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

The time remaining in this debate is six hours and 25 minutes. When we were last considering this bill, we were debating the questions that the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the annual financial statements of the Government for the previous financial year be noted, and that the reports of the committee relevant to the Finance and Government Administration Sector be noted. Kieran McAnulty moved that progress be reported, and the call is now available to him.

I’m keen, if nothing else, and as I should be because it’s been an outstanding year on the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I must say, as the Reserve Bank comes in and answers questions, it always surprises me how well our economy is doing under the fine leadership of Grant Robertson, the Minister of Finance.

However, we must recognise that there are clouds on the horizon. We hear of the headwinds that are ahead of us from time to time, and the Reserve Bank Governor warns us about that and about the fact that steps need to be taken. When we asked questions of him, it was important and interesting to hear from him that the Reserve Bank is considering increasing capital requirements for our trading banks because, whilst the banks are resilient and are able to weather any particular storm that is likely to hit in the near future, we must be prepared for serious financial conditions. So that’s going to be an important step. We were assured that the banking sector would be able to manage that kind of impact, but there’s much, much more to it than that.

We heard time and again that the fundamentals of the New Zealand economy are strong, that there is strong employment and great employment growth. In fact, the Reserve Bank Governor would repeatedly tell us that one of the pressures on the economy is that we are near maximum sustainable employment—that, in fact, there are labour shortages. Indeed, we’ve seen that labour demand has seen the average wage grow up by $65, and approximately 70,000 new jobs have been created. So we’ve got a very sound economy, and, of course, the minimum wage increasing.

It’s great to see that we’ve got such a solid economy but, having said that, there are pressures. We know that the health sector and the education sector have real demands on the Minister of Finance because there is a lot of ground to make up. We’re trying to plug the gap in our teacher shortage that hasn’t been looked after for nine years—and we heard about that. The Budget responsibility rules are giving us some very firm, very clear, and very reasonable parameters sending very stable signals to the market so that, despite the naysayers out there, business confidence is stable, consumer confidence is up, and we’re doing a great, great job.

One of the things that I found that I was most excited to hear about was the green fund—a great initiative. We’ve heard today about the zero carbon bill, a fantastic piece of legislation introduced into this House—and this is part of that programme of getting New Zealand to a zero carbon framework. A fund managed by Treasury—and, you know, quite reasonably, Treasury officials were questioned about how this fund would be administered, and it’s not some slushy fund; it’s, in fact, a very carefully targeted fund to ensure that any project will be innovative and will drive New Zealand to a green and zero carbon economy. So a business case will be required and it won’t be a case of corporate welfare for your mates and it won’t be looking after the usual businesses; it will be looking at people like local bodies who might come to Government and say, “I’ve got something I want to do. I want to explore how to transfer out our buses to a zero carbon fleet.”—whether that be through, perhaps, a biodiesel supply chain or electrification or any other number of things. What we’re looking for here is innovation, and more than just a good idea but something that will go on and on and on—so that’s really what it is about.

But you know what? This Government has turned around the ship of State, and, what’s more, it’s cleaned all the barnacles and weeds that have grown on it over the past nine years; the barnacle of inequality, the weeds of homelessness, and the housing crisis—we have addressed those matters. I’m very proud to sit on that committee. We have seen a huge improvement, and we will continue to do so. Grant Robertson, Minister of Finance will take that to the next step this month. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Thank you very much. It was interesting to hear from the previous speaker, Duncan Webb, that this Government had turned the ship of State around; unfortunately, it’s turned it in the wrong direction—very much in the wrong direction. We’ve seen the transition that this Government talks about—the great transition that we’re going through. Unfortunately, it’s turning into being a transition from a wealthy prosperous and dynamic economy to one that has fallen off the pace from rich to poor.

So the story that we’ve seen in the last year—when we came into Government, Treasury was predicting just before the election, in its pre-election special, that we’d be growing at nearly 4 percent in 2018; and what did it turn out? It was closer to 2 percent, a very substantial drop in the growth of our economy. How does that translate to people’s lives? Well, it creates fewer opportunities for New Zealanders to get ahead, to be able to look after themselves and their family, to be able to engage in productive and satisfying work and have a range of opportunities, and it weakens our ability to provide world-class public services as well if our economy continues to slow down. So that’s the result of the economic policies that this Government has carried out.

Now, we’ve also seen today that our interest rate level has been cut to 1.5 percent—the lowest in a very long time, and at extremely low levels that you would normally associate with a serious recession; and how do we explain that? Well, the Reserve Bank Governor has talked about ongoing low business sentiment, tight profit margins, and competition for resources—those have been some of the reasons. So the Government will spend all of their time saying: “Oh, oh, it’s not our fault; it’s the rest of the world—that’s the reason why New Zealand’s growth has dropped and why we have to have these really low interest rates.” Well, that’s only very much part of the story. They don’t take any responsibility for their own actions and the actions of this Government in slowing down the economy. Yes, there is some slow-down internationally, but not universally so. Certainly the United States is going gangbusters, it’s grown over 3 percent and it’s rising; the Australians haven’t reduced their interest rates, because they see their economy stabilising; China, of course, is still growing at over 6 percent.

The other thing that’s not mentioned quite so often is that New Zealand’s terms of trade, the prices that we’re getting for our exports, are at incredibly high levels in terms of the history of this country. So this is a time when the New Zealand economy should be booming and going gangbusters, but instead we’re slowing, and that is because of all the additional costs that this Government has added and because of the gross uncertainty that it has brought into the economy over the past 18 months—the most dramatic, of course, has been 18 months of indecision around the capital gains tax. So why on earth would anybody in the last 18 months have made a major investment in their business? Remember that it’s investment that leads to jobs and growth and opportunity—why would anybody make a major investment if they didn’t know whether they’d have to pay a capital gains tax of 33 percent on that investment? That uncertainty kept hands in pockets for a long period of time, and I’m just very grateful that the Government decided to backtrack on that original policy; and so at least we have removed that one element of uncertainty.

But there is so much more: when you look at industrial relations, when you look at overseas investment, and when you look at all the additional costs that they’ve added into the housing sector. The gross manner in which they made the decision for the oil and gas, which has left so many other industries wondering whether they’ll be next to be sacrificed for preparations for the Prime Minister’s next major global international conference where she wants to virtue signal around the world without doing any analysis about the cost of those decisions.

Treasury, of course, which we’re talking about here in the financial review, is responsible for our economic policy. As I said earlier in this debate, there is no discernible clear economic policy that’s been outlined by the Government. We remember, in August last year, the Prime Minister stood up in front of a business crowd and announced her business partnership agenda, which was going to be a clear articulation of the economic policy of this Government. She listed a whole bunch of things. There were three main things, one of which was the capital gains tax, which has subsequently been abandoned, and the Provincial Growth Fund, which has now lost a lot of credibility given the way that it’s been handled by its Minister, Shane Jones. She announced all that stuff and then we never heard of it again—never heard of it again. So it’s been announced, it was the Prime Minister’s major announcement in August last year—never referred to again. So it’s little wonder there’s so much confusion.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I will begin by just acknowledging the previous speaker, Paul Goldsmith, who was, when I was in Opposition, the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and collegial in that role, but I must correct a few errors in his speech.

At the beginning of his speech, he talked about the Reserve Bank reducing the rate. That decision was taken today. He tried to paint a picture that would have the world believe that that was not about global headwinds, when, in fact, the Reserve Bank itself noted concerns around the global economic outlook. It acknowledged that the underlying fundamentals of the New Zealand economy are strong, and we see, of course, central banks around the world easing monetary policy. I would have thought that member would have welcomed lower interest rates for homeowners and businesses, so I’m a little surprised at his misery around this. This is, obviously, an independent decision by the Reserve Bank. They rely on their own decisions and forecasts.

This is a Government that is focused on making sure we have an inclusive, productive economy that’s sustainable over the longer term. We’re fixing the problems that accumulated under nine long years of neglect by the previous Government—problems that were ignored, like kids growing up in cars, hospitals with rot and mould in the walls, and rivers so dirty that they can no longer be swum in. Of course, we know that not everything can be fixed overnight. We’re a prudent Government. We are interested in running surpluses, and I have this graph here with me, which I grabbed, which was part of the original Budget slide pack when the Budget was presented, which highlights in blue the deficits that were run under the previous Government’s watch and the surpluses—in red, conveniently—that are predicted under this Government’s watch. This is a prudent Government.

The reason, of course, that we’re interested in running surpluses is because there are global headwinds out there. There could be natural disasters. There are a number of things that can happen, and in those circumstances we want to be well prepared should there be any unforeseen circumstances around the economy, but in the meantime we’re getting on and investing in our economy, because we are a Government that believes in investing.

Two thousand businesses are expected to benefit from the 15 percent R & D tax incentive. We’re saving businesses and customers $100 million over the next two years by dropping ACC levies—$100 million on average—from 72c to 67c per $100 of liable earnings. We’re investing in regional economies through the Provincial Growth Fund. We’ve established the Business Advisory Council vehicle to harness expertise from the private sector. We’re doubling down on trade and broadening our trade base. We’re reforming skills and trade training to address long-term labour shortages and productivity gaps and to make sure we’re preparing for the future of work, and we’ve made a $100 million capital injection into the New Zealand Green Investment Fund to stimulate new private sector investment in low-emissions industries.

We’ve got a plan, of course, that has so many more attributes to it. I’ll mention one more: investing $10 billion more capital than the previous Government—and in health, I know that to be true. We are investing heavily in capital in the health sector because our buildings were so run down under the last Government’s watch. But what do the international observers say? What do they say? The IMF forecasts advanced economies to grow by 1.8 percent in 2019 and 1.7 percent in 2020. Within that, the IMF forecasts New Zealand’s economy to grow by 2.5 percent in 2019 and 2.9 percent in 2020. So, compared to our peers, we are set to grow solidly.

New Zealand’s GDP growth remains one of the best in the OECD. New Zealand’s GDP growth of 0.6 percent in the December 2018 quarter was higher than in Australia, Canada, the euro area, Japan, and the UK, and higher than the OECD average. That’s forecast to continue, as I have just outlined. Our unemployment rate: down to 4.2 percent in the March quarter, the second-lowest since December 2008. Wages grew 3.4 percent over the year. This is an economy in good shape.

We’re looking to make sure that it’s an inclusive economy, and it’s a real inspiration to work with Jacinda Ardern, our leader, bringing this coalition Government together to make sure that we share the gains from a productive economy with the whole country, not just with the wealthiest 1 percent. This is a Government committed to sharing the gains with everyone, and I salute also the finance Minister, Grant Robertson, for the good job that he is doing.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and a pleasure to get up and to speak on behalf of New Zealand First in this appropriations debate and to follow Dr Clark, who has given us some much-needed balance after what have been some attempts by the National Party within this debate to talk the New Zealand economy down when, of course, all the news is good, and certainly in comparison to international economies that we would normally compare ourselves to.

The National Party’s false premise, of course, is that there were some forecasts a few years ago that would’ve said growth was at a certain rate that’s higher than where it is now, but that doesn’t rely on the reality that things happen. There are international headwinds, as the Governor of the Reserve Bank clearly outlined to the select committee, and we’re seeing that. Who would’ve predicted back then that Trump and the Americans and the Chinese would be going hammer and tongs in a trade war, and just about $200 billion of tariffs are being mooted to be put on to the Chinese imports into America just this very week. Those are the dynamics of the international economy that could not be predicted two years ago.

Our performance as an economy—and as Dr Clark has just laid out, nearly at 3 percent, or just under 3 percent, looking at 2.9 percent, the IMF predicting this year, against the OECD average of about 1.8 percent—is a stellar performance indeed and off the back of some great exporting performances, particularly out of our primary sector, I might say, with record exports. Actually, if you look at some of those forward indicators, the dairy payout—they’re just about to come up. Fonterra are about to announce their payout for next year. All the commentators are saying it could have seven—in fact, mid-seven—dollars per kilo of milk solids in front of it. The meat industry, which has ticked over $10 billion worth of income for this country, are going gangbusters. In fact, unfortunately for the farmers of China, there’s been a major outbreak of African swine flu; so it looks like the tailwinds for the next two years for the red meat sector are very strong indeed. We’ve got the kiwifruit industry ticking over—$3 billion—and with the gold kiwifruit in particular now outstripping in volume the green kiwifruit, and the innovation that we’re seeing in our primary sector.

Of course, when you look at innovation in a sustainable economy going forward, in the most successful economies, it’s R & D. It’s R & D as a percentage of GDP, and this Government has committed to getting our percentage up to 2 percent, but that would still leave us behind the OECD average. There’s almost a direct correlation between the wealthiest economies and the percentage of R & D, and this Government just the other day passed a bill for R & D tax credits for our businesses. Nothing—nothing—signifies the disarray in the National Party than the fact that they voted against that bill. It’s, essentially, a tax cut, a tax incentive for our businesses to invest in R & D for long-term sustainable growth, and the National Party voted against that—virtually their only principle, they voted against.

This Government has been incredibly prudent and, as the Governor of the Reserve Bank noted today, we have had a Government responsibility around that. We’ve set a target of 20 percent of our debt to GDP, which we have almost achieved—I think it’s sitting at 20.6 percent at the moment. So we’ve been incredibly prudent in the way that we have invested and kept that within balance towards the overall scope of our economy. Not only have we been doing the R & D tax credits—that’s a big-picture policy that we’ve highlighted—but the Provincial Growth Fund. Aren’t we proud of that on this side of the House and, particularly, within New Zealand First—195 projects across 14 regions. I highlighted in the House the other day that I had the pleasure of actually announcing one of those in Nelson at the Cawthron Institute—

💬 Jamie Strange: Yeah, I enjoyed that.

$6 million—Jamie Strange was there representing the Government as well—into that to grow the Algae business, which is a fast-growing area of development. This stuff sells for eye-watering amounts per gram. That’s the sort of thing we are doing to transform our economy. We’re not sitting here talking things down; we’re getting on and delivering real, sustainable gains for New Zealand. Thank you.

Mr Chair, thank you very much. Now, I talked about Census 2018 in the general debate but now I want to focus on the costs, the funding, and the budget for Census 2018. Look at this committee report about Statistics New Zealand—two and a half pages, but one and a half pages are about Census 2018. Why? Because the census has always been the most important job for Statistics New Zealand, and Census 2018—last financial year it was the census year. So that’s why the census should be the key job for Statistics New Zealand, and they botched Census 2018; it became a disaster for the Government.

Now, how did Statistics New Zealand perform in terms of conducting Census 2018? As I said, it was a complete failure, a shambles, a disaster. The response rate—as I repeatedly argued—officially was 90 percent, but it includes the 5 percent partial response rate. In the past, in previous censuses, this 5 percent would be considered non-responses, but they changed the definition this time to make the response look better. So the reality is 85 percent responded; 15 percent of New Zealanders did not submit their individual forms—10 percent of them did not do any census form at all. So this is what we had for Census 2018.

Then the Government has not accepted any responsibility. They blamed the previous National Government, first of all, saying, “This decision was made by the previous National Government.”, implying that the decision might have been the wrong decision. But the decision was made after a thorough study, and, internationally, countries are moving towards online censuses—we call it modernised census—and these countries are doing very well. In 2016, Australia did a census mainly online—94.8 percent response rate. Canada—same year, 2016—98.4 percent response rate. New Zealand: 85 percent, actually, if we look at this.

So the decision was made, in the broad context—and it was the right decision—but then the Government is arguing, “Census 2018 was underfunded because, on the one hand, the Government wanted to move the census online and, on the other hand, it tried to cut the spending by 5 percent over two census cycles.” That is not true—that is not true. The previous National Government was anticipating the modernised census would be cost-effective and, therefore, generate savings. The 2014 Cabinet paper says, “The modernised census model is estimated to produce savings (compared to 2013 costs) of at least five percent over the 2018 and 2023 census cycles”. Its cost is the savings; they are not saying cut the costs. So this is why we say that to accuse the previous Government of underfunding is absolutely wrong. The fact is that the 2018 Census had a budget of $113 million—and it increased to $117 million. Compared with the 2013 census, $72 million—that’s a 63 percent increase. At the end of the day, Stats New Zealand did not spend all the money. They underspent the census budget by $758,000 in a census year

💬 Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: How much?

—$758,000 they didn’t spend—they could not spend. So there’s no reason to believe, or to argue, that Census 2018 was underfunded. The Government should face up to the challenge, face up to the failure, and try to acknowledge their responsibility.

There are times, as Gwendolen remarked in The Importance of Being Earnest, when “it becomes more than a [mere] duty to speak one’s mind, it becomes a pleasure”. It’s a great pleasure to follow on from Mr Jian Yang’s speech, then, about the 2018 census, which, of course, in the appropriation period was a very significant spend and a very significant event.

Now, I have, actually, read Mr Yang’s report that he wrote criticising the effectiveness of the delivery of the census as well as criticising the Government’s performance in the remaining months that it had before the census was carried out. One of the things in that report which I thought was brilliant was he was repeating something that Dr Nick Smith had said in the House once, which was that it was a sign of failure that we’d only put out so-many press releases. I have to say that if Dr Smith thinks that the frequency of ministerial press releases is a mark of success in the world, that might explain why there was a housing crisis on his watch. Now, having said that, the report that Mr Yang wrote was very interesting; so I have passed it on to the independent review that’s being conducted into the 2018 census, which is being conducted by management consultant Dr Murray Jack and Connie Graziadei, who was the deputy chief statistician for Canada, who, of course, ran a very successful online census in Canada. It’ll be interesting to see what they make of Dr Yang’s report.

Now, I just wanted to start by talking—because one of the myths that are going around, of course, is that people don’t trust the use of administrative data as part of the census output. What’s interesting is that if people don’t trust that, or if—what Mr Gerry Brownlee’s been repeating in the House—people don’t trust the use of admin data, then Mr Brownlee and the National Party really should look at their own role in spreading misinformation and concern about that, because it was their Government that set in path this strategy of using administrative data.

Let me just talk you through the long-term census transformation strategy that they signed off in 2014 and 2018. So, as Mr Yang said, traditionally, historically, we’ve conducted censuses using paper forms, going door to door, collecting that information. That was the way that censuses were conducted up until, well, mostly—there’s been a bit of a transition but really the big shift started with the 2013 census, where there was a greater use of digital, of online form-gathering. In that census, roughly 70 percent of forms were gathered on paper and about 30 percent were online. That formula was switched for the 2018 census, where the target was to get 70 percent online completion rate—and we got about 85 percent; so well above the target that was set by the previous Government on that—and the remainder forms on paper.

Now, the idea was that then, from about 2023, the next census would be called, you know, “digital plus admin”—so online forms plus the use of admin data. For censuses after that, the rough intention was that it would be primarily admin data supplemented by online forms, and then the 2033 census might not even happen, because we would have such good administrative data, you wouldn’t actually need to carry out a survey in the historical term. So that was the long-term intention that was set up.

That raises the question: what is administrative data, and why is it any good, and what is it that Mr Brownlee is so worried about? Well, administrative data is data that’s gathered about real people; it’s real data that is gathered by Government agencies like the Accident Compensation Corporation, in education, health records, births, and deaths, and marriages, immigration records—those kinds of things. What the previous Government did was to set in train a long-term project to be able to use anonymised data to gather much more accurate information than we have ever been able to do as a result of the census process. Now, it turns out that was the right call, because the result of this census is that we have got a more accurate population record than we have ever had before. We’ve got a population file with 4.7 million records about real people—the kind of information that can be used for the formation of district health board budgets, of electorate boundaries—and I think Mr Yang should congratulate the Government that he supported that made that decision to use administrative data, because it is working.

What a pleasure to follow on from the Hon James Shaw, and, I must say, after listening to his explanation, that’s the best explanation I’ve had on the current situation around the statistics. Why he didn’t try that approach initially, instead of standing in this Parliament day after day and blaming the previous Government for the mess the statistics got into, I will never know. That was a credible explanation, but, unfortunately, his reputation as Minister of Statistics has already gone down the drain because he stood in this Parliament and said, “Not my problem; all the problem of the previous Government.”

My concern today that I want to address as a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is, of course, the declining economy. The Governor of the Reserve Bank will appear before that select committee again tomorrow at 8 o’clock and explain the reason why he’s now dropped the OCR—the official cash rate—to the lowest level, at 1.5 percent, that it’s ever been at. We’ve had Government Ministers, including the Minister in the chair now, the Hon Dr David Clark, arguing the economy is not in decline. It’s time for reality rather than rhetoric. The economy is in decline; it has dropped from 4 percent GDP now to 2 percent, and even the Hon Dr David Clark has got to see that as a decline. That will be one of the questions that is put to the Governor of the Reserve Bank tomorrow as to why he has dropped the OCR. I accept there are some world headwinds, but the New Zealand economy is declining far more than it should, and the reason for that is because businesses lack confidence in this Government.

We have record employment; I agree with that. We had Dr Duncan Webb saying earlier that his Government was proud to have turned the ship of State around—it’s turned around in completely the wrong direction, and what happens when you turn a big ship around is it takes time for the effects to happen. I don’t think it’ll be too long before we see businesses, because they don’t have confidence, lowering the opportunities to employ people. My prediction is unemployment will not go any lower. It will now start to increase. Why is business so pessimistic? It’s issues like a capital gains tax that was out there for months following the report of the Tax Working Group before the Government ultimately pulled the plug on it. But, in the meantime, businesses switched off investment decisions because they were worried about the impact of a dirty capital gains tax.

It’s issues like the reforms of the labour market that we’ve just had—the 90-day trial period, which worked so well for so many disadvantaged, difficult-to-employ, young New Zealanders, has now been taken away from most employers; 19-year-old employees and above, you cannot now use the 90-day trial period, and that will make it more difficult for young New Zealanders to get jobs.

It’s issues like climate change, and I want to take this opportunity of acknowledging the announcement today by the Hon James Shaw around the zero carbon bill. What he has done is recognise the importance of giving some certainty to business, and that requires bipartisan support. We will not make progress on the issue of climate change unless business has some security around the settings. But I do take this opportunity of saying to James Shaw that his targets must be reasonable, and my first look at those targets—particularly around methane levels—is they are not reasonable. They’re in fact not achievable, unless an economy that is so dependent on primary production is prepared to cut cow numbers, cut sheep numbers, and dramatically; so it will not happen.

The final point I want to make around a lack of confidence in this economy and in the Government is around the so-called well-being Budget. There has not been a Budget presented in this House that I’ve been part of, either by a Labour Government when I’m in Opposition, or by a National-led Government when I’m in Government, that doesn’t take into account the well-being of New Zealanders. So what we’ve got to watch is we don’t get more rhetoric coming from the Prime Minister which is meaningless, and a Budget that doesn’t deliver real growth.

Today is a wonderful day to be in Government; it is a fantastic day to be in Government, because today the Government has introduced a zero carbon bill, and it’s a great day to be in Government, because, on this side of the House, we are a Government that governs for all New Zealanders. We don’t govern just for business people, though we govern for them too. We don’t govern just for farmers, though we govern for them too. We govern for all New Zealanders. We govern for the children who will grow up in a world dominated by climate change, and, instead of sitting on the sidelines, taking cheap international credit, doing nothing and letting the situation get worse and worse, this Government is taking action to ensure that we will address climate change and address it seriously. No more papering over the cracks. We are getting on with dealing with climate change.

That is why I’m delighted to see that Treasury has investors, that we have invested in the Green Investment Fund, that Treasury has support of that, that we are taking real action with respect to climate change. When it comes to decisions like the oil and gas decision, it’s not just a matter of saying to one industry that they must start to engage in a just transition; we are in there, providing the support to ensure that they can engage in a just transition, and that is the difference between this side of the House and that side of the House. We are about enabling people to succeed; not just business, not just farmers, but all New Zealanders.

It is great being in Government, because, on the Treasury benches we can ensure that our Budget is focused not just on the numbers but on the well-being of all New Zealanders. Instead of having it with just words saying that we do engage in the well-being of all New Zealanders, we are actually going to try to measure well-being, because what you measure is what you govern towards. So we will be measuring not just the number of New Zealanders in jobs but the quality of that employment. We will be measuring not just the number of people who go to school but the quality of the education we get. We will be measuring not just how many hospitals we have but the quality of the healthcare that people get. Why is that important? Because, in governing for all New Zealanders, we need to ensure that New Zealanders can realise their capabilities, can realise their potential. It’s not good enough to have a job which, perhaps, pays a wage but doesn’t allow someone to engage all their abilities. A job at McDonald’s flipping burgers is a fantastic job to have while you’re a student. It can be a great job for many people, but for some people it is a dead-end job. We want to ensure they are able to get out of those jobs and into jobs that matter, and that’s part of what the well-being Budget is about.

For too long—for too long—we have regarded GDP as the only number that matters, the only number that counts. That’s ignoring the extraordinarily contested history of GDP, gross domestic product, as a number—that it’s always been a disputed number, that what gets counted in GDP is disputed, what goes in and what goes out. It was an extraordinary session with Professor Marilyn Waring in the Finance and Expenditure Committee talking about the well-being Budget, when she talked about how what gets counted really, really matters. GDP was contested all along.

Our well-being Budget is being contested. Of course it’s being contested, and of course our measures of well-being will develop over time and will get better, but we are making a start on actually measuring what matters to New Zealanders—to all New Zealanders—and that includes New Zealanders who are not active in the paid economy, because the work that is done in the unpaid economy matters too. That’s why this Budget is critical for women, because so often women’s work has been undervalued. In this Budget, we are going to start to try to make attempts to measure it.

So today is a wonderful day to be in Government, because in Government we can actually make the changes that matter to New Zealand, and those changes are starting to happen in this year in which we are delivering for New Zealanders. I challenge the Opposition—I challenge them—to name one positive thing that they have done in the last year. I cannot find it. The positivity is on this side of the House. It’s a great day to be in Government.

I move, That the committee report progress on this bill and move on to consider the Education Amendment Bill (No 2).

Motion agreed to.

Progress to be reported presently.