Debate on Budget Policy Statement

I move, That the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement 2023 and Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update 2022.

I just want to start by reflecting on, of course, that today is 15 March, and we’ve just heard some comments from the MP for Wigram about that day four years ago, and my thoughts are with the shuhada and the people of Christchurch generally.

Moving now to the Budget Policy Statement (BPS) and the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU), I will start by talking mostly about this Budget Policy Statement that was released on 14 December 2022. It’s important to acknowledge—and I’m sure many of the speeches following me will address this in some detail—that, of course, 14 December 2022 was well before a number of significant weather events that hit the North Island in both January and February of this year.

Going back to this year, the Finance and Expenditure Committee held hearings on 13 February, so that was the day before the emergency was declared, on 14 February. We received 27 written submissions on the Budget Policy Statement and heard 14 oral submissions on 13 February. We then had the Minister of Finance and Dr Caralee McLiesh, the Secretary to the Treasury, attend the Finance and Expenditure Committee on 22 February and we heard from both parties for 45 minutes each. At that hearing, the Budget day was announced, and it will be on 18 May—I seem to be talking a lot about dates here. Then the Finance and Expenditure Committee reported back this month on both the BPS and the HYEFU.

So I want to talk a little bit about what a Budget Policy Statement is and what it says, obviously. So the Budget Policy Statement commences the Budget cycle, it sets the scene, and it’s a requirement under the Public Finance Act 1989, section 26M. That section sets out things that it must include, and that includes—so it says—“the broad strategic priorities by which the Government will be guided in preparing the Budget for that financial year, including—(a) the overarching policy goals that will guide the Government’s Budget decisions; and (aa) the wellbeing objectives … and (b) the policy areas that the Government will focus … and (c) how the Budget for that year accords with the short-term intentions referred to in the most recent fiscal strategy report”.

So those are things that must be included and also those wellbeing objectives “must relate to social, economic, environmental, and cultural wellbeing and to any other matters that the Government considers support long-term wellbeing in New Zealand.” And the other thing that must be included is an explanation of “how the wellbeing objectives are intended to support long-term wellbeing in New Zealand.” And that is exactly what the Budget Policy Statement does.

So if we go right to the start, if we’re talking about the wellbeing at page 2 of the Budget Policy Statement, there’s discussion of the Living Standards Framework and now the complementary He Ara Waiora, looking at Te Ao Māori values as well. So the Budget Policy Statement talks about those four capitals being human, natural, social, financial, and physical. And then what happens in the document is the BPS comments on these capitals. So if we go to page 7 under the natural capital, the natural environment, there’s a section on climate change and there is some discussion about how the Government is very concerned about the impacts of recent extreme weather events—noting, of course, that this was written last year, and we thought last year was bad—and it goes on to say that “Scientists are clear that the severity and frequency of these events are being exacerbated by climate change. New Zealand’s first ever National Adaptation Plan … outlines the Government’s strategy to manage the risks to lives, livelihoods, homes, businesses, and infrastructure caused by the changing climate.” It goes on to talk about the Climate Emergency Response Fund—the CERF—and notes that that has been extended for Budget 2023 to include climate change adaptation. And that was a point that the committee focused on in the hearing with the Minister.

If we go then to the relevant work that has been done on that capital, that’s outlined at page 8 and talks about things like “reforming the resource management system to make it faster, cheaper, and better”—

Hon Grant Robertson: A good piece of work.

RACHEL BROOKING: —isn’t it?—the Plastics Innovation Fund, so that’s a $50 million fund; Jobs for Nature, a $1.2 billion programme that has funded more than 421 projects and created more than 9,000 environment-orientated jobs; and it’s talking also about rural land use and advisory services and the Clean Car Discount.

If we went on, we could look at infrastructure, which is part of the financial and physical capital. And so there are comments here about how “the Infrastructure Commission assesses that New Zealand has a public infrastructure deficit of approximately $104 billion.” and how “The Government is committed to addressing this shortfall and will invest a further $62.7 billion in infrastructure, (in health, transport, housing, and education in particular) over the next five years.” And then there’s a discussion about the need for those Resource Management Act reforms, three waters, and increasing the workforce.

The wellbeing objectives outlined on page 15—and that is the just transition, physical and mental wellbeing, future of work, Māori and Pacific peoples, and child wellbeing. And there’s a note there that there has been a slight revision to those objectives for Budget 2023 to reflect the “increased emphasis on improving our young peoples’ foundational literacy and numeracy skills, educational experience, and”—very importantly, in my opinion—“mental health outcomes.”

Then, how the BPS works, is that these are expanded on in the following pages. So on the child wellbeing, which is “reducing child poverty and improving child wellbeing, including through access to affordable, safe, and stable housing”, there is a comment about how the “Good material standards of living (including access to warm and dry housing) provide children with a good start in life, and this been shown to contribute to lasting wellbeing outcomes in areas like health, housing, and education.”

The focus areas of Budget 2023 are provided around page 18, so we have the overarching goals, which are “1. continuing to keep New Zealand safe from COVID-19; 2. accelerating the recovery and rebuild from the impacts of COVID-19; and 3. laying the foundations for the future, including addressing key issues such as our climate change response, housing affordability, and child poverty.” That is also addressed at page 4 of the committee’s report.

The BPS also has policy areas of focus, and this covers—again, this is outlined on page 4 of the committee’s report—supporting families with cost of living; careful fiscal policy; returning to surplus in the 2024/25 year; getting the basics right, particularly with the Public Service; delivering on the economic plan, and that is investing in infrastructure that drives growth, productivity, and reduces emissions.

In our hearing, there was some focus on trying to do projects that achieve multiple goals. So the Minister mentioned one, something that does two things, is a cycleway in Wellington that is also a stock bank. So it’s infrastructure that’s doing those two things—how can we get those projects, our investments, to do at least a couple of good things.

I just want to touch very briefly on the submissions. We had very engaged people, we were talking about student associations before, we had the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association and others speaking about how they wanted free public transport. We also had support for the wellbeing approach by the Salvation Army and some specific requests from the likes of the disabled persons assembling. Going back to that infrastructure, they were requesting the infrastructure mandate, the highest possible accessibility standards. My time is up. Thank you very much.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak about the Government’s Budget Policy Statement. This year’s Budget comes at a critical time for the New Zealand economy, where we have, on a number of fronts, significant challenges deepening for New Zealanders, deepening for everyday households, for businesses, and for the position of New Zealand as a whole.

In our debate at the select committee, we were acutely aware of that context. What was less obvious was that there are in fact plans in this Budget that will address those challenges in any deep or substantive way. I want to outline some of them. The first is that we are in a cost of living crisis. Not for more than 30 years has New Zealand experienced price increases as rapid as we are currently experiencing, with inflation at 7.2 percent. The consequence of that for New Zealanders is acute. They have experienced food prices going up the fastest they have since 1989, with fresh fruit and vegetables—those things New Zealand prides itself on growing so well—up 23 percent in just one year.

At the same time, families continue to face extremely high housing costs, with rents up $175 a week since this Government came to office. And while prices are rising fast, real wages are lagging behind, so that over the course of this Government, in fact, people have gone backwards in their paycheques.

What that means is that, up and down the country, we are seeing hardship in ways that we haven’t seen in many, many years. Whether it’s families who are struggling to make ends meet, whether it’s the people lining up for food banks, whether it’s superannuitants whose fixed income is no longer sufficient to cover their bills, the cost of living crisis is not only serious; it has become prolonged.

We discussed at committee, when we looked at the Budget Policy Statement, the reasons for that. And while Ministers are right to acknowledge that, yes, other countries have experienced inflation, and, yes, severe weather events contribute to inflation, it is completely wrong for Ministers to reject responsibility for their role that they should rightly take up in helping address the cost of living crisis—not only through band-aids of additional spending initiatives but, actually, getting at the root drivers of inflation.

We have not seen from the other side of the House the economic understanding that Governments that continue to add new taxes and costs to businesses are passing costs on to New Zealanders, that Governments that absolutely restrict immigration and contribute to worker shortages are constraining the ability of the economy to respond to demand pressures, that Ministers who refuse to bring discipline to their own spending are putting fuel on the inflation fire, and that, in the midst of all of this, sitting back and watching real incomes decline without offering any tax relief is just wrong.

The second area that is a clear piece of context for the Budget Policy Statement is the fact that New Zealand, in an international basis, is becoming less competitive. Last year, we dropped to 63rd in the international competitiveness rankings, the biggest drop of any of the countries. What New Zealand should be thinking about at this time is how we grow our economy, become more productive, and come out of this cost of living crisis. But the Government opposite have lost sight of that goal and are instead intent on band-aid measures.

One of the gravest concerns that we have is the degree of wasteful spending that has gone on in recent in years and is set to be perpetuated in the upcoming Budget. Government spending is up $1 billion a week since Labour came to office—$1 billion a week—which is a higher level of spending in proportion to our economy, at 35 percent of our economic output, than New Zealand has seen in 17 years.

New Zealanders often say to me: “Well, if with that spending we were seeing great enhancement to wellbeing, maybe they’d have an argument.” But, actually, when we look at the wellbeing objectives that are outlined in this very Budget Policy Statement, it’s clear that, despite spending up a storm, this Government has managed to take us backwards on the wellbeing outcomes New Zealanders expect.

So much for a just transition; we are importing record levels of coal. So much for physical and mental wellbeing; there has been a fourfold increase in the State house waiting list, with literally thousands of families putting their children to bed in motel rooms. So much for good health services; instead, emergency waiting times have increased, waiting times for elective surgery have increased, and MPs are increasingly contacted by constituents who are struggling not only to get a mental health appointment but to even see their GP. We have seen that Māori and Pacific people have also experienced a significant step backwards in their after-inflation wages. So: all of the spending but none of the outcomes.

The corollary of that, of course, is that the way that the Government continues to fuel its inflation inferno, its money burning routine, is through extra tax on New Zealanders. The tax take is up $43 billion in five years; that amounts to $17,500 in tax per New Zealand household. It is an extraordinary increase at a time when households need every dollar they can get their hands on. At a time when New Zealanders are taking jobs on the side, are cutting back on their consumption of meat, of dairy, and are turning off their heaters, we have a Government that is quite prepared to sit back and let inflation push more cash into the coffers and extract more tax from the pockets of working New Zealanders.

And it’s National’s contention that this Budget will fail New Zealanders if it does not deliver meaningful income tax relief for working people. It is well past time for that to occur. And, at the same time, it is time for the Government to step back from the clutch of new taxes it has imposed on New Zealanders: the ute tax, the Auckland regional fuel tax, the tenant taxes, removing interest deductibility for mum and dad landlords, the app tax, and the ongoing spectre of a jobs tax to fund the Minister of Finance’s pet project of a social insurance scheme—these are not responsible costs to impose on New Zealanders in the midst of a cost of living crisis.

And what is clear is that for this Budget to deliver what New Zealanders expect, it will have to show a lot more discipline about Government spending than has been evident in the past years of this Labour Government. When we on the National side look at the host of projects which have been committed to with very dubious assessment as to whether or not they will deliver results, we worry gravely about how low the bar is for this finance Minister when he signs off how he’s going to spend other people’s money—whether it’s the millions spent on the TVNZ-RNZ merger; whether it’s the millions spent on the Te Pūkenga merger, which seems to have the grand outcome that you can’t call people students anymore; whether it’s the spending on the social insurance scheme; whether it’s the spending on go-nowhere emissions projects; across the board, the huge increase in spending on consultants, the thousands of additional backroom public servants. There has been a cavalier approach to spending the public purse and it’s time the Minister of Finance reined it in.

You know, I just want to say one last thing. He’s leaving it very late because he has already raided the purse for this Budget. He has already spent $2.7 billion of the allowance he set himself for last year—so rapacious is the need to spend, spend, spend. So we can’t take it seriously. New Zealand is in a troubled spot, but National has what it takes to strengthen our economy once more, bring discipline to spending, and let New Zealanders keep more of what they earn while bringing down inflation and taking pressure off interest rates. Another year of Labour is another year we can’t afford.

Madam Speaker, thank you very much. First, I would also, on 15 March, like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the victims of the terrorist attack on the mosques in Christchurch, and their families and the wider community of Christchurch as well. This is a challenging and difficult day for people, and I want all of those in the Canterbury area and all of those in the wider community—especially our Muslim community—who have been affected by this to know that our aroha comes from this House to them.

When I think about the Budget Policy Statement for this year, I think about how quickly the world moves, because we put this statement out on 14 December 2022 and here we are, nearly two or three months later, having to deal with the impacts of a severe cyclone and the flooding that afflicted the northern part of the country around Auckland Anniversary Weekend. We have become used, as we put together Budgets, to events occurring as we are doing that, and once again we find ourselves in the position of needing to not only use this Budget Policy Statement to put the Budget together but to adapt to what has occurred in our country. This set of weather events is significant. They will have a significant impact on the lives of many New Zealanders over the next few years. Having visited a number of the regions where the cyclone has hit and the flooding has occurred, people’s lives have been devastated, their businesses have been destroyed, and communities have been cut off and still remain today, in some cases, cut off.

The human toll of these weather events is enormous, and as a Government, we have responded rapidly to support people in that regard. And I would note, in that regard, that today we’ve extended our support for small businesses in the affected regions by a further $25 million to enable grants of up to $40,000 per business to be given out to those who have been impacted and affected. That is the kind of short-term emergency support that we’ve been able to deliver, which I think tots up to a little over $400 million now. But the significance of this disaster is in its impact on our infrastructure as a country. And we will, over the course of the next few years, face a multi-billion dollar bill to make our infrastructure not only back to where it was but more resilient. And as the Prime Minister said in the days after the cyclone, not only do we have to build back better, we have to build back smarter. We have to make sure that resilience is at the core of what we do when it comes to our infrastructure.

And the Budget Policy Statement indicates that the Government already had in train a massive investment in infrastructure. One of the things I’m particularly proud of is that when we did come into office, we started to turn around the infrastructure deficit that we had inherited, and we are now spending, over the course of the next five years, around about $60 billion on New Zealand’s infrastructure—a massive increase from what we inherited.

The reality of the cyclone is we now have to do more. But that is the right thing to do. But it’s also associated with some challenging conversations for New Zealanders about how we ensure that we are resilient to future extreme weather events, how we work with communities to be more resilient, and, in some cases, to consider the future of those communities or households within them in terms of whether they can withstand the extreme weather events we’re now seeing more of. So that set of events and our response to it now colours what happens with the Budget when we deliver it in May.

But the core of what we are doing remains the same, and that is to produce another Wellbeing Budget. And it’s interesting—even hearing the Opposition spokesperson just now—the change that we’ve made to Budget Policy Statements over the years that we have been in office, because when I came into office, I found them to be very dry documents that didn’t really tell us a lot about what the Government intended to do with its Budget and, in particular, what that meant, because it’s all very well to say the numbers and the amounts of money that we’re putting in, but a Wellbeing Budget requires the Government of the day to be able to express that and what it will mean for people’s lives. And the chair of the committee ran through what are called the capitals. It’s a framework created by economists. I like to talk about it as the people, the environment, the money, and our communities—they are the four elements of what make up wellbeing. And so the Budget Policy Statement now reflects that in a way that we haven’t seen before, and I’m very proud of those changes.

What this Budget Policy Statement and the half-yearly update tell us is that New Zealand is one of the countries in the world that is the best positioned to deal with what is going to be a challenging and difficult 2023. We knew when we produced the document it would be challenging and difficult—and all the more so now. But globally, we are seeing a significant slowing of the global economy. The IMF, in their monthly economic outlooks throughout 2022, reduced their global growth forecasts for 2023. They, effectively, halved them, actually. So around the world, those challenges are being faced. We’ve seen the geopolitical conflicts with the US and China, but obviously the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We’ve seen the COVID hangover of supply chain constraints. We are in a very volatile world, but our Government is proud of the fact that we’ve made sure that we are as resilient to that as possible.

We have had strong GDP growth over the course of the last few years. Our economy is bigger than it was before COVID, and that sets us up well to deal with the potential of slowdown there. Unemployment is at historically low levels: 3.4 percent. We’ve got 2.8 million New Zealanders in work—that’s 2.8 million New Zealanders going out and earning money and feeding their families, and that is a record number. Our levels of debt are among the lowest in the developed world, and that’s important because it gives us the resilience to be able to deal with the shocks that come and to be able to deal with the challenges of 2023.

Inflation is a problem around the world, and there would be some validity to some of the concerns that the Opposition finance spokesperson was raising if it weren’t for the fact that every other country in the world is facing those as well. We are in fact the 11th lowest in the OECD at the end of the December quarter for inflation. Now, that doesn’t stop things being tough for families—they are tough—but it is a global phenomenon. And as a country and as a Government, we have worked hard to be able to support people as that occurs.

I’m also proud of the fact that we are a Government that values making sure that New Zealanders are rewarded well for their hard work. And wages have risen in this country, and we heard in the House today, earlier, the Prime Minister, in an answer to a question, talking about the fact that since 2017, after-tax wages are in fact up by 2.6 percent. We actually know that wages have by and large kept up with inflation across the time of the Government and are forecast to continue to do so in the documents that we are discussing today.

And if people really believe in making sure that wages rise and that we look after New Zealanders, a litmus test for that is how people feel about increases to the minimum wage. What we’ve seen from this Government is a consistent commitment to lifting that minimum wage to make sure that the families who are being raised on the minimum wage can look after their people and look after their communities. Consistently we’ve heard opposition to it, and even yesterday, we heard some bizarre stuff about whether or not those people actually are working people, actually are working hard, which the Prime Minister responded to. So I’m proud of the fact that wages have lifted. This is a challenging time for many New Zealanders, but we are well set to be able to deal with that.

The remainder of the Budget Policy Statement focuses on what will be in Budget 2023, and the critical priority there is the cost of living, because everybody knows that we have to make sure that we look after New Zealanders as we go through this cost of living crisis. Some parties have actions for that; others simply have words for it. In our case, even since this policy statement was finalised, we have redoubled our efforts, extended out the fuel excise duty and half-price public transport, and we will continue to find ways to support New Zealanders through this. It’s also important that during that time, we make sure that the fiscal picture stabilises. We did invest a lot of money during the COVID period to support New Zealanders.

I would say to those interjecting on the other side of the House—in fact, to one of them in particular—that time and again during the COVID period, I heard calls from the Opposition to spend more money than we were spending in our COVID response. We spent that money, and we spent that money wisely, Mr Woodhouse, on making sure we saved tens of thousands of lives and making sure that we kept people and their businesses going.

We will continue to be careful about our spending, and the Budget Policy Statement indicates a reduction in the overall Government consumption that we are doing in the coming years. The other two focuses within the Budget for 2023 will be on making sure we get the basics right: health, education, and infrastructure. And I do note the comments of the Opposition finance spokesperson, who said that we had already spent a chunk of the Budget. That’s the health funding. She doesn’t want us to do the health funding. That’s what she just told us.

The other part of the Budget plan is the execution of our economic plan to have a high-wage, low-emission economy that gives economic security, and that looks forward to a future where New Zealanders have those high-wage jobs based on our productivity and based on making sure that we give people a fair share.

I am extremely proud of our record. This has been a tough time for New Zealanders. They have worked hard to make sure we get to the place we are now. This Budget will continue to support them in that.

Hey, well, we’ve heard it all now, haven’t we? I love that quote from Mr Robertson: “We will continue to be careful with our spending.” Now, let’s just do a little bit of fact-checking on the Minister. Do you know that the spending has gone from $133 billion to $150 billion in the last year? That is someone who has been very careful with our spending! And that’s probably the issue, because the context for the Budget Policy Statement is that in the year to June 2022, we recorded a deficit of $16.9 billion. I’ll just say that again—17 billion bucks of operating loss that this Government suffered. That is despite a $17 billion increase in the revenue to the Government—a $17 billion increase in the tax revenue, and yet it reported a deficit of $16 billion. So, you know, that’s roughly a $30 billion turn-around. You’ve got $17 billion, and you go backwards $16 billion.

That is the issue, that the level of spending that this Government has set about doing over the last few years has just been the issue. Of course, it’s been fuelling the inflation that my good colleague Nicola Willis talked about—it is the issue. To continue to run a series of operating losses at Government account level over the past few years is something that the Government should not be proud of, and we continue to hear the Minister talking about how he will continue to be careful with his spending.

Obviously, the Budget Policy Statement talked about how it was prepared before Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods, and that has had a significant impact on what’s going to come forward into the next Budget. Before I go a little bit further, I just want to acknowledge all the people in Tai Rāwhiti and the Hawke’s Bay and also in Auckland, and particularly in my own electorate of Port Waikato, where I’ve probably now got 100 people without a house, without accommodation, who are now trying to deal with the issue of where they can secure their living. Of course, we’ve got an issue where many of those properties have been affected and will require earthquake funding. When we had a meeting with the Port Waikato residents, as an example recently, the Earthquake Commission representative said it would take between three and nine months before there would be any resolution to their claims. Of course, that’s going to stop them moving forward in their lives.

So that is having an impact on the Budget Policy Statement, and the Minister certainly covered that when he came before the Finance and Expenditure Committee. But I think one of the big things is how the Government has used or misused the COVID fund. It has been a significant source of funding that the Government has set about using for a whole raft of poorly designed, poorly targeted spending. That has been a major issue for a lack of transparency and accountability. We have sought on many occasions, even from Treasury, to get a better view on the nature of that spending, and, of course, it has just been used on a whole raft of ill-defined programs. It’s even been used for the three waters consultation. It’s been used for cameras on fishing boats. A big chunk of it was used for looking at the poorly targeted hydro storage scheme down in the South Island—a whole raft of these issues, when, in fact, that money should have been used to help New Zealanders move forward, to invest in our infrastructure, and, actually, create a more productive New Zealand society. And, of course, we haven’t got that.

That is one of the big issues facing New Zealand, and now because we’ve spent so much—over $60 billion during COVID to support a number of these programs. Some of it has been very well targeted, supporting businesses during the COVID period, but there is a vast quantity of it that has simply just disappeared into the till, and, of course, what that has done is eked into our debt. We’ve got much higher levels of debt. I know the Minister likes to talk about percentages, but the net debt in New Zealand has climbed quite significantly over the past four years. Of course, it means that it makes it more difficult as we move forward into these difficult periods of rebuilding back in those areas like Hawke’s Bay and Auckland, how we cater for that and how we set about doing the major infrastructure spend.

The Budget Policy Statement talked about $12 billion of capital allowances, but it is just outrageous that shovel-ready projects—225 of them; 49 of them haven’t even started. We’ve got some that just will not take place and will not be done, even though when those shovel-ready projects were announced, they were meant to be completed within 12 months. So we look at that and we say, “Has this Government got credibility to build back better, using their slogan in places like Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay?” Right now, I don’t think I would be putting much hope in it. I hope for New Zealanders’ sake that they have a better record of achieving it. I see the Minister of Transport sitting opposite, and, of course, the Government is still committed to the $30 billion Auckland Light Rail project. You’ve got to say, in the context of what’s going on, why is that such a priority? Maybe that’s politics—

Joseph Mooney: Minister for Mt Roskill.

ANDREW BAYLY: Minister for Mt Roskill, of course, as my colleague notes. But that is a project that should be put on hold because we have a construction sector that is already at capacity, and I know that Madam Chair knows a lot about this issue. Yet this Budget Policy Statement talks about not only those $12 billion of capital allowances but, of course, now with Cyclone Gabrielle, the need to increase the level of spending over time. Just got to ask—the credibility and the capability to be able to do that, and that is a very worrying thing, particularly if you are living in the Esk Valley, how that’s going to be done quickly. I’m very, very worried about it.

One of the things I do want to pick up is in the Budget statement—and the Minister talked about this in the presentation to the select committee. It says the third priority is to deliver a strong Public Service in New Zealand. So that, of course, is in the context where this Government has overseen, during the last 5½ years, a 14,000 increase in the number of people working in the Public Service. I think the number now is 67,000 public servants—some of whom do a very good job, I hasten to add. But a 14,000 increase is just a phenomenal increase, and I think the cost of that is about $1.3 billion extra.

You imagine $1.3 billion over the next 10 years—that’s $13 billion. Gee, what you could do there. That money should be applied to doing things like infrastructure spend, where it’s really required. Even if you don’t do that, what about fixing up some of our hospitals? You know, there are 80,000 people who are waiting for an operation—80,000 people are waiting for an operation. You think about it: all those women who are waiting for mammograms—we need their screening to be done, because I reckon there’s a lot of women, my wife included, who should be and haven’t been able to go and get their screening done. I think that’s a travesty for many of the women in New Zealand. When you think about the latency of what may have been occurring over the past three years, I think it is an outrage that we’ve got a health service that is so obviously failing.

Then we’ve got—of course, the Minister talked about education. Yet we’ve got nearly half of our children who are not attending schools, and we have got a teachers’ strike tomorrow morning that is going to take place across this country. It is a shameful state of affairs, particularly when you think about the impact on our children. Crime is rocketing, and, from a business perspective, all they have seen over the last 5½ years is this avalanche of regulation, costing, we estimate, about $3.5 billion of extra costs that have been imposed on small businesses.

Look, the focus should be, for the next Budget, and the Budget Policy Statement, on hard-working New Zealanders, hard-working New Zealand families, who have not seen any improvement from this Government, either in tax breaks or, actually, in making their lives easier, or actually helping them to move forward financially—

Order! Your time has expired. Before I call the honourable member Ingrid Leary, I’d just like to remind members of resisting, as much as you can, bringing the Speaker into the debate.

Grant Robertson, the Minister of Finance, said on 14 December 2022, “New Zealand’s strength and resilience to global forces are about to be tested again”. Well, by golly, that was a very accurate prediction, and he had no idea that on top of the things he was referring to—the global economic downturn, high inflation here and around the world, a geopolitical situation dominated by war, trade disputes, and ongoing supply chain issues—there would also be the weather events that we have experienced this year. But thank goodness he did do that in this Budget Policy Statement, because it means that we are really well positioned with a Budget Policy Statement that is centred on economic security.

As the Minister said at the time in his foreword, “This requires a fine balance of policy responses.” Those responses are around using fiscal policy to ease the pressure on inflation, around looking after families, providing core services, and continuing the economic plan to ensure that New Zealand is futureproofed, is innovating, and has a productive economy. The submitters to the Budget Policy Statement have agreed with the statement and have been highly supportive of it. The alternative would be austerity, and this is what I hear when I listen to the previous speaker, Andrew Bayly, saying that he wants to provide core services, wants to provide targeted support, and yet we cannot do that unless there is a budget for that.

What it has meant is a reprioritisation and going back to bread and butter, and the Minister has alluded to that today in terms of really honing down on the cost of living for New Zealanders and the cyclone recovery. There is little bandwidth for anything else, and this Budget Policy Statement positions us well for that. We were already facing economic headwinds. There is a global inflation pandemic, and because we have braced into that and leaned into it, we are now well positioned for the recovery that needs to happen—as the Minister said, in the order of billions of dollars. So thank goodness he had the foresight to see what was coming, and we are well positioned to brace it.

In terms of how we are going back to basics, it’s really about getting the 1.4 million New Zealanders who are needing assistance, who need a boost to income, targeting support to them. Those are pensioners, students, parents, those on main benefits. We see that reflected in changes coming in next month, and we’ve also seen today the announcement from the finance Minister of more business support for the affected areas with the weather events reaching $50 million. Already in Tai Rāwhiti, $4.1 million of that money has gone out the door. That builds on work we’ve already done to target support around cutting the fuel taxes—so that’s now been extended. We’ve got the extension to half-price transport, which has made a huge difference to many people in my electorate of Taieri. We have an average annual family income of $26,000 a year in parts of my electorate, and for those people, being able to access half-price transport is critical to them getting out and about, to be able to do their shopping and also to have the wellbeing of being part of a wider community. We have also seen successive increases to the minimum wage.

The recovery will cost billions of dollars, and we’re in a strong position to recover. Wages are up, we do have one of the lowest debt ratios in the OECD, we have an unemployment rate which is still really low—3.4 percent. It will be tough, but we are well positioned to do that. The submitters to the Budget Policy Statement come from all over the political spectrum, and, by and large, they agree very strongly with us, including the Federated Farmers. I’ll just read what they said to us: they said the wording in this Budget Policy Statement around strengthening the economy is “a significant improvement.”—and they’re referring to 2022. They cite various parts of the report: “Budget 2023 will continue our work to support households and businesses in a targeted manner; “We will continue to work to fight the drivers of high prices by ensuring that markets function competitively and deliver good outcomes for consumers.”—we’ve already seen that with the work going on in the supermarket sector. “Public agencies examining what needs can be met by reprioritising existing funding.”—exactly what we’ve seen with the statements from the Prime Minister, one tranche of reprioritisation and then another one this week, some of which is about delaying things that we know are essential to building the economy; they just need to be done at the right time. The last one: “Ensure ongoing value for money for government spending.”

We’ve also had a strong submission from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, who talked about their support for the work the Government’s done on mental health but also on prioritising children. They say, “Targeting children’s wellbeing as a Budget priority would facilitate one area of need where early intervention strategies are required. … Supporting children’s wellbeing is a wise social and economic investment.” My colleague, the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Rachel Brooking, referred to the multiple references in the Budget Policy Statement where the needs of children are giving the direction of travel to what we will see in this Budget coming up.

Another submission, which Rachel Brooking also referred to, was from the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association, on transport. Yes, they were asking for free transport, but they did say, in noting the fare cuts that we have made, making it half-price transport, “We know that increasing public transport use and re-incentivising mode shifts are key ways in which we can reduce emissions. Reducing fare prices is a sensible step towards a cleaner, more carbon-friendly transport system and a better Aotearoa.” I’m delighted that just this week we’ve seen a Supplementary Order Paper on a tax remedial omnibus bill which is now looking to ensure that there is no fringe benefit tax for e-bikes and scooters provided by employers, so that we are incentivising responsible and sustainable ways of providing transport.

The change, I guess, since the Budget Policy Statement was produced has been the weather events, and it has been the continuation of the global inflation pandemic. What this Government has proven through COVID is that we have got economic security at the heart of what we do, but we will not go to austerity. To do that, we need a plan, and I haven’t seen a plan from the Opposition in terms of the things that they’re arguing for. I’ve seen a couple of policies. One, which has now been dropped, was about tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts that would give the lowest paid New Zealand workers around $2 a week and give other earners thousands of dollars a year. The second plan I have seen just today from Simeon Brown, who is the transport spokesperson, was a plan to produce a plan, which seemed to be quite centred on roads. It talked about building more roads. It had very little to do with the futureproofing of our transport and what we need to do in order to lean into a climate-orientated future. I just wonder if that member has been influenced by others on the other side of the House who perhaps don’t take climate change as seriously as their leader or the rest of their caucus.

A plan to have a plan is not a plan, and when it comes to the childcare policy that we saw earlier this week, the problem with that plan is a plan needs to be well worked out, it needs to be well costed, it needs to look at what the risks are, and that plan is in grave danger of blowing out because it hasn’t been worked through in terms of a cap, in terms of whether the savings would be passed on to parents, whether they would stay with early childhood education centres, that might feel that they need that income. So they haven’t really thought through with their plans the targeted support that is going to reach the back pockets of New Zealanders.

In summary, this Budget Policy Statement that was produced in December 2022 foreshadowed some of the big events that we have seen this year, without the Minister actually being able to crystal ball gaze. It’s very fortunate that he had put economic security at the heart of his Budget Policy Statement, that has been endorsed by the submitters that we heard. It means that we’re well positioned to be able to build back better and smarter going forward.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, tēnā koutou e te Whare. I would highly recommend that people check out this Budget Policy Statement. It’s actually quite a short document, it has some really useful and interesting information and graphs showing New Zealand’s labour market and annual consumer price inflation relative to the rest of the world. It actually shows that—at the time this was published, anyway—we were doing quite well relative to other countries. So it does help to situate New Zealand in the context of the global factors that are driving some of the challenges around higher prices.

When it comes to the wellbeing approach, it’s very wonderful to see these sorts of objectives laid out in the Budget Policy Statement. There’s five wellbeing objectives. Just transitions—supporting New Zealanders to transition to a climate-resilient, sustainable, low-emissions economy. I wouldn’t use the word “economy”; I would say “Way of living”. The second one is physical and mental wellbeing—supporting improved health outcomes for all New Zealanders, particularly the mental wellbeing of our young people. Three is the future of work—equipping New Zealanders and enabling businesses to benefit from new technologies and lift productivity and wages through innovation. Four is Māori and Pasifika people—really focusing on lifting incomes, skills, opportunities, and access to housing. And fifth is child wellbeing, which is reducing child poverty and improving child wellbeing.

So all these objectives are really great and the Green Party absolutely supports those. But, ultimately, the Labour Government has sort of tied their hands behind their backs in terms of achieving any of these, because the fiscal strategy and keeping to fiscal rules ultimately means not addressing some of the bigger-picture issues that are driving inequality in this country. Ultimately, the kind of short-term approach to politics doesn’t set us up for the long term, it doesn’t ensure that we’ve stayed the course, even in the midst of political dramas.

So, for example, this week we’ve seen the Government walk back on commitments to making progress in reducing emissions and funding in that. If I look at the work under way in the Budget Policy Statement across water, climate, biodiversity, and other domains, we see some of the major initiatives that are effective, that have delivered results, were initiatives that the Green Party and the Green Ministers implemented last term, like the Clean Car Discount and Jobs for Nature and the Plastics Innovation Fund. Then, we flip over and we see one of the main ones in the safety of New Zealanders is preventing and responding to family and sexual violence—again, initiated by a Green under-secretary, and now it’s being delivered by a Green Minister.

So the Green Party is very clear on the transformation that we need and how to get there. You set out your priorities in your Budget, and you make sure that you’re staying to the strategic vision and carrying on for the long term. That means not getting distracted with short-term responses and reactions to political attacks from the people on the right who, you know, have absolutely no solutions. As long as the Labour Government’s caught up trying to respond to the likes of the National Party, they’re never going to make progress on these issues. And that’s why we need so many more Greens in Parliament and in Government to be able to implement the sensible solutions that actually will deliver the benefits for New Zealand.

One of the key observations that the Green Party has brought to this Parliament for many decades, which the National Party has yet to discover, is that we live on a planet. We’re part of nature. We have to live within the ecological limits. If we don’t design our economy and our society to live within ecological limits, we will have no future. And, yes, those men on the right—all men at the moment—really do not grasp that. They’re very much stuck in the 20th century extractive model of society and the economy and really want to persist with the colonisation which led them to the privileged positions that they have right now, which was ultimately about stealing people’s land, alienating people from the land, taking all of the natural resources in a very short-term way, and not building up for the long term.

So what are our objectives; what would be in a Green Budget Policy Statement? Living within our ecological limits and making sure everyone has enough. And within that space, which is quite eloquently explained by Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics—although I do think we’d need to put an indigenous Aotearoan perspective on that—there is an incredibly sensible approach to Government finances and the economy that would actually enable New Zealanders to thrive and would actually achieve the objectives set out in this Budget Policy Statement.

So what is that? What are the Green solutions? Well, let’s start with a rent freeze, a warrant of fitness on rental properties, and a huge public housing bill, because every single person in Aotearoa can and should have a secure, warm, dry, healthy home, so let’s make that happen. Rents are driving inflation, and the National Party solution to this is to allow landlords to keep creaming it. That doesn’t make any sense to me. We can have reasonable rents, and we need to regulate for that while we increase the housing supply from the public sector.

Secondly, let’s invest in sustainable transport because not only is that going to reduce emissions, it actually just connects people and communities and would be the single most effective thing we could do to improve productivity in this country, because our current transport situation is incredibly costly and it uses a huge amount of our GDP. I mean, just last year, vehicle and fuel imports exceeded our dairy exports. So think about that. All of our dairy exports are only paying for the vehicles and fuel to drive around the country. Now, we could have a far more efficient transport system if the public invest in public transport and efficient transport. We wouldn’t have to buy as many vehicles. We wouldn’t have to fill up the tank with so much fuel. The Government wouldn’t have to cut petrol tax to try and reduce cost of living, because people would have affordable, sustainable options that weren’t so reliant on petrol. So it would be wonderful if the National Party could embrace an economic analysis of their transport budget, because they certainly don’t.

So the Greens would invest in regional rail. Put bus lanes everywhere right now; get enough bus drivers—addressing housing affordability will help us with the bus driver shortage—and pay them properly. But we should have publicly owned public transport as well.

Community energy—very simple things that we could do to improve people’s ability to have more resilient, sustainable electricity production rather than the current crazy corporate model we have where private investors are sucking value out of our publicly funded electricity assets that we built up over generations. So if we actually managed energy and electricity for the public good, it would be better for everyone in New Zealand, including the businesses.

Support people to have livable incomes. Every single person in Aotearoa should have enough to make ends meet. There’s some simple things we could do to value the unpaid mahi that so many people do, that is very important to our values and also to our productivity and sustainability as a society. Here’s a simple one: extend paid parental leave. Iceland has nine months paid parental leave at 80 percent of your previous salary—three months for the birth parent, three months for the other parent, and three months that can be divided up between them. Then, they have free, high quality early childhood education from whenever parents decide to go back to work. Now, why can’t we do that here in New Zealand? If Iceland can do it—a country with fewer than 400,000 people—we absolutely could do that here in Aotearoa.

And we could have a four-day work week, and a guaranteed minimum income. All of this can be funded if we change our tax system to make it fairer. Tax excess profit, tax wealth, because, right now, our economy is allowing people to benefit and enrich themselves through things that don’t offer genuine value to everyone else. And that is the truth, as our current economic system cannot differentiate between money earned as the result of a genuine contribution, and that earned through exploitation of people and the environment. Once we’re able to differentiate between those two, it’s very clear that the oil companies made record profits in 2022 through selling a product that is literally causing devastation around the world right now. Like Cyclone Gabrielle, the horrific flooding in Auckland—direct consequences of climate change induced by fossil fuel use. And yet the oil companies made record profits. The banks made record profits last year, mainly through things that have nothing to do with the efficiency of providing their service. But, you know, the Government’s COVID response combined with rising interest rates now are leading to excess bank profits.

I rise on behalf of ACT to contribute to this Budget Policy Statement, and I have to tell you, Madam Speaker, as a short musical interlude, while I was listening to the previous speaker, I was thinking of the great Kiwi band The Feelers and their contribution, “Space Cadet”:

Space cadet or space boy

One and the same

Sand castle or sand toy

They’re all just games.

Now, I can’t think why I might’ve thought of the song “Space Cadet” while listening to Julie Anne Genter speak. I guess it’s just one of those mysteries. But it is worth having a discussion about this bold Budget Policy Statement. This is how the Government sets out its intentions around what its Budget will look like. And it’s one of the things in the Public Finance Act that I think is worthwhile—that the Government actually has to say what its intentions are. But what’s interesting is that this Government made its own changes. It said it would bring in Wellbeing Budgets. So before we get to the money or the economy or to the fact that people are finding it pretty hard to make ends meet, with too much week left at the end of the money, we get to talk about this wellbeing stuff that the Labour Party so importantly put into the Budget. And one of the things that they said was that they would not just consider GDP; they’d consider all measures, until they got obsessed with just one measure, which was COVID-19 and everyone else’s wellbeing be damned. And there’s some interesting things in the document I’m holding here. The survey showed a growing polarisation regarding trust in the Government between 2020 and 2022, with an increasing number of people having either very low or very high levels of trust and a roughly corresponding decrease in those with moderate levels of distrust.

Well, this Government talks about wellbeing and talks about social cohesion, but it’s now measuring its own policies, and its one-size-fits-all imposition, running roughshod over people’s lives, has actually led to a lot of people distrusting the Government. And their daily podium announcements have created a cult of personality that is not good for our democracy. And the Labour Party know that’s true because they have dumped their leader, and their new leader is doing everything he can to distance himself from the Ardern era of the Labour Party on a daily basis, dumping policies. We even saw a Minister go overboard today.

But there is a very important point here—the way the Government acted through COVID-19: one-size-fits-all, close the border, leak information on pregnant women sheltering with the Taliban, refusing to apologise, stop paying home carers if they’re not vaccinated even though there’s no public health effect as they’re staying in the home anyway. All that this Government did was so divisive, and it’s showing up in their Wellbeing Budget. It also gives a series of wellbeing objectives. It says that there should be a just transition supporting New Zealand’s transition to a climate-resilient, sustainable, and low-emissions economy. How has that gone? Well, first of all, climate emissions have flat-lined under this Government. So that’s a fail.

But what about adaptation? What about preparing for the extremes of weather that come with climate change? Well, that is clearly a fail. We need to invest more in constructive policies to adapt to climate change, and that’s why ACT’s been saying for years that half the GST on construction should be shared with the local councils to pay for the infrastructure. Brooke van Velden’s got a bill before the House to be debated on that, and just today from the Taxpayers’ Union Curia poll we see that 70 percent of New Zealanders think it’s a good idea to share half the GST on construction with the local council to get that resilience going. So the Government has failed in its stated objective. ACT has the ideas that could help get us there.

Number two is physical and mental wellbeing, supporting improved health outcomes for all New Zealanders. I mean, this would be quite funny if it wasn’t so serious. This is a Government where 52 percent of people in MidCentral wait more than six hours to get into A & E. Now, this is a Government that actually stopped publishing the figures on mental health. This is a Government where mental health has never been worse, in part because of their COVID response and their incompetence at organising anything. This is a Government that tried to blow up the healthcare system and restructure it in the middle of a supposedly one-in-100-year health crisis. I mean, they are failing in physical and mental wellbeing—that’s their second go.

The future of work—now, this is quite amusing. It talks about equipping New Zealanders and enabling New Zealander businesses to benefit from new technologies and lift productivity and wages through innovation. First of all, productivity has been flat-lined, but, second, you’ve got fair pay agreements, you’ve got the war on immigration, and you’ve got extra regulations and employment law other than fair pay agreements. You’ve got endless bureaucracy and compliance costs and uncertainty along with record inflation and rising interest rates, and none of these things are helping productivity or equipping New Zealand firms. What would help would be to adopt ACT’s immigration policy and accept we’re a nation of immigrants, and Kiwi firms won’t compete with their competitors around the world successfully when a business in, say, Denver, Colorado, can access 340 million American workers and a New Zealand firm in Christchurch can access 5 million workers, unless we are open to immigration.

It then goes on to talk about lifting Māori and Pacific people’s incomes, skills, and opportunities, including though access to affordable, safe, and stable housing. Well, the way this Government approached COVID, with its monetary policy, with its shutting the border, with its shutting down construction, shutting down manufacturing, housing has never been further out of reach of the poorest New Zealanders. We saw record rents today. It’s gone up 175 bucks from 400 to 575. That’s the median rent under Labour according to TradeMe.

They’ve also said they’re going to make housing more affordable. We’ve never had housing more unaffordable, first through high values and now we’ve got high mortgage rates as well. And so who is at the bottom of that pile and who is most disadvantaged? Well, I’m sorry to say that it’s a statistical truth—it’s Māori and Pacific New Zealanders. So they’ve failed at that. Then here’s Jacinda Ardern’s signature—child wellbeing; reducing child poverty. Well, there’s some good news there. Five years of Jacinda Ardern and child poverty went from about 13 percent to about 12 percent, roughly. We’re talking about material hardship—kids that don’t have the shoes and the food to get up and go to school with a good school bag and a packed lunch and a warm jacket to put on. That’s what material hardship’s about measuring. It’s moved slightly so in the farewell to Jacinda Ardern there was a slight improvement, but nothing like the transformation that this Labour Government promised.

So this Budget, by its own measures, has already failed. The wellbeing objectives this Government set have all failed, and yet it is ACT that has the ideas to fund the building of infrastructure, to get the homes built, to get education that is local and run by communities, for communities, like charter schools that get kids to actually want to attend and go along and hold the schools accountable for doing it. It’s the ACT Party that has the initiative. It’s Karen Chhour who has the initiative—a bill in this House to remove section 7AA so we say a kid’s physical and mental safety is more important than the Treaty of Waitangi. To that kid at that stage of life? Absolutely, and it’s the ACT Party that is taking the initiative, ironically to achieve Labour’s Budget goals better than them.

And then we get to the money. This is a Budget that is not just about wellbeing. One of the things that helps with wellbeing is actually being able to afford to pay your bills. And hasn’t it been a revelation in the last week, when we have seen from Grant Robertson that he has been at the very least a little bit economical with the truth. I wish he was economical with Government spending, but he’s been economical with the truth because he’s been saying for a long time that wages are keeping up with inflation. In fact, he’s been saying wages are ahead of inflation. And I thought that’ll be really good for the pensioners and the superannuitants, for the beneficiaries, and for the people on student allowances, because the amount of money they get is indexed to the average wage. So they are going to be looked after just fine, and then—uh, oh!—the Government is going to index pensions and benefits to inflation. Why? Because average wages haven’t kept up with inflation.

So in that one move, the Government has admitted that wages aren’t keeping up with inflation. So they’ve been telling porkies, and the next thing they’ve done is they’ve said, “Well, superannuitants, beneficiaries, people on student allowances, they’ll be looked after. Their income will keep up with inflation.” But those people who work hard every day, wake up, make the kids’ lunches and get them off to school, go into work, slam an instant coffee, stare at the screen and get through the day before picking up their kids to go home and do it all again every day, day after day after day—those are the people whose wages after tax are falling behind inflation. And unlike people that get their money from the Government, those people who work for their money are paying more tax and they’ve got less left at the end of the week because this is a Government that has a massive spending problem and thinks it can buy its way to another election. It’s created massive inflation along the way and it has failed its own wellbeing targets before you start to talk about money.

This is a Government that has discovered the great problem with socialism—they’re running out of other people’s money, they’ve run out of ideas, and this October it’s important that they run out of power so that ACT and our friends in National can fix this country and realise that Kiwi Dream again.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It was 22 February when the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, came along to the Finance and Expenditure Committee to talk about the Budget Policy Statement, and it was obvious that the carefully prepared talking points had to be put to one side because only six days prior, Cyclone Gabrielle had ripped through the North Island. It was the most extreme weather event anybody can remember, doing massive damage to the country’s productive capacity. It had serious impacts on half the country’s population and half the country’s GDP, and it’s obvious that this Budget Policy Statement, which contains a lot of value about the Government’s strategy and about where we’re going with the economy, basically has to be reread in light of this natural disaster.

I’m glad to say that while New Zealanders pull together in times of crisis and expect their Government to lead and support the people of this country in times of crisis, we have a Government and a finance Minister in Grant Robertson who’s committed to using all of the levers available to him as finance Minister to give struggling Kiwi households and businesses the support they need to navigate their way through the aftermath of this disaster. He’d been newly appointed as the cyclone recovery Minister, and the finance Minister foreshadowed at the select committee that morning a rolling maul of initiatives that the Government would be bringing forward in response to Cyclone Gabrielle.

The Government has announced $17.5 million to support communities and social service providers with the immediate welfare response. We’ve seen $26 million in grants funds for farmers and growers, we’ve seen $3.25 million in funding to support the immediate mental health and wellbeing needs, and today we see the second tranche of the $50 million programme to support businesses affected by the extreme weather events, whether it’s the cyclone or the Anniversary Weekend floods. It’s a locally administered scheme to support businesses that were knocked around by those weather events.

The finance Minister also signalled—and I think this is very important—three key things about the Government’s response. One is that substantial work is under way on a programme of support that will assist those New Zealanders who are in flood-prone, at-risk areas, where homes or businesses are located in harm’s way. They are now going through getting their insurance claims processed and paid out, and they’ve got some very tough decisions to make about whether they repair and rebuild, and what do they do to address the often acute risk that many of them are facing.

The Minister has also said that he understands that there’s urgency about this. I know that in my electorate, I’ve got people who have had a metre of contaminated water flow through their homes. Their homes are, effectively, wrecked and they’re staring at the wall, wondering do they rebuild, do they repair—what do they do? They’re often in untenable situations, and it’s not just the people of West Auckland. It’s Esk Valley, it’s Wairoa and all over the Hawke’s Bay, it’s the North, it’s the Coromandel, and it’s different parts of Auckland.

The Minister has also signalled that the Government’s response will be localised. It will be tailored to different situations in different regions, and it will engage the communities—the affected residents in those places—in the design and roll-out of those programmes. I’m very comforted by that, and the people in West Auckland that I represent, hundreds of whom have been devastated by these floods—I know that they will take some comfort from those words.

All of that is going to cost money, and it will affect the Budget that this Budget Policy Statement sets the platform for. But the good news—the good news—is that this country, after five years of financial stewardship by Grant Robertson, is in an exceptional state and is prepared and ready to deal with a disaster of the proportions of Cyclone Gabrielle and the Anniversary Weekend floods. We’ve had years of sustained, high levels of GDP growth. The economy is much, much bigger than it was five years ago, when we took office. We have some of the lowest levels of debt in the developed economies, 2.8 million New Zealanders in work, and very low levels of unemployment, and all of that is recognised by the ratings agencies and their AA+ rating of New Zealand’s economy.

So that’s all good news, but there’s no question that the extreme weather events have challenged many of the assumptions that the Budget Policy Statement is built on. The Minister said that, particularly, the cyclone in Hawke’s Bay will have an immediate contractionary effect on a part of the country that produces some 40 percent of the fresh produce that ends up in our stores and our markets. There will be pressure, and there is pressure on food prices. We’re already seeing pressure on a tight labour market, and the construction sector, which has been going gangbusters in building the houses and the infrastructure this country needs, will be stretched even more. On top of that, the stimulus created by the rebuild financed by Government and insurance payouts will have an effect on the overall economic indicators.

So many of those assumptions have changed. The environment’s changed, but I think that it’s true to say that Cyclone Gabrielle and the floods changed everything and didn’t change everything. Absolutely, the cyclone is going to require that the Government wholeheartedly gets behind families and businesses and backs them and uses everything at our disposal, from legislation changes and policy changes to the mobilisation of the Public Service and investment in the rebuild and the recovery, including a huge infrastructure rebuild. That is going to happen, and there’s going to be a full-throated approach by this Government in doing that.

But, in a sense, it also doesn’t change some of the key fundamentals. Our Government is going to continue to provide and prioritise the economic security for New Zealanders through a very difficult year in the global economy. We’re going to continue to run a prudent fiscal policy and return spending to the normal levels, following the COVID-19 recovery, and, as the Budget Policy Statement says, Budget 2023 will again focus on New Zealanders’ wellbeing and the long-term goals of improving child wellbeing and mental health, and the transition to a high-wage, low-carbon economy.

I wanted to touch on one aspect of the economic plan that was released earlier this week by my colleague the Minister for Economic Development, Stu Nash, who has released what is an excellent piece of work. It’s the industry transformation plan developed by the Government in conjunction with industry and the labour movement. It’s a plan for the transformation of our advanced manufacturing sector, a sector that is rich in skilled, highly paid jobs and that plays a predominant role in our non-agricultural exports. It’s one of the sectors that we must invest in for the long-term prosperity of our country. It has the potential and there’s the opportunity there, if “NZ Inc.” mobilise behind that industry, to grow New Zealand firms that are capable of taking on the world and competing successfully in our international markets: developing intellectual property in New Zealand, selling it to the world, making stuff—technology—and delivering services that the rest of the world wants. It is one of the best examples of a high-value, high-skill, low-carbon industry. It’s exactly the kind of future this country wants, and the industry transformation plan document that Minister Nash released this week is a fantastic blueprint for us to get there.

Finally, just let me pay tribute to the finance Minister for this Budget Policy Statement and for all of the work that he has under way. He’s a classic, reforming Labour finance Minister, preparing the country for the rainy day with prudent, cautious financial and economic management, but he’s ready to invest when this country needs it.

This is a split call—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I was quite happy, actually, to hear the member over the other side of the House talk about using technology and growing the economy and exporting out to the world, because that’s exactly the right attitude. So thank you for having that and I wish the rest of your colleagues also shared that. It’s a shame you’re leaving.

But let’s look at the current state of this economy. We have got inflation at 7.2 percent and it is not transitory. We have got real wages which are down, no matter what fudging we hear around that. A lot of that is domestically driven with immigration constraints, constant regulations being piled on to businesses, and all of these costs add up, driving up the costs of workers, and that’s having a real issue in everyday households. Government spending is up a staggering $1 billion a week. That is unbelievable. That is reckless. We’ve got the large-scale asset purchase programme and when yields moved on that—we’re now in the hole for $9 billion on that. It doesn’t get talked about a lot but that is a big problem. And $60 billion spent on COVID—some of it very good; some of it not so good. Net debt is up.

It’s very hard to meet the big response that we need to Cyclone Gabrielle and the big infrastructure requirements that we have, because we just don’t have that money around any more. We had the opportunity and I believe that this Government has squandered it. We have constant taxes coming on with the regional fuel tax, the IPS tax, the jobs tax, which is off the table for the moment; interest deducibility, and this has been passed on. We saw rents up $575 now, up 43.5 percent since this Government came in, not the 35 percent the Minister said at question time.

And you know what? New Zealanders are probably happy to pay taxes if we are getting First World services but, as my colleague Nicola Willis said, we just aren’t. You know, health is looking abominable. We have got thousands waiting over 24 hours in the emergency departments. We’ve got 80,000 people waiting for an operation. Education—you know, over half of our kids aren’t turning up to school. Two-thirds of them are failing basic literary and numeracy tests. And we’ve also got emissions up. I mean, that is a pretty sad indictment on a Government that declared a climate emergency to have emissions going up. So we are paying a lot more, the Government is spending a lot more, and yet we’re getting worse outcomes. And I would be able to spend more of my taxes if I got First World public services, and I’m afraid that we are not.

So if we look at the Government’s wellbeing objectives, and we see them here in the Budget Policy Statement, they talk about a just transition. Well, we’re now importing three times as much coal as when Labour came into power. Physical and mental wellbeing: we know the health statistics—I’ve mentioned them before—are very bad. Mental health statistics are out the gate and that is a really sad indictment. We are a divided country at the moment and we have got a lot of people feeling the impacts of this Government’s policies over the past few years.

The future of work—I mean, we’ve looked at swamping businesses with a lot of regulations. Māori and Pacific peoples—and it’s really sad to say it, but they are feeling the brunt, as are our most vulnerable throughout society, as a result of this Government’s mismanagement. And talk about child wellbeing—you know, this is what our former Prime Minister wanted to get into politics for and we’ve now got more kids growing up in motels than we’ve ever had, and that is a damning indictment on New Zealand.

So if we want a Wellbeing Budget, let’s focus on growth. Let’s be positive. Let’s look out there at the world, because we are not going to get rich and lift incomes for all by expecting the Government to drive all of that, because the Government doesn’t drive it. The Government doesn’t create growth. What the Government needs to do is set the expectations and then get out of the way and let the private sector and the NGOs develop that. Let’s develop our technology. Let’s export those services. Let’s develop high-paying high-skilled jobs in New Zealand and take that to the world.

When we do that we will have a Wellbeing Budget. We will be able to have first-class education, first-class healthcare—all of those things that our parents’ generation and beyond used to have and yet New Zealanders growing up in the 21st century don’t. And New Zealand parents now are looking at this country and saying, “I’m not sure if I want to continue here. I might go and look over at Australia” or “I might go and look somewhere else.” So if we want a Wellbeing Budget, let’s make sure that we’ve got the mind-set right. Let’s not make the mistakes that this Government continues to make and let’s grow our economy and lift incomes for all, and the people to do that are the National Party.

Helen White—this is also a five-minute call.

Thank you. Salam alaikum. I start that way absolutely deliberately on this day when there was such a terrible outcome for people, and I just wish to express my condolences and my thoughts to the people who are most impacted by that.

In the past few years we’ve had some very, very big crises. We’ve had a pandemic, we’ve had floods in Auckland, we’ve had cyclones, and we’ve even had a war that has really impacted on us in terms of inflation—and obviously the people of Ukraine, much more. Those kinds of crises have been coped with by this Government. This Government has had to stand by its people, and I’m incredibly proud of the way that we have done that. We’ve learnt some lessons out of that. We’ve learnt that we need an absolutely sound health system; we’ve learnt we need warm, dry homes; we need mental health support for people, and we need a response that is meaningful and dramatic to climate change.

Now, those kinds of things are absolutely—and I’m going to use a term that’s been used rather a lot now—“bread and butter” for this side of the House. This is what Labour does. It understands that, actually, Governments have a role in making sure things go well for a population. What is a great difference is that the response is targeted and actually supports those most in need.

Now, I have to contrast here; I cannot let what has been said on the other side of the House go entirely unchallenged. We can’t just have platitudes. We need a difference in policy in this area, and this Budget Policy Statement does that. We have a difference in policy in areas which affect our most vulnerable. We are changing things right now so that people like my parents, who rely on their superannuation, will get $100 a fortnight more. That’s real change for them; that’s real support.

We have to build up our health system because, actually, in a “let’s just cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes” kind of mentality, guess what suffers? Actually, our health system, our hospitals—those things suffer—and we’re not ready for floods, we’re not ready for pandemics, if that attitude prevails. What actually has to be the heart of a governing group is the welfare of people, but it can’t just be just platitudinal. It can’t be saying, “We’re for wellbeing.”—it’s got to be doing the mahi on wellbeing. That means that we need to deal with things in a local way.

We’ve just had floods and cyclones, and the response that you’re seeing from this Government is targeted and in partnership with the communities affected because, actually, in these particular crises, the effect is not all the same for everyone, and people on the ground will tell you that. So we need to make sure that hard-earned taxpayers’ money goes to the people who need it the most—and that’s happening.

I want to make another contrast here, because I was on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee when we had the Clean Car Standard came through. We were told it was a terrible thing. You know, it’s been absolutely wonderful for transforming this economy. We have 57,000 low-emissions vehicles in place, as a consequence. Contrast that with this focus on utes, which has gone on. Let’s remind New Zealanders: which utes get the tax; which utes? The utes that are firsthand utes. They’re not the farmers that are actually needing them—those are the second-hand utes. The firsthand utes are the most wealthy New Zealanders. Those are the people who can afford to pay tax—those people. Actually this myth that we are undermining the value of those people needs busting because, actually, we need to remember who needs these low-emissions vehicles. We all do. We all do because we’ll pay the price by cyclones and floods in our communities, and it’s not good enough. Thank you. I commend this.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Just to open my kōrero this afternoon, can I acknowledge those that lost their lives in the mosque attack in Christchurch on March 15. Secondly, it’s the first opportunity I’ve had to speak in the House this week, and I’d like to acknowledge the Tasi family, who lost their son Joshua in the terrible incident in Beach Haven last Friday. Can I just offer our sympathy, our love, and our heartfelt acknowledgment to all of them and the Beach Haven community at this particularly sad time.

I think Minister Robertson summed it up this afternoon quite well: when, in fact, we put this particular Budget Policy Statement together and it was released prior to Christmas, of course we didn’t really know what 2023 had in front of us. The challenges of Cyclone Gabrielle—and I acknowledge my family down in the Hawke’s Bay, the challenges that they have faced, but also those in Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland who have faced their own challenges in the floods at the start of the year. Quickly, life changed for us this year; and albeit we expected 2023 to be somewhat easier, it’s certainly put our challenges in front of us.

This Budget, 2023, will be delivered on Thursday, 18 May. This year’s Budget will be delivered in the shadow of Cyclone Gabrielle and will be focused on the cost of living—something that’s very important to all of our communities—and also the cyclone and flood recovery across our country. We’re committed to working with local communities to get affected families and whānau and businesses back on their feet, and their regions moving forward. And when talking to people in Hawke’s Bay this week, they reminded me—my family reminded me—to say: “We’re still operating. We’ve been hit by this flood, of course, but remind New Zealand that we are still operating, and we’re still open for business”, largely in the areas that they are able to at this time.

But Budget 2023 will continue this Government’s commitment to providing New Zealanders with economic security through what will be a difficult year in the global economy, facing both the challenge of inflation and a forecast economic slowdown, and the combination of a global economic downturn and high inflation here at home and around the world. As many of us saw—in Canada, the stories that they shared: a geopolitical situation dominated by war, trade disputes, and ongoing supply chain issues are about to test our strength in our country and our resilience economically. However, we’re well positioned as a country economically to manage some of the challenges in front of us and to respond, recover, and rebuild in the challenges that have faced us. And this Budget Policy Statement that was presented by the finance Minister—and that our Finance and Expenditure Committee heard—is of course a setting of the scene for Government’s expenditure, what priorities matter, and how effectively Government will invest in New Zealanders moving forward.

Our wellbeing objectives—our values—are one of the most important things when we experience challenging times because they are the things that we come back to: our kaupapa; what we value the most when we’re making decisions between spending on this or spending on that, when there’s not enough money in the kete overall to do everything that we want. But now we know we have to invest in the challenges that Cyclone Gabrielle and our flood response require of us. But these objectives are about wellbeing, they are about people and communities, and that’s particularly where a Labour Government does well for Aotearoa New Zealand.

The first objective is around just transition, supporting New Zealanders to transition to a climate resilient, sustainable and low-emissions economy. Secondly, physical and mental wellbeing: this was something that was important to me when I stood for Northcote in 2020—that we continue to support improved health outcomes for all New Zealanders, particularly the mental wellbeing of our rangatahi; our young people. The future of work: equipping New Zealanders and enabling New Zealand businesses to benefit from new technologies, to lift productivity and wages through innovation. And the last one is around Māori and Pacific peoples, something particularly from this Government—and under the leadership of Jacinda Ardern—with investment in Māori communities enabling Māori to see the lowest unemployment rate that we have ever seen in this country. So this Wellbeing Budget will continue that theme. It will continue to lift Māori and Pacific peoples: their incomes, their skills, and opportunities—including through access to affordable, safe, and stable housing. And still, when we talk to those communities, that is the number one priority for them to do well and to look after their families. And lastly is around child wellbeing: continuing to reduce child poverty and improving child wellbeing, including through access to affordable, safe, and stable housing once again. These are the things that are important.

But, again, I come back to wellbeing. That’s where the value proposition is, and where some of the decision-making propositions are when we have to choose between spending on this or spending on that, and how we make some very difficult decisions moving forward. So we already know that this Budget’s focus will be prioritising the cost of living challenges that our communities and people face, with a short-term cost of living payment for up to 2.1 million people to help with the impact of rising prices. We’ve increased support for families, we’ve boosted superannuation, and increased student allowances through our 1 April changes ahead of us. We’ve extended our fuel tax cuts, reduced road-user charges, and continued half-price public transport. We’ve permanently kept it at half price for community services card holders, and that’s something that’s particularly important to Aucklanders.

As we continue the work on transport—and I always say that our transport portfolio is one of the most political yet one of the most challenging and the most expensive portfolios that any Government will ever experience. But I’m really proud of the work that we are doing, that the future Budget will invest in: helping Aucklanders to address congestion and to reduce the emissions that go into our atmosphere. Transport is vital for us, and we are on track for Auckland’s first electric ferries—and I know the member across the House, Simon Watts, on the North Shore values the ferries—and they will serve over 200 passengers at any one time across the Waitematā Harbour. Auckland Transport will receive $27 million in grant funding from this Government to pay three-quarters of the costs of constructing my and member Watts’ new electric ferries to serve the Waitematā. It’s a first step in decarbonising our transport fleet in Auckland, and I’m very proud of it. But it’s not just on water; we will continue to invest in public transport.

At a local level, we have safer school streets. The Safe school streets programme has seen innovative solutions and I see that locally in my electorate in Willow Park primary in Hillcrest—again, that I’m very proud of. But we must continue the work of the additional Waitematā Harbour crossing. It’s one that all residents across the North Shore are asking for urgently, yet no Government has invested in ensuring that it’s a part of our short- to medium- term future. We’ll be seeing these options soon in April, and Aucklanders will have the opportunity to be consulted and to provide their feedback around which system meets their needs best. And actually, I do think it’s a good idea that we have aligned—even more so—Auckland’s integrated public transport system with Auckland Light Rail, City Rail Link, and of course the additional harbour crossing moving up to Ōrewa over time.

But again today, I come back to our investment in people. I talk about our housing story in Northcote: the hundreds of houses that were built for social houses and for first-home buyers, the daylighting of the local stream, the new infrastructure that we saw in Northcote during the Auckland floods compared to the devastation in the suburb next door, in Wairau Valley. These are the things that matter for our Wellbeing Budget moving forward, and I’m really grateful to speak on this tonight.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I want to join with the last member, just in terms of acknowledging the Beach Haven community on the North Shore. I know within his community that has hit hard home, and I know across the broader North Shore that has been an issue and something that is recognised. I also want to acknowledge today in terms of the anniversary around the Christchurch mosques tragedy as well, and join with other speakers in this House to acknowledge the impacts of that.

So we’re here today to discuss the Budget Policy Statement (BPS). Lovely front cover there as well—looks quite similar to the Auckland Council annual report, but I’m sure it hasn’t been copied. But the Budget Policy Statement is one of those salient cogs, I think, in the machine. But the challenge is, if you go into any room around the country and you mention “BPS”—unless you’re in Belmont where it’s Belmont Primary School, “BPS”—most people would just look at you and sort of, you know, there’d be a lot of confused faces around the board. However, it is a very essential part of the process that we play and that Government plays, and the document that we’re going to discuss today and debate obviously contains the vision for the Government in terms of how it sees us moving forward. The problem with this document is that the vision that’s included in this epitomises everything that’s going wrong with the direction of this country, and that is a big challenge.

We acknowledge that the Budget process is a complicated process. As a chartered accountant, I thoroughly enjoyed going through this document as a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee—but what Kiwis, I believe, want isn’t that complicated. Actually, I think you can probably sum it up in one word, and that is “hope”. There is a real fear within our communities and in my community of the North Shore, and I also feel it as a dad as well: I worry that my children are going to inherit a future, one of less opportunities and one in which there is little hope. The vision set out in this document by this Government shows that they don’t have the ambition or the skill to turn this around.

So I want to talk about three elements of this document. One around cost of living, one around mortgage rates, and one around health and infrastructure. The first thing I want to talk about today is around the cost of living crisis. The cost of living crisis is by far the single biggest issue facing Kiwis, no matter where you live in this country. But the Labour Government’s track record on this issue is like a Shakespearean tragedy. First came denial: there were months and months when there was just no cost of living crisis. I mean, you would struggle for the Government to even be able to utter the words and hoping like magic that if they didn’t mention the word then it was going to disappear, which didn’t happen. But then it came to the minimisation point, and sure there was some acknowledgment by Government that there is a cost of living crisis, but there was a real clear articulation that “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do about it.” All right? No accountability, hand waving in the air, it’s all Ukraine war, the global factors—any figure, any excuse that they could give without the basic premise that they could take accountability or responsibility for what it is.

But I think where we’ve got to now is the last and probably final phase of that process, and that’s an acceptance phase. We’ve seen very quickly that the Labour Party, particularly in the last few weeks, has become the party of, you know, not doing too much—or maybe doing not much but “Maybe we’ll do it later.” A lot of kicking for touch. But they basically tossed their entire election manifesto. They’ve tossed it out to try and buy back that narrative. But Kiwis can see through that. This new Prime Minister that’s come in—bread and butter Prime Minister—he’s accepted that there’s a cost of living crisis. He just hasn’t quite accepted that he needs to do anything about it, right? He hasn’t accepted that he can do anything about it.

What I predict when we come to Budget day, which is obviously coming up in May, is that we’re going to see more band-aid solutions in regards to dealing with the cost of living. Like that cost of living payment that went to people living overseas, and those ones that were backpacking and stuff like that. And so this basically left hard-working Kiwis shaking their head going, “What is really going on?” It will be more spending by the Minister of Finance and no doubt the Minister of Transport, Michael Wood, on whatever projects catch their eye. Consultants from the top end of town will be lining up in a conga line trying to get their slice of the pie, and families on the bread line will continue to do it tough. So that’s what I predict is going to happen. And of course the last aspect is we’ll get a few more taxes, no doubt—if there is anything left to tax by then, and that is a big “if”.

But the reality is that Kiwis across this country are staying awake at night wondering how they’re going to put food on the table or how they’re going to pay the rent. And this document that is being cleverly put together basically doesn’t deal with it. So let’s talk about those mortgage rate elements, because I think that’s really important, and it’s important to talk about the impact around inflation on interest rates. While this Government has been very busy spending up like there’s no tomorrow, whatever bright ideas come to the Cabinet meeting every Monday, the interest rates are skyrocketing. We’ve seen the first rate increase this year is the 10th consecutive rate increase. And the Reserve Bank no doubt aren’t going to be finished yet. You’ve got economists out there saying that mortgage rates are going to go over 10 percent, and that is a reality that’s going to be hitting Kiwi households. What we’ve seen with the interest rate increases is basically inevitable because the Government isn’t doing anything about dealing with the underlying root cause. We need to keep that in sight because you can talk about basis point increases in regards to mortgages, but for every one of those increases, it’s hitting the back pockets of hard-working Kiwis, and real Kiwis are going backwards under this Government.

So young families are the other ones that are impacted, those ones that have saved up hard for that dream to buy a home. The sad reality is that it is, for many of them, simply what I said before: a dream. It is not going to be their reality because they’re not going to have to afford it. And half of mortgage holders when they re-fix their mortgage in the next six to 12 months, those families are going to have to get around those kitchen tables in the evenings and go, “Well how are we going to find the additional money?”—hundreds of dollars that is going to be needed to meet their weekly payments. What are they going to be able to do? What, in reality, in terms of decisions, are they going to be able to do? Because all of the cash and all their wages have been eaten up by inflation or increasing food prices, and these increases are growing at the fastest rate in the last 30 years. So they can only do one thing—

Shanan Halbert: Increasing water rates.

SIMON WATTS: I hear the member from Northcote providing a little bit of commentary. The only thing that they can do is tighten their belts and make those impossible choices, because for many of these families they will be impossible choices.

As you turn on the TV each night and you see that the Government continues to, you know, spend like there’s no tomorrow, there’s going to be a continual wastage. We’ve seen the high-priced consultants and the spending on that, we’ve seen that in the building of light rail to nowhere, and the new “Uber tax” that’s come out. So it’s no wonder that the majority of Kiwis think that we’re going backwards.

The last aspect and the last few minutes is around health and infrastructure. We’ve heard today just the complete shambolic nature of where the health system is. The sad reality is that this is hitting our families and our communities really, really hard. We’ve seen $50 million of consultant spend, at least, on that light rail project, going to nowhere. We’ve seen health systems that have had a huge amount of expensive restructuring. We’re reminded, and this reminds us, why Kiwis believe that this Government are so wasteful in terms of their overall expenditure. I mean, we even heard it today at question time in terms of the waiting times—I mean, absolutely horrific waiting times. These are waiting times that will lead to adverse clinical outcomes for individuals, and individuals may die as a result of that. That is the reality of what they’re facing. Meanwhile, this Government is throwing around money wherever they can get to.

So the document, the Budget policy document that we’ve got here, should really be able to give Kiwis hope that, you know, they’ve got a Government who’s got ambition and is tackling all these challenges that face us as a country, the confidence that they are going to make the hard calls that they need to do to secure the future that they deserve. Well, that’s reasonable. Instead, within this document we see a Labour Government—that we’ve come to know very well in the last five years—big on talk, but with no real plan. Inflation remains high and the Government is steering the ship head on into recession, with unemployment increasing. The only hope is a National-led Government in October which will get this ship back on track.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Al salam alaikum. I do want to start my contribution by acknowledging the events of March 15 and the significant anniversary today and let those families of those who died know that we are still thinking of them in this Parliament. We are also thinking of those survivors, the impact on the community, and we send you our love and aroha. I want to acknowledge also the health professionals that I met that same day—well, the next day—in Christchurch, when I was the Minister of Health, who worked with those families through the trauma and the atrocity of it all. The families, of course, will bear the challenges that come with those terrible events for their whole lives, and I think it’s appropriate that we acknowledge them here today in this debate.

The debate that we find ourselves in is the Budget Policy Statement debate. It’s an important one for this Parliament, because the Budget itself shapes so much of what we do as lawmakers. It sets the structure of the Government’s programme. It funds those activities that are new, that need to be funded, but it also provides the licence to continue funding existing activities of Government. It’s an incredibly important process and an incredibly important part of what we do here in this Parliament. And it’s against the backdrop of a global inflationary environment, a predicted global downturn around the world, fragility, headwinds, and so forth. And so when we had the Minister of Finance appear before the Finance and Expenditure Committee, he acknowledged those things. And indeed, in the foreword to the Budget Policy Statement, they’re quite explicitly recognised.

But then, on top of that, of course, the events locally, in here, in New Zealand, the impact of the cyclone and the flooding have changed the game again and made it an even tougher Budget to deliver.

The Government is determined to continue a prudent programme that reduces debt over time; is determined, we heard from the Minister of Finance, to make sure that we focus on the cost of living issues that are facing New Zealanders; and is determined to continue funding those things which every New Zealander needs to be sure to access when they need them, like education, healthcare, and infrastructure. This is a Budget, we heard, that is about striking the right balance, a fine balance in a tight environment where there are those global economic headwinds. Tough choices will have to be made and already some money has been put aside for new health initiatives, for health cost pressures, and $62 billion for infrastructure investment over the next five years. A priority for Budget 2023 is to keep the investment in education, in health, and in housing continuing.

The Budget will continue to invest in Labour’s economic plan to create the high-wage, low-emissions economy that we know will provide economic security for New Zealand and New Zealanders in good times and bad.

So it’s built on strong foundations. We know the foundations of our economy here. Successive Governments have been careful to ensure we don’t spend too much, that our debt levels are lower than most in the in the world. It’s extraordinary, in fact, how low our public debt is when you compare us to any of the countries we like to compare ourselves to.

And I do want to acknowledge the Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson, for his dedication to ensuring that we are prudent with the money that we have as Government and that we focus on the issues that affect New Zealanders in challenging financial times. He has been a fabulous finance Minister and I want to acknowledge also that I’ve had the privilege of working alongside him as an associate finance Minister in our first term in Government and had the experience of working with him as he developed the wellbeing framework that now shapes our Budgets to make sure that we have a longer-term vision of where the country is heading, that we explain to New Zealanders where we want to take the country and what the objectives of our Budget spending are.

These are things that have not been done historically in quite this way, and indeed the world is very interested in how New Zealand is doing this. I remember going to the World Health Organization in Geneva and having conversations with the OECD about the wellbeing framework as it was being developed. They were very interested in New Zealand’s pioneering efforts and, indeed, very encouraged and excited about these particular initiatives because they can see that this is where the world needs to head. We need to be sure that we understand the value of what we’re doing, that we are addressing those capitals that underpin it: the human capital, the skills, the education for our workforce; the social capital, the social connections across our society that make for a decent society, and connectedness as human beings; the natural capital, the environment that underpins our wellbeing, our health and our wealth—we need to understand those things better and understand how the decisions we make affect those things; and, of course, the financial and physical capital that traditionally is examined in Budget processes.

And so I do want to really acknowledge the way in which the Minister of Finance has shaped the way we think about Budgets in this country through that wellbeing framework, which has been adapted over time, which has been informed by the science advisers across Government. The priorities we see in this Budget, indeed, are a development on the work of those science advisers, the just transition, the physical and mental wellbeing, the future of work, and the focus on Māori and Pacific peoples and child wellbeing were all priorities that have been informed by the advice of science and of people who advocate for the difference that Government can make.

So I think the Minister of Finance has a big job ahead of him in these tight times, but I also think he has the track record and the vision for carrying it through in a way that will support the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins as Prime Minister in delivering a Budget that will hit the mark, that will prioritise on the things that are most important for New Zealanders right now in this time of a challenging cost of living crisis—but that will also prepare us for the future that we have ahead.

I do have a couple of minutes, so I do want to focus on the Budget Policy Statement per se, which I do commend to anybody following this debate at home. I believe the cover photo is one that the Minister of Finance himself took. I hope that’s true and I’m not misleading the Parliament on that—he has many skills. This arguably is but one of his skills, and if that’s not true, he has many others. But this document itself is much more like a contemporary annual report. It lays out the vision for where the country should go. It used to be that Budget Policy Statements were just full of numbers. This has the numbers in it, but it explains what they mean for New Zealanders, where the country will head, why we’re prioritising the things we’re prioritising, and what we expect the outcomes to be, and then a Government can be held to account to that and our population can know that it is represented in a way that represents and mirrors the priorities of that society.

So I really want to take my hat off to the Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson, for the work he’s done in developing these Budget Policy Statements into something that I think we can all be proud of as a Government, but also as New Zealanders, to see ourselves reflected in the reporting documents of the Parliament.

Before I close, I do want to acknowledge the sound footing we are on when we come to this Budget. The operating allowance remains unchanged from that projected in the previous Budget. The credit agencies during this Government’s time have upgraded New Zealand’s credit rating and we’ve got amongst the lowest levels of debt in the developed world. We’ve got these record-low levels of unemployment that have endured during this time of Government. We have the 11th-lowest inflation in the OECD. I’m not saying that it’s not affecting people at home, because it is—it’s a global inflationary pressure—but it is something that we are thinking of here in making sure we have the right basis to move from. And we see after-tax wages increasing over time. This will be a great Budget. I do want to acknowledge the Minister of Finance’s leadership. I commend it to the House.

Members, it’s time for me to leave the House for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6.02 p.m. to 7 p.m.