Appropriation (2019/20 Supplementary Estimates) Bill

Thank you very much, Madam Chair—my apologies for being too quick to get going there. I thought it might be helpful—

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: Very quick that Minister; he’s very quick.

Indeed, thank you very much. I thought it might be helpful at the outset of the consideration of the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that I explain clearly what it does. In almost all years, once Cabinet has decided in early- to mid-April the amounts to be included in the Estimates for the year about to start and the Supplementary Estimates for the year about to end, there is a Budget moratorium from then until Budget day where no further decisions with financial implications are made. This ensures that the Budget documents presented to the House on Budget day reflect all of the decisions that Ministers have made. This year, with a need for a timely and ongoing response to COVID-19, it was not possible to have a Budget moratorium. This has happened once before in the time that I’ve been in this House, and that was immediately following the Canterbury earthquakes when a similar situation befell the Government where there was a need to make decisions in what would normally have been the Budget moratorium period; the same occurred this year because of COVID-19.

The addition to the 2019/20 Supplementary Estimates that I presented to the House last Tuesday contains all changes to appropriations and new appropriations for 2019/20 decided since the 2019/20 Supplementary Estimates closed in early April. I thank the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their expeditious examination of the addition to the 2019/20 Supplementary Estimates.

The Supplementary Order Paper incorporates the Appropriation (2019/20 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, the changes to appropriations, and new appropriations for 2019/20 contained in the addition to the 2019/20 Supplementary Estimates. It is a revision-tracked SOP showing the changes being from the bill as introduced. For each appropriation or capital injection in the schedules to the bill, the amount of the change in the Supplementary Estimates—what is the second column in the addition to the Supplementary Estimates—is replaced with the amount of the cumulative change in the Supplementary Estimates and the addition to the 2019/20 Supplementary Estimates. Essentially, what that does is bring together all of the spending in the 2019/20 year, rather than, as I might have heard in some earlier parts of this bill, an extensive discussion about what is about to come in the 2020/21 year.

What is covered here and what is new here is the spending that we needed to undertake in this financial year that is about to end on 30 June, rather than the expenditure that’s coming forward. I look forward to the debate and questions.

My thanks to the Minister for explaining the reasonably complicated sort of arrangements. So am I right in assuming that you only want us to debate the changes to the bill in terms of the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)?

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: That’s the SOP we’re debating.

So the Supplementary Estimates, for example, included that there were to be $344 million not spent in the KiwiBuild housing—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Can I just say we’re on clause 4, which is the overview of the bill.

Oh, I thought we were taking it all as one part. We’re not taking it all as one part?

💬 Michael Wood: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I seek leave that the provisions of this bill be taken as one part.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Clauses 4 to 8 and Schedules 1 to 3