Appropriation (2020/21 Estimates) Bill, Appropriation (2019/20 Supplementary Estimates) Bill

First Reading

I move, That the Appropriation (2019/20 Supplementary Estimates) Bill be now read a first time.

Bill read a first time.

I want to begin by saying how proud I am to be part of a Government that is successfully facing one of the biggest crises and catastrophes that has faced this country, and indeed the entire world. What a proud reputation we’ve established for New Zealand. Little old New Zealand in this corner of the world is now able to claim that we have eliminated COVID-19 in our communities, in our streets and our towns, and our businesses and our households are safe for now—but the risk remains. And the way we continue to manage this particular challenge is to continue to be careful and cautious, and that’s what we’re doing.

The great thing is, of course, that the starting point for this Government was one where we had near record-low unemployment; we had near record-low Government debt, in terms of ratio to GDP; we had just committed $12 billion of investment in infrastructure; and we had new investment in education, particularly in skills and training as well as in health services and facilities. This is a forward-thinking, far-reaching Government that was doing all of this even before we were afflicted with COVID-19.

And then, in January and February, the word came through that a pandemic had broken out in China, and we had to start making some decisions. But we did it in the right way. We were cautious, we listened to the evidence, we took advice, we started closing off our borders to parts of the world where the risk was greatest, because we are a country of travellers and we are a country of hosts to travellers—that’s what’s built our tourism industry that is used to hosting 3 million to 4 million people a year. That’s where our biggest risk was, and this Government was smart and sharp and focused on what the issue was and made decisions accordingly. And, of course, I have to say none of this was made easier by a country that was still reeling from nine years of neglect from the previous administration. So our decisions had to take that into account as well as the long-term future prospects of this great country of ours.

And, you know, I look at our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and I look at my Cabinet colleagues, and indeed all the members on this side of the House, and you look at the challenges that this Government has faced: a terrorist attack, volcanic eruption, drought, and then, this year, the COVID-19 pandemic that we had to face along with the rest of the world. It required resolute action, and it got it. And it got the right decisions at the right time, and we went hard and we went early, and we are reaping the benefits of that now. Look around the world, see what’s happening to other countries—it’s not a pretty picture. But with the leadership of Jacinda Ardern, with the assistance of our Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, and all of the other experts, and the scientists, and the others who were informing us and informing our decisions, we took the crucial decision and New Zealanders now are safer as a result.

I said it to this House a few weeks ago—possibly more now, because I’m kind of losing track of time with what we’ve had to go through—but the question on the lips of voters in September this year will be “Did you keep us safe?” And I know all members in this House, as we get around our communities and do our meetings, members on this side, members on that side, we are all hearing the same message. New Zealanders are saying, “You kept us safe. Keep keeping us safe. Don’t make rash decisions, don’t give in to the nattering nabobs of negativity.”—as Spiro Agnew would have called them—“Make sure you keep this country safe.” That’s what they’re saying, and that’s what this Government is doing. We’ve won the battle of COVID-19, but it’s not over yet. Just today, there were two new cases from across the border, but because of our testing and our border management regime, they were picked up and—once again—we’re swinging into action to keep our people safe again.

Now, we’ve got another big battle, another big challenge, and that’s the recovery—because this has been tough. This has been tough for New Zealanders—it’s been tough for New Zealand business owners, it’s been tough for workers in those businesses, it’s been tough for families, and it’s been tough for elderly people, and now we’ve got to focus on the recovery, and that’s going to have its own challenges as well.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): And can I just ask the Minister—focus on the Budget?

I was just coming to the very point. Great minds think alike, as they say, and I was just about to say that’s why this Budget is so important. It reflects those commitments, but, actually, this is a Budget that says we are prepared to commit and take the action of $50 billion to get the recovery going.

Now, as the Minister of Finance said just a short while ago, the commentary is already changing. There is already confidence returning to the economy—Kiwibank yesterday said that the worst case scenarios are off the table—but we still need this public investment in infrastructure, in income support, and that’s the stuff that we’re doing. So we’ve extended the wage subsidy by eight weeks to protect those jobs—we’ve put $3.2 billion into that. We’ve put $400 million into the tourism industry, because this is going to be a long time for that industry to recover. We have to be real. And I know members opposite—the reality is they are equally as concerned as us about that industry. But this isn’t going to return to pre-COVID conditions any time soon, and we’ve got to support that industry, because eventually the borders will open and the travellers will return, and we have to have something for them to return to—an economy that is robust and is growing.

We’ve got the loan scheme for small businesses—$1 billion now signed up to through IRD to support small businesses and to support their cash flow. We’ve got the Lunches in Schools programme that’s going to not only feed 200,000 kids but generate more jobs to boot. Eight thousand new public houses—they’re the houses that you live in, not the houses that you drink in—are going to be built. That’s going to be a stimulus as well. There is another $3 billion in infrastructure projects on top of the $12 billion that was committed to last year, $36 million in a redeployment package to assist the regions, and there are decisions already being made in Northland, Hawke’s Bay, Rotorua, and Queenstown Lakes. Eleven thousand environmental jobs are created as well, because in restoring the economy we can’t just ignore what’s happening in the environment as well, and we’ve got long-term challenges there as well.

I want to finish by just spending a couple of minutes on an area that’s important to me, and that is what we’re doing in the justice system, because that’s important too. So we’ve got changes to our Family Court system. We’ve actually allowed parties going through the very painful and emotionally upsetting event of a marital or partnership separation to now get access to legal advice from the outset, a Family Court system that is resourced and equipped to help them navigate that very difficult time through a very tricky system. So we’ve reinstated that. We’ve put in place Family Court liaison staff to help people—just there to assist parties to get through the process, know what help and support is available, know where to get the counselling, and know where to get other advice and support so they can navigate their way through that very tricky time in their lives. That’s been long overdue and that’s now happening, and there will be other commitments in that system as time progresses.

And then the other is in our community law centres. What an amazing job they do, there to help people who wouldn’t otherwise have access to legal advice or access to the justice system. So more money is going to our community law centres because you can predict—with what is happening with the difficulties that people are going through with their residential tenancies, with their employment, with what’s happening with income support—a lot more people are going to need a lot more advice, and they would be able to get it through a recharged, re-supported, and highly charged community law centre network. So that is going well, as well.

What we do in that system, the support that we provide people, whether it’s in their employment, through the extension of the wage subsidy scheme, through the regional investment programmes that we’ve put in place, through the reviewing and reallocating some of the Provincial Growth Fund money, this is a country that is on its way on the journey of recovery. We are not there yet, and it will take time, but this is a country that can look back on the last few weeks and the last few months and say we had a hell of a challenge but we met that challenge and we supported each other. We supported each other through the health crisis and now it’s time to support each other through the economic crisis and the economic rebuild—and we will do that. This is a country that has proven that, when it’s hard up against it, we pull together, we work together, we cooperate, we collaborate, and we make the difference. This is a time to celebrate what we’ve done, but not to rest on our laurels—to be thankful for the leadership that we have had, to be thankful for the investment that has been put in through this Budget as we recover and get back on our feet again.

Madam Speaker, you warned the previous speaker, the Hon Andrew Little, that he should bring his speech back to the Budget. The problem here is that this is a Budget, four weeks on from its delivery, that is massively out of date and out of step with what this country needs right now. It’s very hard to look back and debate the merits of this Budget when it is so short on information, on encouragement, and on projection of a positive future for New Zealand. We have a Budget that was produced by a finance Minister who just one week before lockdown stood in this House and told us everything was OK, there were no dark clouds on the horizon, no need for anyone to worry, and that when the Budget was delivered, a few weeks’ time out from that point, they would see that there was a bright future ahead.

Well, what about the thousand people a week—a thousand people a day, I should say—who’ve been going on the job seeker benefit since lockdown? What about the thousands of people who are not eligible to go on the job seeker benefit because they have received a redundancy from their workplace? What about the tens of thousands of people who’ve lost casual work? What about the tens of thousands of people who’ve lost part-time work? Those people aren’t recorded in statistics, but they’re there and they are real. Add to that the tens of thousands of families whose primary income has been slashed as a result of the COVID-19 response. They are the people who will certainly say with some gratitude that we’re lucky to have dodged the bullet that was the worst possible eventuality from COVID-19 spreading throughout our community.

But I’m sorry to tell the previous speaker that when it comes to election day, they’re unlikely to be still saying, “Thank you very much for what you did. I’m going to vote for you for that.” They’re more likely to be saying, “Will I still have a job? Will my family members still have a job? Will my family still have income? How long will it be before we’re able to securely wake up in the morning knowing that our household income is going to be coming in?” Those are the questions that will be asked in 14 weeks’ time. And what we see in this Budget is a $20 billion slush fund there for the Government, presumably to use during the campaign period to salve some of that concern. But New Zealanders are not silly. They will know that if money is received as a benefit, it has a very, very small, if any, growth effect on the economy. So there is no doubt that expanding the domestic economy is going to be the challenge that Governments need to answer, or prospective Governments need to answer, in the coming campaign. And they’ll all turn back to this Budget and look at what the projections are for debt, and there will be a discussion about how well that debt is incurred.

Today, we’ve heard the Government in the House talking about their infrastructure plans, how they are going to build all these wonderful infrastructure projects that will create jobs up and down the country. The problem is all 11 of those projects that were announced today and that are part of a bill that is being rushed through the House today—ironically, rushed through the House; three years almost into a Government and they are finally getting to a legislative position to deliver some infrastructure—were announced a long time ago. Some of them would have been delivered by now had there not been a change of Government. But very few of them—very few of them—will have the big effect of creating long-term jobs unless they are followed up by more. That is the challenge that sits out there for all political parties ahead of us.

If we look back to other times when there’s been a tough, difficult economic period, then it is generally infrastructure that is the answer. It is the purchasing, effectively, ahead of time of intergenerational assets that provide the opportunities for an economy to expand in the future. And remember that an economy is not some nebulous thing. Certainly, it’s impossible to put your hand on it and say, “This is an economy.” It doesn’t come in a paper bag. You can’t grab it off a bookshelf or a shop shelf. It is what’s happening to you in your life, and the lives of all those 5 million New Zealanders who at the moment are wondering just what the future holds. It’s all about what they are able to do, what they are able to purchase with the dollars they earn, with the opportunities that come from the work that they do. An economy is a dynamic thing that everyone who gets up in the morning and does something contributes to, and at the moment, we are seeing massive contraction.

Later this week, we’ll find out just how much that contraction has been and we’ll be able to work out what the annual contraction would mean, and, from that, some of the extrapolation of what that will mean in job losses, I think, will be even further exacerbated. So with all due respect to the previous speaker, who spoke about the leadership that the Government has given and headed towards a recovery, there is nothing yet that can give any New Zealander confidence that this is a Government that knows how to handle that.

What we observe is a huge separation in the minds of New Zealand voters between the Prime Minister as an individual and the party that she represents, the party that she leads. That party is seen largely to have let her down. The reality is they’ve let all New Zealanders down and it is a further reality that they are led by the Prime Minister. So separating the two is not going to last and there will be, I think, that turning back to say, “What is it for me when I cast my vote? Will I still have my job? Will my family still have my job? Will my family income still be there?” Those are the questions that will be asked.

And today we sort of heard a speaker, earlier in question time, talking about how the Government’s put up loans for small business, and we were told that there’s been a billion dollars’ worth of those loans taken out. It might be easy to say, “Well, it’s a billion dollars against the 140 billion that the whole country is going to go into debt over.”, but that billion dollars has to be paid back. So the idea that simply being able to borrow money at a good rate means that employment will be sustained for people because businesses are jobs, jobs are income—and if those businesses have to recut the cloth so that they can afford to pay the loans back, that inevitably will fall back on smaller, less, or however you want to put it, employment opportunities within their particular enterprise.

There was then the claim that this Government has produced 8,000 public houses in the last three years. Well, the saddest thing is that of those public houses, there was an ongoing programme from what was Housing New Zealand, what is now Whānau Ora, and that there is a natural expectation around that. Further, nearly half of the 1,600 they claim to be specifically introduced by this Government, 800 of them were previously consented or under construction at the time of the last change of Government. These people are not good at infrastructure. They are not good at delivering. They are brilliant at announcements. They are amazing at standing in front of a camera and pronouncing what should happen. They are absolutely convincing on all of those scores. But it’s like their snake oil: take it home, try to drink it, it’ll probably knock you over. It’s got nothing to it; it doesn’t work. And that’s exactly what the country is being sold by this current Government.

We heard Mr Little just saying there, “Aren’t we lucky to be led by a Government like this?” Well, the 5 million New Zealanders got behind the effort to prevent COVID19 coming into this country. Those same 5 million people now want to get behind an effort to get the country back into a reasonable shape so that we do have security around jobs, security around family incomes, security around the futures of all the young people that will be coming into the workforce next year. And they are not going to simply say, “Thank goodness for all the announcements that have been made. I hope that they get delivered on.” They will look to delivery records, and this Government does not have one. They are bad for delivery. They are not focused on the economy, and their list just proved it. The National Government will deliver.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. This is an interesting time to be speaking in a Budget debate. This is now the 10th Budget that I’ve had an opportunity to speak in since being here in the House, and the unusual nature of this Budget debate is I’m struggling to identify what the alternative remedy would be to what is actually being outlined by the Government. The difficulty in this situation that we all face is, yes, this was a Budget that was delivered in haste off the back of rapidly changing economic circumstances. It was a Budget that delivered huge amounts of borrowing, but would the alternative that may have been proposed if there was a National-led Government in place be any different?

The reality is that the last time we had massive economic upheaval, through the global financial crisis and through the Christchurch earthquakes, the same remedies were proposed at that very point in time. There were mass job losses off the back of those economic events. There was a considerable increase in borrowing that the State did when it came along and said, “We have to invest in the economy to keep jobs going.” There were a lot of jobs being lost and there were a lot of people who went on to welfare. The same circumstances are, in fact, in place, and the difficulty with this Budget is trying to identify what would be done any differently.

I am struggling to identify what the alternative remedy would be. Simply saying “We’ve been there before and we can deliver it better.” is not one that I think is very sellable. In fact, the very people who were doing the delivery 10 years have now all left. John Key’s no longer here. Bill English is no longer here. Steven Joyce is no longer here. They were the ones—

💬 Chris Penk: You’re still here, Jami-Lee—you’re still here.

—that were doing the delivery. I’m not there either, Mr Penk—thank you very much. You might not be if you keep writing books, as it turns out. I think we need to really look critically at this Budget and ask ourselves what would be done any different. There wouldn’t be anything different; in fact, this is the very prescription that Governments around the world are following. Jobs are being lost, Governments come along and invest, and Governments come along and identify infrastructure projects, fast track them, and try and do the best they can by people to keep jobs going, to keep people in employment, and to ensure that there are New Zealanders out there who still have hope and opportunity. I think when people go into the ballot boxes later this year, they’re going to ask themselves, “What’s there in the future for me?”. But there also going to ask, “Is there anything different on the other side of the fence?”, and I can’t say that there is much difference.

When I look at some of the projects which are being delivered, now there is a valid criticism here that many of the things that have been announced recently, including before the lockdown, were plans that were in place already. There were plans that were announced by the previous Government, but when I look at things like what was announced earlier this week such as SkyPath, that’s something that Dan Bidois said during the by-election campaign. That is something Labour’s picked up and they’re running with it. You can’t complain about that. The Unitec housing development—that’s something Nick Smith announced in the last Government. This Government’s now picked it up and is running with it, and good on them. The rail electrification out to Pukekohe—that’s something that was announced during the last election campaign. Labour’s picked it up and they’re running with it. It’s hard to disagree with what the Government’s actually doing, and it’s hard to make speeches in the House in opposition to what they’re doing when, in fact, the prescriptions they’re proposing are ones where, if we really boil it down, there’s actually bipartisan support for them.

I have to say there are questions on delivery that the Government has. If there are failings of the current Government, it’s that the housing hasn’t been delivered as fast as it could have been, the housing hasn’t been there in place for New Zealanders that need it, the rail works aren’t exactly going as fast as they’d expect—and good on them for trying to do more. But they haven’t delivered in that particular area, and I can’t say we can see any appreciable gains yet for the massive mental health funding that was put in place a couple of years ago. But would the policy prescription be any different if the blue team was in place? The answer is no.

I have to say also that many of the roading projects announced earlier in the year are, in fact, ones which we can honestly say now that the House is united on. There’s the Northland State Highway 1 upgrade, which that I’m sure Shane Jones pushed for considerably, which appears to be going ahead. There’s the Penlink project—I saw Mark Mitchell in the House before—and that seems to be something the House is united on. The Mill Road project in South Auckland that’s going to be going ahead—again, a project that the House is united on. There are many other roading projects as well.

The difficulty with this Budget debate is we’re trained in this Parliament to try and be for everything or against everything, but there isn’t much difference between the two policy prescriptions that are out there. We may hear more during the upcoming election campaign from the National Party and we may hear more from the Labour Party, but so far, both sides are saying the same things, and that’s actually not a bad thing for New Zealanders. It’s not a bad thing for New Zealanders that we are united in this Parliament on borrowing for more infrastructure spending and we’re united in this Parliament on ensuring there are more jobs for people so that they can have hope and opportunity in Government investing in those areas, and this fiction that we seem to entertain through a Budget debate where one side is doing everything perfectly and one side’s doing everything absolutely wrong is a fiction—that isn’t actually the reality.

I have to say that if the Government could be criticised on some other areas, it’s that they haven’t turned their minds and eyes to a range of risks that are on the horizon. We’ve heard a lot about a trans-Tasman bubble. We haven’t seen much in the way of plans or delivery on that yet. If there’s something we need to turn our minds a lot more to in the future, it’s how we do work closer with our longstanding partners that we’ve been moving away from over the years. If the Government’s looking at a trans-Tasman bubble when it comes to travel, they should also be looking at even more integration with Australia. We can benefit more by working much closer with Australia.

We also need to turn our minds to how we can work closer with the likes of the United Kingdom and the likes of the United States. I’m very concerned that over the past 10 to 15 years, our country has been moving further and further away from traditional trading partners like the US and like the UK. We have started to put all of our economic eggs in the one basket, with that being the China exporting basket, and now they’re in a situation where we know that there are risks there on the horizon if we place too much trust in the regime in place in China—that we will have further economic problems, because if this virus that we’ve seen and the handling of it in China has told us anything, it’s that we have to be more diverse in our trading opportunities and we have to be more diverse in how we look at the rest of the world.

So I say to Labour and I say to the Opposition that if they’re looking at our foreign policy and our exporting opportunities and our strategies in the future, we must stop putting so much hope and opportunity in the China trade basket. We have to look at working closer with the UK and start looking closer at working with the United States. If there are opportunities to further integrate our defence forces with Australia, we should be looking at those types of opportunities.

A glaring hole in our legislative framework when it comes to boosting the regions is also the way in which we have constraints in place by way of the Resource Management Act and the way in which local government is not incentivised to ensure that there is growth and there is opportunity in the future. So when it comes to policy programmes that this Budget will be funding and when it comes to future policy work that the Government is intent on looking at, I would say they should be directing their officials and directing efforts towards how we can unlock economic opportunity in the regions and around the country by ensuring we change that legislative framework when it comes to investment, we change the way we incentivise local government, and we change the way they look at infrastructure.

The options for the future are almost solely based on infrastructure spending to support further job growth, but we won’t get that infrastructure spending being delivered long-term if we continue to have constraints in place. The short-term COVID19 response measures that are being legislated for which are allowing fast tracking of projects are good, but that’s not sustainable long-term. The very fact that we have to legislate in this House to deliver greater infrastructure because there are too many constraints suggests that our whole model isn’t set up correctly. It suggests that if we are to deliver economic growth for the future and if we are to ensure that there are fewer constraints to job creation and infrastructure building, then we should be looking wholesale at those legislative frameworks.

Finally, I want to say to the Government that I hope that they are more cautious when it comes to borrowing in the future. They are borrowing to ensure growth and to ensure infrastructure spending, but it has to be targeted and it has to be done well. If there are opportunities in the regions where we can take local government, where we can take community partners, and where we can ensure that investment gets into those projects, they should be looking at doing that, rather than just assuming the Government can do everything and should be the be-all and everything when it comes to this country.

It’s hard to disagree with much of what’s being delivered when this was the same policy prescription 10 years ago. It’s hard to disagree with much of this Budget, and I hope New Zealanders ensure that we continue to grow as a country in the future.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very happy to stand and give my 10 minutes’ worth around Vote Māori Development in this Budget because I was quite disappointed in some of the areas that the Government missed out on—they missed an opportunity.

So everybody knows it was $900 million for this Budget, and it should have been—it was a post-COVID Budget for Māori. So much so, in fact, that Māori took it upon themselves to actually set up their own areas to look after their whānau, and they set up their own stops, their own COVID-19 stops so they could look after their whānau. I think the 1918 flu epidemic was a big signal to them and they didn’t want to see that happen again. So when I start to look at this Māori development Budget allocation of $900 million, I hear the words and the voices of the many Māori economic development leaders who have come out and said that this Government has missed a great big opportunity in growing the economy.

We have talked about this—I have listened in this House on a number of speeches around who is best to be able to deliver a strong and growing economy, and it is the blue team. I’m afraid I disagree with what the previous speaker, Jami-Lee Ross, said—that we were very similar: the red team, the blue team. But it is actually the blue team that actually delivers a strong, a very strong economy.

In saying this, I think that many of the Māori whānau that were out and about looking after their particular areas, their rohe, during the COVID-19 lockdown, were quite disappointed. I was getting emails, I was getting texts from whānau who were saying, “Where are the Māori Ministers? Why is it we just hear a dump of $45 million and then silence? Why is it that there are only little wee Facebook flashes and then that’s it?” They wanted to see more and more of the Māori Ministers who, I’m afraid, did not—did not—show up and face up to the issues that Māori whānau were actually facing during that time.

Questions around Māori Development in the 2020 Budget were around: is this enough to actually keep growing in terms of the needs of Māori? Because the need for Māori is growing every day. There are employment issues, there are businesses going to the wall. Has this Government given enough in their Budget?

One of my whanaunga, who is a leader in Māori economic development on the coast, said that this was a Budget mainly for welfare and education. It had nothing to do with actually moving the Māori economic development dial further to grow the economy.

Pre-COVID, the Māori economy was $50 billion and growing. I would hate to think what that Māori economic development growth is like now. I believe it has taken a hit. There are concerns around the growing numbers of Māori unemployed; 17,000 Māori unemployed has been quoted. If we look closer to it, there most probably will be much more than that.

I want to talk a little bit about the other areas within this particular Budget, because I believe that some of the Budget items have not been realised, and will be lucky to be realised in this next 12 months. Let’s look at the $109 million for the promotion of Māori language and culture through direct funding of the broadcasting entities. Now, we all know that the Māori media sector shift, a document, has only just been released by the Minister. I believe that that $109 million is the one that will be aligned to that particular strategy.

Why would a Minister go ahead and do that? Why would she put some money in something when, really, she has no idea about what kind of feedback she’s going to get from those that are in the Māori media? Why would you do that—$73 million to discharge the departmental responsibilities of Te Puni Kōkiri? Is it an administration fund? It is an administration fund—that’s what it is at the end of the day. And, at the end of the day, are they doing what they say they’re doing?

There is $37 million for assistance to whānau for Māori housing providers—for Māori housing providers. What have they got? What impacts will this, post - COVID19, have on their workforce? I don’t think that this Government has actually taken that into account. I really don’t. I don’t think that there is enough of a workforce out there to actually help our Māori into redeveloping their homes, refurbishing their homes, or even building new ones, and is $37 million enough for that? Has this Budget been even or well-thought-out in divvying up each of the sectors?

Then, of course, we have the $40 million to fund Māori development initiatives to meet economic—well, I’ve already spoken about that because this is not enough to meet economic, cultural, land development, technological, health aspirations, including Māori digital technology, and rangatiratanga funds. Honestly, that is a drop in the bucket when you come and you start to pull all of those sectors together. It a shame, actually; again, another missed opportunity.

I also want to talk a little bit—and it would be remiss of me not to talk—about the Whānau Ora budget: the $137 million that was given to Whānau Ora. On the day that the Budget was announced, I was interviewed by Māori Television and they asked me what I thought about it. And I said, “Well, it’s a great amount of money.” However, I could only see two areas where the actual funds had been tagged. One was for commissioning agencies and one was COVID-19, yet there was a glaring gap in between. That ranged between $10 million and $20 million. I said, “Well, what’s the plan for that?” I don’t there is a plan, only for the Minister to be interviewed by the same Māori Television and asked the same question, and he too agreed that there was no plan. He didn’t have a plan for the excess of that funding and that’s very, very shameful. It’s a competency issue. Is the Minister competent enough to be able to run that particular portfolio?

I’m reminded of the start of 2020, when there was a great big—I suppose raruraru, let’s say that—raruraru between the Minister, Whānau Ora commissioning agencies, Whānau Ora providers, and we’ll call them the “Dames Group”. They came out and questioned the Minister as to why he was giving over funding that he had tagged from the 2019 Budget to Whānau Ora commissioning agencies and why he was giving it to non - Whānau Ora commissioning agency providers. And he said, “Well, I’m the Minister. I can do that.” They weren’t exactly the words that he should have actually said. Then there came all of these issues from the “Dames Group” around his competency and they felt aggrieved enough to take a Waitangi Tribunal inquiry into the state of Whānau Ora under this Government.

This is very shameful on that Minister for doing that—for putting at risk all of those providers and whānau, to be honest. To top it off, the Prime Minister was asked to step and help to sort it out because it was getting very, very, very—a lot of tension between the parties, where the Minister’s name was being asked to resign because he was so incompetent of being able to manage that particular fund.

I can say that at the end of the day, when it comes to the Māori development portfolio and Māori development in the Budget, this Government has missed a great opportunity to be able to move the Māori economic development sector dial to actually grow Māori business in this country. Eight million dollars were shared for Māori tourism. It was shared amongst Māori tourism and a few other organisations. There is just a drop in the bucket if that; it’s only a half a drop in the bucket. The Māori tourism sector is highly successful. It’s a highly successful sector. And they need to be able to support their whānau by having access to more of that Māori development budget. Remember, at the end of the day, if their businesses are thriving, people are being employed, the economy is growing. And that’s what this Government has actually missed: the whole area of growing the Māori economic development sector.

Before I close my contribution today around this Budget—really at the end of the day, there is something I want to acknowledge around the issues that have been bubbling up overseas and here in New Zealand around Black Lives Matter or, in New Zealand’s case, Brown Lives Matter. It is going to actually reshape race relations in this country and overseas. And I just want to acknowledge some of the issues that have been brought up through that. I think that, you know, for a Government and parliamentarians we need to keep that in the back of our minds. We need to have it there at the forefront. Thank you.

I call Louisa Wall. This is a split call.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. I’m incredibly proud to belong a Labour team, and particularly with our finance Minister in the House. Through Budget 2020 he has prioritised $50 billion—I’ll say that again; $50 billion—to lead us through a response to COVID-19. And lest we forget the 22 New Zealanders who have died, the 1,506 New Zealanders who were infected by this deadly disease, two of whom were announced today. We have zero in hospital, and we have 1,482 who have recovered. And through that Budget appropriation, I specifically want to highlight the $500 million that we have invested in our health system. It’s incredibly important to highlight that investment, and, obviously, the leadership of Mr Bloomfield, who’s become a bit of a celebrity. It is “Team Health”, with the support of “Team Aotearoa New Zealand”, the 5 million of us who ensured that we have no community transmission. Having no community transmission means that that investment, actually, is valuable, and it’s valuable in these ways. What we did is invest in testing, and I can attest to the fact I was tested, and within two days of having that test, in Manurewa, my electorate, I got a text message to say that I did not have COVID-19.

We also invested in treatment facilities that we would’ve all needed had we got it. So our intensive care capacity was bolstered. We trained our staff. We ensured we had appropriate facilities. Then there’s the prevention aspect of that $500 million—in an investment in our public health units—to ensure that we’re able to do contact tracing. We invested in self-isolation facilities to make sure that all those Kiwis, our citizens, our residents coming home, were isolated for those 14 days. And we also invested in communications assistance. During this troubling time we had over 5,000 calls every day and we were able to respond to them.

We need to put this in a global context. So, globally, 7.7 million people have been infected, with over 428,000 deaths. But the biggest impact globally has been on us cutting our borders—closing them, cutting them, saying we can’t let anyone home unless they’re a citizen or a resident. For us, closing our borders could result in a $16 billion deficit to our tourism industry. I’m not sure if many of us know, but that’s how much we get as a country from tourism. And it specifically has affected 180,000 full-time equivalents. And so I do want to focus on our investment in our business owners.

We needed to invest in our business owners, the $12 billion, because they employ 1.6 million New Zealanders, who needed to continue to be paid. We didn’t want them to be beneficiaries. Actually, we wanted them to be supported by their business owners—their employers—and so we as a Government chose to do that. And I want to acknowledge our workers, and particularly our essential workers, who have kept, I would say, our home fires burning. In Māoridom we have a term called our “ahikā”. They are the people that got up throughout this whole crisis—our essential workers, our clinicians, our social service providers, our food suppliers, and amongst all of that, our iwi and our other community leaders, our Pacific community leaders, our ethnic community leaders, who did so much to ensure that the trauma of this disease that was killing us—we actually mitigated those consequences.

And we’ve got much to do. And the reality is this Budget will provide the resources, I believe, to initially respond. And I know my colleague the Hon Grant Robertson will talk about the recovery aspect and then the rebuilding aspect of this Budget. That’s what we’ve done—we’ve created a framework for us to recover and to rebuild as 5 million people, New Zealanders—Team Aotearoa New Zealand. Part of that rebuilding, for me, is reimagining, because there are areas that will be decimated. And I guess this provides an opportunity, like most disasters, where we can learn from what we’ve done in the past and actually reimagine what the future could be. So I say to our business owners, to our workers: kia kaha koutou. We’ve got more work to do and we can only do it if we work together. Kia ora.

I call Kieran McAnulty—

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. You know, it has been a great privilege—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: —and he has four minutes and 25 seconds.

Oh, thanks very much, Madam Speaker. As I’ve been going around the Wairarapa electorate over the last couple of weeks, something has struck me, and that is the absolute confidence that the general public have in this Government, and that is as a response to both the Budget and the successful—

💬 Matt Doocey: You need to get out of Wellington.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: You need to get out more.

—response to COVID-19. And my opponents on the other side of the House heckle. They can’t even do heckling in unison. This is a display, yet again, of what we’ve seen from this side of the House. National’s response to this Budget has been somewhat of a pantomime. One bloke could stand up and say, “We should spend more.”, and another bloke could stand up and say, “But what about the debt?” They aren’t even unified in a position of opposition because they know, deep down, that this Government has succeeded where most other Governments across the world have not.

As I sat there on the Epidemic Response Committee post this Budget, I reflected on the position that the Opposition took to the response to COVID-19. They said we should be like Australia, and yet Australia continues to be in a position where they themselves cannot open up the borders between states. They said we should have been like Singapore, and yet we know that they, unfortunately, have seen exponential growth in cases after opening up their economy. They even said that we should be like Sweden, and then one week later they stopped talking about Sweden.

The fact is that this Budget is evident every single day. If the Opposition members bothered to go out and about in their electorates, they would hear from small-business owners that said it was the wage subsidy that kept them open, it was the wage subsidy that managed to keep their staff on, so that now that we are opening up, they are ready to put rubber on the road and they are ready to hit the ground running. That is certainly the case in the Wairarapa. If the members wish to come and spend their money in South Wairarapa, in Greytown, Featherston, and Martinborough, they would see retail, they would see hospitality, and they would see accommodation places booming because people are able to do so, because, as the Prime Minister said right at the start of this response: “The best economic response was a successful health response.” Act hard and act early and this is what you’ll see.

That is what Professor Sir David Skegg said to the Epidemic Response Committee: that New Zealand was the only Western nation in the world with an opportunity to eliminate COVID-19, and the Opposition scoffs. I remember in her contribution to this debate on the Budget, Judith Collins said that New Zealand did not act fast, and did not act hard, and did not act early. That is despite the fact that we closed our borders to foreigners 21 days after our first case—it was 56 in Australia, it was 51 in Canada, and it was 60 in the USA. So for Judith Collins to stand in her response to this Budget and state that and fail to back it up with facts, I think that sums up the Opposition’s response to this matter.

You can also see the same point if you look at how long it took to get lockdown in place: 27 days after our first case, it was 54 in the UK, and 55 in France. And, of course, the timing of the first economic package—what this Budget has built upon 19 days after the first case. I acknowledge the work of the finance Minister, the Hon Grant Robertson, in putting together a package that has saved jobs and saved businesses and kept economies like that in Wairarapa going, and then followed it up with the response in the Budget: an extension to the wage subsidy which the Opposition continues to scoff. I invite them to talk to small businesses—

I’m sorry to interrupt the member. I call the Hon Grant Robertson.

It’s a great pleasure to rise in the debate, and my member—my member?—my fellow member on this side of the House—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: What a marvellous member.

Exactly. I won’t go there. My colleague was just reaching a crescendo and then—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Cut off in his prime.

—you cut him off at the knees, as it were. Few would know. But it is a pleasure to stand in reply in this debate today, and to acknowledge all members who have spoken in the debate. This is the opportunity that the Minister of Finance has at the end of the Budget debate to be able to respond to a few of those who have spoken before me. I do need to address some of the issues raised by the Opposition in their speeches. I couldn’t agree more than with my colleague Kieran McAnulty about the fact that there were a range of views expressed by the Opposition. Some said we were spending too much, some said we were spending too little. Some members said that in the same speech.

One of those was the Hon Paul Goldsmith, who managed to say that we were simultaneously opening up too slowly, moving too fast, not spending enough, spending too much, not helping small businesses, helping the wrong types of small businesses. It was a confused offering, but I did note that Mr Goldsmith managed to attend the launch of Nick Smith’s campaign in the weekend and played the piano. The song he chose to play was “Rocket Man”. I do think that’s probably appropriate in many ways, because it has a very long chorus, which many of you will know: “And I think it’s going to be a long, long time.” And I think it’s going to be a very, very long, long time before Mr Goldsmith finds himself on this side of the aisle.

But he’s not alone in that. Todd Muller also had a very important speech at the weekend. Many have noted the upside down flying of the tino rangatiratanga flag. That’s well known as an international distress signal, so he was reaching out across the aisle to the Labour-led Government, to the New Zealand First Party and the Green Party, who formed this Government with us to say, “I need your help.” He clearly did, because all of the ideas in his speech were ones that this Government has put in place. In fact, Mr Muller even reached back into history for that and said that it was Michael Joseph Savage who’d done a tremendous job of pulling the country out of the Great Depression. So I can only agree with Mr Muller that it is a Labour Government supported by New Zealand First and the Greens that is the right Government to get us through the other end of this crisis.

In Budget 2020 we sought to build on the response phase of our plan to deal with COVID-19. I do want to again place on record our thanks to the team of 5 million, but to some pretty important members of that team—our essential workers, and, in particular, within our essential workers, a hard working group of public servants who kept the Government going during level 4. One of those groups of people were the people who put together the Budget. It was put together without actually being able to be physically in their offices, but they managed to do that, and I do want to put on record the incredible efforts of those public servants.

Another group are the staff members from the Ministry of Social Development who have processed the applications for the wage subsidy scheme so quickly that some people could not believe it. Some people have been paid for the extension of the scheme within six hours of applying. Madam Speaker, I know you’ve worked closely with those officials and they work hard, and they were absolutely brilliant in these circumstances. When we compare that response to the rest of the world, we can see that we got money into the pockets of New Zealanders, gave cash flow and confidence to businesses and supported people to be able to put food on the table. That $11 billion that has ended up being paid out of the first phase of the wage subsidy scheme is something all New Zealanders can be proud of, the fact we looked after one another in a moment of crisis. I think it is something we will look back on with pride indeed. In addition to that, obviously, we’ve now seen the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme being developed to make sure there is working capital for our businesses to spend on paying the rent and the utilities or just to give the confidence that they can pay their bills, and the various tax measures that have been put in place to ease that burden and give tax refunds.

Something we haven’t talked about enough, I believe, is actually the support we’ve given to the aviation industry to keep flights going for our exporters, in particular. We did run the risk in the early days of this that we were not going to have air routes available for our freight. The Government stepped in. We’re supporting more than 50—I think towards 100—flights now a week that actually has made sure we’ve had those air freight routes. That’s been well and truly welcomed by those in the export sector.

But as my colleague Louisa Wall said, this Budget began the focus now on the recovery and the rebuild phases. It is vitally important that we do not allow New Zealanders to be left behind in that recovery. It’s why we extended the wage subsidy scheme. It’s why we put in place the COVID income relief payment to cushion that blow of the loss of work on those people who have lost jobs as a result of COVID-19. And it’s why we’ve now got the focus on the industries and the sectors that will grow the jobs that we need in the rebuild: that is in infrastructure, that is in construction, that is supporting our small businesses.

It’s amazing that we talk about the big numbers, the billions in a Budget, but often it is those small things that make a difference. The fund we’ve established for small and medium enterprises to offer e-commerce to put themselves on a website, to get themselves online are practical things that small-business people want. The fact we’ve already got people working in the Jobs for Nature Fund, people out there supporting us in pest control, making sure that we’re looking after our streams and our rivers. We can do practical things that actually create jobs in the moment, as well as the big picture things like construction and infrastructure that take us forward.

But also in the tourism sector—and we’ve had a lot of questions and conversations about the tourism sector. The tourism sector is going to be affected for some time. I want to give credit to my colleague Kelvin Davis, who has exhaustively consulted and listened to that sector and established a fund that is now being used to protect our critical assets like the Waitomo caves, like Whale Watch Kaikoura, but also to support—he said today—550 businesses to transition themselves to a new era, to focus on domestic terrorism, to look at what they can do to repackage the offering that they have. That is, again, practical support, keeping people in work, helping to create new jobs.

There is support for horticulture, for agriculture, for the arts and sports, and I do want to mention that, because those sectors are the ones that bind our communities together. They also offer jobs and employment to thousands of New Zealanders. But we saw at the weekend, with the start of Super Rugby Aotearoa, the way in which our communities come together around the sports, around arts, and we have supported those organisations so they know they have income, which has dried up from their usual sources of sponsorship and of the community trusts that support them. All of those sectors are getting support.

But the one that I want to spend a bit of time on, because it highlights the link between the recovery and the rebuild for the long term, is the investment in skills and training—the fact that out of this crisis we have emerged with a policy that creates free apprenticeships across the board, and creates free trade training in areas as diverse as community care and mental health, right through to manufacturing and construction. That’s legacy building. That’s what will make the difference, and it’s what didn’t happen after the global financial crisis (GFC), because after the GFC what we saw was people bailing out, not having their apprentices, letting them go, not taking on more people. We’re not going to let that happen, so that’s why we’re putting in a subsidy to support employers to keep their apprentices on. It’s why we’re boosting the trade academies and we’re giving opportunity across the board. In the construction sector we know that matters, because after the GFC, when the recovery came, there wasn’t the skilled labour force that was needed. We’re not going to let that happen. We’re investing in the future of New Zealand to make sure that we have the skilled staff we have as we begin our recovery.

As we look to the future of what we can do in our rebuild, we do want to rebuild this country better. We want to make sure that as a country we take seriously the challenges that have always been there but have been highlighted more than ever in this. That includes in inequality. It’s why initiatives like extending lunches in schools out to 200,000 students matters. It’s why it matters that we make sure that we have lifted benefits by $25 per week and doubled the winter energy payment.

There is more to do in all of these areas, just as there is in our sustainability agenda, and just as there is in making New Zealand more productive, but this Budget is one that responded to a one-in-100-year shock. It did so with a very large sum of money, but it was the rainy day we had been saving for. We put the umbrella up to make sure that we protect all New Zealanders. We will come through this strong. We will come through it with an economy that is more productive, is more sustainable and is more inclusive, and we will do that in a way and at a pace that other countries won’t have been able to do. That brings me back to the very beginning to thank all New Zealanders for their work and to ask them to support our recovery and rebuild as well.