Imprest Supply (Second for 2020/21) Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this Budget 2020—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Five minutes.

Five minutes, thank you, Madam Speaker. [Interruption] It is. The first thing I would say is that I recognise without a doubt that as a nation, we responded and we’ve managed to put ourselves in a very strong position in terms of how we’ve dealt with COVID-19. There’s no doubt about that at all. And I want to acknowledge, you know, the Government for the response around their health response. But now we’re moving into an even more critical phase, and that is the economic recovery. We keep talking about the economy, but actually the economic recovery is what’s going to drive our social wellbeing. It’s what’s going to drive our mental health issues in this country for the next two or three years, and it’s all going to come down to how well the incoming Government is able to deliver a plan—a plan that needs to be clearly laid out and articulated for the country in the coming campaign.

I can’t believe—I find it extraordinary—that the governing party at the moment, the Labour Party, has come out and told the country that they will not be bringing any serious policy forward during this election. So they’re basically either waving the white flag and realising that it’s just too much and it’s beyond them, or they’re going to sit back, at best, and be complacent about our health response—which, by the way, was a team of 5 million; it was the whole country that put us in this position—or, at worst, it’s a very arrogant way to treat the country, to say that during the upcoming campaign—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I just remind the member that we are actually on the Estimates.

Yes, thank you, Madam Speaker, which brings me back to the Estimates. It is that Budget 2020—it brings me back to the point that I was making. Where is the plan—where is the plan? Where is the investment going? Because I can tell you right now, in both my portfolios—the first one being defence, and I want to acknowledge our defence forces. I want to acknowledge the work that they’ve done both overseas in advancing our international interests and protecting those—but especially back home. When the chips are down, it’s often our New Zealand Defence Force that we call on to step up and take a leadership role. And they had to do it this time as well, because we saw very clearly that our protection at the border was not working.

The budget for defence forces was OK. It’s what I’d call a zero budget. They’ve adopted our plan, which was the Defence Capability Plan, and I want to acknowledge the Hon Ron Mark, because fundamentally—at the start of this term, I said if he can stick to that and you can keep the investment funnel going in terms of our personnel, our equipment, and our property, then we will support that. And fundamentally, they have been able to do that, with a couple of little slip-ups. I notice that they’re just starting to renege a little bit on investment into defence property, and that’s one of the priorities in terms of defence and where the investment and where the spend has to go.

In terms of sport and recreation—and I want to come back to this Budget and say there’s been promises made, there’s been money allocated, but there’s no detail around it. Sports clubs don’t know where the money is going. We know that they’re suffering. We know that COVID has actually had a massive negative impact on our local clubs and our grassroots sports. They need to have some clarity. They need to have some certainty in terms of what they can do, in terms of what they can deliver, in terms of getting our kids back out on the sports field. I come back to the fact that without a clear plan, in terms of what we’re going to do now as a country in the next three years, without, you know—

💬 Greg O’Connor: Did you sleep in on Saturday morning?

Greg seems to think that it’s not important to have—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Full names.

Mr O’Connor seems to think that it’s not important to have a plan. If he’s got a plan, stand up and articulate it for the House. Tell the country what it is, because we sure as hell don’t know what the plan is. There is no plan. So the Government—it’s incumbent upon them in the upcoming campaign to actually stand up and lay out a plan in terms of Budget 2020 and how that actually translates into where the investment is going, who can expect to get the investment, where it’s going to be best spent, because I can tell you one thing: the party opposite has got a very proud tradition of splashing money everywhere. It’s never targeted. They never actually can show an asset or a result for it. And actually, as a country, when we’ve borrowed as much money—

💬 Greg O’Connor: Sports fields are full of kids.

—as we are, Mr O’Connor, you actually need to be able to articulate a clear plan in terms of where that investment’s going. So I would challenge one of the members opposite—maybe Mr O’Connor—to stand and take a call and outline for us in detail what their plan 2020 means for New Zealand in the coming general election. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

On this side of the House, we’ve said that the best economic response is based on a strong and excellent health response to the COVID-19 crisis. We went hard and we went early; we locked down tight for four weeks and nearly as tight for another three weeks. It was a huge shock to all of us and a huge shock to our economy, but it worked—it worked. Our health response was perhaps the strongest in the world at the time in terms of the lockdown. Other countries didn’t go as hard, didn’t go so strict, and we’ve, sadly, seen some of the outcome of that across the Tasman, and, like all of us, we really feel for our Australian whānau, for the people who are now locked down again. But it’s not just people returning to their homes again there; there is an economic consequence as well, with businesses shut down again, with the economy faltering. That is why the best economic response was indeed driven by a strong, strong health response.

Nevertheless, when we shut our economy down—shut it virtually all the way down for four weeks—we knew that it would have a strong economic impact. During those four weeks of the lockdown, the Budget was rewritten to respond to the COVID crisis, to give a strong economic response. We can see that strong economic response in action now. We can see that economic activity is picking up. We can see that the rural sector, which kept us all going, is coming back strongly through exports, that the shops are open, that buildings are going up, that friends can gather at cafes and at pubs, and that we can stand and watch sports games. Our economic response is coming off that strong health response.

But there is, nevertheless, still a strong economic response, and as we have said many times, now is the rainy day, the time to respond. So the Budget does have the core Budget response, as we always have, to health, to welfare, to education, but it also has a strong economic response to the COVID crisis in a five-point plan, which is embedded in this Budget—a five-point plan where we are investing in our people.

The wage subsidy kept people in touch with their jobs. The wage subsidy means that people still had money coming in. We responded to beneficiaries and we doubled the winter energy payment. Why? Because it enabled people to survive that intense COVID crisis. We are investing in our people by making all apprenticeships and trades training free so that we are training people for the trades that we need as we recover. We have extended the wage subsidy to ensure that businesses can get through this tough time. The whole point of that wage subsidy and the wage subsidy extension is to give businesses time to rethink, to regather, and to decide what they will do in the future. That’s the first step: investing in our people.

The second point of our plan was: protecting and creating jobs. That’s what the wage subsidy did: it protected jobs. But we also have the shovel-ready projects, which will create jobs in construction. In my own electorate is the North-Western busway and the Whau walkway, which will bring jobs and economic activity to West Auckland. We’ve got 11,000 new environmental jobs in this Budget, responding to the needs of our economy and ensuring that people stay in employment and that the employment they stay in builds New Zealand. So that’s the second part of our five-point economic plan.

The third point is: preparing for a post-COVID future and tackling our long-term challenges in housing and in climate change. So we are providing 8,000 new places in public and transitional housing. We are building, building, building State houses—about 300 dwellings going up in my electorate, and that is repeated across Auckland and throughout the country. We are starting to deal with our waste better as part of an environmental response to COVID, and we’re investing in our hospitals. So that’s the third point: preparing for a post-COVID future.

The fourth point of our plan is: backing small business. That’s what the wage subsidy does. We’ve provided interest-free and low-interest loans—a minimum of $10,000 for a business and up to $100,000, depending on how many employees each business has. That’s an extraordinary thing to do. The whole objective of that interest-free or low-interest loan is to give businesses the cash to tide them over. We know that cash is king, that getting cash in the door really matters to a business. This low-interest and no-interest loan provides that cash that a business needs. Sitting in here is a strategy around tax refunds, where instead of having to carry a tax loss forward and set it off against future profits, as a one-off temporary measure, businesses could pick up a tax loss and carry it back and write it against previous years’ profits. It’s a timing difference only, but the effect is to get cash into businesses faster, to help them survive. So we are backing small business by doing that, by making sure they get the cash they need.

And our fifth point: we are positioning ourselves globally. We’ve had a brilliant health response here in New Zealand, a health response that means that people are interested in New Zealand and that our exports are growing because our reputation has been enhanced by our response to COVID-19. We are backing those exports with further funding to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, giving practical support to our exporters so that they can access markets and grow markets. We are negotiating trade agreements with the UK and with the European Union, and the work continues.

So there it is—the five-point plan: (1) investing in our people, (2) protecting and creating jobs, (3) preparing for a post-COVID future, (4) backing small business, and (5) positioning ourselves globally. These are the things that we are doing as part of the economic response to COVID-19. It’s great work.

What do I hear from the Opposition? Carping and complaining and digging out the old bogeyman attacks. And they say, “Well, we’ve had to borrow to respond to the COVID crisis, and how are we going to repay it?” Let me just give the Opposition a little bit of an education on how debt works and why we need to engage in debt and how we will repay it. Now, when the previous National Government came into power, debt was at 6 percent of GDP, thanks to the judicious stewardship of Dr Michael Cullen. But the Opposition, the then Government, was quite quickly hit with the global financial crisis, and properly—quite properly—they borrowed to get through the global financial crisis. In fact, under the former National Government, debt rocketed up to about 26 percent of GDP—a 20-point increase in debt. That was the proper response. Over time, it worked down gradually, until we’d managed to pay off some of that debt, until in 2017, debt was down to about 22 percent of GDP, and this year, before the COVID crisis, under this Government and under Grant Robertson’s stewardship, we had worked it down to about 19 percent of GDP. That’s what happened to debt: rocketed up, along came down, and it was the right thing to do. We are borrowing again in a crisis.

We anticipate, as is set out in this Budget, that, in fact, debt will reach about 54 percent of GDP. But how does that compare? Well, it compares very well indeed—it compares very well indeed. The OECD average of debt as an extension of GDP, it’s sitting at around about 86 percent—this is before the COVID crisis. In the UK, it’s about 80 percent of GDP. In Australia, before the COVID crisis, about 45 percent of GDP. In Germany, about 60 percent of GDP. That is before the COVID crisis. So you can see that our borrowing after the COVID crisis is well within reasonable bounds and well within bounds that can be repaid.

But here’s the interesting bit. During the years when the former National Government borrowed money and then repaid it, tax hovered at around about 25 percent of GDP. In 2006, it was about 32 percent of GDP, but the tax take by 2012 was around about 25 percent of GDP—25, 26. In 2018, it was about 26 percent of GDP, and there it hovered. All during those years when debt went up and came down again, it hovered at that level of GDP.

So we do not need to drag out the bogeyman of tax increases in order to manage the debt. I’m sure that there will be some adjusting in due course, but there is no need for a rash response, there is no need for a bogeyman, and there is no need for fears around it. As has been shown by the previous Government and will be shown again by this Government, that level of debt can be managed and repaid, and it is a necessary and needed part of this Government’s response to the COVID crisis. This is an excellent Budget, and I commend it to the House.

I’m not sure what to make of the end of that speech. I think we’ve just heard the Government’s tax policy having just been announced. Only I don’t think Grant Robertson would be that fond of the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee either announcing the Labour Party’s tax policy going into the election in this debate or committing to no new taxes, because, frankly, they haven’t said that. The Prime Minister hasn’t said it. The Minister of Finance hasn’t said it. Frankly, I don’t think it’s true. I think there are tax increases on the way, because that’s all the Government knows how to do.

Now, the one thing I will agree with Deborah Russell on is this: that the Budget was somewhat rewritten during the lockdown, but there was part of it that I don’t think the Government paid close enough attention to. We’ve been hearing a lot of speeches about the cost side of the Budget, but I want to focus on the revenue side, because unless we get the money into Crown coffers, it’s going to be very difficult to deliver the spending programme of this Budget and maintain the debt levels—eye-wateringly high though they are—as what Ms Russell says is up to 54 percent of net GDP. My concern is that the revenue projections are frankly heroic.

Now, last year, the actual Crown revenue was at $93.5 billion. If this Budget was rewritten as recently as March, remember, before the lockdown, there was a projected fall in Crown revenue of at least $4 billion to $89.5 billion in the 2019-20 forecast. Despite that, despite all of the drops in tax take that is likely to be the case—and I’ll go through why that is—they’re only forecasting a $2.5 billion further drop in Crown revenue before it recovers by a massive $7.6 billion.

Now, in the face of thousands if not tens of thousands of companies going to the wall over the next few months and years, even those that survive will survive—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Where’s your evidence?

It’s called realism, Dr Webb—it’s called realism. The evidence is in every single small business that every single one of my colleagues has visited to hear of the trauma and the fact that they survived the lockdown by the skin of their teeth. But let me tell you what they’re not saying. They’re not saying, “Guess what! We’re going to make a profit this year.” It’s only on profit that tax is paid by companies. In fact, many of them will sustain thumping great losses. The tax loss offsets for that will go through into out-years. The GST take is already down; it’s going to go down even further. Jobs are being lost, and people who lose their jobs can’t pay PAYE. In the face of all of that, they’re telling us that Crown revenue is only going to drop next year by $2.5 billion. I say phooey. Indeed, the Minister of Finance acknowledged that in the 13-hour debate on this appropriations bill in saying that the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update is going to adjust Crown revenue. What that’s going to mean? This is a Government that doesn’t know how to cut spending or reprioritise spending or take a value for money lens to spending. That means debt must go up in order to sustain the spending path that they’re on.

There’s another reason debt’s going to go up: because the health sector is in a terrible mess. Now, the Minister of Health has acknowledged that the $643 million deficits projected across our DHB sector in March isn’t going to be met. It’s going to be even worse than that. That’s going to be about 30 percent higher than it was last year. Now, this Budget does put a big dollop of money into DHBs. But listeners should be under no illusions that there is going to be a single extra treatment or procedure or visit to the doctor as a consequence of that nearly billion dollars a year going in, because they’ve firstly got to recover the deficits, which could be approaching three quarters of a billion dollars before they even account for health cost inflation, which runs at about twice the rate of general inflation. So there is every likelihood that one of two things will happen: either DHBs will continue to plunge further into deficit or services will be cut under this Government.

Now, there’s one thing that they will be able to draw on, and that is the underspend in the mental health commitments that they made in Budget 2019, because despite the nearly half a billion dollars they said they were going to spend in mental health, I think, Mr Doocey, they’re up to—what—about $40 billion, if we’re really generous.

💬 Matt Doocey: Million.

Forty million dollars, rather, if we’re really generous about the new spending that’s gone into mental health. Big announcement, not big delivery. In fact, no delivery. Very little, if any, new mental health services have actually been put into place as a consequence of that commitment. So there will be some offset, but there’s no doubt that the budget for health in Budget 2020 will not be met. There will have to be a supplementary appropriation just to fund the deficits before we even get to extra care for population growth and inflation.

I want to touch on the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), because we’ve had an extraordinary revelation over the last few days from the Minister for Regional Economic Development, who talks about pūtea. Well, I think it’s more like kete poaka. It’s a pork barrel. He is running around the country, embellishing the number of jobs that he thinks is being created, and today had the audacity to issue a press release estimating that there were 13,217 jobs created out of the Provincial Growth Fund on the same day that the Auditor-General issued a damning report into the management of the Provincial Growth Fund that said that the fund’s authorisation processes lacked transparency, it lacked coordination across the four organisations in Government that were managing the fund, that there were no measurements. They didn’t even know how to define job growth.

Yet the Minister comes to this House and trumpets the fact that they’ve exceeded the target of 10,000 jobs created out of the PGF and accuses me of plucking figures out of the air. Well, that is the master of plucking figures, I would suggest, and that there is no more likely to be 13,000 jobs than I am to be 6½ feet tall. It just ain’t happening. We want it to happen. We want there to be measures in place. We want to know how many jobs are being created, because that is a core task and target of the Provincial Growth Fund, but we are none the wiser. The Auditor-General cut through the spin of the Hon Shane Jones, the Minister for kete poaka, and said, “We don’t know.” That’s not good enough. When $3 billion is being earmarked for Provincial Growth Fund initiatives, we should know better about the sustained economic and job growth that comes from it.

I say $3 billion. The Minister will say $2.7 billion of it has already been appropriated, but if one reads the fine print, there’s only $339.5 million that has actually been paid out. So for every dollar of commitment that the Minister has made and every ribbon that he cuts, for each dollar, only 12.9 cents has actually reached the regions. Those regions of Northland, of Tai Rāwhiti, of Hawke’s Bay, of Whanganui, and of the West Coast, those high priority regions—all they’ve heard is grand announcements, while Mr Jones walks in, cuts a ribbon, and leaves. The money is not flowing into those regions at the speed and in the rate that he portrays it to be.

I want to finish briefly on Pike River, because I now have responsibility for Pike River re-entry on behalf of the National Party. The Minister for Pike River Re-entry has made it clear that the $54 million—

💬 Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: How much?

Fifty-four million dollars, Mr Bakshi, that has been earmarked for re-entering the drift will be the limit of the taxpayer’s commitment to that. I support that. I wish the Pike River re-entry team the very best over the next five months as they head down to the drift and try to recover important electrical equipment that may provide answers to questions that the families of the Pike River miners and the community right across the country have. But I agree with the Minister that it’s time to put a cap on that and do the best with what we’ve found.

Madam Speaker, I feel very honoured to be able to speak and stand in the House this evening to be able to give my reflections—or my contribution, rather—on this Appropriation (2020/21 Estimates) Bill.

It was not even six months ago, I think, that anybody in this House could have envisaged what 2020 would bring us. I know that this Budget is probably not the Budget that we thought we would be all debating in the final week of this House sitting, before the end of this 52nd Parliament rises, but here we are. Here we are in the oddest year that has been, 2020, and we are now—like the world has globally been—forced to quickly and fundamentally shift ourselves as a nation.

Now, I want to thank, first and foremost, every single person that has worked tirelessly in Aotearoa New Zealand to get us to the position that we are in today, to be able to say that here we are, this team of 5 million. Collectively, we will be leading New Zealand through our COVID recovery. Collectively, we will be building back our economy. Collectively, we have put ourselves into a position that is the envy of the world. It is something that, wherever I go in our electorate of the mighty East Coast—and I’m sure that wherever any member of Parliament in this House goes, in the places that they call home—whatever ilk that people are, whatever colour that they adorn on their chest, people are proud of the way that we have responded. People are cognisant of the privileged position that we are in to now turn to building our economy, and I could not be prouder of the plan that this Government has to keep New Zealand moving.

In March, it was about responding to the unfathomable, and we did that. That was through two different lenses. The first was the health one, as we’ve discussed. But for us in Te Tai Rāwhiti, we started to see the economic impacts of COVID-19 a lot earlier than the rest of the country, because we were heavily dependent on forestry export. Almost one in every four families in Te Tai Rāwhiti had their incomes directly or indirectly impacted by forestry, and the fact that China was starting to shut down—it didn’t need our logs and it started to shut down. Our community rallied, and we were supported by this Government. We were supported by the Hon Grant Robertson. We had the Hon Phil Twyford come up into our patch. He met with the people. He could see the desperation, the looks on our community’s faces when it was very apparent that we were going to face some economic turbulence, well before we went into lockdown.

We were the first cab off the rank to secure a regional COVID-19 economic recovery package, of $29 million. That is something that really leads into the way that our Government has responded, because that led to the recovery, which leads to our rebuilding. Now, there are five key areas of our fundamental economic plan. We are investing in our people—investing in our people. Our Government has invested $1.6 billion into training. We are investing in those people that want to and need to—out of necessity, because of the situation that we collectively find ourselves in—retrain and be redeployed. If you want to become an apprentice in this country, we have the opportunity to do that completely for free as a consequence of this Government’s investment. Whether that’s being a tradie, whether that’s being a sparky, whether that is working in an area that has been completely under-resourced—mental health support, whatever it is—we are providing that resource.

Now, last week, or the week prior, we had some big flooding up in Tolaga Bay, up the East Coast. We were up there assessing some of the damage. I was actually meant to be up there looking at some of the investment from last time: in the 2018 floods, the Provincial Growth Fund invested over $30 million to building and strengthening particular structures up some of our most flood-prone roads. I was supposed to be looking at that, but we had another flood.

Now, one of the chaps that I had the opportunity to meet—he was a young fella. His name was Angus, and he was the first point of call as we sort of went up into the dangerous area. Angus was a young gentleman. I’d say he’d be no older than 22, 23. He was in his young 20s. He had just completed a three-week course: Wheels, Tracks and Rollers. It was a three-week course that was a recipient of funding that came from our COVID recovery funds to enable retraining and redeployment. Now, after his three-week retraining course to get him up into the civil engineering type of work, a local chap by the name of Kim Cranswick—he is a founder of one of our local companies up there, Cranswick Enterprises. Well, Kim had taken on, just the week prior to the floods, about six new grads who had come off this course. Locals employing locals who had been trained locally to work in our patch—that is a story that is familiar for over 400 young locals up in our patch. They had been picked up, retrained, redeployed into areas that we need. Now, I could not be prouder to see that level of investment into a region like ours.

I heard, just prior, quite a derogatory framing, I thought, of a fund that has been transformational for rural and provincial New Zealand. I heard them refer to it as something like the poaka kete—the pig basket fund. How derogatory, because if any of those members would like to come up to a place called Ōpōtiki—I would love to invite you all to come up to Ōpōtiki. This is one of the centres of our universe. Now, this used to be a thriving, incredible town. It’s been a little worse for wear—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: As much as I enjoy the member talking about my electorate, it would be really good to focus on the Estimates just for the last couple of minutes.

The Estimates have a substantive—over $3 billion was invested into that fund that has invested in your electorate, the mighty East Coast. Your electorate of the mighty East Coast has been a benefactor: $236.5 million on the Tai Rāwhiti, $228 million into the Bay of Plenty. That funding has not gone to pork-barrel politics, and we both know this. It has gone into fundamental investment in our people.

Last week, I was sitting literally with 80 young people—young, old people—from our community that had been employed in a local project. It was the Whakatōhea mussel factory, a massive, big development. It has been invested in by this Government as a consequence of this Government’s commitment to rebuilding our regions, investing in our people, and that is something that has been neglected for far too long.

Now, as we find ourselves on the precipice of what could be a gravely challenging economic environment ahead, I am heartened. Just earlier, I saw Sir Michael Cullen sitting in this House for some valedictories of some of our good friends. I reflected on his foresight in terms of thinking far beyond a three-year political electoral cycle. It’s that type of vision that I see emulated in the Hon Grant Robertson and in these Estimates that we are debating here today.

We have a critical economic situation—the globe does. So what he has done and what this Government’s done has looked at the long-term future. We are investing in tomorrow’s economy, whether that be through over $1.1 billion that was invested into sustainable jobs—I’ll acknowledge our friends over there in our team Kākāriki: it was $1.1 billion into nature-based jobs. That is about investing in our land and our young people, and again Te Tai Rāwhiti has been a massive benefactor. I want to acknowledge the work of Rena Kohere and Charles, who have secured substantive funding for over 60 young locals to plant trees and to do pest control up in the backblocks—for 60 young people that haven’t had the opportunity to work on their land.

I want to conclude with the words of the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: “We are focused on protecting jobs and creating new ones, on upgrading our infrastructure, and putting people at the centre of our recovery. We’re focused on keeping New Zealand moving.” and that is this—[Time expired]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I guess that actually sums up the Government: a lot of talk, hot air, and delivers nothing. That member, Kiritapu Allan, talks about how offended she was, and she actually talks about certain things that we have apparently said that were derogatory. She is offended. I suppose I am offended that she actually thinks that pork-barrel politics is something that she supports, that after three years of doing nothing as a Government, finally they’re throwing money into communities, purely for the purposes of an election year.

Earlier, my colleague Michael Woodhouse was very articulate in his estimation and his analysis of this bill. In terms of the imprest supply bill, obviously that is something that we need to make sure that we pass, because the Government expenditure needs to continue, but the Budget, the Estimates, is something that we need to seriously look at. We need to collect revenue as a country, and how does a Government collect revenue? Taxes. How does the Government actually pay for things? The money that the Government spends on everything, including the Provincial Growth Fund, the $3 billion that the Hon Shane Jones is actually very proud of and that member who just sat down is actually very proud of, apparently, and offended that we’re calling it pork-barrel politics—it is done as a result of collecting taxes and, in this instance, borrowing huge amounts to pay for them.

One of the things that I’d like to highlight to the House is that, often, when the Hon Shane Jones actually dishes out—what did Michael Woodhouse call it? Kete poaka. I quite like that: kete, the basket of money that he—and Shane Jones actually talks about pūtea. He talks about pūtea quite a lot. He does like that word, and I think it’s actually a good word, because that could be used for good and well-meaning and well-purposed spending by the Government, but apparently it’s not, because even the Auditor-General has actually criticised the transparency issue.

But that transparency issue has existed in this Government for a very long time. I, in my portfolio, wanted to find out what that Minister was spending $50 million on for enhanced digital connectivity in the infrastructure investment package announced earlier on 1 July, and the reply I got today—if I can actually enlighten my colleagues in the Chamber—actually says, “Final decisions are still being made around the exact breakdown of projects to be funded by $50 million for digital connectivity.” That’s typical of the answers and lack of planning that this Government dishes out with the money, the huge amounts of money that they’re dishing out to the communities. Apparently, they’re planning this. If they were planning it, they should’ve researched it, just like the Minister of broadcasting when he was talking about merging Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand. When he took it to Cabinet, he hadn’t even done the business plan. He hadn’t even done the business case. I am still waiting to find out what that plan is. That was last year.

This year, the Minister announced $15 million to improve connectivity in the rural areas. COVID-19 has actually highlighted the issue of people who had lack of connectivity. It also highlighted the importance of connectivity and what a good deal of work the previous National Government actually did: the UFB that the National Government rolled out—the ultra-fast broadband—the Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) 1 and RBI 2, and even the mobile black spots that we started and actually rolled out to the country, which the Government continues to grow in terms of the numbers of people who are connected. I actually applaud that, because we need to do more in that space.

I was hoping that in the Budget the Minister would actually announce a bigger, punchier announcement in terms of what he was in fact going to do, what this Government was in fact going to do, for the people who had major difficulty connecting. In the rural communities, we had many, many people who complained that when they’re trying to do their business from home, when they’re trying to educate their children from home, they did not have connectivity that was useful for them. The Minister and the Government should have responded to that, but no, $15 million, rural—

💬 Simon O’Connor: How much?

Fifteen million dollars only. They were planning on extending the rural connectivity issue, but I don’t know how far $15 million will actually go, because it really doesn’t go very far when you’re actually talking about rural connectivity issue. Even WISPA: in order for them to extend, it’s going to actually cost in excess of $150 million to do so. Extend fibre—it’s going to cost about $400 million.

I think the Government has lacked ambition when it comes to connectivity, and it is very important to think that there are many businesses in the sector of broadcasting and media that have actually failed. There are a lot of people who are out of a job. During COVID, I had to actually deal with a constituent who was a part of an employer of the Bauer Media Group who had lost their job. This young lady had just bought her first home, and she could not see the future—she had just bought her home and she lost a job and she was on a wage subsidy. She didn’t see how she could actually continue to pay her mortgage, and she was about to lose her job. There are many stories like that.

But this Government continues to talk about how they’re looking after New Zealanders. This is the Government that has promised so much, including the delivery of the light rail that goes down Dominion Road—yes? They were going to spend so much money, and yet it’s now cancelled. It basically shows the example of how this Government lacks the planning, lacks the foresight, and lacks the gumption and the honesty to deliver on what they promised. They actually talk about borrowing as a good thing. Yes, in a crisis, we need to borrow. We don’t have the cash to actually spread out to everyone and pay for everything. Yes, we know that, but there needs to be a plan when they are borrowing to spend. When they don’t have a plan and when the spending is actually not targeted, it is the future of our children and our grandchildren who will be indebted, and they have to actually pay that debt back. I would like to see the next National Government show this Government up by actually showing what planning, targeting, and responsible spending is.

One of the things that I wanted to talk about was that recently COVID-19 has actually meant there are many constituent cases that have actually come to all of our members’ offices—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: It would be nice if they related to the Estimates.

This Government talks about how they’re helping a lot of people through their spending, and it is very clear that there are some people who actually miss out on that Government spending. It would’ve been very, very nice if they actually considered that export education industry which a lot of New Zealanders are part of. It’s a $5 billion industry that many ethnic communities are involved in. We have actually suggested that the borders could be controlled better. We can actually work through the security screening, the testing, and maybe opening up to export education students, because they’re here on a long-term basis—often a year, sometimes two, sometimes here on a degree three or four years—and they could actually pay for the testing, come and do quarantine, and they’re going to be here for a long term. But they haven’t even considered that. It’s a $5 billion industry with tens of thousands of people who are ultimately going to lose their jobs as a result, and this Government are not even planning, are not even considering, because they say, “Oh, it’s COVID-19; it’s too dangerous.” Maybe perhaps if they put some thinking into it, perhaps if they actually consider the ultimate result, the outcome for these people who are in fact hurt as a result of COVID-19, perhaps they might have some plans for those people who are desperately in need of the Government’s help.

This is a split call. I call Fletcher Tabuteau.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First this evening in the Government debates on the appropriations, just to address a few issues raised by the previous speaker, Melissa Lee. They spoke about pork-barrel politics. The irony of that—am I allowed to use that word in the House? You’ll check me, I’m sure, Madam Speaker, if I use it inappropriately. The irony of that statement is that the only thing that the Opposition party has come up with thus far in terms of appealing to the electorate is roads and a little bit of rail, and how much it’s going to cost—that’s all they’ve been able to engage with the electorate—

💬 Mark Patterson: No ideas.

Yeah, truly, no ideas—no ideas.

So let me just put the appropriations that we have been talking about this evening in context. What we are doing here is about smart and targeted investment in, particularly, our regions but across the country. What we’re doing here—

💬 Brett Hudson: Vote buying.

—Mr Hudson, is about investing money in response to a pandemic that, unfortunately, is taking down the rest of the world. We here in New Zealand—I don’t think we actually appreciate it ourselves that we are able to move around and engage and hug one another, like we have tonight in our valedictory speeches, and congratulate one another. It’s amazing. In fact, I was at the US Embassy’s Fourth of July celebrations a couple of weeks ago, and the ambassador said to the crowd, 1,500 strong, that nowhere else in the world have the United States been willing to bring people together—nowhere else in the world have they been willing to bring people together—to have that celebration: the Independence Day, as it were, of the American nation. Only in New Zealand have they been willing and able to do that. That focuses the mind, and it gives you an indication of just how amazing New Zealand’s response has been to COVID—that 5 million - strong team.

But that has been our health response. I implore those people out in our communities right now who are worried about community spread and whose doctors are suggesting that they go and have a test: please do it, because it’s so important that we know what the situation is. But right now, we’re in an amazing position.

These appropriations give us an indication and an insight into what it is that we as a Government are trying to do in terms of an economic health response. I rebut the assertions from those members opposite on the Provincial Growth Fund. As the under-secretary of regional economic development, I have had the privilege of travelling around this country and seeing firsthand not only the people in the regions coming together as stakeholders and as members of a community, saying, “What do we need? What would make the most sense for our community right now in terms of regional economic development, growing our towns, growing our communities, putting more jobs in the regions?” That’s what they’ve been doing. They came to the Provincial Growth Fund, and they worked with our amazing team down there. I just want to put this in context for everyone in the House: those projects—that money that this Government has spent—has come from the people and the communities in the regions. They have come to this Government and said, “This makes sense in our place. This makes sense for us long term.”

I can speak about Rotorua for the next half an hour, about the difference that the Provincial Growth Fund has made and will make. I put it to this House very briefly, because I have such a short amount of time left, that we invested $55 million into Rotorua just recently, and that was simply about unlocking roading infrastructure and the three waters component so that housing in Rotorua could be developed and built. There are 1,200 homes, 1,200 properties, being developed by local iwi right now because of this Government and our investment in our communities, because that’s what our communities want and that’s what they needed, and it’s been a blessing for all of us. Thank you very much.

It’s always a pleasure to follow my good friend and colleague Fletcher Tabuteau on matters of finance and the Budget. I wanted to start in this final appropriations debate for this year’s Budget by responding to some of the criticisms that we’ve received on the other side of the House. I heard the phrase “responsible spending” being used a lot to suggest that actually a lot of our spending is not responsible and that you can only rely on National to do responsible spending.

💬 Hon Member: That’s right—that’s right.

So I just wanted to pick up a couple—how did it work out with Novopay? How did that work out? That was a contract awarded to an Australian human resources company with no IT experience, and it cost the country absolutely billions of dollars. That was good. How about that SkyCity convention centre?

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: How about the Estimates?

OK. Well, it is a debate, Madam Speaker, and—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I know you’re responding to the points made in the debate, but it would be good to tie it into the Estimates.

I will absolutely do so. My point being that there is certainly no monopoly on the wisdom and on responsible spending on the other side of the House. I was also just going to mention the Saudi sheep farm. That was my personal favourite. That was a good use of public finances.

I want to turn my attention in particular to the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF), the $50 billion appropriation that was made in Budget 2020 in order to deal with the various phases of the Government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. The first thing I’d actually like to do is to congratulate and to acknowledge the Hon Grant Robertson, Treasury, and actually the whole Public Service, because the Budget effectively got written twice. We went through the whole normal business-as-usual process, got right to sort of pretty much the end of the process as the last packages were being drawn up, and then, of course, the pandemic crisis hit our shores and everything changed. What that meant is that the Budget essentially had to get rewritten again in a very short period of time. I know that Grant and the Treasury team and the Public Service did an extraordinary amount of work under incredible pressure, at a time when we were also shutting down much of the country to go to level 4. The COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund, that $50 billion appropriation, is kind of the centrepiece in terms of Budget 2020 of how we were going to respond.

We did cop some criticism for not saying up front how all of that would be spent. But the whole point here is that we are in an evolving crisis where new information is being revealed on a daily basis—certainly at that point—or several times daily basis, and we also don’t know how it’s going to evolve in the future. There’s about $14 billion left of that appropriation that hasn’t been committed, and the reason for that is that if there is another outbreak and we have to go into some other state of lockdown and, God forbid, another state of emergency and level 4, then you’ve got to have some money in the tank to be able to deal with that the way that we did the first time around. So in terms of responsible spending, that is entirely the appropriate response.

The other thing that I wanted to point out is that the economy needs liquidity at a time like this. One of the things that the previous Government did during the global financial crisis is they actually turned the screws on a bit much for a bit too long, and actually it prolonged the economic downturn. So, you know, putting cash into the economy via the CRRF is an entirely appropriate response.

The one thing I’d like to say about that, though, is that it does have to get paid back. It is tens of billions of dollars, and it is going to take a very, very long time to do so. Therefore, we have not just an economic duty but a moral duty to future generations of taxpayers to make sure that that stimulus spend in this year’s Budget—that every dollar available of that is put to work on resolving the long-term challenges facing this country, because otherwise we present future generations with a double whammy. Not only do they have to pay their taxes to pay back the debt that we’re running up in order to get ourselves through this crisis; they’re also going to have to pay additionally to get themselves through whatever crises are facing them. And we already know what those crises are. First amongst them is the climate crisis. That is the omni-crisis that affects housing, it affects inequality, it affects public health, it affects local government, and it affects infrastructure. We have an absolute responsibility to ensure that this stimulus spend is a green recovery and sets us up for the long term and reduces that future burden on future generations.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The last speaker in this debate, the Hon James Shaw, mentioned the moral journey that future generations may have to pay off, and the moral obligation that we have, and that we need to set the solutions to long-term challenges. That’s an admirable sentiment from a member of the Government, but we haven’t seen a lot of that in action. Indeed, when it comes to the challenge that future generations will have in paying off the significant amount of debt that will be run up in the coming years, the absolute obligation on this Government is to spend as little as is necessary and to spend it very well—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: It’s called austerity. It’s called kids going hungry. It’s called homelessness. We’ve been there. We’ve done it.

—to do so on things that will deliver for the economy today and in the future and to come out and tell New Zealanders, honestly and up front for once—and the member can take a call if he wants to—how they’re going to pay it back without raising taxes.

What we’ve seen in this Budget is that debt in New Zealand will go to $250 billion over a four-year period. This Government will borrow $140 billion, additionally, to spend in four years—more debt than we’ve ever had before. The challenge that we have when it comes to debt is that, actually—

💬 Mark Patterson: You’ve got no idea.

—it’s other people’s money that’s being spent here.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Actually, I have quite a few ideas.

It’s other people’s money that’s being spent here. So Mr Shaw is correct: it is future generations, children and grandchildren, that will pay this back, and they will do it in one of two ways under a Labour - Green - New Zealand First Government. There will have to be fewer services, which means less money for teachers or for doctors or for nurses or for policemen, or there will have to be higher taxes, because the country knows that a Labour Government with the Greens and New Zealand First under their wing is very good at spending money and then raising taxes to pay it back. And if it’s not going to be paid back through higher taxes, every member of the House on the other side, and the Prime Minister, has the opportunity to stand up and say that taxes won’t be increased, but when they’ve been offered that opportunity, they haven’t taken it and they haven’t said there won’t be more taxes. But what they have said is “Our policy will come.” Well, New Zealanders know what it means when $140 billion is borrowed and spent in a four-year period, and it must be paid back.

But here is the challenge—because, of course, we live in times when there will have to be borrowing, irrespective of who forms the next Government. So a National Government will also have to borrow, but what we will do is borrow more carefully, and we will make sure that we spend taxpayers’ money more carefully than has been evident under the last three years under this Government, and we will look at things that will grow the economy, invest in infrastructure that actually will get built. So when we announce that we would want more houses, it won’t be a few houses under the equivalent of their KiwiBuild, which has been one of the greatest failures of this Government over the last three years—such a failure that they don’t call it KiwiBuild any more. We’ll look to back New Zealanders and make sure that we can have the Government agencies and departments working more efficiently and more productively for the taxpayer resource that they are given, and that will mean the economy can grow more quickly, that we will be able to borrow less, and that there will be less burden upon New Zealanders today and going into the future.

There’s $250 billion worth of debt, and you only need to look at actually some of the spending over the last three years under the Provincial Growth Fund, or other things that the Government have spent money on, to give a bit of insight into what would happen. So the big announcement last week of the Provincial Growth Fund was a swimming pool and a library. Well, that’s going to change things, isn’t it, around the country. Look, good on that small community who want a library and they want a swimming pool, but do you know what they want more than a library and a swimming pool? They want some hope, they want some jobs, and they don’t want to be saddled with debt in the future and have higher taxes to pay that back. Less services and higher taxes is what this Government is promising but not admitting to.

There are 200,000 New Zealanders on the unemployment benefit as a direct result of COVID-19, as a direct result of the lockdown when the Government closed the economy down. We know there are likely to be more than 300,000 additional New Zealanders who will lose their job and go on the unemployment benefit. These are everyday, hard-working Kiwis that have done what the Government asked of them, which was actually a great sacrifice to themselves. The Budget doesn’t look widely at how to help them get back on their feet. So we know that there’s been a wage subsidy there, which the Opposition, the National Party, supported. It was important through lockdown that New Zealanders didn’t have to worry about where the paycheque would come from, but, actually, since they’ve been able to go back to work, businesses have relied upon that. The Prime Minister has said that it will run out in a few weeks’ time, and that is a hard cliff that businesses run up to when it comes to employment. [Interruption]

Now, members opposite can scoff at that, but wait and see what happens over the coming weeks as business after business has to lay people off because they don’t have the resource to keep them on. When the Prime Minister says, “Actually, it will be OK, because we are expanding the criteria around the Government-guaranteed loan scheme offered to businesses, and particularly small businesses.”, what members opposite don’t realise and what the Prime Minister forgot to tell New Zealanders is that for very many businesses in New Zealand, they can’t get access to those loans, because the Government has offered an 80 percent guarantee and the bank needs to give a 20 percent guarantee for that loan. In many cases, the banks won’t lend the 20 percent, because they don’t have certainty of when the economy will fix itself, they don’t have certainty around the Government policies, and, when it comes to the tourism industry, they have no certainty of when the Government is even going to start talking about things that will help the industry get back on its feet, even safe, short-term things today that would make a difference.

So when the Prime Minister says, “Don’t worry; unemployment won’t go up when the wage subsidy finishes, because businesses can take on more debt and the Government is guaranteeing it.”, she’s out of touch, because, actually, most businesses I talk to are saying they don’t have a debt problem; they have actually too much debt. It’s a turnover problem, and they need help for a shorter period of time as the economy fixes itself, supposedly. But secondly, their banks won’t lend to them. So what we’re going to see, as of last week and this week and next week, is businesses that want to rebuild their business. They want to keep their workers there working for them as they strive to make things better, but when the wage subsidy is over, they know they can’t afford to keep those workers on, and they’ve started the discussion already about unemployment, and they’ve started the discussion already around redundancy.

When the member opposite said, “What would this member do?”, well, we’re going to go and get every single vote, because here’s the thing: on 20 September, for the tourism sector—the tourism sector, and every travel agent in this country—20 September, it will be too late, because for five months those travel agents have had no income at all.

💬 Mark Patterson: So what’s National going to do about it? What’s National going to do about it?

And when Kelvin Davis, who rarely is on top of his brief, stands up in this House—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! Mark Patterson.

—and he says that actually it’s travel agents’ fault for not applying or asking for too much or for trying to actually sort the things out themselves, what he does is a great disservice to these small-business people, who have been scrapping for five months to try and rebuild their businesses, with no remuneration. They’ve been looking after New Zealanders who are owed a lot of money around the world, because they’re not able to travel, and, actually, the Government has done nothing for them.

So come 20 September, it will be too late, because long before that, those businesses will close. And the members opposite say, “Well, actually, it will be OK with this loan.” There’s not a single travel agent in the country who’s said they’re able to get that loan, because of uncertainty, and there are thousands and thousands of New Zealanders who have done what was asked of them, who have sacrificed, who are about to lose their jobs. The Government needs to take action on this long before the election, because by the time the election comes around, it will be too late.

The final thing I want to say, as my time runs out, is how the Government really has its priorities wrong. It is a good thing that there is money in tourism—and there’s $400 million that they’ve given to about 120 companies—but the sad thing about that is there are so many thousands of other businesses in tourism who are deserving of funds as well and haven’t been given it. And here’s a question: why has AJ Hackett been given $10 million by the Government to save 20 jobs? And the reason for that is just down the road, there is a business with 50 jobs, and those jobs are about to go because they didn’t get $10 million. So the problem the Government has is they picked some things that are a great press release and look good on TV, but the hard-working New Zealanders that graft every day have been left behind.

Good on AJ Hackett for getting $10 million out of the Government to save 20 jobs. That’s a great achievement, but the person down the road with 50 jobs that are about to go didn’t need $10 million, didn’t need $1 million; they actually just needed a few hundred thousand dollars over the next few years to keep those people on, and they didn’t get it, because the Government is picking people they perceive to be winners. Why did they go and give money to the Waitomo caves and not the small businesses around them that depend upon tourism in exactly the same way? The Government has lost its way. It doesn’t have the right priorities. Come 20 September, a solution is on its way.

This is a split call, possibly.

I think that last speech—anyone sitting at home, sitting in the gallery, just have a listen to that last speech, and it sums up the ridiculous situation that the Opposition find themselves in, because you’ve had speaker after speaker lamenting how much has been spent in this Budget, and then the last speaker spent the last five minutes chastising this Government for not spending more on an industry which, sadly, is an industry which has suffered probably the most, heavily involved in tourism, involved in getting New Zealanders overseas. Admittedly, I have had people from that same industry come into my office; I’m sure every electorate has. I have nothing but sympathy for those people, because not only that, they are also the only people over there at the moment who are actually getting money back for New Zealanders who have money invested in travel companies overseas, and these are the companies that have to get it. So I do feel some sympathy for them; however, we cannot save everything.

Can I go straight to the appropriations. The appropriations—$50 billion this year. Now, we’ve been absolutely chastised for spending that money—“It’s a terrible thing.” Just imagine if we hadn’t. Just imagine if we hadn’t brought in the wage subsidy. Just imagine if we hadn’t made the decision at the beginning of this COVID-19 pandemic, if we had said we’d do what the last three speakers have said we do—“Sit, wait, don’t spend money, because we can’t afford to.” Well, where would we be? Have a look at our cousins across the Ditch. Have a look at the Victorians. How many times in this House have you sat in that Chair, have I, have we sat here and listened to us being told, “Be more like the Aussies.”? How many times have we been criticised, whatever leader, whoever’s over there—“Why aren’t you more like the Aussies?” Well, we’re not like the Aussies; we’re New Zealanders, and we’re taking a broad view.

The whole idea is that when we start to come out of this COVID downturn—and we are, because we are the one country. I heard a statistic this week that said Auckland Airport is as busy as Heathrow Airport. That’s the sort of thing that’s happening in this country. Every one of us here will have friends overseas—even mentioned by my colleague from New Zealand First about how there’s an American Embassy everywhere in the world. New Zealand was the only one that had an unregulated crowd at that embassy. That tells you something. That’s how successful we’ve been.

I go back to the appropriations, Madam Speaker—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That would be good!

Well, I’ve hardly ever left them, actually, but I know that you do run a very tight line on these things; so I will run very strictly down—so I’m in a sheep pen, with fences put up by yourself, in your second to last day in the Chair, but you’ve been consistent right the whole way through, I do have to say. But can I just say I’m reminded that I was cleaning out an old uncle’s belongings after he died, and I found a slip that this uncle had been given during the Depression—1938—and it was to go to a work camp to plant trees. That was at the time when the Labour Government had started spending some money at the end of the Depression. Originally, in the United States and in New Zealand, it was all shut down and there was no spending done.

I also remember driving from Westport to Nelson through the Golden Downs forest, and that area was planted by those same people, and it was only a little bit later in the United States, during the New Deal—when Roosevelt started spending money—that the Americans came out of the Great Depression—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don’t want to interrupt your story—well, I sort of do—but just to let you know that ACT is not here to take the other five minutes; so there are another five minutes available to you to continue.

💬 Hon David Bennett: No, not him!

And the crowd went wild, that they were once again ashamed at a speech like mine. But what I’m focusing on, and going back to the appropriations—not that I feel like I’ve ever really moved far off of them—spending the $50 billion. Again, I just want to warn that we’ve had plenty of evidence that if you do stop spending, and a very good example of that—and if you just want numbers, and often when those members opposite are debating they say, “Let’s count the numbers. We’ve got to have targets.” Well, just what happens when you stop spending? I’d like to go to the police appropriation. What happened when you stopped spending—or not you, Madam Speaker; I’m sure as a Minister you were only too keen to spend more money, but certainly, your police equivalent at the time—the fatalities on the road, a number that we can actually go for. In 2013, there were 253 fatalities on the road. That was at a time when police numbers were cut, as a result of Budget cuts, by 111. By 2017, those numbers had gone to 379, which was almost a 49 percent increase in numbers. That was a direct result of failing to spend.

While I’m still on the police appropriation, I could almost go to the gang policing at the same time. That was at a time when you may have heard, in fact, the current leader talking very tough when the Rebels Motorcycle Club arrived in New Zealand—how she was going to stop that from happening; she was going to invest and there was no way that they were ever going to be allowed to establish. They were going to be—I think “crushed” was the word used. Well, the Rebels motorcycles are one of the most successful gangs in New Zealand now. And the reason why? You can talk as tough as you like, but if you don’t actually put the investment in it—and today we are paying the price for that. We are paying the price for that reduction in investment at the time.

This is an opportunity, because if we get this right—and I believe we are getting this right—those generations that will come after us will look back and say, “This was a time when New Zealand invested heavily in its future.” I heard one of the speakers opposite talk very proudly that Bill English never spent more than a billion at once. Well, can I just say, the evidence was clear. If you don’t pay the bills and do the maintenance, someone has got to do it down the track. If we did what those members opposite are advocating now, if we stopped spending, if we sat here waiting to see what’s going to happen, exactly what would happen is that we would end up—someone would have to pay the bills further down the track, which is exactly what our Government has had to do. We’ve had to pay the bills and do the maintenance for that stopping of spending that actually happened at the time.

The important thing, too, as we do go forward with this appropriation, it’s really important that you have a broad plan to ensure that you know that you have a context in which every dollar you spend is being contested. So is this dollar we’re spending within a plan that is designed to improve New Zealand, to make New Zealand better for the future? Let’s just go through that five-point plan. Investing in our people: one of the things I’d really like to focus on there that’s in the appropriation is the free apprentices and trades training in key areas. Tell me, anyone who is in this House, who hasn’t had a local business—whether it be air conditioning, whether it be any sort of a trade—approach saying, “We haven’t got any people. We haven’t got any tradespeople coming through.”? We stopped training in 2008, 2010, and as a result they were demanding that we open the borders, demanding that they be able to get people imported so that they could actually have this work done. It’s incredibly important we now have an opportunity to make sure that doesn’t happen, and this is when I point to investing in our people. What better way to ensure that we have got our young people into apprenticeships and trades training, that they are coming out work-ready, job-ready, as they will be as the work picks up. The work is picking up. The work is very much picking up.

We then go on to the second part of this, and it’s barely raining outside at the same time. Jobs, jobs, jobs, and this leads firstly into this, that there are going to be 1,100 new jobs. Well, what better way to ensure that the jobs that we are investing in are ones that our children and grandchildren are going to thank us for, and what better way than the environment? Eleven thousand new jobs that are going to be out there, whether it be out on the farms, out in the provinces, where those young people are going to be out there not only doing useful work but actually learning how to get a job, how to work, and ensure that in the future.

In the time left to me, I won’t go through the other two but I would like to go to the last one, which is to position us globally. Again, I challenge everyone in the House: we will all be speaking to people overseas, and the one thing they do is to talk about our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. Now, it’s not just the fact that they’re talking about her individually; what it is they’re talking about is New Zealand, and how good is that going to be to ensure that our produce, that brand New Zealand, that New Zealand Inc. is on the world stage as we come out of this, as we produce more produce that needs to be sold on the world stage, that at a time when borders are slowing down, we have that opportunity to make sure that New Zealand Inc. is high on that world stage. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

That was a speech from one of the more moderate members of the Labour Party that does value his economic credentials and thinks that he is of moderate economic persuasion for a left-wing socialist party. Now, he did tell us that at the moment, the Labour Party is investing in our future. They’re not investing in our future. The Labour Party is spending hand over fist on social spending to keep New Zealanders in some kind of utopia so they don’t have to worry about the election campaign. That’s what the Labour Party is doing. They’re not investing in our future. They’re not borrowing to build infrastructure. They’re not borrowing to make the country go faster in the future. They’re only borrowing to save themselves in six weeks’ time. That’s all it’s about. So it’s pretty rich for that member to come to this House and then talk about the road toll as some failure to spend money. He has got no idea. In regard to tourism, he said we can’t save everything. He’s quite happy for some people to go to the morgue. He’s the moderate one in that party. Imagine if we let the madness in the second row have a go, what they would come up with, and we don’t even want to know what the first row would think.

So it is implorable on this House to consider a very special thing that is happening in New Zealand at the moment, and that is the Labour, Green, New Zealand First parties are saying the right things around our primary industries. They’re actually saying they believe in them. They have actually been booting them for years and now saying, “Oh no, we need you. We love you. We want you to contribute to the future of New Zealand going forward.” Should we believe that? Should we take that? Should we understand that they genuinely think that? Well, I think we have to take them at their word, because we know that the primary sector is the future of New Zealand. We know that they will deliver the jobs, they will deliver the export earnings, and they will deliver the future for this country. That party can never understand that, because they don’t believe in freedom of enterprise, they don’t believe in aspiration, they don’t believe in hard work, and they don’t believe in investing your money and making something out of it. They believe it’s all dictated from a group of people in Wellington that are some kind of academic elite that can determine the future of a country, and the COVID crisis is a perfect opportunity for that academic elite to show their credentials. That’s what the Labour Party stands for.

Now, I believe in the agriculture and horticulture sector. I know they will deliver, and we will have to take them at their word that that is what they believe in. But if we take them at their word, let’s look at the document that they put out a month ago around the future of the primary sector. They want to double the export earnings of the primary sector by $44 billion. “We’re going to double the export earnings.”—and that’s the first category.

The second category is that they’re going to restrict the primary sector, predominantly the dairy industry, to emissions targets, which would cost the New Zealand dairy industry $5 billion to $12 billion. So on the first side, there’s a $44 billion increase in primary sector, right? Of that, we asked the Minister last week, and he said $4 billion of that comes from the dairy industry, which is currently 40 percent of our exports. So we’re going to get $4 billion in through growth, be from organics and regenerative agriculture. Now, no offence to those forms of agriculture—I’m an organic dairy farmer so, you know, I understand what that means—but there is no price point for regenerative agriculture in the dairy industry at the moment. We do not get paid a premium for it. So how they are going to get that increase in production from something that is not even paid for is a virtual impossibility at this stage.

But then their second criteria is that they will whack on $5 billion to $12 billion of costs on that very sector and then they’re still going to have a $4 billion increase from that. How does that work? The Minister couldn’t answer it. The Minister’s got no calculation. He just thinks it’s going to happen. It’s like what we’ve seen out of that party for the last three years: all these glorious promises, these glorious ambitions of what can happen, and no delivery. And the primary sector is the next one to face that.

Well, let’s look at the horticulture sector. That’s an even bigger example of what you’re talking about. Now, the horticulture sector does have ambitious growth plans, you know, very ambitious growth plans of $6 billion to getting to that $10 billion or $20 billion that they can get to in the next decade.

💬 Dan Bidois: How are we going to get there?

Those plans—and exactly. As my colleague says, how would you get there? Well, you can’t grow fruit and veges if you don’t have water. You just can’t go find a farm and plant it in kiwifruit and think it just happens. You need water for fruit and veges. It’s that simple. And what did they do? They cut all the water storage programmes out when they got in. The only water storage programmes we’ve got now are a couple little projects we’ve got in the last six months to try and placate the residents in Auckland—an election campaign. They have got no intention of doing anything decent on water storage.

So how do we get this glorious goal for the horticultural sector when there’s no water? Let’s look at the second big issue in the horticulture sector, and that’s labour. We need people that are going to pick that fruit, and we’re going to need people that are going to do the work on those farms and prune those vines.

💬 Michael Wood: I’m looking at some people who are going to need some work later this year.

That member over there—he’s a funny guy, isn’t he? Well, he’s never picked a fruit in his life. He’s never picked a vine. He’s sat in that chair while other people have gone out there and done the work. And that member is a true reflection of the Labour Party: self-entitled, comes here and thinks he can go and tell people what to do. Become a real New Zealand manufacturer or income earner that actually did anything.

💬 Michael Wood: As nasty as it is ignorant.

Oh, nasty? But what was his comment before? It was a great comment, wasn’t it? But that is the love of being a liberal Labour Party member, because you can throw stones and then you can hide behind this veneer afterwards that you are better than that. I know. You’re such an upstanding member of the community.

But if we look at that plan, what are they going to do around labour supply? I reckon that the Labour Party will determine that they want to stop people coming into this country, to unionise the workforces of New Zealand. That is their grand plan. That is what their intention always has been. They don’t want contracted labour; they want unionised labour all the way. And they will use COVID as an excuse to go towards unionised labour on our primary sector. That will destroy the efficiency of our primary sector. That is the number one thing that we can see will come out of that plan, because they are going to stop that labour supply.

But actually, it gets worse, because our primary producers have very high asset values and very low incomes relative to their asset values. The biggest risk to our primary producers is the Labour, Green Party, and New Zealand First that want to tax the guts out of those people. The Greens were silly enough to go out there and tell us their tax policy, give us some numbers. There’s income tax rates and an asset tax. Where’s the capital gains tax that the Green Party’s talked about for decades? Gone, because they know the Prime Minister won’t agree to it. They know the Prime Minister will agree to an asset tax. If we take an average dairy farm in the Waikato—say, $8 million. You take off the $2 million for the house and all those exemptions, $6 million at the 2 percent that the Green Party is talking about—that wipes out that dairy farm. It wipes it out—wipes it out.

The Labour Party tax policy—I can write it now for you. And if anybody wants to have a look, just have a look in a few weeks’ time when their tax policy comes out. It will talk about equity and fairness. We will have a tax policy based on equity. We want a fair and reasonable tax policy. We’ll give no numbers, will not talk about the asset tax that they intend to bring in, will not talk about the increase in income tax that they intend to bring in. Mark my words: anybody that votes for that side of the House and is in business will pay the price next year. Between September and Christmas, they will have passed the biggest tax programme in New Zealand’s history, because they’re borrowing only for social spending; they’re not borrowing to invest in the country going forward. And that comes back to our fundamental starting point of the difference between these two political parties.

The National Party will invest in New Zealand’s infrastructure, will invest on the way forward. On that side of the House, it will all be about spending to the election and then taxing the guts out of the productive sector. And New Zealand farmers will end up paying an asset tax, which will destroy the productivity of our most competitive—[Time expired]

Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā, and kia orana. Look, it’s just sad. I’ve already heard two things today. One is the National Party again trying to drive a wedge between farmers and Government, and it’s not there to be driven. The other thing I’ve heard is the arguments for austerity—to not spend, to pare everything back—and do you know what? We’ve been there before, and we don’t want to go back.

The fact of the matter is that there is no trade-off between the environment and the economy. The economy is a subset of the environment. Without a healthy and flourishing environment, there is no economic prosperity and there is no effective farming, and we know that good farmers are totally on board with that. Rivers and farms, in fact, go hand in hand when properly managed. Our farms depend on our climate, and that is why this Government, in this Budget, has a comprehensive strategy to address this. If we’re going to hypothesise an economy, we must first assume a flourishing, healthy, and effective environment, and this Budget sets out numerous steps across the board to effect that.

Our environment needs to be one that sustains health and sustains a healthy population, a population that can work and recreate in the environment; an environment that provides effective supply of food and trade and all kinds of exports, and we want to do that; and one that also—and sometimes we forget this when we’re talking about the environment—provides an effective urban setting, somewhere where we can live and flourish. This Government, across the board, through this Budget, has done exactly that.

We look at the freshwater package that David Parker, the Minister for the Environment, has set out. It’s something that strikes a balance—a balance to the farmers I’ve spoken to—that is recognised as fair and effective, one that limits the amount of nitrogen that’s going into our waterways, and one that requires the offsetting of stock away from the waterways, but, equally, one that recognises that farming is an important part of our economy and that it is possible to effectively and sustainably run dairy farms, which are a critical part of our exports. We can do that effectively, and a good farmer knows that to do that effectively, we must do it sustainably.

It’s no good having adverse environmental outcomes that are just paid for but that someone down the road has to pick up. That’s what we are picking up now. We’re picking up the neglect of our waterways that the last Government oversaw—no action at all on cleaning up our waterways. They sat on their hands and watched as nitrates leached and algae grew in our rivers. But now, with David Parker’s freshwater plan, genuine steps. A plan which sees hard bottom lines and which actually sets rules in place—that’s what we’re seeing, and that’s what we saw when we examined these Estimates.

The Resource Management Act reform, which is part of this process, is a huge leap forward. These proposals, which the next Government will be able to implement, see not just the effects but they are also looking for positive outcomes. It’s actually changing the way we think about environmental outcomes. We’re saying that we mustn’t just say that minor effects are OK and slowly see the environment sliced away by inches, but that we want positive environmental outcomes.

Of course, the huge leap forward under this Parliament, and one that this Budget will actually see, is the emissions trading scheme reforms, which James Shaw came and talked about in front of the select committee. At last, we have a cap-and-trade scheme with a cap, one where we can effectively price carbon. Carbon is not costless. If you look at coastal communities that are being inundated with flooding, they’re the ones that are bearing the costs of carbon emissions elsewhere. It’s only right that we now have a cap-and-trade scheme, an emissions trading scheme which correctly prices carbon, and that we have a sinking lid on carbon emissions where, finally, the genuine price of carbon will, in fact, be paid.

As for the response to COVID, the environment is a huge part of that, and, in fact, Eugenie Sage, our Minister of Conservation, has made some important initiatives there such as the $1.1 billion initiative which will see money spent now which will have returns for generations to come. Whether it be insuring our biodiversity through the predator-free scheme and by using that money so that people can get out there and hunt, trap, and otherwise eliminate the predators which are absolutely wreaking havoc in our conservation estate, or the wilding pine scheme, where people who have previously been working in the tourism sector—many of those people who are working in that scheme now are out there cleaning up our environment, removing these weed pines, and making huge leaps forward. Of course, we can see, looking across the board, that in terms of the environmental sector, we’re making massive leaps and bounds which previously have been absolutely neglected, and we’re making great steps forward.

Really, what we have here is, at last, a Government which sees that left unregulated, people will take. They will abuse the environment in a way which is nothing more than the tragedy of the commons that’s been identified 150 or nearly 200 years ago. What we need are genuine rules in place, national policy statements which set out some absolute dictates which say that, no, we can’t privatise this—we can’t privatise these gains and socialise the environmental losses—but we need to actually have rules in place which set bottom lines, whether that be a freshwater policy or an urban development policy.

The work that’s been going on in this sector—in urban development—is really important as well to recognise that Government has a significant part to play in stimulating urban development and in absolutely indicating where urban development ought to occur, enabling the finance of it, and partnering with business and private sector, where appropriate, but also making sure that where there are uplifts, there’s an ability to ensure that the people who get the value uplifts pay out a reasonable price for it, whether that be through targeted rates or other means. What we’re doing there is making sure that we’re integrating environmental outcomes, urban design outcomes, and transport outcomes, and the work around Kāinga Ora has been real. Urban development and urban design has been critical in doing that, and it’s all part of this Budget package.

Another thing we’ve seen in this Budget is, for example, the progress being made on waste. The fact is that we need to understand that waste is a problem in New Zealand, and, of course, Angie Warren-Clark has made some significant gains in respect of food waste. But we’re also looking at our recycling and the fact that our recycling framework in New Zealand hasn’t really worked for a long, long time, and we need to address that.

The waste levy is going up to properly reflect the cost: one, the cost of disposing of that waste and, two, ensuring that we have innovation. Only recently, there’s $124 million dedicated to improving our recycling outcomes so that we’re not simply trying to dispose of our problems overseas and that we’re not sending all of our recycling and waste materials overseas, which raises huge problems. It raises huge problems about us being able to manage, in times like the present, our own waste problems. So having a framework where we can do that is very, very important.

Of course, we’ve seen recently the Green Investment Fund making investments into the Wellington port and making sure that the Wellington port can, in fact, go carbon-neutral—another fantastic step forward. It’s not a grant but a loan, because we know that when industries make steps like this, there are longer-term gains to be made—along with the grants made also for schools and hospitals to become carbon-neutral.

So this is a Government, and this is just one example. This is just one tiny sector of all of what’s going on in Government to show that we’re a future-focused Government—not one that’s here for immediate gains and not one that’s here to immediately placate the electorate, but one that’s here to make the tough decisions to make sure that future generations don’t bear the costs of what’s going on here today. Whether that be the environmental costs or the wider costs, we’re a Government which is committed to spending the right sums of money now to avoid austerity, to avoid environmental disaster, and to look after the prosperity of our nation and our people today, tomorrow, and for ever. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Honourable members, there’s one minute to go, if someone wants to have a go for one minute.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. What I want to do is talk about this Government’s investment in social development, specifically around reducing the impacts of family and sexual violence. I mean, this Government recently announced $183 million, and we have been unprecedented in our response to family and sexual violence, and our Prime Minister has absolutely led the way. Not only have we looked at some of the more traditional ways of reducing violence but we looked at some of the other systemic issues. We’ve invested in perpetrator services, supporting people who use violence to change their behaviour—hugely important. The other big investment that we’ve made—

Order! Sorry, the time for this debate has expired.