Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill

I move, That the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill be now read a second time.

I thought it might be helpful at the outset to recap for members exactly what these two bills are and the purposes that they serve. They, effectively, are both ends of a standard part—[Interruption] we don’t usually interject when we’re leaving the Chamber, Mr McClay—of the financial system and the way that we go about managing the Government’s accounts.

The Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill seeks appropriation by Parliament of changes to appropriations and new appropriations for the 2021-22 year that the Government agreed to between April 2021, when the 2021-22 Estimates were finalised, and early April 2022. Spending against these appropriations has already been incurred under the authority of imprest supply Acts relating to 2021-22, but unless the spending is appropriated by Parliament before the end of the financial year, it becomes unauthorised expenditure, requiring validation by Parliament in an appropriation, confirmation, and validation bill—

💬 David Seymour: We’ve seen that before.

Seventy-eight times in the Government that the member supported when they were in office, in fact. I thank the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their prompt scrutiny of and report back to the House on the 2021-22 Supplementary Estimates.

The second bill that we address during this particular motion is the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill, and this is needed to provide the sole parliamentary financial authority for Government spending in 2022-23 until the Appropriation (2022/23 Estimates) Bill is passed. As the deadline for the third reading debate on the latter bill to be completed is four months after Budget day—that is, 19 September in this particular year—this imprest supply bill provides supply for the first three months of the 2022-23 financial year. In addition, it is standard practice for imprest supply bills to cover the possible materialisation of fiscal risks in the uncertain timing and spread of expenditure. This imprest supply bill seeks to provide sufficient authority for the Government to incur a maximum of $30 billion in expenses, $9 billion of capital expenditure, and $1 billion in capital injections.

Although the total imprest in this bill is higher than what would be sought in a normal year, it is lower than what was provided for in the last two years and reflects the ongoing but reduced economic uncertainty from COVID-19. As New Zealand continues to recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic, we will move more close to pre-COVID-19 levels of imprest supply.

It is worth noting that there is a formula that is used by Treasury when it comes to imprest supply, and I thought it would be useful for members to know what that is. Treasury calculates the amount needed in an imprest supply bill by initially taking a quarter of the annual appropriations for each vote as an approximation of three months’ worth of Government expenditure. Treasury then provides for an additional margin for items where expenditure may be unknowingly incurred unevenly over the fiscal year; any risks that may materialise in the first three months of the fiscal year, particularly with respect to but not limited to COVID-19; any in-principle transfers that need confirming in the first three months of the new fiscal year; and an allowance for any multi-year appropriations that first appear in the Appropriation (2022/23 Estimates) Bill. Treasury also then builds a contingency in on that.

It is worth noting that this is a very cautious and conservative approach. If we look at the last couple of years, in the 2021 equivalent of this legislation, $51 billion was sought, but only $12 billion was charged against the imprest supply.

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: And don’t I know it.

In 2021-22, $41 billion was sought but only $23 billion—Mr Woodhouse—was charged against the supply. So it is a conservative approach but one that avoids unappropriated expenditure from coming through. As all members will understand, from time to time, expenditure does arise that needs to be accounted for, and the Government is doing that in this legislation.

It is instructive in understanding the imprest supply element of the motion today to look at the Supplementary Estimates, because they give a good indication of the kind of expenditure that a Government might require in a given year, and in the Supplementary Estimates that were assessed by the select committee, we can see good examples of the way in which the Government is required from time to time to do things that are either unexpected or unbudgeted for—for example, sometimes these are small elements of much larger appropriations. One example in this year’s Supplementary Estimates is in the corrections area, where there were significant changes required partly because of costs that were being incurred by the Department of Corrections when they were undertaking their capital works and revaluing land and building assets. These are reasonably normal occurrences that occur in each year and are accounted for in this bill.

However, there are also things that are not normal that do have to be dealt with and are not always expected, and within the Supplementary Estimates that we’re dealing with here today, we have, for example, the process the Government had to go through with supporting Air New Zealand. As members in the House will be well aware, Air New Zealand was facing potential insolvency in the face of COVID-19, in the immediate and dramatic reduction in people flying internationally in particular but also here in New Zealand. So the Supplementary Estimates include both what we did to support Air New Zealand through that but also their recapitalisation exercise and the Government’s role in that. It, again, is a good example of the fact that expenditure can be incurred, but then revenue returns to make up for that expenditure from time to time, and as members will know, Air New Zealand has begun paying the Government back the money that it lent it in that early phase of the pandemic.

So that’s the reason why we need legislation like this—to make sure that we deal with those things that are either unexpected or that occur without the necessary appropriation available. An even better example of that, I believe, is in the area of COVID, and it does, obviously, make up a significant amount of what is being dealt with in the Supplementary Estimates and, obviously, what we’re thinking about when we look towards the imprest supply bill. Within the Supplementary Estimates that we’re dealing with today, we have around $2.7 billion of support that was provided through the COVID-19 resurgence support payment and then a further $1.5 billion for the COVID-19 support payment that was provided in the early part of 2022. This is the kind of action that a responsive and responsible Government needs to take in the face of a global pandemic.

💬 Todd Muller: Ha!

I’m fascinated by the hindsight approach that is exemplified by the exclamation I just heard from the other side of the House, because I recall that when it came time for the Government to make the tough and difficult decisions about when we had restrictions and how we dealt with them, members on the other side of the House urged us to spend more and more to support businesses across New Zealand. We felt we were taking a responsible approach. Over a million jobs have been saved as a result of what we did through the wage subsidy and, indeed, these resurgence support payments. Businesses around New Zealand, when I travel around New Zealand, say it was these payments that kept them in business. So when the National Party today say the Government is wasting its money in this area, that is a complete reversal of what they have previously said. They might like to think it’s possible to govern in hindsight; it is not.

As a Government, we had to take difficult decisions, none of which were costless, and because we have managed to run New Zealand’s finances in such a way that we could do this—make the payments that are covered in the Supplementary Estimates bill in front of us today and still have one of the lowest levels of net debt in the world—it is a tribute not only to hard-working New Zealanders but to the careful management of the books as well.

💬 Hon Member: Yeah, because they’re paying their taxes.

I would also note for the benefit of the Hon Louise Upston that within the Estimates also are changes where less spending than was appropriated also comes in. I would note that the appropriation for jobseeker support and emergency benefit decreased by $450 million because there was a lower number of people who needed to get support through income support than had been forecast, and I want to pay tribute to the Hon Carmel Sepuloni for the hard work that she did in making sure we had the programmes in place to support people to stay in work—programmes such as Mana in Mahi, He Poutama Rangatahi, and Flexi-wage.

So I commend this legislation to the House. It is an essential part of a financial system that between when we approve the Estimates formally, the Government has the ability to incur expenditure. As I have noted, the amount of money required for imprest supply this year is lower than the last two years, and in those last two years the Government spent only a fraction of what it put aside. This is about being careful and making sure that we obey the rules of the Public Finance Act, and I commend the bill to the House.

I predict that in some years from now when New Zealanders look back on a declining economy, they will look at these two bills as emblems of this Labour Government’s failed approach to economic management, because what these two bills do, essentially, is give Grant Robertson permission to go on the biggest spend-up in New Zealand’s history. And it gives him permission to do that, notwithstanding this Government’s complete failure to deliver better outcomes for their spending—their record of not providing results for the tax they take from New Zealanders. So National will be opposing these bills.

This is a Government that has overseen spending blowouts and has a lack of targets for its expenditure and what they will achieve. It has shown an inability to deliver and get results, and poor prioritisation of the public purse. It has been reactive and panicked when it comes to dealing with substantive issues, and it has put in place short-term thinking where long-term responses are required. The context in which these enormous amounts of money are being spent is a cost of living crisis. Prices in New Zealand today are running laps around wages. Inflation is at a 30-year high. Groceries, petrol, rents, childcare fees are all climbing by the week, and New Zealanders’ wages are simply not keeping up. Every week, New Zealanders are working harder to go backwards. That is the economic context we are in, and yet you would not know it from the speech we just heard from the Minister of Finance, who essentially said, “All is rosy. All is fine. Let’s go on a big spend-up, and can I also have $30 billion in my back pocket in imprest supply in case I need a slush fund later?”

We have interest rates climbing faster than they ever have in the history of the official cash rate in New Zealand, with New Zealanders having to re-fix their mortgages and watch hundreds more dollars walk out of their bank accounts. We have widespread workforce shortages, such that businesses are having to close their doors and say no to offshore orders because they simply don’t have the workers to do the job. We have an economy that shrank in the first quarter of this year and that declined in size. And with all of this going on, we have thousands of New Zealanders voting with their feet, departing our shores for Australia. So this was an opportunity for the Minister of Finance to illustrate and set out a plan for New Zealand’s economic recovery and to demonstrate he understands how tough things are and that he is setting a course to make them better.

But instead, what we have seen in these bills, set out very clearly, is a continuation of a pattern of spending more than he said he would. And this is something that this Minister of Finance has done in every single Budget he has set down. He spends more than he said he would the year before. Now, for this Budget, what he said last year he would be spending this year was $2.4 billion, and what we find in the pages of the documents that the Treasury has put together is that instead, he is spending $9.5 billion more each year—a considerable increase in expenditure at a time when the economy has already overheated, a time when every piece of fiscal pressure puts more pressure on inflation and more pressure on interest rates. And such was his desire to spend more that he raided next year’s Budget—and the year after that—to ensure that he had more funds to allocate.

And I want to note for the House that what the Minister of Finance has taken up the habit of doing is saying, “Oh, no, I’m doing a great job on the economy.”—I think he likes to describe himself as characteristically humble—“Just ask the IMF.” Now, let’s be really clear about what the IMF have said, because the IMF report to which the Minister refers was actually published the week before the Budget, and at that time, what the Minister had said he would do was reduce spending from $128 billion to $120 billion this year. And the IMF noted that and said that they thought that that scheduled tightening was appropriate. Now, what in fact the Minister did was the very opposite of that. He did not commit to the scheduled tightening when he published the Budget documents; instead of spending $120 billion this year as he led the IMF to believe he would, what these documents show is he will be spending $127 billion. Now, these numbers are so big and eye-watering that I think people lose sight of them, but what needs to be understood is he is spending more than he said he would and he is spending more than the IMF thought he would.

He also likes to say, “Well, look, as a percentage of GDP, it’s similar to what New Zealand had to spend following the global financial crisis.” And I think that this is perhaps the piece of analysis that best portrays his lack of understanding about what’s going on in the economy right now, because following the global financial crisis (GFC), what New Zealand had was a significant demand issue. We had not enough demand in the economy, and we had high unemployment. Unemployment got over 6 percent. And what that meant was, rightly and properly, the Government of the day used its expenditure to provide income support to people and to prop up what was an ailing economy. Today, we are in the very opposite situation, where people cannot find workers and where there is record-low unemployment. So the rationale for increased expenditure in this overheated environment just isn’t there. And so for the Minister of Finance to say “Oh, look, it’s just like after the GFC.”, I think, is to betray his ignorance.

What we have in these Budget documents is a series of band-aids, of announcements of more spending, where what is required is more delivery. And a case in point is the band-aid cost of living payment. Now, I’ve spoken to many New Zealanders since the Minister set out this Budget, and so many of them have said to me—and these are New Zealanders from all walks of life and from all incomes—“What an insult that $350 payment is. What an insult to say that you can, as Minister of Finance, buy me off and say it’s all sorted by giving me $350. Well, actually, what I want to see from the Government is a plan for strengthening the economy in the long run.” What New Zealanders want to see is a plan to grow productivity and drive better wages, such that wages are growing faster than incomes. What they want to see is low and stable interest rates. What they want to be able to do is be businesses that can find workers to invest and grow. They don’t simply want band-aids; band-aids, by the way, that as of last week when we spoke to the IRD, 170,000 are going to miss out on because the IRD still doesn’t have their bank accounts, and millions will be spent on hiring 300 staff for the IRD to administer the payment, when what was needed—

💬 Anna Lorck: Jobs. Jobs.

Oh, the member Anna Lorck, who is a very nice woman and whose company I enjoy, has said that that’s about creating jobs. Can I just remind her that in the Hawke’s Bay, there are employers crying out for workers, and what they don’t want, Anna Lorck, is the IRD paying them more and taking them down to Wellington to do unproductive work. What those employers want is to be able to get a worker and grow a business and send more production offshore. They don’t want the Government paying them more to run a big bureaucracy, and it would do the members opposite well to understand that pressure that exists in our economy.

And what we see in this appropriations bill—and it is appropriate that the member Anna Lorck is commenting here—are many examples of poor prioritisation. How many people, Anna Lorck, in your electorate have said they want billions spent on a restructuring of three waters? Because my view is that there aren’t New Zealanders saying that they want four mega-entities and council assets being taken and restructured with billions spent on it. My view is that there aren’t New Zealanders saying, “Yeah, look, let inflation tax me more. You know, merge RNZ and TVNZ; that should be priority number one.” There aren’t New Zealanders saying, “What you should do, Government, in the midst of a global pandemic, with dire workforce shortages and a 4,000-nurse deficit, is you should then spend billions on restructuring the back office of the health system.” These are not New Zealanders’ priorities. This Budget does not reflect effective prioritisation.

I say to you this: what New Zealanders judge a Budget by is not how much you say you’re going to spend; they judge it by what you deliver. And this is a Government that has a consistent track record of promising big and delivering little. New Zealanders are going backwards. This Budget sets out a path to more debt, a growing tax burden, faster rising prices, poorly targeted spending, and more New Zealanders moving to Australia.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege, as the chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, who reviewed the Supplementary Estimates bill, to be able to take a call in the House. I really wanted to be able to back up the Minister of Finance in his comments around the importance of these particular two bills. They are quite dry, and I accept that—you know, the titles are very dry and they seem like very technical bills, but actually they’re quite important in the respect that, you can’t spend money as a Government unless you have the authority of this Parliament; in the same way you cannot tax without the authority of Parliament, you cannot spend money.

So, effectively, these two bills provide the authority to be able to spend for the next three months until the Appropriation/Estimates bill carries through and also it provides the authority for some of the extra spending through last year in the Supplementary Estimates.

We’d like to thank the officials who came before the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I think there was over 20 of them, all the different chief financial officers from the main Government departments where there were changes to the Estimates—the Supplementary Estimates. We only had them in for about five minutes because what, effectively, the Finance and Expenditure Committee came to in their report was we approve the Supplementary Estimates and our report back was to support what was in them. As the Minister of Finance said, the imprest supply Acts are a regular part of the annual Budget cycle, and the Crown, again, cannot spend expenses or capital without them.

So what I found really interesting coming from across the other side of the House was that the member that sat down, Nicola Willis, said that National opposes these bills. National will, therefore, oppose reducing the cost of living for Kiwis who are finding it really, really tough, because that’s exactly what these bills do: they approve the spending for the package that reduces the cost of living.

And just for the member over there who forgets what it’s like to reduce the cost of living—our package—that includes the fuel excise duty and the road-user charges being cut and extended for two months. It also includes the spending for half-price public transport, which is also extended for a further two months. The National Party opposes that because that’s what these bills allow for. You cannot spend unless you put these bills through the House.

The National Party also do not agree with the temporary cost of living payment for people earning up to $70,000 who are not eligible to receive the winter energy payment. And to be fair, if they even go into coalition with the ACT Party, who don’t want the winter energy payment, I’m not surprised they oppose this particular bill.

But also, if they oppose these bills, they oppose establishing better access to health services. The vast majority of this Budget and of the spending which will be in this quarter, will be establishing the New Zealand health authority and the Māori Health Authority. The other side of the House don’t approve that spending and, you know, I’m not surprised that they don’t approve that spending, because they didn’t mind running down the hospitals. They didn’t mind running down the workforce that came to this—so I’m not surprised.

The other side of the House, by opposing these bills, also oppose the rural connectivity and the innovation in tourism. They’re asking for a plan, so why don’t they agree with innovating the tourism industry? Why do they oppose rural connectivity? We know how hard it is to be able to work remotely in some parts of our country. And these two particular bills provide the spending for to improve that rural connectivity.

By opposing these two bills, they oppose the support for apprenticeships that will help build a skilled workforce. That is the effect of opposing these two bills: you, in effect, oppose the spending that allows for apprenticeship work.

And for Māori and Pacific people, you oppose the ability for them to have to be mana enhanced. They oppose the health, education, housing, and social welfare initiatives that are right throughout Budget 2022. For a person like me, who is the MP for Mana, the opposition to these bills means that you oppose the 300 further homes for Pacific ownership in Porirua East. And that’s unfortunate because Pacific homeownership is one of the lowest—the lowest—in the country. So by opposing these bills, you oppose the initiatives that are needed to support improving Pacific housing.

They also would oppose the implementation of our Government’s commitment to support the Dawn Raids historical accounts. We’ve seen time and time again, since last year, these records of the Dawn Raids, which are so important to our Pasifika communities, to our Tongan communities, to our Pacific Island communities, to our Samoan communities. Being able to record those accounts are so important in order for those communities to move forward and that sort of work, it is unfortunate, the other side of the House oppose.

They also oppose the $49.9 million for the Pacific Provider Development Fund. Again, by opposing these bills, you oppose the investment into those Pacific providers. The reason why we want to provide that money for those Pacific providers, is we want them to adopt their models of care into the new health system.

Now, members, during the weekend, I saw so much social media of people really enjoying Matariki. I was really moved by the dawn festival, the ceremony that happened from Te Papa, that was broadcast across a number of media platforms in New Zealand. And I remember sitting there watching those scenes of that dawn ceremony and thinking, “I’m a mother of eight Ngāpuhi children and this is their time in order for them to be proud of their Ngāpuhi heritage, in order for them to understand Mataliki, Matali’i, Matariki—it is what their ancestors used to be able to navigate into this country and for them to be proud of what they were doing.”

So by opposing these two bills, you also therefore oppose the resilient and sustainable cultural sector that this Government has been trying to help during these COVID times. More than $185 million was used to help build a resilient cultural sector because of the impacts of COVID-19. And so, as part of it, that investment included investment in Matariki celebrations. You oppose these bills, you oppose that investment in those Matariki celebrations that rung out across the country. That is our first public holiday with a te reo Māori focus. So by opposing this bill, you can’t sit there and say, “Mānawatia a Matariki” and then oppose the funding that is needed to be able to support such a celebration.

These bills also support the funding into Te Matatini. Another plan is the cultural sector workforce capability initiative—that is another plan to be able to boost our Māori and Pacific arts. Again, these bills provide the foundations in order for those initiatives to be funded.

But, you know, I want to be able to understand why you would oppose such bills. They are technical bills in nature. They approve the Supplementary Estimates from last year: the additional funding that the Minister of Finance said had to go into Vote Corrections and COVID support. As the Minister of Finance said earlier today, it is far less than what has previously had to be used, and, as the Minister of Finance says, as we move into different and more normal spending, the amount has come down. It’s really unfortunate that we’re having to play that politics of not being able to support New Zealand through that COVID recovery.

The Supplementary Estimates approve—the Parliament approves—the authority of using those expenses in the previous financial year, which were not in the normal Appropriations/Estimates bill. So I’m really saddened that the Opposition don’t want to support such a bill.

And again, by opposing this bill, you oppose the cost of living payments, $350 for those who earn up to $70,000—that’s 2.1 million people. You oppose the support that is provided to 2.1 million people—and the member from ACT over they can come across with as much as she’d like to say, but 2.1 million people, again, is the population of Auckland and the population of Wellington and a little bit of Christchurch.

So you can oppose as much as you want for these two particular bills, but we on this side of the House know that Kiwis are hurting, and we wanted to be able to provide some temporary relief for them as they go through the next few months. We know that, economically, internationally our economy is looked at and seen as sound and stable. But we knew that Kiwis were finding it tough, we knew that Kiwis wanted to be able to celebrate Matariki, we knew that Kiwis wanted to be able to celebrate Matatini, we knew that Pacific Island people wanted to be able to own their own homes, and we knew that the health sector had to be reformed.

So these two particular bills, again, provide the authority for the spending that was spent last year over and above the Appropriation/Estimates bill. They provide the initial funding for the three months going forward for Budget 2022. So by opposing these bills, you oppose the initiatives that are helping Kiwis who are finding it tough at this time. So therefore, I’d like to commend this bill to the House and ask the Opposition—particularly those in ACT—to have a really good think about it.

Why, thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll give Barbara Edmonds credit for this: she tells half a story really, really well, and she’s picked a number of—well, she’s probably got that sort of bug that Grant Robertson’s got. You know, “I’m so good; just ask me how.”

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Figjam.

Well, I wasn’t going to say that, Mr Simpson, but I think that’s probably not too far from the truth.

Let’s go through some of the things that she said are so heinous that the National Party are opposing them. I want to start with better access to health services. So apparently if we oppose the Supplementary Estimates and the imprest supply, we oppose better access to health services. If only there were better access to health services. What we have in the health sector right now is better access to bureaucrats. Bureaucrats are rolling in it, thanks to the half a billion dollars that was appropriated for a health restructure that isn’t going to add a single procedure, treatment, X-ray, or immunisation, and the only people that are happy about that are my friends in the consulting firms and a plethora of bureaucrats. Where’s the new Dunedin Hospital, by the way? If they wanted better services and better capital programmes and better emergency department wait times and better rheumatic fever and better immunisations for children, surgeries, set some targets. Set some targets for actually doing something, rather than throwing a whole pile of money at something, a whole pile of restructures at it and then hoping.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: But Labour don’t agree on targets.

Well, no, that’s right. I think they say something like they have adverse outcomes. You know, they might have adverse outcomes like treatments being done or cancers being detected or kids’ rheumatic fever being avoided. If that’s an adverse outcome, I’ll take it.

She then went on to talk about innovating in the tourism industry. Here’s a really, really good way to innovate in the tourism industry: let it open up and then let them get the staff that they need to feed it. My friends in Queenstown and Wānaka are absolutely panicking over the ski season. Great to see the snow; there’s more of it this week. The only thing they haven’t got is people to actually man the ski fields—person the ski fields, staff the ski fields—and the hospitality and the entertainment services that need to go along with it.

Rural broadband initiatives was one of the things that Ms Edmonds crowed about. Well, if it wasn’t for the previous National Government, we would not have survived COVID, thanks to the high-speed broadband and rural broadband initiatives of the previous Government that actually got us the internet speeds and capability to be able to go online.

I mean, this is something that I know is very close to her heart, as the Mana MP, but Pacific housing initiatives—crowing about Pacific housing initiatives at the same time as the Government presides over the highest level of house price inflation in New Zealand’s history is, I think, a bit rich, frankly, because the reason that those initiatives are so desperately needed for Māori and Pasifika first-home buyers and other vulnerable people is because houses are now completely out of the range and the reach of those communities.

Then, of course, we had the Minister of Finance kind of normalising what we’re doing here, as if, “Oh, this is what we do every year with both Supplementary Estimates and imprest supply.” On one level he is correct, but we are now two days away from the end of the muddiest, most opaque, most profligate Budget spending period in this country’s history. And it’s not so much the fact that we’re doing the Supplementary Estimates; it’s the sheer scale of the things that have been approved in between Budgets with zero scrutiny by the select committees, zero scrutiny by this House. And the only time we get to see this—which is billions and billions of dollars of spending on top of Budget 2021—is on Budget day 2022.

Now, he’s right. There has been a lot of money spent on COVID—necessarily, unexpectedly. Not all of it, frankly, I think is needed, but that’s an argument we couldn’t have. And also the Air New Zealand recapitalisation, support for the Office of the Auditor-General through a very difficult period—there are a number of things that are necessary and appropriate in a normal Supplementary Estimates process. But in the 54-page bill that we have here there is also a huge list of things that by any measure should not be part of Supplementary Estimates. They are, essentially, business-as-usual Budget appropriations that the Government did not put into Budget 2021 when it should have: things like biosecurity risk management, managing the fisheries resources sustainably—well, as if that’s something new and unexpected. Writing off software as a service intangible asset may have been unexpected, but I bet not, because if you’re going to write off a $120 million asset, one doesn’t do that on a whim. Energy and resources: $20 million for oil field decommissioning, as if the oil field just kind of sprouted up and needed decommissioning. It’s been there for 40 years. Why on earth is that part of a Supplementary Estimates process? I could go on. Radio spectrum management rights—as if they came up unexpectedly. None of this should be in Supplementary Estimates. So if we oppose this bill, it’s not because of the process; it’s because of the quantum.

Let me just talk about imprest supply, because both the Minister and Ms Edmonds did talk about that as well. I say this: yes, imprest supply is a normal part of every Budget cycle. But under the previous National Government, the imprest supply values for the first imprest supply were around $7 billion or $8 billion. In 2021, this Minister gave himself a $56.5 billion slush fund. Last year, it was a $41 billion slush fund, and in 2023, it’s a $30 billion slush fund just to get going. Now, both of them say, “Oh, well, that’s far less than previous years’ imprest supply.” Well, that, frankly, is gilding the lily, because it is still more than three times the greatest amount of imprest supply than the previous National Government gave itself. It’s lazy budgeting, and, frankly, it’s no wonder—

💬 Anna Lorck: Oh, National were lazy.

Oh, there we go. The Berocca has kicked in. I think we need a bit more magnesium over there. It is lazy budgeting, and it’s actually an insult to drunken sailors to say that that’s what this Government is spending like. I’ll say this about drunken sailors: they spend their own money. This Government is spending taxpayers’ money. It has a responsibility to make sure that for every single dollar—in the good times, but especially in the tough times—of taxpayers’ money that they lift out of the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders and spend on these initiatives, they’ve got to be able to hold hand on heart and say two things: (a) this is good value for money, and (b) we know that because it has been scrutinised by select committees and this House. I don’t think we can say either of those things about the Supplementary Estimates, and certainly I predict that the spending that’s going to go on in a still eye-watering $30 billion imprest supply is going to be exactly the same.

Over the past year, in various roles, I have been quizzing the Reserve Bank Governor and the Minister of Finance about the inevitable place we have found ourselves, and probably are going to, in terms of inflation, and the Government spending is a contribution and a driver of that inflation. All we’ve heard from the Minister of Finance is equivocation and avoidance and “Not my problem.”, and “Isn’t there something going on in the Ukraine?”, and “We’re kind of about the middle of the OECD.” This Government needs to take responsibility for profligate spending in a heated economy driving prices when supply is low. I mean, it’s fourth-form economics. It was predictable 18 months ago. It’s going to take another 18 months to get under control even if the Government takes the steps that it needs to take in order to get the inflation curve going back to within the Reserve Bank range of 1 percent to 3 percent. And not only are they not doing that, they are adding fuel to the inflationary fire by the spending that they continue to do in the name of wellbeing. Well, the legacy we’re going to leave our children and grandchildren is hardly wellbeing for them. It’s kicking the can down the road, but the can is getting heavier and they can’t kick it far enough for them not to be able to take responsibility for their decisions. That reckoning is coming in the next 12 months.

I often sit here on this side of the House and wonder what world those members of the Opposition live in. Mr Woodhouse, the previous speaker, has just given me an idea of what world they do live in, and it’s not one that acknowledges there is a world outside New Zealand. I believe that his last statement was along the lines of “something going on in Ukraine”. It’s almost like you read the newspaper and all those little side issues that you read down, and there it was: Michael Woodhouse was reading the Otago Daily Times on Saturday morning and he saw that “Oh, there’s something going on in Ukraine.”

But we can ignore that because, being a diligent member, he will have been preparing his speech for today and he will have been ensuring, as every other member of the Opposition does, that he doesn’t mention that there is a world outside New Zealand—a world where “something’s happening in Ukraine”. Mr Woodhouse, there is actually a war going on in Ukraine—a war that actually, potentially, is going to impact the world in a way we probably haven’t worked out. In fact, it’s a world that COVID is still taking place in—that I suspect we still haven’t worked out.

So those speakers in the Opposition—and I can see them diligently going through their notes—will all stand up and ensure that whatever else they talk about, the only time they will mention a country or something happening outside New Zealand will be the gleeful encouragement for New Zealanders to leap on the next plane and go to Australia, because from what I’ve heard during question time, from what I have heard through every speech relating to this, every New Zealander who leaps on a plane to go to Australia is a victory for the Opposition—something to be celebrated. Well, actually, those members of the Opposition should be very careful that they’re not actually encouraging those people to head over there, because that’s exactly what they’re doing.

By taking this very myopic view—I’m not sure “myopic” is really a sufficient word, but my vocabulary is limited. There will be a better one—Shakespeare will have thought of one, but it doesn’t come to mind. But we’ll stick with “myopic” for now.

The very myopic view taken by the Opposition—and I’m waiting for David Seymour’s contribution. He’ll take myopia to a new level, because he will ensure, when he does his speech—and he’s either following me, or a couple after, that he doesn’t even acknowledge that there’s a place called overseas. He’ll make sure he doesn’t even acknowledge there is a thing called COVID, because with everything he does, he will point at the Minister of Finance’s seat—MOF, affectionately known as—and say that every ill that we have in this world, everything that’s gone wrong, from the common cold to AIDS, is the fault of the Minister of Finance.

So can I invite those members—and Mr Speaker, I am going to go to the bill. I can see you encouraging me to go there. Can I encourage the next speakers, please, to just accept that even beyond Australia there’s a big wide world out there. Just in case you think somehow this paradise that we live in, this pavlova paradise, is somewhere where the only bad things that happen are happening in New Zealand.

Look at the inflation rates from around the world. Have a look not only at what’s being predicted but have a look at what’s actually happening, and these are not Third World countries. We sit in a pretty good place. I see New Zealand at 6.9 percent, and there are only about 10 countries below us, of countries that we recognise, but, boy, there’s a heck of a lot above us—countries like the United States, 8.3 percent, and that’s just been upgraded; the European Union, 8.1 percent; the United Kingdom, 7.8 percent. I did read over the weekend that that’s predicted to be over 10 percent come the end of the year.

So we are in what you would have to describe as a fluid environment, and fluid environments require a fluid response. Now, once again, the first two speakers on this legislation—and talking about fluidity, when one does discuss bills such as this, an imprest supply bill and a Supplementary Estimates bill, really what we are talking about is the necessity for fluidity.

Just for those who are listening at home and might be confused by some of those previous contributions, I will just say that each year we have a day—this year it was 19 May—that is Budget day. That’s the day that these very well-prepared departments—despite what Mr Woodhouse has said—come here. They’ve been beavering away, and they’ll be beavering away now for next year’s Budget. They go through particular cycles, and under the information they have and the world as they understand it exists today, they know what they will need. They’ll go to their Ministers, and their Ministers will put the case for what they need to keep their departments operating, and that’s what the appropriations are for—that money will be appropriated. But, of course, as we know, we live in a very fluid environment.

Now, there are two ways we could do this. We can say, “Right, OK. Budget day is 19 May. If you didn’t put your money in, too bad. It’s gone, and we’ll have to wait till next year to get that money.”, and that’s the approach that the Opposition took, pretty much, in 2008. That word is “retrenchment”, and that’s basically what happened in 1929, during the recession. The world retrenched; the Americans retrenched. Here, we had a very, very conservative Government who, essentially, retrenched, and countries only ever came out of that when they actually started spending some money. That is where we had the New Deal. That is where we had Michael Joseph Savage—whose photograph, rightfully, is on the walls of many a home in New Zealand, because people understand just what that man and his party did at the time.

So, coming back, to put that back: how does that actually relate to what we’re talking about today? Well, some things just can’t wait a year, and so we’ve got to make sure that the Minister of Finance and this Government has got the ability to make sure that we do get through this, and who knows what’s going to happen next? As I say, this is a very fluid environment. This very chart from April 2022—an inflation chart. If there was an update now, I’m sure that most of those countries will change—we know that Britain has and we know that the United States has—and so we’ve have to make sure we have the ability to change.

Take the police, for example. Since the Budget last year, we’ve seen—and it’s been brought up in this House; it’s been a matter of considerable concern—a rise in gang activity, shootings, etc. Now, it would be a terrible day if we had to say, “Righto, we can’t really do anything about that until next year.”, but this Government and this Minister of Police is going to be doing a considerable amount about that, and he’s going to need some finance to do so. It would be terrible if he had to just wait until next year, because, again, the losers will be those people who rely on the police for their safety and the ability to go about their lives on this—sorry, was that a two-more-minutes call there, was it, Mr Speaker? Thank you. I wasn’t—I was thinking you had your fingers the right way round.

So I just want to reflect—in the time left to me—that sometimes we have options in life, and I’m one of these people who go through life saying that doing nothing is rarely an option. It’s sometimes an option, but certainly in the times we live in, doing nothing is not an option.

I’m proud to be part of this Government. I reflect on, really, the theme underlying a lot of the criticism of this Government—again, whether it be through question time or whether it be through speeches in this House, it’s “Boy, you guys are doing these health reforms. Boy, you guys are doing these water reforms. We’re going to get you next year.” Well, the option with both is to go back to our electorates and see the pipes bursting and see the sewage going into various harbours and waterways. With health, everyone knows the current health system is broken, but “Let’s do nothing because we might get thrown out of Parliament if we do something.”

Certainly, if we look at the last National Government, in particular, essentially, it did nothing, and it was a safe option to take. They squandered their popularity. At the time, they had a very popular Government and a very popular Prime Minister, and even those staunch members across the House will admit that there was a lot of wasted opportunity. Well, I’m proud to be part of a Government that does things, and if we get criticised and if the things we do are unsuccessful next year, by gee, I want to be part of a Government that stands for doing something; not for doing nothing. So, again, this imprest supply bill gives us the opportunity to do things, and not—as is celebrated in the Opposition—do nothing and imagine that New Zealand is just this wonderful little world. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Budget and imprest supply bill that we’re debating today is really about our priorities as a country, and the Government, on behalf of all New Zealanders, makes decisions about what our priorities are, how we can invest together in the things that are going to lift up our people and protect our environment and ensure that we have a habitable climate in the future.

There is much to celebrate in the Budget, which is why the Green Party supported it. Of course, the Green Party is not a party officially of the Government. We have a cooperation agreement with the majority Labour Government which means we’re doing as our voters would have wanted us to, which is to work as constructively as possible to get better outcomes for the climate, for biodiversity, for our people and equality in New Zealand. Our two Ministers, James Shaw and Marama Davidson, are certainly working as hard as they can, and you can see the effort that they have put into this Budget, because we had the largest ever investment in climate initiatives in this Budget. The fact that it came from emissions trading scheme revenue is fantastic, because it means that those who are causing the most damage through climate pollution are therefore paying for a lot of the solutions, which is fair.

We also saw $114 million for the prevention of family violence—something that my colleague Jan Logie started in her work last term as the first ever executive role as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, and now Minister Marama Davidson is the first ever Minister to have that role. So that is fantastic. But, ultimately, we’re not officially in the Government and the Labour Government doesn’t need the Green Party’s votes, and there is a lot more that we believe could have been done and should be done to ensure that we do have a habitable climate and we do have a fair society. While we absolutely supported the response to COVID, unfortunately, the fact is that unintentionally it has led to a massive increase in wealth inequality in New Zealand, and the only way to fix that is to fix the tax system and to make sure that the wealthiest are paying their fair share.

So, ultimately, this is about political choices. Continuing to have child poverty in New Zealand is a political choice. Obviously, the parties to my right are happy to let child poverty get worse and worse and to give tax cuts to those earning the highest incomes and to perpetuate a lack of a fair tax system, and the party to the left, you know, is tinkering around the edges and saying, “We’re doing the best we can.”, but not fundamentally changing the system. The system is rigged in favour of those who have the most. The system is rigged in favour of those colonists who came here and got land—whether through theft or through trade, but a lot of times theft—and who have perpetuated a racist system that has failed those who have roots as tangata whenua. I acknowledge that the Labour Government is doing what they can to try and right these wrongs, but until you fundamentally change the system, nothing is going to change.

That’s what we saw in the response to COVID, because we see the wealthiest New Zealanders almost $1 trillion richer after COVID. Of course, most of that, many of them, would be happy to pay more to have a fairer society. Who wants to live in a country where children are growing up in poverty and don’t have opportunities? No one.

So how could we have addressed the cost of living crisis and inflation? The Green Party supports the measures that the Labour Party brought through on the Budget, but we could have done a lot more if we had transformational income support, a guaranteed minimum income, and we could pay for that. We could end child poverty with a wealth tax on the top 6 percent of those who own wealth, who just got a lot wealthier in the last two or three years through no effort of their own; simply through an economic system that is rigged, that sees the return to capital grow faster than the economy grows. So making the tax system fairer is a choice that the Green Party would make, a choice to really take ambitious action on climate. There are so many opportunities. I’m just going to give one example here, which is, unfortunately, not in the Budget.

The Government needs to commit $350 million now to be able to purchase the hybrid electric trains that could massively increase connectivity between Palmerston North, the capital city, and Masterton. We have a business case that shows a positive return on investment. We have the regions—Horizons Regional Council and Greater Wellington Regional Council have committed the funding. Waka Kotahi has committed funding. We already had track work go through as part of the COVID response and we know that there is a huge benefit to increasing the connectivity. If there are more frequent trains, more people can choose to travel easily between these cities in the lower North Island at lower costs—lower carbon costs, lower safety costs. It’s just a win-win-win right across the board, and, of course, a positive benefit to cost ratio, which I would think the ACT Party would care about, but, you know.

Instead, the National Party did campaign on a massively over-designed extension to State Highway 1 north of Ōtaki to north of Levin, and, unfortunately, this is a bit of road that needs immediate safety improvements—it needs immediate safety improvements. You know what won’t improve the safety immediately on that road? Spending 10 years building a separate highway to the site—that will not improve the safety straight away. So the Government has committed $1.5 billion to this stretch of road that only has 8,000 cars in each direction a day, and a four-lane bypass of Levin—the cost of this project is equivalent to half of the residential property in Levin.

Now, look, let’s solve the problem of the bottleneck in Levin. Let’s solve the problem of the safety of the State highway. You can do that for a couple hundred million dollars. You could get the exact same benefits, the exact same result, at lower cost, faster, if you improve the existing road and did a two-lane bypass of Levin, and you’d have more than the $350 million left over to massively increase train connectivity, not only between Levin and the city, between Palmerston North and Wellington City but also on the Wairarapa line, where you could double the number of peak train services and get services all day, get services on the weekend. That’s how you truly transform the transport system. It makes economic sense. It’s better for the climate. It’s better for the people who have the choice to not drive and not spend two hours stuck in a car. They can do other things. They can be productive. They can work. They can talk on the phone. They can have a glass of wine. They can relax. New Zealanders want effective passenger rail services and the economic case absolutely stacks up.

But it means making choices. If we’re going to make the choice to spend $1.5 billion on a highway that will delay safety improvements, that has a benefit to cost ratio of 0.2 because the cost is so much greater than the economic return of that project—I mean, I think it’s a little bit surprising that only the Green Party stands up and argues for this kind of rational investment in transport solutions that will give people more choice, that will reduce transport costs, that will help us to respond to climate change. I know that there are supporters. The local MP in Ōtaki is absolutely supportive of the rail investment, and I want to acknowledge her and her work campaigning for that. But we need to continue the campaign, because, unfortunately, the Labour Government has not committed the $350 million in this Budget. That is why, my friends, we need a Green Party in Government so that we can actually get—

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Look what happened last time. What about the letter?

💬 David Seymour: Release the letter.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Release the letter.

—the sensible investment in transport solutions that New Zealanders have been begging for for years. I hear that the National Party and ACT Party don’t know that the letters are already public—you morons—and it’s a great letter. Do you know why? Because it’s all about evidence-based transport investment.

Do the members of this House not want an effective investment in transport solutions in Wellington? Can the members for the National Party really stand and talk to their constituents in Northland and Southland who need investment in their roads and say that they back $2.2 billion of investment in the capital, where already it’s like the place in New Zealand where public transport could actually be an alternative? Do you want to spend $2.2 billion on roads here, rather than effective public transport here and fixing the roads in Northland and Southland that move our product to market? OK, well, party vote Green.

I just heard a Green Party member talk about why the Green Party is rational, and it brought me back to a wonderful quote from Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and she said, “Being rational is a bit like being a lady. If you have to say you are, you’re not.” And that’s the problem the Green Party has.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. This is the bill where the Government passes a law to add or subtract money spent in each appropriation from the Budget. These appropriations—the original estimates—are in this book, and if you want to see a thick book, if you want to get a sense of how much money this Government is spending, there it is. This is a Government whose spending is out of control.

To put some numbers around that, you know what, in 2019—before COVID—when this Government said it was investing in the future, and was certainly spending enough money, it spent $87 billion. Now, that was actually up a lot from the $78 billion Budget it inherited, but it was $87 billion. This year, this Government will spend $128 billion, and it has increased expenditure by $41 billion in just a couple of years. That is sensational spending, and it has an effect. It has an effect on the price of everything that New Zealanders buy, because inflation—as another great economist Milton Friedman said—is too much money chasing after too few goods. When this Government increases spending by $41 billion in just a few years, when it runs a deficit of $19 billion—that’s what they call “the fiscal impulse”; $19 billion more money spent than it takes in tax—that means there’s a lot of money sloshing around.

The problem is, it might be OK if we were getting quality for that expenditure, but let me give you an example uncovered by ACT just in the last 24 hours: that is the expenditure on advertising for COVID boosters. You might think this is a minor thing, but we’ve been tracking this expenditure. They’ve been spending about $2.4 million, $2.7 million a month since last year.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: How much?

$2.7 million—he asks. We asked how many people are actually getting vaccinated after hearing that advertising. Well, back in February, there were so many people that it was $3 of advertising for every person that got a booster. Then, in March, it was $9 of advertising for everybody that got a booster. Then, in April, it was $29 of advertising for everybody that got a booster. And come May, last month, they spent $2,765,000 advertising for COVID-19 boosters. And how many people got boosted? Well, 41,000 got boosted—that’s $67 of advertising for every person that got a booster.

Now, let’s just think about this. If the people over here cared about New Zealanders’ money, if they showed them the basic respect for their taxpayer dollar, when they know that people up and down this country are tightening their belts—you know, they’re making sacrifices. Do you know what people say? They say, “We used to plan out meals for the week. Now we go to the supermarket and we shop the specials and we eat what we can afford.” I get messages—because I’m down with the kids on Snapchat—and they say, “We are sitting around our flat. We can’t go out, because we can’t afford the petrol.” And that’s because petrol consumption has gone down 15 percent year on year. These are the facts: people are tightening their belts everywhere, but not this Government.

Back to our COVID vaccination advertising, they had $2.765 million spent even though only 41,000 people presumably heard the advertising and got vaccinated. Did they think, at any time in the last four months, “Gee, we’re spending the same money and getting less vaccinations? Maybe the advertising is not working. Maybe we need to change strategy. Maybe we need to start saving New Zealanders’ money and show them some respect because they are tightening their belts. Maybe, as the custodian of the public dollar, we in the Labour Government should too”? And did they do it? No, they did not do it. Did anyone on the Labour Party like to say, “Did they do it?”

💬 Hon Poto Williams: Oh shush.

Oh—oh. They’ve got nothing to say for themselves, because they ploughed on and they spent the money to the point where it cost $67 for every person that got boosted, in advertising alone. And when you ask the Labour Party whether they are accountable for public money—that’s Poto Williams, a Minister of the Crown—she says, “Oh shush.” That’s what their attitude is to the New Zealand taxpayer, and that’s why they’re on their way out. That is the arrogance and the out-of-touch attitude of a Government that wastes taxpayer money, hand over fist—$128 billion.

Well, there is a better way. The ACT Party is the only party that has published a fully costed alternative budget that shows how we could reduce expenditure by $6.8 billion and get back into surplus this coming year—not in 2025, not in 2026—straight away. And we’d do it. For example, this Government has hired 14,000 additional—beg your pardon, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The Speaker earlier ruled that slogans were not to be visible from the floor of the House. I think the member has made his point, and I thank him for that, but if he could leave the slogan face down on the table, I’d appreciate it.

Well, Madam Speaker, I would never dispute your ruling but the “real change” Budget—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Good.

—as written here is not a slogan. Madam Speaker, you may come from a political tradition where, when a Government says, “We are going to deliver a Budget for real change”, it’s just a marketing exercise. But, in ACT’s alternative budget, it’s not a slogan, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I’m now going to warn the member that if he continues to question my ruling and show a slogan to the House, which is also against the Standing Orders, I will warn him once. Thank you.

Point of order, Madam Speaker. The clock continued while you were on your feet and I had to reserve my—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Then I would invite the member to get on with it.

The ACT Party is the only party that has set out how we could reduce expenditure, reduce taxes, and get this country back on track. And it also has serious policy proposals that are not slogans, that are not gimmicks. Simple questions like: can we afford to be the only country I can think of, remaining, that pays a pension at 65? Because do you know what? The United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Australia—all of those countries are now raising their age to 67. If we had the courage to do that here in New Zealand, we could raise it by two months a year, for 12 years, to 67. People would barely notice it. In fact, with the increase in life expectancy, it wouldn’t reduce the time they got the pension, but it would save the taxpayer—and especially those younger taxpayers thinking of going overseas—$16 billion in the first 12 years. Now, you just have to ask yourself: “Is New Zealand so wealthy that we can afford to be the outlier from Australia, Britain, America, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, and Italy?” Or do we have to start introducing rational policies?

Do you know what? I won’t hold it up. I’ll cover up what you call a slogan and I call a title. It also says, in our alternative budget, that the ACT Party would have foreign investors from democratic OECD countries allowed to send ideas and money to New Zealand without the normal obstruction of the Overseas Investment Office. Now, we have, per capita, half as much foreign direct investment as Australians, a third of what Estonian citizens have, and Estonians are about to overtake us in productivity or GDP per hour worked. Can we really afford to be one of the hardest countries in the world to send investment and ideas to? Or do we need the kind of ideas that ACT promotes in order to make this a country that can hold on to its First World status, its developed country living standards, that can afford the cancer drugs that people need when they or their loved ones get ill, that is a place that young people want to stay and build their futures?

We’ve got two options. We’ve got the Labour Party, who will spend and spend and spend, and still there are no results. We have an alternative Government in waiting, with the ideas of ACT, that will make sure that this country not only survives but thrives, and that’s why we oppose this Government’s spendthrift Budget. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I’m pleased to rise and speak in this debate on the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill and the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. I’m usually actually at this point in the pecking order—just after ACT—because my name starts with W and it just happens to happen. I usually got a little bit more to riff on because Mr Seymour usually puts up a better fight than that. It was a bit of a snooze, wasn’t it?

So let me just move on and actually focus on this bill and what it actually achieves, because what we really do need to focus on is that these bills do some really hard work for our country. They are actually a stark contrast with what we get from the Opposition, which is a real lack of vision, because what we can see in these bills is a really comprehensive accounting for the spending that’s going on.

I want to talk about that because I think there’s a bit of a myth out there that we need to bust, because what I have found is that over the last few years, we have had a country that is in safe hands in a crisis, and I think that New Zealanders actually will take that on board, because I have been super impressed by our finance Minister and the mixture that he brings to this job of actually being really careful and responsive and very careful about taxpayers’ money and his creativity and vision—always looking for the future.

So I want to talk about those aspects of this bill. I want to talk, first of all, about something that came up actually from the Hon Michael Woodhouse. In that speech he gave in his turn in this debate, he talked about how there was $20 million set aside for oil fields being deconstructed. I just want to talk about that for a minute because that can wash over people and they cannot think about it.

I was here watching and participating in a debate when we were talking about the decommissioning of oil fields, and the National Party opposed this Government in terms of its bill, which was to make those responsible for reaping the profits out of those oil fields responsible for the decommissioning. Now, I see that as a highly cynical act of people with a lot of money; that they would actually take the oil out of this country and cynically pass on the ownership of the companies before the decommissioning came in so that the New Zealand taxpayer has to pick up that bill. It’s not a great amount of money in this Budget, but there’s a lot of money at stake for New Zealanders.

It’s taxpayers’ money; it’s hard-working taxpayers’ money. I see this Government as actually much less cynical—much more savvy—about that kind of wastage. I’d like the Opposition to think about that kind of wastage, because we got all sorts of arguments at that point about how we were destroying the industry by holding people to account by making them actually put things right. That worries me because that is not vision.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Order! Order! I’d like the member to come back to the bills which are being debated this afternoon and which are before the House. I’ve been listening very carefully and I haven’t heard the member addressing either of those two bills, and I invite her to do so.

Those issues about spending, I can go to more directly in this bill—although that was a comment on a comment made about a spend in the Budget.

So with regard to the broader issues, we are going through a situation at the moment where we have faced a double whammy as a Government. We have faced COVID and we have faced a war in the Ukraine, and that has caused all sorts of issues in terms of the economy. What we’ve had is someone in charge of the appropriations of money who has thought very carefully about the spend.

So the spend that we can see in these bills are things like the winter energy payments; are things like the temporary cost of living payment, which is going to go to people who don’t get that but are on $70,000 or less a year. Those people are the ones that are hurting the most and they’re going to get the most help as a consequence. This covers things like the 25c that we have taken off fuel at this time.

It also covers one of my favourites, which is half-price public transport. Now, yesterday I was standing with my daughter at a bus stop and she was saying to me—she said quite spontaneously—“This is the bit I love.” Like, “I am using this public transport.” It was really nice because this was a young woman who was on a low income and she was able to go on a bus in Wellington for half the price it used to cost her, and she will be devoted to that form of transport as a consequence. It is just a damn good thing for everybody at that bottom line. That’s where you can tell that this Government is grounded.

It is not, by contrast, going by a decision to hold tax rates and depreciate them. It is not going to our wealthiest citizens, and that actually is the contrast. That is a shocking contrast that the Opposition would suggest that at a time of crisis, we don’t push the money into the places where that spend supports our most vulnerable, supports those people without a lot of capital.

But instead, we push all that money—the vast majority of it—to our highest-income earners. That’s ridiculous. It’s also inflationary, because where is that money going to end up?

I want to talk about the article today that was by Fallow. It was in the New Zealand Herald, and he said this: “There is a difference between borrowing to build State houses, because you object to Kiwis living in cars or emergency housing hotels, on the one hand, and selling off State houses and paying down debt on the other.” That is the contrast here.

Yes, there’s spending in this Budget. I make no apology for spending in this Budget as long as it’s supporting people who need supporting; as long as it’s supporting our economy and our people. But when that spending and all that devotion to paying down debt goes to the point of spending the very infrastructure we need to support people, that is a bad move. That is a bad move for New Zealand and it’s based on an ideology that’s completely out of date.

So I want to talk just a little bit before I finish about some of those other things that I think are very important in this Budget in terms of vision. I haven’t got time to pick more than one, so I’m going to pick the one which I saw, which is about income insurance.

I was an employment lawyer and I spent my life watching some people who were lucky enough to have redundancy pay do OK if they lost their job, and I saw the majority of New Zealanders with absolutely nothing: their wages had been driven down and they didn’t have savings when they lost their job.

This is such a sensible idea. This is going to bring a whole lot of people who are working into a situation of security, and they are going to have 80 percent of their income guaranteed. So they’ll be able to pay their mortgage, so they’ll be able to sleep at night, so they’ll be able to go and find a better job. It is such a fundamental that you would think that it’s something that all the parties would agree is important because it’s about good housekeeping too.

It’s about when there is a financial crisis, actually people have security. They’ve paid into a system where they have security and it helps everyone in the economy because we don’t end up with big financial shocks as a consequence.

This is such a fundamental in New Zealand, and yet we were running into a situation where people had very little savings, they had very little security, and apparently that was OK—and it was completely inequitable between people.

So I absolutely am thrilled to see this is a new building block and that’s in this Budget, but it’s also a vision for the future.

That is a Minister of Finance who understands and cares about the future of our economy, not just now. It’s being done at a time when we have had real crises to face, and I absolutely applaud him for the work that he’s done in that space.

I am absolutely pleased to see that work come back before the House soon, and it will be a great complement to ACC, which is one of the other visionary parts of our system that I am very proud of.

So I am pleased to see this and I commend these bills to the House.

I rise on behalf of the National Party as the member of Parliament for North Shore on the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. National oppose this bill. I tell you what: listening to that last speech about a finance Minister that has responsibility, that is in control, I was thinking, “Where have they been?” This is a Minister in a bill that we are going through today that is an open chequebook—an open chequebook for a Government that is addicted to spending and a Government that is addicted to debt. And we’ve got a Minister of Finance at the helm of this ship, going through a massive storm, and basically going to crash-land our economy and hard-working Kiwis are going to pay for those decisions.

The New Zealand economy, and the New Zealand economy more broadly, which is impacted by these Supplementary Estimates, is in a nosedive, and the pilot Prime Minister is across overseas doing clinks and drinking shot glasses of grape juice while the Deputy Prime Minister is in the navigator seat thinking, “You know what? Those dials in front of me are all going red inflation and the machine’s going, ‘Pull up, pull up’ ”. And he’s going: “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. I know better than what the dials are telling me.”

The problem with that attitude from a Minister of Finance is an arrogance that he knows best. But all the warning signs are saying that our economy is in a nosedive and this Government has played a role in terms of where we’re at. What we want from this Government is the ability to recognise that we’re in a freefall and to start to take action around that. But sadly, and sadly for hard-working Kiwis and for Kiwis around this country, we have got a Government that is addicted to spending, addicted to debt, and has an inability to fiscally manage this country and its future.

So what I want to talk about in regards to the bill is the $127 billion that is in the spending for this year. That is just over $57,727 per Kiwi household and that amount is about $1,100 a week of spending. That is the quantum of spend that that side of the House is currently spending and not investing in terms of us. And we’ve talked about how that quantum of spend has increased significantly.

Let’s talk a little bit about three waters, which is included within this appropriation: $2.5 billion of borrowings or spend that has just been spread out in a bribery fund for local councils. One and a half billion of that is going to be borrowed at commercial rates—$100 million of interest costs alone, $50 per household in terms of interest repayments per year before these entities have even started. That is in regards to a piece of legislation that is one small element of a significant appropriation in regards to what we’re talking about.

We talked before about the $350 sugar hit. Let’s be clear: this is going to do nothing on a sustainable basis to help hard-working Kiwis out there dealing with a cost of living crisis. The navigator in charge of this plane, while it’s nosediving, thinks they know best and this $350 payment is like trying to turn over the fuel gauge to the backup engine when fuel is pumping out of the plane as it’s heading for the mountain. This Government are out of control and they have an inability to manage. National have come up with some good ideas in regards to how we’d do that: inflation-adjusted taxation policy, making sure that Kiwis would get sustainable money back into their pockets, and that would benefit middle New Zealand.

Lastly, this appropriation includes a significant amount of money on consultants, contractors, and bureaucrats. There were 14,000 more bureaucrats in the last five years; $34 million on consultants and contractors on an advertising campaign for three waters, which was absolutely wasteful spending. One and a half billion dollars is the cost for those additional bureaucrats and that excludes front-line teachers, front-line nurses. The National Party oppose this bill.

I rise as the proud member of the Tukituki electorate in the Hawke’s Bay region, which is absolutely booming. The bill today is about approving the investment—the investment—we are going to make into driving New Zealand forward into the future.

I’d like to start by talking about jobs. The investment from this bill is going to go into our Apprenticeship Boost programme. Now, in Hawke’s Bay, in Hastings, we have got an Apprenticeship Boost programme that I am proud to speak on. I went and visited 20 apprentices who were on a housing development programme, learning how to build, learning how to be electricians, learning how to be plumbers—women, young men, old men, you name it, they were on the Apprenticeship Boost programme. And this is part of the bill in investing this money in the first quarter to make sure that the Apprenticeship Boost programme can continue. Now, it was a win-win solution. It was a win-win solution because not only were they learning how to earn a trade, they were also building homes for the future. They were building homes that were going to be used for transitional housing to get more people into homes, and that is a very important part of the Budget.

Now, as the member for Tukituki, I’d like to discuss a part of the Budget around the spending appropriations that we’re doing that came right from the heart of Hawke’s Bay. In doing this, I would like to acknowledge five special people: people that were part of the budgeting service advice, which is part of this bill. We will be ensuring that their funding continues. I’d like to acknowledge Kristal Leach from Budget First in Hastings, Carmel Thompson from Central Hawke’s Bay Budget Advisory Services, Ngaio Bell from Wairoa Financial Literacy Services, Kerry Henderson and Debbie Mackintosh from Napier Family Centre. Now, they are budget advisory people who have had money to invest and to make sure that they were able to provide the service during the COVID lockdown. Now, they advocated really hard to ensure that that money—the $20 million not only for Hawke’s Bay but for the whole country—would continue.

Now, it was a very good example—a great example, which I did talk about locally—about how local work can make a difference; a real difference. A difference because it shows that people on the ground, this Government is listening to and this Government is prepared to invest with them. And those budget services—particularly in this time where people are finding it difficult, they need to be able to tap into budget services to make sure that they can have the support and the knowledge they need to ensure they can budget well.

Now, today we’ve been speaking on three waters as part of the investment that was going into this Budget. And as the local member for Tukituki and Hastings—where of course the water crisis started in Havelock North, which has spurred on the three waters bill—as the local MP, I have publicly come out and talked about the jobs it’s going to create—the jobs for the future. Building infrastructure, the pipes and the drains—that’s the investment that’s going to be going in, and that’s why we need to make sure that Hastings is right at the forefront of that. We’re seven years ahead of the rest of the country, we’ve already invested in our water infrastructure, getting our drinking water back, and now we are going to be showing the country. And that is why it’s so important and I believe that Hastings and Hawke’s Bay should be an absolute capital for three waters, because it’s going to grow hundreds of jobs, and that’s about the future—that’s about the future. And this is what this Budget does: it invests in the future.

Now, I do have to turn at this point to a couple of mentions in the House today, particularly from the ACT Party. Now, the leader of the ACT Party said he was down with the kids. Well, I’m up with the kids. I’m up with the kids because this cost of living payment is going to go to students—hard-working students who need support. And that’s good for those students—those hard-working students who’ve got through COVID, done their part, and we absolutely should be investing in them. And that cost of living payment, students have done it tough, students have done it tough too, so why not invest in them? Because I know that they will absolutely benefit from investing. And those students, they go out too and they need to pay rent and pay for their food too, so good on them. So up with the kids, not down with the kids like the ACT Party.

Another part of these appropriations is about health—a major investment in health. And today, I got to stand beside our former Hawke’s Bay District Health Board CEO Keriana Brooking. And I can think of no one better to stand by when we talked through the rural health that we are doing for this country. And I tell you, it was one of the proudest moments. And I’d like to take this opportunity, as we look to the future of health, to thank Keriana Brooking, to thank her, and also to thank all the DHB board members—and yes, I was an elected DHB board member—and as we look forward to investing in health, to thank them too for the hard work and service that they have done.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I’m very confident that the member is going to segue even closer to the bills at hand.

OK, absolutely, Madam Speaker. So, as we go through this, I would like to say that as we invest in the future and we look to make sure that we appropriate the funds for the Budget so that we can absolutely invest in what needs to be done because this Government, the Labour Government, is investing in people, we don’t hear anything like that from the other side—no. We don’t hear about investing in people. No vision—no. But we’ve got a vision in this Budget. We’ve got a vision, because we are making sure that things like the winter energy payment—that’s something that the ACT Party doesn’t agree with and the National Party isn’t very in favour of either, but no, we invest in the winter energy payment. And, of course, we are also looking and investing in making sure for one very important part here: dental grants—dental grants for low-income Kiwis will be more than tripled from $300 to $1,000. And no longer will they have to have emergency work.

Budget 2022 really invests forward. And the thing is, our debt is low. New Zealand’s debt is low. It is lower than the US, it is lower than the UK’s, it is lower than Canada’s, and it is lower than Australia’s. We have low debt in New Zealand, and that is what we need to continually say, because, as I started, Hawke’s Bay and Hastings are booming from the investment that’s coming in: into housing, into jobs, into education, into cleaning up our water. All of these things have an incredible impact on the hard-working people who have to get out there and do the mahi. And that’s the other thing: we need to absolutely make sure that we have jobs for the future. That’s what this Budget and the investment is all about, and it’s a bright future. And Hastings in the heart of Hawke’s Bay, the engine room of the economy, is getting a significant amount of this Budget into growing our jobs, apprentices, building houses, improving our health services—all those things that make sure that people across our region and across New Zealand are touched, because this Budget, of any budget I have ever seen, touches almost every person in one way or another. And that’s a big deal—that’s a big deal—and I’m absolutely thrilled to speak on this and on behalf of Hawke’s Bay. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on—I think it is the right order—the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill. Well, I think that just says it: the first. That means that Mr Robertson’s going to come back for more money—and gee, don’t we know that. He has an insatiable appetite for a bit of deck, a bit of money from people. And guess where he goes and gets it? He gets it from you, all of you—not you, but part of you, Madam Speaker. I’ve got to say, it comes from you as well. It comes from every New Zealander; he just loves spending your money. Wow. I don’t know how many more “First for 2022/23”—I think that that is a superb title! Someone blew that one.

Anyway—anyway—gee. I’m just reflecting. How many crises have we got at the moment?

💬 Hon Member: Fire crisis.

Oh, that’s right, I’d forgotten that one.

💬 Dr Shane Reti: Health.

So we’ve got—Mr Reti—the health crisis. Yeah, we’ve got 18,000 operations that haven’t been dealt with. And, of course, so many thousands of New Zealanders don’t know that they’re in trouble yet, from a health perspective.

💬 Dr Shane Reti: Wait times.

Wait times. We’ve got an economic crisis—and I’m going to talk about that because, you know what, our debt’s doubled from $60 billion to $133 billion. And don’t worry, it’s going to continue under Mr Robertson. It’s going to get to $185 billion.

💬 Hon Member: How much?

Three times—$185 billion—since two years ago, up to 2025. That is a staggering amount of increase—three times. Mr Robertson will leave this office as one of the biggest spenders, one of the finance Ministers who has spent so much on tick. And this is what? I’ve just done this: the first for 2022/23.

Anyway, we’re talking about crisis. So we’ve got the health crisis, we’ve got the economic crisis, and we’ve got the cost of living crisis—gee. And here is a Labour Government who’s saying that they’re going to look after the vulnerable. They have done the most shocking job for the vulnerable. Guess who gets hurt when the price of groceries—fruit and vege—goes up in the grocery shop, the supermarkets? Who gets hurt when the price of petrol gets up well over three bucks? Who gets hurt when entrance costs go up? You know, the average mortgage—my good colleague Nicola Willis talking about the average mortgage, $600,000 with the increase now. The average increase per week is over a couple hundred bucks.

And then, of course, if you’re not in that situation, you can’t get a house. And gee, you’re not going to be able to get a house for a while unless you got lucky enough to have wealthy parents. If you’re having to rent—guess who rents, mainly? More vulnerable people on fixed incomes. Up by 150 bucks. That is a cost of living crisis, that’s for certain.

Then we’ve got the workforce staffing crisis. Talk to all the small businesses.

💬 Todd Muller: Can’t find anybody.

We can’t find it. Every business I have been into over the last two years says to me they cannot find good labour. That’s why National came up with a policy to help businesses invest in good plant and equipment to improve productivity, but also to help businesses retain their staff and put them and help them into better paying jobs in more important parts of their businesses. But, of course, we’ve got so many businesses, like the hospitality and all those other businesses in places like Queenstown, that will never be able to do anything other than look at slowing down their businesses, so—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Order! Order! The member is giving, in nature, somewhat more of a general debate speech than addressing issues that arise in the two bills before the House. I invite the member to come more closely to the bills that are being debated. Andrew Bayly.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So all this—it leads to more cost. As my good colleague Simon Watts, who just spoke before, said, 14,000 new bureaucrats. Fourteen-thousand more public servants. That is costing New Zealand more than $1.5 billion a year in additional personnel costs. And you can see it in the Budget; you can see it in terms of the three waters, the $2.5 billion that’s been set aside for that; we can see it in health reforms, $0.5 billion that’s been spent so far, which is all going to feed through into the future requirements for funding, which is what the appropriation is all about. These are big, chunky pieces of costs that will lead to a much worse economic and financial situation for New Zealand. I think the most damning part of this has been the drop in productivity that’s come about, which is symptomatic of what has been happening around the financial situation that we are seeing. It’s feeding through into—businesses are less productive now. It is just making it so much harder for people to survive.

I think one of the other aspects that is interesting, that will feed through into the need for more funding and the appropriation, is also the current account deficit. It’s interesting, when you look at the current account deficit, it’s one of those areas that’s had very, very little emphasis. Traditionally, we’ve had a current account deficit of about $10 billion a year, which, in the scheme of things over the $340 billion economy, is OK—it’s not ideal, we’d like to have a positive figure. But what is interesting, looking at the financial projections, is that in 2022 and 2023, we’re going to have an estimated or projected deficit of $24 billion. That is a significant increase—it’s basically over half the increase in the current account deficit. All this is meaning is that the debt of the country is going to increase because that is going to feed through into the financial situations.

And I’ve got to say to you, all of these things are just making it harder for New Zealanders. The way that we’re having to live now, with the wage changes that are taking place—or lack of them—it means that, in effect, all New Zealanders now are poorer off than they were a couple of years ago. That is the most damning thing.

The worst thing about what’s happening is that it’s also making our businesses much more uncompetitive. Because what has happened with the rapid increase in inflation, which is feeding through into what’s happening with the Government accounts, is that we have built into the economy a much higher cost structure, which means that we’re paying more for our labour—if you can get it—we’re paying more for import components going into our businesses.

Even if inflation, which is obviously near 5 percent—it is likely to stay up at those high levels for quite some period of time. Even if they come back within the bounds of the Reserve Bank requirements of 1 to 3 percent, what we have done is that we’ve embedded a much higher cost structure into New Zealand that will not dissipate. We have, therefore, made New Zealand businesses less competitive from an international perspective, and we’ve made it a much more unfavourable, much more disadvantageous situation for, particularly, vulnerable people and people on fixed incomes. That is the travesty of what we are facing.

All that is fed through into a financial situation which I think is—not only are we dealing with all these other crises, and I didn’t talk about the educational crisis, I didn’t talk about the crime crisis, I didn’t talk about the housing crisis. But what it has fed through to is, ultimately, an economic crisis that will take some time to deal with. The question that I’ve got is: how are we going to give the confidence to New Zealanders that they, first of all, should stay in New Zealand and not immigrate to Australia; but secondly, how do we give the confidence to our business community and to individuals to want to stay here, to give New Zealand a fair shot? Because, at the moment, we’ve got this dramatic brain drain that’s leaving for places like Australia and Canada—both countries have been actively recruiting in New Zealand for quite some period of time. The outlook for New Zealand is poor; it’s going to take National to turn this ship around. And gee, we’ve got a big job ahead of us.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Often in the Budget cycle, there’s a poor cousin, and one can imagine that with an international war, with global inflation leading to domestic inflation, with supply chain issues, and with pressure on households, it could be really tempting to skimp and save on things that are perceived not to hit Kiwis directly in the pocket. Certainly, when we live in the most peaceful country in the world, we’re at the bottom of world, we have a very stable environment, it would be very tempting to perhaps skimp and save on defence. But it is great to see in the Schedule to the Supplementary Estimates that there are allocations not only for defence operational things but also for defence capabilities in the order of $213 million.

Also tucked away in that Schedule on page 15—I can see that the Minister for Veterans is in the House, Meka Whaitiri—there’s about $38 million in support for veterans of agent orange who haven’t previously been able to access funding for their exposures. Now, one of these two new exposures has got a name that I can’t pronounce; it’s quite niche. But the other one is hypertension, and that is a massive achievement for those veterans of the Vietnam War, of agent orange, who fought so long and hard to be recognised to have their ailments recognised in the former things, like hypertension, which we know leads to so many other debilitating medical conditions, So those veterans will be eligible for an ex gratia payment of $40,000, and it also applies to the spouses—mainly the widows, actually, of those who have passed away from those ailments. So I’d really just like to acknowledge the Minister for that and to acknowledge that that is contained in this Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. If that bill was not voted through, those payments would not be able to be made.

But we are facing, in our little haven at the bottom of the world, more challenge now than we have faced since World War II when it comes to insidious, growing, compounding threats, and they are strategic competition in terms of geopolitics and, also, climate change. The Defence Assessment 2021 recommended that New Zealand’s defence policy should shift from a predominantly reactive risk-management-centred approach to one of a deliberate and proactive strategy, and we have seen that in the communication from our defence Minister, the Hon Peeni Henare, who spoke about climate security and green defence at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore; we’ve seen that with commitment of $1.3 billion over four years in Budget 2022 to a climate-finance initiative focused on the Pacific; and we have also seen that in the appropriations of $662.5 million to maintain existing defence capabilities. Now, that is the largest capability investment ever in defence, and it does include the $4.5 million announced this week, which will be to further support Ukraine to be able to defend itself from the invasion by Russia. And we’ve heard today, in this House, the knock-on effects that that war is having. So not only is the Government contributing to that because it is the right thing to do but it is also recognising that we are in a global situation here and that the inflation that we are seeing currently, domestically, is very much tied to things happening in the Ukraine.

I digress a little bit—still on defence—but at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, I took my 20-year-old son out to the airport in Dunedin. He had given himself a number 2 haircut because he didn’t trust the people who were going to be using the clippers to clip his hair. He had a final cheese roll. He’d been up until 2 o’clock in the morning because he’s not the most organised person, and he is off to the army. I really do hope that they will teach him to be a little more organised and to clean his room, but I’m really proud that he is going there at this time, because one of the things that has happened in the Budget is that there is an appropriation of an extra $90 million—which I understand will be targeted operationally, by those who make those decisions, to the lowest-paid workers, but also to recognise that we are in an environment with a really tight labour market and that we need to be able to recruit and retain people into our forces. Now, if these bills were not to go through, it would not be business as usual, and work that is going along around that space to recruit and retain and to pay people their worth would not be able to happen.

And what we saw in Ōhakea recently—I’m a member of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee—definitely reflects the defence Minister’s focus on people, infrastructure, and our region, the Pacific. It’s a story of regeneration, and it’s a story of strengthening. The Defence Force has certainly been very busy, not only helping manage COVID here with managed isolation facilities, COVID in the Pacific with vaccinations there, and also the incredible goodwill that our Defence Force builds up when they do that kind of people-to-people engagement, supporting countries during difficult times. They’ve been busy with the Tongan eruption and the tsunami, and of course, they have also been busy helping the Ukraine Defence Force to be able to defend itself. It was really heartening to sit in the select committee and hear about the excellent reputation that our Defence Force has, particularly around IT and digital things and communication, and that was reflected also in the conversations that we had up in Ōhakea.

So while that $662.5 million is to maintain existing defence capabilities, the Government continues to deliver on $4.5 billion worth of major defence capability projects. And that has been the largest capability investment ever, and that’s 12 projects that will support our Defence Force to continue to patrol our 15,000 kilometres of coastline, support search and rescue, disaster response, and continue to defend New Zealand. And we have seen some of the progress that’s been made, which is on target. For example, the C-130Js are going to replace the old Hercules—five of those have been ordered—and that is also referenced in the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. I was lucky or unlucky enough to be one of the first journalists on the ground after the Asian tsunami in 2004, getting my transport to and fro from the current Hercules. And at that time, they were feeling very old. So now, some two decades on, it is really timely that we get defence capability that is fit for purpose and that is also interoperable with those of our friends around the world.

We’ve also got capability projects happening with the upgrade of the ANZAC frigates and with the HMNZS Canterbury so that we can continue to have military operations and combined operations and interoperability with key partners because that is something that is going to enable us to play a key role in ensuring that our region remains stable and is not seen as too attractive for others to come in and try and take over. We have got projects continuing in cyber-security in supporting capability and other projects with upgrading computer systems, and so on.

Another thing I’d just like to mention in the House today, actually, is also the decision to establish an Inspector-General of Defence, which will be an independent oversight function for the New Zealand Defence Force. So that means even though the Operation Burnham report pointed out that the Defence Force, in most respects, acted within its remit and within its duties, there was still room for some more independent oversight. And so the Government has acted to do that, and that will be something that will certainly strengthen the ability of our Defence Force to do its job in a transparent way, in a way that is trusted by the New Zealand public.

There’s a lot more I could say about the Defence Force, but I just want to finish by acknowledging my son for choosing a life of service with our world-class Defence Force. We need that capability now; we need young people who find the Defence Force attractive, who have the skills, and who can operate machinery and equipment which is going to serve our region. I’m proud that our Government has ensured that our Defence Force is equipped to deal with the challenge of our time. These two bills before the House will allow us to get on with the business and do that.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Mānawatia a Matariki. Even though, obviously, the long weekend is over, the season of Matariki is still upon us. As this afternoon we’ve listened to this debate, and as we’ve looked at these appropriations, I feel very much like there’s a connection. It’s very much been talking about things that have gone on before us. There have been some conversations about the present, and what has been happening right now today. But also, obviously, this is about looking to the future and looking at the year ahead in terms of our spending. But I’d change that language to “what we’re actually investing in”, and that, as has been said by many on this side of the House, is people; it’s people, it’s infrastructure, it’s into our health system, it’s into our cost of living package, it’s into our climate emergency response, it’s into supporting business growth, and it’s into supporting Māori and Pacific aspirations in Aotearoa New Zealand.

I’m glad that, on this side of the House, we are investing in what is needed at this time. Things have been thrown around this afternoon; there have been lots of things around “insatiable spending”, “addiction to spending”, “addiction to debt”, and alternative budgets, and alternative Governments even, but we know and we bring it back to the fact that we have a plan. We bring it back to the fact that our finance Minister, the Hon Grant Robertson, has developed a balanced Budget for this time, supporting the here and now but also, obviously, looking to our future and to future generations, and I’m grateful to be under the leadership of our Deputy Prime Minister, of our finance Minister, who has worked hard to find that balance in a challenging time that we are in. I’m grateful right now, as we end this debate, to support our Minister of Finance, to support these bills, and to commend them to the House.

The time for this debate has expired. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Those bills are set down for third reading forthwith.