expenditure that, in communications—and we think about the entity in State services and their core role—communications expense for them rose over $400,000 in the annual year in question, and so members probed the commissioner as to why that was. The response we received, of course, was that as they are trying to take more of a leadership role in developing the State sector, they believe that it is appropriate and necessary for them to spend more money on communications and on communications specialists—what, in the private sector, might be called “public relations”. Some members questioned the true justification for that, but that was certainly the view of the commissioner and something that I think we’ll likely keep a very watching brief on as we move through into the next financial year for review.

I’d like to talk briefly about the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA). We acknowledged some of the longstanding challenges, from a review perspective, of this particular department. It is, effectively, from an accounting or an accounts perspective, siloed into several areas, and those areas cannot be cross-subsidised. A surplus in one area—particularly in an area such as passports—cannot be used to address one-off cost challenges elsewhere. That tends to make for a challenging entity to review, because the obvious performance of the entity is just not that obvious, but we were reminded again by DIA that they have a future issue in passports where, at the moment, there is a surplus in that account, but with the legislative—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member, but the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Tēnā rā tātau katoa. Prior to the dinner break, the committee was debating the Appropriation (2017/18 Confirmation and Validation) Bill. We had reached the Finance and Government Administration sector. Brett Hudson has the call and has one minute 20 seconds remaining.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m looking forward to this last little while. I finished, as we rose for the dinner break, talking about passports within the Department of Internal Affairs and how there’s a surplus on that account but there’s a forward looking expense as we transition more people from five-year passports to 10, given the legislative change in the last Parliament.

I just want to round out my contribution talking about statistics. I do know that some members on this side are going to have quite a bit to say, I think, about this particular annual review, particularly census 2018, for which there was a large sum of money in the annual year appropriated to complete the census. The first point I would make is that despite all of the public talk about the census and the responses, the department of statistics confirmed to us that they did not spend all of the money appropriated to the census, which is a really interesting position. But, more importantly, the committee found it very difficult to get questions answered by the chief statistician. It’s worth reflecting for us all at this time that when Parliament convenes in select committees, we have an absolute expectation in annual reviews that questions will be answered, and it was a stain upon this year’s annual reviews that it was so hard for the committee to get an answer to its question.

Thank you, Mr Chair. During this stage of the debate, obviously we are addressing not only the annual reviews from the finance and Government administration sector but also the financial statements of the New Zealand Government. That’s where I want to start, probably not surprisingly, and that of course is annexed, I guess you would say, to the annual review of Treasury, which I’m going to come back to. But if we start with those financial statements of Government, I think it’s actually quite a telling snapshot of where the finances of this Government have come from, where they were, obviously, at 30 June last year, and actually, pretty tellingly, where they’re going.

What we see in the statements is the story of a Government that inherited actually very good healthy surpluses based on a good, well-performing economy, and in fact the statements themselves show that. So for the guffaws on the other side, this is exactly what the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee has recorded, that the Government had very good surpluses that it was working with. But what we’ve unfortunately seen is a legacy of those surpluses being frittered away on poorly targeted, poorly thought-through—I won’t even say investments because they’re certainly not—spending that has delivered almost nothing in real benefits for New Zealand.

So whether you want to talk about $2.8 billion on that failed first-year-free policy, whether it’s the KiwiBuild monstrosity that my colleague Judith Collins will talk about, we have a legacy of those big surpluses that these financial statements record as being frittered away. What makes that even worse is that the Government hasn’t put the attention into the growth machine that generates those surpluses. You only have surpluses if you have a Government that focuses on and understands the importance of the private sector and business in the economy. And when business is telling the Government, as they were all through this period and are continuing to, that they’re not confident, they don’t want to invest, they don’t want to grow, and they’re not feeling good about employing people—instead of listening and thinking “Actually, that’s something as a Government we should care about.”, you’ve got the Hon David Parker saying “Well, it’s all junk. Why would we care about any of that?” So the tale that the accounts tell is a very sad one of wasted opportunities, of a Government that has spent the hard work of New Zealanders over the previous decade to get into a good position, and, in fact, of an economy that is slowing down very quickly.

In these statements, we have some rather sad statements, in hindsight, from the Minister where he stated, for example, that he thought New Zealand’s economic growth was becoming more sustainable. Well, what a tragedy that is when we now have Treasury saying that our growth in the first part of this year is down to 2.0 percent. So while the Minister is sitting there singing his little Pollyanna tune about everything was sustainable and coming up roses, the economy was going backwards and he was too deluded to notice, to pay attention, or to do anything about it.

We also noted in these reviews that both Treasury and the Reserve Bank were telling the Government that the only thing that was holding up the books was population growth and spending. You cannot build a sustainable economy on the Government spending other people’s money. Labour Governments have tried to do it time and time again, and it doesn’t work. What we’ve seen is exactly what we’re seeing now, which is an economy in a sharp decline, the private sector retrenching, putting away the cheque book, and jobs growing far more slowly than population growth, and yet we have a Government that refuses to accept any of that.

The Minister told us back in those hearings—and, again, it’s almost laughable to look at it now—that he was confident that the Government’s programme would lead to strong per capita growth. Well, I’m sorry, Mr Robertson. Per capita growth has been zero over the past six months. An economy in absolute stasis, going absolutely nowhere under this Government—on a per person basis, totally stagnant.

Now, a similar thing is happening in the cash side of things. Again, this is a Government that is spending like a drunken sailor, as most left-wing Governments do. And yet these financial statements record that those big surpluses I talked about have now gone back $4 billion. So when you look at the residual cash deficit of this Government—and that, for members on the other side who don’t know their way around financial accounts that well, clearly, is the actual cash flow—from the numbers here to where we are, just in what Treasury put out last week: a $4 billion decline in just the last nine months.

That is the sort of negligent handling of the economy that we’re seeing from this Government. They have wasted the hard work of New Zealanders. They have thrown money away on coalition fripperies for their partners-to-be in Government. They have done nothing while the economy is in free fall, and as a result the numbers are going back, and going back sharply.

The other thing that these financial statements showed us was a Government that is so desperate to try and paint within the lines that it set for itself around Budget rules. They’ve hidden $6 billion in off - balance sheet debt that costs taxpayers considerably more to finance than it would have done if they’d borrowed it through normal channels. Now, Treasury told them not to do it, and it’s costing taxpayers more to do it, but, because Grant Robertson wants to measure himself by his own stick, he’s moved that debt somewhere else. Never mind that it’s more taxpayers’ dollars incurred. If it works for Grant, he doesn’t much care about how it affects taxpayers.

Now, I wanted to mention some of the other comments that came up in our review of Treasury, because there were some quite concerning comments out of the—well, I was going to call him the recently departed secretary, but that makes him sound somewhat like he’s dead, and I certainly don’t want to imply that. The Secretary to the Treasury made us some reasonably concerning comments—that actually this is a Treasury department that is significantly under-resourced, and they acknowledged that they were under a lot of pressure, thanks to the new Government, and would have to be discussing priorities with Ministers.

Now, anyone who’s been a Minister knows that’s code for “We’re spread too thin. We can’t do our job well.”, and I’m sorry but the performance out of Treasury in recent times, when we’ve seen them playing with sun and moon cards instead of focusing on the health of the economy, it just shows the sort of attention that this Government is putting on to things like managing something as unimportant to this Government as the economy.

I will just say, in passing, one thing that I was particularly disturbed by, which was to see Treasury tell us that a quarter of their own bills are not getting paid on time. When the financial managers of this Government can’t pay their own bills on time and leave generally private sector suppliers out of pocket, because they can’t get themselves organised, I blame that on the Government and their failure to properly oversee the pretty simple core business of Government.

Now, in the time left in this contribution, I want to also focus on the annual review of the Reserve Bank, because, again, there is a story here of significant and serious under-resourcing of one of our core financial agencies. I hate to say it, but there is a very clear theme developing of this Government being so uninterested in the economy and the private sector and the thing that actually pays the bills that they are under-resourcing Treasury, they are not getting Treasury to focus on their core work, and we’re seeing the Reserve Bank telling us that they are significantly short in their prudential supervision staff, and, in fact, they told us they were at least 15 key people short of being able to do their job well.

Now, the Reserve Bank is an agency that has paid a dividend to the Crown last year of $456 million—$456 million. So the Crown is using them as a cash cow, but are they properly resourcing them to do their job of looking after our banks, looking after our insurance sector, and managing our currency risks? No, they’re not. So you’ve got the Reserve Bank having to go cap in hand and, apparently, being turned away by the Government, and telling the select committee—which is pretty serious; in fact, I haven’t seen it—that they were significantly under-resourced and, therefore, not able to fulfil their full regulatory responsibilities. That is a serious issue, and I would suggest to this Government that they should at the very least have due regard to these important institutions of Government so that they do ensure that they are in a position to be able to properly do their job.

Just one final comment on the Reserve Bank while I’m here, and that is around the stress testing of New Zealand banks, given the issues that are currently being discussed with capital adequacy. I would point out to the bank that they told us that their stress tests have found the banking system is resilient and the banks hold enough capital and liquidity buffers. So, given those comments, I think it is important—and I certainly hope the Government is having these conversations—that there is serious reflection going on as to whether the significant constraints on capital, the significant extra costs that will fall on borrowers from these massive jumps that the bank are now proposing in capital adequacy, if they’re to proceed—given that the bank told the Finance and Expenditure Committee that our banks are resilient and will withstand.

I call the Hon Judith Collins.

Oh, thank you, Mr Chair, and good choice, might I say. Look, I agree with everything—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: What have you cooked up?

—that my colleagues have said, and I would say to Dr Duncan Webb that if he wants to have some nice, home-made Louise cake tomorrow, he’ll just behave himself. I’m not going to turn up with some silly, scungy-looking Madeira cake.

Anyway, so let’s get back to business. Let’s talk about manure of the horse variety, otherwise known as KiwiBuild. I think it’s really important that we talk about a subject where the Government has promised big on KiwiBuild, and then they put the Hon Phil Twyford in charge. What they have been able to do is—we asked them in our select committee, the Finance and Expenditure Committee, about the KiwiBuild Buying off the Plans initiative. We got some explanation about how “the Government”—in other words, read “the taxpayers”—will underwrite or purchase new homes off the plans as a way of underwriting private developers in case the houses do not sell. Note that phrase “in case the houses do not sell”, and what we have found is they hardly ever do sell.

So whether it’s 11 apartments in Ōtāhuhu in Auckland, where you’d think surely, surely, the public would think these would sell—anyone would think they would sell—but, six months later, they are still not sold. Ten of them are not sold. But that, apparently, enables the developer to go and build other places that people don’t want to buy. So, amazingly, that is, apparently, adding to the housing stock, but, unfortunately, they’ve got no one in them, and that’s because they have not sold.

Then, I give you Wānaka—please, Wānaka—where we’ve got houses built—

💬 Hon Amy Adams: Oh, they must sell.

No—unfortunately not, Mrs Adams. They have not sold. No, no, no, they have not sold. But then, why would they sell? They have no storage other than outside storage things so people can put skis in. There’s no cellar inside and no garaging, because, apparently, it doesn’t snow in Wānaka, and nothing else that people might want for $650,000, for a little two-bedroom home. And that’s what Phil Twyford’s KiwiBuild Buying off the Plans initiative is assisting.

Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t stop there, because, of course, most of those haven’t sold either. The problem doesn’t stop there, because he’s contracted for close to 200 new homes extra in—guess what? Wānaka.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: No.

Yes, that place where first-home buyers are rushing to buy a home

💬 Hon Amy Adams: But not from Phil.

Possibly not, unless they want a ski chalet or something, but that’s the sort of nonsense we’re seeing: a waste of money. What is driving this waste of money—and it wouldn’t be a waste of money if there was this enormous need in Wānaka for first-home buyers to buy a KiwiBuild home for $650,000, a little two-bedroom place with one bathroom. There would be no problem, but there is not that need.

Te Kauwhata is another example, where every house that the developer seems to build sells unless it has a KiwiBuild sticker on it. The same house—exactly the same house—in the same street with no KiwiBuild sticker sells, but one with a KiwiBuild sticker doesn’t. Now, why would that be? You’d have to say that the whole scheme and project is rubbish.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: The stench of Twyford.

I would not blame Mr Twyford myself, personally, as the stench, but I do think that the whole policy is a dog. It’s a dog that has well lived past its use-by date, and it actually never really had any use at all.

Then we have things like this: the Reserve Bank. I’m going to finish on this issue. The Reserve Bank is a bastion of independence, or it certainly was under a John Key and Bill English - led Government. It was a bastion of independence under a Helen Clark - led Government. It is no longer a bastion of independence. It has now been subverted by having Treasury have its say over who’s on that board. It just happens to be the Secretary to the Treasury at the moment. Well, fancy that.

We have now got a Treasury that’s more involved with people’s feelings than they are with their finances. Tell anybody this: sort out the finances for people, you’ll take a lot of stress off them and we’ll take a lot of the problems away from them, but this Government seems absolutely dedicated to talking sun and moon and caring and kindness. But, unfortunately, someone else has to pay the bills, and that’s the New Zealand taxpayer.

We deserve better for the Reserve Bank. We are lucky to have the Reserve Bank, and this Government is allowing the Reserve Bank to get watered down by Government influence.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to just start my contribution by referring to some points made by Amy Adams, the honourable member two speakers prior, where she talked about the economy and the Government books that we inherited and said that we are somehow benefiting from that rock star economy and the healthy books that were left to us by the National Party and the previous Government. However, what she failed to mention and what we also inherited was a huge under-investment in infrastructure in our roads, in our schools, and in our hospitals. That wasn’t a healthy inheritance that we inherited on this side of the House.

So you will see in the financial statements that we have been rebuilding essential public services like our transport infrastructure, schools, and hospitals while also growing the economy and through providing—[Interruption]—wait for it—record investment in our regions through the Provincial Growth Fund. We have been able to do all of that in terms of the economy as well as also demonstrating a new kind of leadership—one with empathy, one with compassion, one that’s focusing on the well-being of our people—and I am proud to sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee and receive the reports on how well we are managing that very challenging job.

Now, I want to go to the reviews of a couple of organisations, in particular, where I sat in on the hearings, with the first being the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation. I really enjoyed their review and their presentation, and one area I wanted to mention particularly in this committee because it is a new initiative. It is a new achievement by the guardians, and that was the signing of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Te Puia Tāpapa fund. It is a new way for iwi and Māori organisations to work collectively and efficiently to invest together. The significant achievement that they’ve made at this stage is the signing of a memorandum of understanding. No investments had been made at the time that they presented to us, but they did note that just getting to the point of an MOU was a significant achievement. It had taken years to get there, to achieve this type of working collectively across iwi organisations, Māori organisations, and some organisations, for example, like the Māori Trustee. So far $115 million has been committed, and I look forward to future reviews to see how that is progressing.

If I can go to the second review—that’s for the Inland Revenue Department—in particular, the area that I was quite interested in hearing about—because there is a bit of nervousness when you are undertaking such a huge transformation project—was the Business Transformation project. It is a huge project. It is a multi-year programme, and it’s over $1.3 billion being spent to upgrade technology and improve IRD policy and processes. It was really pleasing to hear from the IRD that it is on track to meet its 2021 deadline for completion. They also said that they have been reviewing steps that they have been taking and other past experiences along the way and adjusting their decisions and making more sensible decisions and phasing in this project—learning lessons from past experiences.

Finally, with the last 30 seconds that I have available to me, I just wanted to mention the review of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. I don’t agree with the comments made by the honourable member on the other side of the House, in terms of its independence and impartiality. I was particularly interested in our line of questioning that we had around diversity. Female employees make up 36 percent of the Reserve Bank—and I see the member over there throwing his head back: “Here we go again, trying to get some gender equity in the financial sector.” So 36 percent of the Reserve Bank are made up of females, which is typical of that sector, but they are making moves within the organisation to increase that as well as ethnic diversity—so I mihi to them.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Just a moment to comment on the Opposition, who will have you believe that the country’s going to hell in a handcart; but actually the country’s doing really, really well. For all those people that are listening right now and that are watching their televisions, that are thinking that the Opposition are crying foul with good reason, they’re not. They’re the Opposition—that’s what they do, and we’ve heard it through all of the reviews that we’ve been doing on the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

We sat through quite a few of the reviews—the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, the Inland Revenue Department, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, and Treasury—and it was a pleasant experience, because this Government is changing the way that we do things. The way that we’ve always done things isn’t necessarily the way that is best for New Zealanders. So what we’re doing is some groundbreaking stuff. So it was my pleasure to sit there and listen to the annual review, to listen to Treasury talk about things like the Living Standards Framework. They were talking about the well-being Budget, which is coming up. The comment that kept coming through was about how we measure things, as we have done for so many years now, in terms of GDP, but that’s not necessarily the thing that matters the most. Whilst the member for Papakura can sit there and mock it wholeheartedly, actually, bringing a bit of kindness and looking after people’s well-being is something that was tragically missing from the previous Governments, in fact. They sat there for nine long years—we all sat there for nine long years—and oversaw some of the worst homelessness that our country’s ever seen. So, actually, taking a step back and doing things differently to ensure the well-being of New Zealanders, as I say, was a pleasure to listen to.

Talking about living standards and the Living Standards Framework—again, innovative stuff for the Treasury to be dealing with—they talked about some of the challenges which are involved. We’ve got to understand that there will be challenges when it comes to new innovative things like this. They talked about making sure that the Living Standards Framework reflected our very important Māori cultural identity in there, and that we weren’t just running a very broad brush over it, making sure that the people of this land are being looked after as we move forward as well, because we know that Māori are overrepresented in all of the terrible statistics. When we’re talking about corrections and when we’re talking about poor outcomes in health and education, Māori are heavily overrepresented in those areas.

So to actually have a Living Standards Framework that they’re developing and taking time with is a great thing. They have taken it out there and they’ve listened to the people. They actually referenced it, and it says so in the report, that actually 500 responses were received between July and August of last year, and most of them were positive. So there’s a sign out there that New Zealanders know that, actually, this is a really good thing that we’re getting into. They know that this Government is transformative in its approach, and that’s a great thing. The Opposition can laugh but, actually, I’ll just say it again: they oversaw homelessness like you wouldn’t believe. I represent Rotorua, and, actually, we became superstars when it came to the homelessness population of New Zealand. So they can laugh, but, actually, they shouldn’t be laughing; they should be ashamed—they should be ashamed that they oversaw that in their time.

Let’s talk about the well-being Budget, because that’s where this all comes back to. I’m proud that we’re going to be overseeing something as revolutionary as a well-being Budget, looking outside of just GDP measures, and that was what we heard from Treasury. They talked about—well, the Minister made sure that he pointed out some of the key focuses of the well-being Budget: talking about creating opportunities for our productive businesses and making sure that iwi are actually at the centre of that too because we have a lot of iwi that have come into quite a bit of money and they need to be given these opportunities to be able to advance. In the well-being Budget, we’re also going to, he mentioned, lift opportunities for Māori and for Pasifika as well—again, turning around those negative statistics that we’ve become so OK with in a really terrible way. Again, the Opposition will laugh, but this Government’s going to do something about it.

We’re looking after our nation in terms of the digital age, through innovation. I’ve just come from a function next door, where the people of Wairoa have been connected with internet. They have fast fibre there. So they can sit there in their house in Nūhaka in Wairoa, and they can make sure that they’re participating as global citizens of our digital world.

Lifting our outcomes when it comes to child poverty and mental health and well-being is also really high in the well-being Budget’s focus. For that reason, the Treasury are doing a great job, the Minister is doing a great job, and this Government’s doing a great job too.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Well, I think this is the year of delivery, is it not? I thought this was going to be the year of delivery. Well, I’m struggling when I stand up here and we’re talking about what the Government has delivered. What I do know is that this Government has overseen a decline in this economy, and that those last two speakers need to avail themselves of the facts.

So let’s just go back in time. In the last three years that the National Government was in power, we averaged 3.3 percent average GDP growth—3.3 percent, and where are we now? Where are we now? We are at about 2 percent—we are at about 2 percent. Now, that’s a drop of more than a third—more than a third. I’ll tell you why that’s so bad. Not only are the cafe shop owners that you go and get coffee from in the morning feeling the effects of it, but what it means for a $300 billion economy such as New Zealand’s is that there’s a loss of economic activity by about $3 billion—a loss of $3 billion worth of activity. That’s in the coffee shops. It’s in the production of New Zealand steel doing new types of steel products through to the agriculture sector. Across the economy, that’s what we’ve seen a decline in. Over the last 18 months, we have seen that decline. What that means is that this Government has now missed out on over $1 billion worth of tax revenue. And so—

💬 Hon Member: How much?

A billion dollars—a billion bucks. That’s why this Budget’s going to be a problem for this Government, because they’re already down a billion bucks. No doubt, when they came in, as we all saw in the Treasury projections, the economy was steaming along. I heard Mr Parker today talking about some of the reasons why it’s gone backwards. Well, actually, the fascinating thing is exports have actually gone up. Exports have actually gone up.

Internationally, and this is the other thing that I find an absolute contradiction, is that—yes, you’re right—the World Bank has downgraded the world economic forecasts, but with this so-called third downgrade, they currently sit at a figure of 3.3 percent for the world economy—3.3 percent. We’re at 2 percent. We’re at 2 percent, and we’ve got growing exports. So how do you account for that? How do you account for that?

What this Government has done is ruin the confidence of New Zealanders who own a business, who employ people, and who get out there and make it happen. Why have they done that? Well, it’s interesting. I just heard about infrastructure. I just note the speaker before last said that we have had years of neglect in infrastructure, so what’s the first thing that the Minister of Transport does? What Mr Twyford does is he cancels all those roads of national significance, 6 billion bucks’ worth—6 billion bucks’ worth. All these roads that we were actually getting to the stage where we were moving past the point where we hit a deficit and we were actually starting to create new roads, such as Mill Road in Auckland, which goes north from my electorate and the Papakura electorate. All canned—canned so we can take 6 billion bucks and put it into light rail.

Now if you were doing the light rail on top of the $6 billion worth of roads of national significance, then that would have been fine, but you haven’t. They’ve nicked the money. They’ve nicked the money for these significant projects and put it into the trams, they’ve given Winston Peters $1 billion for his foreign affairs things, they’ve given Shane Jones 3 billion bucks, and they’ve given the Minister of Education $2.6 billion, but in the first few years there’s only nearly $1 billion, but not quite—right? It’s all gone.

What’s more, you’ve got a declining Budget, and you won’t have the surplus that you’re budgeting. That’s why you’re going to have trouble in this Budget coming up. You’re going to have significant problems about it. It’s of your own making, because you have imposed things on business owners, on those people that employ New Zealanders—unreasonably so—and that’s why we’ve arrived at this situation.

But what have you delivered on? Well, it’s interesting. You have delivered on a tax increase. You said you wouldn’t impose taxes in this first term. You have imposed $2.3 billion of additional taxes, which you said you wouldn’t do in the 2017 election. I don’t think it’s right.

I move, That the committee report progress.

Motion agreed to.

House resumed.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.