Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, Imprest Supply (First for 2024/25) Bill

I move, That the Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2024/25) Bill be now read a second time.

These two bills are quite technical, so I think it would assist the House if I explain what each of them is and what purpose they serve. The overriding principle here, as set out in legislation in the Public Finance Act, is that the Government cannot incur expenses or capital expenditure without Parliament’s authority. The Budget for 2024-25 was released and had its second reading on Budget day, 30 May. However, it won’t actually be passed until later this year. The purpose, then, of the imprest supply bill is to bridge that gap between the start of the new financial year on 1 July and the point at which the House confirms the Budget. More precisely, this bill provides financial authority to incur expenses and capital expenditure for the first three months of the 2024-25 financial year, before the passing of the Appropriation (2024/25 Estimates) Bill.

In addition, it is standard practice for imprest supply bills to cover the possibility that fiscal risks materialise and to also allow for the uncertain timing and spread of expenditure. The overall amount being sought in this bill is consistent with the amounts sought in previous years. The imprest supply bill seeks authority for the Government to incur a maximum of $34 billion in expenses, $6 billion in capital expenditure, and $1 billion in capital injections. So that is the purpose of the imprest supply bill—it is an interim spending authority. As its name reveals, it is the first imprest supply bill for this financial year, 2024-25, and there will be a second imprest supply bill later this year.

The imprest supply bill is forward-looking, whereas the Supplementary Estimates bill is all about the past. It seeks Parliament’s approval of changes to appropriations and some new appropriations which occurred in the 2023-24 financial year. These are changes that the Government agreed to between April 2023, when the 2023-24 Estimates were finalised, and April 2024, when the 2023-24 Supplementary Estimates were finalised. So spending against those appropriations has already been incurred under the authority of imprest supply. However, this spending must then be confirmed by Parliament before the end of the 2023-24 financial year—that is, by 30 June, or four days from now. Otherwise, it becomes unauthorised, which is something I think members would want to avoid, although I can see there’s at least one member sitting opposite me who has been involved in unauthorised expenditure. The Finance and Expenditure—

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Oh, so unnecessary.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Ihumātao comes to mind. The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on the 2023-24 Supplementary Estimates and has no matters, I understand, to bring to the attention of the House. It recommends that these Supplementary Estimates be accepted. I thank the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their prompt scrutiny and their report on this matter.

I said before that the Supplementary Estimates cover changes that the Government agreed to for 2023-24. In fact, there were, of course, two Governments in that financial year, and the change of Government part way through that year makes the Supplementary Estimates bill a little more interesting than usual. In particular, many changes relate to the decisions the coalition Government took at the mini-Budget in December and at the Budget in May.

Together, Budget 2024 and the mini-Budget reduced spending in the 2023-24 financial year. Actually, within weeks of coming to office, this Government managed to make changes that, even with a little bit of that financial year left to go, saved $1.1 billion. That is $1.1 billion, hard earned by New Zealanders working hard in their jobs, their businesses, and their communities. We saved them that money, and those changes are reflected in the Supplementary Estimates bill. In part, the Government was able to make significant savings because, as I said, we got on to things very early with a mini-Budget in December, soon after the coalition was formed, judging the urgency of stopping some programmes of expenditure in order to ensure those dollars could be reprioritised to better uses at a later date, including, for example, uses such as funding cancer medications and funding medicines for New Zealanders who would otherwise miss out—175,000 New Zealanders, no less.

Members may recall that the mini-Budget, among other things, included stopping work on Labour’s so-called industry transformation plans—I’m not sure a tear has been wept for them—stopping work on the Lake Onslow pumped hydro idea, otherwise known as Dr Woods’ white elephant; stopping work on Labour’s income insurance scheme, otherwise known as the jobs tax; repealing mandatory union-style agreements across industries in a back-to-the-1970s move, otherwise called, in Labour’s strange use of the word, “fair” pay agreements; and exiting the Crown’s contributions to the highly controversial Let’s Get Wellington Moving, which had the grand effect of slowing Wellington down.

Other savings that affected the 2023-24 year were made as part of the Budget process, with some being part of the 100-day plan—for example, repeal of the three waters programme. That returned $270 million in the 2023-24 financial year alone. Sadly, we didn’t come into Government in time to save the $1.2 billion—$1.2 billion, ladies and gentlemen—that had already been wasted on that programme.

There are many more changes, both spending and saving, in the Supplementary Estimates. I said at the beginning that these bills are technical. They are technical, but they are also very important to New Zealand’s public finances. They are part of the system that  ensures the Government has the proper authority from Parliament to incur expenditure. I commend these bills to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Labour will not be supporting this bill in the House, because what the coalition Government is asking us to do with supporting these two bills that look both forwards and backwards is to cast a vote in favour of a programme of work that is taking New Zealand backwards. This is a programme of work that will not help ordinary New Zealanders, it will not help New Zealanders get ahead, and it is not something that we are willing to support.

Now, what we heard from the Minister of Finance laid out very clearly the technical nature of these two bills and the fact that we do need to pass them because the executive does need Parliament’s consent to continue spending until the Budget is formally passed later in the year, and the Supplementary Estimates is an important document that show those changes to appropriations from when Budgets are set to year end and what happened. Usually, this is a chance to do things like, for example, in the tertiary education Vote. Where an Estimate is made, they are just that: Estimates are about the enrolments that will happen over a period of time, and it’s not until enrolments are there that things do need to be changed.

The Minister of Finance, I see, couldn’t rise above her snark tonight in the House in terms of the need, sometimes, to make corrections in Supplementary Estimates. This is something that is a usual process in terms of the workings of this House, and I think it would do all of us good if the debate could be lifted on this and that we could have a real debate about the choices that are being made.

In both the backwards-looking and the forwards-looking document, we are seeing laid bare the kinds of choices that a newly elected Government makes, because, of course, the Supplementary Estimates, after an election that has brought about a change of Government, really do tell a story about the changes that that Government has brought into being, and the Minister of Finance alluded to that, talking about the mini-Budget and the $1.1 billion that was shaved off there. All of these are contained in the Supplementary Estimates. These are otherwise known as “what the National Government or the coalition Government has cut”, and the list is long. We can see, laid bare, the values of this Government in these cuts. We can see cuts that will increase child poverty, we will see cuts that will increase unemployment, we can see cuts that slice $3 billion worth out of climate action, and we can see cuts that will take New Zealand backwards, and that is what is very clearly laid out in this legislation.

I’m going to focus on a couple of votes that are covered off in the Supplementary Estimates. If we have a look through, one of the most depressing things while reading through the analysis of the Supplementary Estimates is the amount that all of these are decreased by. This is a Government that has cut and has come in and undone. Really, the Budget showed they haven’t got much vision of what they are going to do, and I think we see that reflected by the way New Zealanders are responding to this Government. The majority either believe things are going to get worse for them, or they don’t know what’s going to happen. It is not a Budget that has inspired hope, it is not a Budget that has made New Zealanders feel confident about their future, and it is no surprise when you read through the list of cuts in the Supplementary Estimates.

The Minister of Finance seemed to wear it as a badge of honour that this was an incoming Government that cut a programme of work about New Zealand’s future energy security, because not only did they scrap investigating whether Lake Onslow was a good scheme—fair call. They won an election. It’s their call to make—not one I agree with, but they were elected, and that is their decision to make. But what the Supplementary Estimates lay bare is that they scrapped the entire work programme around fuel storage, around not only what we’re going to do into the future to make sure that we can give New Zealanders the most affordable energy that both their businesses and their homes can receive in the form of renewables but also how we’re going to ensure that the lights stay on.

Now, we hear a lot from this Government—and we heard it from the Prime Minister, today, in question time—showing they really do not understand this issue. The fact that it takes somewhere between 10 and 16 years to bring a newly granted gas exploration permit to fruition of production—they seem to think that that is the sure-fire, quick solution to New Zealand’s energy security.

What that shows is that this is a Government with no plan and it is a Government with no vision, and the fact that we have a Minister of Finance, who is meant to take some kind of long-term view of New Zealand’s security, wearing it as a badge of pride that they have cut in this Budget, as is made formal in these Supplementary Estimates, all the money that was put aside for looking at our future fuel security in terms of the battery project, because it wasn’t all about pumped hydro. It’s about time that we heard a peep out of this Government about what they’re going to replace it with, because I think what New Zealanders are growing very tired of very quickly is hearing only what this coalition Government is going to cut and very little detail—next to no detail—on what they’re actually going to do.

Why are they sitting in those chairs? What is their vision and what do they hope to achieve for New Zealand, because all New Zealanders are seeing is a programme of work that is taking New Zealand backwards—a series of bad choices that are being laid bare.

We also see in here, in the appropriation, decreased by $507 million, the work to partner with businesses to cut our emissions. In these Supplementary Estimates, we have a Government who has made a choice that they are going to go and pay other countries to decrease their emissions in the form of buying international credits at—who knows?—$100 or $200 a tonne, which is probably the best estimate, rather than partnering with New Zealand businesses to keep well-paid, highly skilled industrial jobs in New Zealand, such as at New Zealand Steel. This is no subsidy; this is a good economic deal for the Government. We have yet to hear from this Government where they’re going to go and buy a carbon credit for $18 a tonne, which is what it costs in terms of the New Zealand Steel deal.

But, again, with pride in these Supplementary Estimates, we see this Government that has ripped the guts out of our climate action. We see a Government that has no plan to reduce our emissions at home. We see a Government that is burying its head in the sand when it comes to climate change, and to take $3 billion of climate action out in a single Budget is something about which members opposite need to hang their heads in shame. They need to explain to future generations why it is they are putting their futures in jeopardy, because that is what this Budget and these Supplementary Estimates show: that they are a Government that is intent on taking us backwards.

But, more concerningly, they are putting future generations’ futures at risk by what they are doing. They are putting it at risk in terms of not only the health of our planet but also the future of work and job security—the fact that people can have some security and how it is they’re going to make a living. With swipes of the Minister of Finance’s and the Prime Minister’s pens, they have taken away that security. They have consigned New Zealand to an uncertain future, and they are taking us backwards. I think that those members who are occupying the seats opposite are going to have some explaining to do to future generations about what they did in this moment of history, because it is reprehensible.

That’s just one vote. Then you move on to housing, and you see the kind of money being taken out of Māori housing. You see money being taken out of progressive homeownership, and you see this is a Government that is building fewer State houses than any Government in decades. Take away even just community housing, and the previous Government, every year in six years, built more than 750 community housing places. They are going backwards when it comes to housing. New Zealand was starting to get on top of a housing crisis, but we have a programme of work that has made incredibly bad choices laid bare in these Supplementary Estimates that will be a burden for future generations to bear.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. For those following along at home, we are currently debating two pieces of legislation in this one debate tonight. We are debating the Imprest Supply (First for 2024/25) Bill and the Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill.

Now, as the Minister herself alluded in her introductory remarks as we began this reading, what’s interesting about this Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill is that, typically, it would just be a bit of a clean-up job for extra expenses that had occurred at the end of the Budget period for the Government as it had been coming out of office as one would expect with this transitional change of Government. However, what is rather more interesting and, therefore, concerning to the Greens and why we will be opposing this, among the raft of measures contained within it, is, as the Minister herself spelled out, that particularly this Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill contains within it the financial decisions that the Government made in its mini-Budget at the end of last year, 2023. Those 15 programmes that the Government decided to stop would have made a material impact towards the wellbeing and benefit of New Zealanders and towards people and planet.

I just want to echo some of the sentiments that we’ve heard from the Hon Dr Megan Woods here: this Budget, in its fulsome context, is not a vision for the prosperity, for the future, for the wellbeing of this country and the people that live within it, but this Budget represents a shredder, and nowhere could that be more apparent than in the 15 programmes that were stopped, as included in this Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. Let’s just go through a handful of those pieces because I think part of what this Government did moving so quickly when it first came into office was that it knew that a lot of the programmes that it was undertaking or that it was cutting—it knew that the stuff that it was doing was, fundamentally, actually unpopular. It’s why, if we recall, they decided to push through as quickly as possible those changes to the smoke-free legislation. But, as contained within this legislation, there are things like the quick and paced removal of the 20 hours free early childhood education. This Government would argue, of course, that they’ve now replaced it with their own policy of FamilyBoost, and I can hear some heckling probably to that effect.

I just wanted to unpack that for context for the House, because we recently, just last week, had something called “scrutiny week”, a new initiative in our House of Parliament, which allows us to speak to Ministers, such as our Minister of Finance and our Minister of Revenue. And in the Finance and Expenditure Committee, we actually spent quite a long time talking about the Government’s policy of FamilyBoost. And I put a pretty straightforward question to our Minister of Revenue, who is responsible for implementing that policy through the Inland Revenue Department—his agency, that he is obviously responsible for as the Minister of Revenue. I asked the Minister if the intention of the FamilyBoost policy—noting that this stands in stark contrast to 20 hours free early childhood education—from the Government side of things is not to lower the cost of living; the intention of the FamilyBoost policy is to pay families who meet the threshold criteria a maximum of $75 per week towards their early childhood costs.

This is a really important difference because this difference belies the fact that the Government is actually not paying any attention whatsoever to whether this policy will result in price gouging by early childhood private providers. That is a really important and salient point here, because it means that the efficacy of that policy can only be judged by the fact that they’re sending $75 out a week per family that is eligible, not by whether the cost of living for New Zealand families has decreased.

So let’s just deal with that—the fact that this 20 hours free early childhood education being removed in this mini-Budget, as represented in the Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, is diabolical, especially when put in contrast to the evidently ineffectual FamilyBoost policy, which will only serve to bid up the price of early childhood education in this country. Interestingly enough, as was also canvassed in contrast at scrutiny week just last week with the Minister of Revenue as well, this mini-Budget, as represented in the Supplementary Estimates bill, also removed depreciation for commercial buildings. Now, I think that there’s a really interesting parallel here, especially on the brightline test, which is also contained within this, but not the changes that the Government has made when it comes to tax deductibility for landlords.

On the notion or on the argument of tax deductibility for landlords and the ability for that to be applied, the Government’s rationale has been that they believe that—just like any other business where you can have tax deductibility; or interest deductibility, rather—we should have the same apply for those who decide to invest in rental properties as landlords. I put that question to the Minister in contrast to what is contained within this piece of legislation around how—well, if you can see that there is depreciation costings that you can put against any other kind of business, why would you then decide to, if you’re being logically consistent, remove it from commercial buildings.

It would come as no surprise to you or any other member of this House that the Minister of Revenue did not have an answer, and he referred us to the coalition agreements, which once again goes to show that the thing that trumps for this Government is not logical consistency, is not an evidence basis, but it is indeed their political leanings. Also contained within this legislation is the killing off of the likes of the Climate Emergency Response Fund and the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry funding, which the Hon Dr Megan Woods spent a long time talking about.

This, interestingly, also stands in stark contrast to some questions put to the Minister of Finance, the Hon Nicola Willis, at scrutiny week just last week, on the fact that the Government has said time and time again that they do not like to do what they consider to be corporate welfare when it comes to decarbonising our economy. However, underneath the emissions trading scheme, which is the system that this Government wants to put all of its eggs in the basket of in order to curb our emissions, the Government wants to do the mitigation part of climate action, but they are not willing to remove those free allocation units for polluters to pollute. So, again, we have yet another logical inconsistency where they’re more than happy to remove the funding available in this legislation here. They have made the decision to remove the funding for decarbonising our economy, but then, on the other hand, within the broader Budget, they are retaining the free allocation programme to subsidise our largest polluters.

As was also stated by the Hon Dr Megan Woods, we have here, contained within the Supplementary Estimates bill, the work to stop on Lake Onslow. We also have work stopping on Resource Management Act (RMA) reforms. However, funnily enough, they’ve also started their own work programme on RMA reforms. Riddle me that. We also have the deeply unpopular policy decision from the Government to repeal Community Connect, otherwise known as half-price public transport for young people, and we also have, contained within this bill, the decision to make changes to the indexation of benefits from Consumers Price Index inflation to wage inflation, which is the decision that the Government did not make in a vacuum but with a regulatory impact statement and advice from their own officials that these changes to benefit indexation will push up to 13,000 more New Zealand children into poverty. That’s the legacy that this Government gets to be proud of. That’s the legacy—that is what is contained within this law that they will push through under urgency tonight and tomorrow morning.

But, if I can just hazard a warning to the Government members, we will not take this lying down. What you have from members of the Opposition is a commitment to fight them just as hard tonight, through the morning, and till midnight tomorrow night as we did on Budget urgency where we successfully prevented them from passing three of their seven pieces of Budget night urgency legislation.

I spoke to a few different people around these parts in Parliament who have been around for a lot longer than I have, and they said that they have never seen something like that happen before, where a Government has been stymied from passing its Budget night urgency legislation. And I think that that goes to show that we on the Opposition side are more than willing to put absolutely everything that we have got to making it abundantly clear to New Zealanders who are out there in the real world about the impact of the legislation that they are passing through, because the evidence tells them that it’s going to push more kids into poverty, that it is going to increase our carbon emissions, and that, ultimately, the bloody-minded focus on tax cuts at all costs comes at the expense of the public infrastructure and the social contract that New Zealanders rely on—that all of us rely on—for the sake of our wellbeing.

So, ultimately, as was well canvassed per all of those different iterations of all of the projects that were cancelled under that mini-Budget and with the Government attempting to write themselves a cheque for this imprest supply bill, the Greens will be opposing this, and we will be doing absolutely everything that we can to make it clear to the New Zealand public how these decisions made by this Government—and what the evidence base shows—will make this country a worse and harsher and harder place to live in, because people already know and feel that in their day to day. But we will be making it clear, as we go line by line through this to oppose it.

There’s not really much else to say except to look forward to all of the Opposition members running down the clock with every single inch that they’ve got. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Well, I’ve heard so many wonderful and powerful, thoughtful speeches in this House; I’m sad to say the last two haven’t been either of them. In fact, I listened to Megan Woods talk, and it was actually the marshalling of the thundering cliché again and again—no phrase was used until it had been so thoroughly road-tested that it had lost all traction. Then we heard from Chlöe Swarbrick, who says, “If I just talk about enough detail, people will decide that I must be really smart.” This is the person who uses modern technology to campaign against mining and talks about this Government having contradictions. She said that we shouldn’t be giving money to people to pay for their early childhood education, we shouldn’t have a $75 tax credit, because maybe some of that money will be absorbed by the early childhood centres providing the service. Well, if that was the argument, then we should never put money into social services, because the money might be absorbed by the people that provide the social service.

Actually, there’s some truth in this—there’s some truth in this. It was shown by the previous Government. The previous Government was able to show that if you increase spending by 80 percent in six years, if you increase the amount of money spent per person by 30 percent ahead of inflation—so 80 percent in general, but 30 percent ahead of inflation per person; you know, it’s the real figures—they can actually make social outcomes worse. That is the context that you cannot forget when you talk about this Government’s Budget. Six years of spending more and more every year, racking up $100 billion of debt on top of an ever-growing tax bill—

Camilla Belich: Aren’t you spending more in your Budget?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —and, actually, the social indicators got worse. Camilla Belich is over there, and she’s trying to dispute this. I wonder which statistics she’d like to dispute. Would she like to dispute the victimisation of New Zealanders by violent crime, because according to the Ministry of Justice, after six years of Labour trying this enormous ideological experiment—“If only we try being kinder to criminals, maybe one day they’ll be kind back.” And what happened? Well, according to the Ministry of Justice’s victimisation survey, violent crime towards New Zealanders went up 30 percent in six years. That was the result of a Labour Government that spent so much money.

This is the Labour Party—this is the party of Peter Fraser and Clarence Beeby—the party that believes every single New Zealander should have the opportunity to be extended to the full range of their powers. Whether they’re boy or girl, from town or country, rich or poor, they should all get an education so that they can access the world. That’s what the Labour Party used to stand for. They pumped the cash into the Ministry of Education, they went from 2,600 public servants in the ministry to 4,600 public servants—2,000 extra bureaucrats, and you know what happened? New Zealand students did worse. Worse in attendance—

Hon Peeni Henare: Talk about COVID.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —73 percent attendance—oh, I heard Peeni Henare saying, “Talk about COVID.” Sir, you are coming up. Let me just finish talking about education. They put so much more money into education, and yet fewer students attended and fewer students passed, and New Zealand students in the international league tables—in the Programme for International Student Assessment, in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, and in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, the results got worse. So, if Chlöe Swarbrick believes that spending more money is the answer to everything, then why didn’t it work when they increased expenditure from $86 billion to $140 billion in just six short years?

And then Peeni Henare, my old mate from Ngāpuhi up north, he said, “Talk about COVID.” Well, let’s talk about COVID—let’s talk about COVID. COVID-19 was a real catastrophe, but it was nothing like the catastrophe that the previous Government visited on New Zealanders through its overreaction. You know, I remember when Donald Trump was elected and Jacinda Ardern said, “No one marched when I was elected.” Jacinda Ardern claims that she didn’t create any social unrest. Who would have thought that Jacinda Ardern could divide a society so badly that we had fires on the front lawn of our Parliament?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: And can we go back to the appropriation.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: We are talking about the appropriation, Madam Speaker. We’re talking specifically about the fact that this is a fiscal clean-up job for enormous amounts of expenditure which has not delivered results. It delivered social division; it delivered half a billion dollars’ worth of rapid antigen tests being stored in a warehouse at enormous expense after they expired and were unable to be used. So if the member wants to talk about COVID—wasted money, social division, $100 billion of debt; nothing to show for it—I’m happy to talk about COVID.

Does anyone on the Labour benches have any area where they think their Government succeeded that they would still like to talk about?

Hon Peeni Henare: Māori housing, champ.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: So—oh, oh, Peeni Henare wants to talk about Māori housing. Well, first of all, what on earth is a Māori house? You know what? I think that New Zealanders—human beings—actually living in a house—it doesn’t make a huge difference what race the house is. I find that houses are just houses. You know, we actually believe that a house is just a house. But let’s talk a little bit about houses for Māori and for Pākehā—actually, for New Zealanders of all creeds and races, from all corners of the earth that make their home in this beautiful land. You see, the problem is if they want to talk about housing. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m going to go there. I’m going to talk about KiwiBuild. You see, the reason that we’ve got to cancel so much stupid spending is that the Labour Party brought in so much stupid spending, and somehow they managed to have rents—rents went up $200 in just three years after they started poking around with the taxes on rental housing. KiwiBuild became a byword for failure, and Kāinga Ora took over $2 billion of money, borrowed on the taxpayers’ credit, and started actually—

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Built some houses.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Megan Woods said, “To build houses.” You know what they did? They went out into the housing market, and they bid above the odds to buy land. They bid above the odds for materials and builders and project managers. They actually managed to raise the price of housing even as they tried to build affordable housing. So, Peeni Henare, you want to talk about Māori housing? You want to talk about black, white, Cuban, or Asian housing? We’re very happy to talk about housing, but I don’t think the Labour Party should want to talk about their performance in the housing market—the massive inflation, the massive rent increases, and the massive failures in Government expenditure for people of all backgrounds. Is there anything else the Labour Party candidates would like to talk about?

Camilla Belich: Why don’t you talk about your own Budget?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Here we go. Why don’t we talk about our own Budget? Well, our Budget is busy cutting back the waste. This is the Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, and as has been pointed out, it is largely about the changes we made when we came into power to reduce wasteful expenditure right across the board. But thank you very much, Camilla Belich, for telling us that nobody in Labour wants to talk about their performance anymore. They’d rather we switch to talking about this Government, and, actually, more and more New Zealanders feel exactly that way.

So what is this Government doing? Well, this Government is reducing expenditure each and every year. And why are we doing that? Because people out there are feeling it tough. You know, I heard one of the people in the Opposition say that this Government’s making bad choices with its Budget. Well, I disagree with that, but even if it was true, it would be better than the previous Government, who made no choices—no choices at all. They just thought, “Never mind, we can borrow a few billion more.” That’s how we got $100 billion into debt. What this Government is doing is tightening its belt, just the way that people up and down this country, around the kitchen table, people in firms and farms and families, have had to actually save money so that they can get through the fortnight to the next payday, surrounded by rising prices caused by the reckless fiscal irresponsibility of the previous Government and the inflation that it caused.

We are now managing our books to take pressure off inflation so that people can breathe again at the end of the financial week, and we’re doing that by cutting wasteful expenditure by around $13 billion, by around—

Hon Peeni Henare: And it’s not working.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Oh, and Peeni Henare says it’s not working. Well, in fairness, it took them six years of fiscal irresponsibility to get us here; we’ve had six months of fiscal responsibility, and, actually, inflation is coming down. People can see it being back in the target band. People can see those interest rates finally dropping, because we’ve got a Government that’s being responsible.

Here’s what else we’re doing: we’re using some of the savings to let people keep more of their own money with lower taxes so they can keep more of their own hard-earned money to get to the end of that fortnight, to get to the next payday without slipping further and further into overdraft. That’s the kind of responsibility that this Government is bringing to financial management. Thank you, Labour, for playing, but by the end of it, you didn’t want to talk about any of your policies, and if I was you, neither would I.

I don’t want to talk about the last regime. I don’t want to commit cruelty to species that are on the verge of extinction! I want to talk about elements inside this particular bill, the Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, and I want to start with energy. As was pointed out to me during the select committee process, the scrutiny process, a word and an experience that I wasn’t quite familiar with, certain things happened during the unwanted sabbatical. However, coming back to the topic, I want to talk about the mortal threat that we face in terms of having a robust, adequate source of energy, and the fact that our energy resilience is threatened by a host of wild, untested, expansionary falsehoods, in terms of what was served up about how New Zealand should respond to climate change.

We cannot respond to climate change, in an energy context—whether it’s more sun, more wind, other interventions—unless investors, unless firms, unless farmers, unless manufacturers have the confidence that the lights will stay on and we’ll have enough fuel in the country to continue to grow the economy. I am funding—

Scott Willis: They know that you’re a one-term Government.

Hon SHANE JONES: We’ve heard enough from “Yabba Dabba Doo” over there. This is serious economics. We are talking about the threat to the resilience of our nation in respect of fuel.

Ever since that crazy, dangerous decision was made to imperil the robustness of our military, worsen the resilience of our firms through the closure of the only refinery that we had in New Zealand, it falls to us now to tidy it up—an investment to ensure that our fuel supplies continue to remain at a level where business has confidence in our direction. If we do not have an energy system that can guarantee to keep the lights on, we will not attract new investment, and this notion that somehow just wind, just solar is going to keep the economy turning over—riddle me this: why is it that the 1,500‑megawatt investments that are either going through the system or have already been allocated are not already up and running?

The last regime did nothing to improve the competitiveness of the energy sector, which is why, in the coalition agreement, now funded as a consequence of this Budget, we’re going to drive better competitiveness. Not only are we going to drive better compliance—and I don’t want to talk about the 100,000 New Zealanders whose lives have been blighted by the falling over of one single pylon. Let me come back. There is a clear message in this particular Budget: either we’re going to use our own indigenous resources or we’re going to worsen our vulnerability and throw ourselves at the feet of geopolitical instability.

There is a very bleak story to be told. Whilst previously no one wanted to openly admit that we should use our own gas resources, this politician, this side of the House, is clearly going to trumpet: if you want to invest in gas and in oil in New Zealand, the door is open. The opportunities are here. We are not going to quietly watch the mountains of Indonesian coal grow whilst the only response we hear is “More wind, more solar.” We need hard-headed responses, and as a part of my delivery, we’re going to do that in the context of energy.

Let me talk a wee bit about fisheries, an area that has been continually demonised, continually delegitimised. The industry has now, in our side of the House, not only advocacy but a politician who is not going to acquiesce with the ongoing trivialisation of this important industry and this notion that suddenly we’re going to outlaw bottom trawling—suddenly we’re going to outlaw the majority of the techniques used by our current fishing industry—to suit a tiny minority of activists. It’s not happening. We need to boost the income, boost the revenue from expanding our capacity, derive more livelihood income, more export income from that industry.

Now, let me go on to what was meant to be the key institution to moderate and incentivise changes to behaviour in climate change: the emissions trading scheme (ETS). What happened under the last regime? Well, hopefully, we’ll see the back end of the soon to be retiring chairman of the Climate Change Commission. I can’t comment on the CEO of that organisation, but I go down on bended knee and pray that the next chair deals to that particular person’s inability to deliver what society needs. But what was the inheritance that we ended up with? Gross uncertainty, continual attacks on forestry, and an inordinately negative view as to what role sequestration, what role abatements, what role offsetting should play—to the point that the last regime thought the best way to deal with this was to hand out massive corporate subsidies to recipients in the industrial world. And those who received it—good on you. You played by the rules; you received the pūtea. My message to you: abide by the key performance indicators.

But we’re not going to address the challenges of climate change unless we bring certainty and stability, and a lot of the work that was under way under the last Budget has gone by the way, and there’s a narrow focus this time to enhance certainty and boost stability in terms of the ETS. And this notion that some would have you believe—that we’re going to go away and spend billions of dollars in 2030; that’s what we hear from the “Yabba Dabba Doo Party” over there: that New Zealanders are going to endorse us sending billions of dollars to the Congo—is never going to happen. New Zealanders expect us to invest so that society, so that the community, can adapt to the challenges of changing weather and changing community challenges.

Now, let me finish just on building and housing. Kāinga Ora—and I’m not too fussed by the name. “Kāinga”, from the word “kā”: to light a fire where you built your home; “ora”—sadly, for that lovely Māori word meaning “wellbeing”, most of the experience for organisations with that name in their moniker has been an inverse-related outcome. Kāinga Ora ended up, under the last regime, delivering houses at $6,500 per square metre. No wonder their finances are in a terrible state. In New Zealand, we should be delivering bulk standard houses for at least $2,400 per square metre. And why do I say that? There is no point building the Taj Mahal when what society really requires is to stop spending the $1 million per day in motels and move those people into bulk standard, ordinary whare, not overcompensated and overcapitalised, like many of us grew up with in New Zealand—an ordinary Keith Hay house—or, in the case of the people who grew up in the 1960s, where you could get the same dwelling if you lived in Kaitāia down to Invercargill.

Kāinga Ora, sadly, with a board that lost its way, probably dominated by a very, very overreaching Minister of the time, has worsened housing statistics in New Zealand. The costs blew out to the point that, yes, there is at the moment a pause because we’ve got to get our hands around the throat of how much money we are continually throwing after bad outcomes. And the worst—the worst legacy—is to look at the trajectory of inflated costs associated with delivering housing for the most needy, which is why our modest contribution of the granny flat is already inordinately popular around New Zealand—not only as a response, because it eclipses the Building Act, much of which is unnecessary bureaucracy; it will also have a pathway through the Resource Management Act. It’s common-sense, robust gestures of that nature which will deliver to garden-variety Kiwis a housing solution that is not overcapitalised and does not have the cost structure of the Taj Mahal.

Celia Wade-Brown; this is a split call—five minutes. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to take a call in this debate on the Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. What this bill does is look at the wash-up that needs to be done. The Supplementary Estimates reflect the activities of the Government through the period of the year that maybe weren’t foreseen, weren’t part of the original Budget, or, in this case, were the brutal changes caused by a change in Government.

The change in Government treats the majority for the coalition of three rather distinct partners as a total mandate for some of the policies pushed by one or two minor parties—parties of the three-headed taniwha.

Hon Shane Jones: Minor—minor? All-powerful—all-powerful.

CELIA WADE-BROWN: Power and size are not always related. This is legislation that should be a usual and normal part of our parliamentary process, but this set of figures is quite challenging as a change of Government has stopped some very good processes in their tracks—sometimes before their worth has been fully proven.

Now, the Greens supported the 2023-24 Budget. That doesn’t mean we supported every line. We certainly don’t support many of the changes brought in since November. I’d like to draw attention to a few of the specific changes to appropriations listed in Schedule 1 that deserve a bit more of a detailed investigation. Why was $1.5 million—

Hon Shane Jones: Investigation? Where’s Darleen?

CELIA WADE-BROWN: —less spent on apprentice training, when every party here apparently supports—

Hon Scott Simpson: Set Darleen free!

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, not a good idea, on the right side of the House. We’ll stick to the debate, thank you.

CELIA WADE-BROWN: —training and retraining in positive trades. What a tragedy that the Community Connect programme is $30 million underspent, when those half-price fares were helping people choose public transport. Now, that’s an effective way to support low-income families and reduce congestion far more cheaply than tolled four-lane highways and tunnels ever can. Dropping Community Connect was a deliberate move by the new Government against public transport.

Similarly, planning infrastructure and activities for mode shift, which encourages those who can change—it’s not compulsory. There are certain members of the Opposition and the Government that I cannot imagine ever on a bicycle, but they’re not listening, so it doesn’t matter. That was underspent by $200 million, and I’d like to have addressed at some point: if the spend on national pharmaceuticals was almost $500 million overspent in this Budget already, is this coming year’s Budget actually going to deliver the promised medicines?

Transport congestion, road pavement conditions, health, crime—they’re all susceptible to having—

Hon Shane Jones: Tell us about potholes.

CELIA WADE-BROWN: —yeah—the symptoms addressed. Potholes are a symptom of a bad transport system. The Greens want to address the causes, not the symptoms, and we want to reduce future health costs. Warm, dry, secure housing would solve truancy a lot faster than fining parents.

Hon Shane Jones: No, send them to military camp.

CELIA WADE-BROWN: All 10 of them. These questions, and the Budget as a whole, remind us that poverty, tax cuts for landlords, mitigation of climate change, adaptation to climate change that’s already happening, and protection of our taonga species are political choices.

In conclusion, with the damaging effects of inequality now starkly clear on the health, economy, and environment, I’d like to quote Kate Raworth: “Don’t wait for economic growth to reduce inequality”. Let’s address the causes of inequality, the causes of ill health, and the causes of environmental degradation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I rise to support the Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, because this Budget is about getting New Zealand ahead, moving us forward out of the dark daily struggle to a brighter future, enabling hard-working New Zealanders to keep more of what they earn, strengthening our economy once again, and delivering that tax relief that people have not seen in New Zealand for 14 years. It’s a fiscally responsible Budget and delivers on our commitments to put more funding into our front-line health services, education, and police. That’s right.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: What about the Supplementary Estimates?

CATHERINE WEDD: On this side of the House, we’re reducing the ballooning bureaucracy—I am getting to the actual Votes in Estimates—because we are taking money out of the back office and we are moving it to the front line.

I’m an electorate MP standing up every day for the people of Hawke’s Bay, and this Budget respects those hard-working people in provincial New Zealand. Regional New Zealand has been neglected for the past six years, as the previous Government treated provincial New Zealand like a bottomless tax ATM machine, spending the money in Wellington on consultants and ballooning bureaucracy, taxing hard-working people in businesses, and strangling our productive sectors with regulation. Budget 2024 respects provincial New Zealand, because we are aspirational and we reward success.

Our tax-relief package in the Budget will increase the take-home income of 83 percent of New Zealanders—83 percent of New Zealanders. It is in here—this is what the New Zealand public voted for, and this is what this bill will be delivering on 31 July. It’s time that hard-working New Zealanders can keep more of what they earn. Our tax package gives the average-income households up to $102 a fortnight, plus the FamilyBoost childcare of $150 a fortnight. This is significant to many low and middle income - earning families who are really struggling at the moment after years and years of neglect. Our Government is finally taking action to bring down inflation, bring down those interest rates, and strengthen our economy.

Budget 2024 also puts a heavy focus on health. We’re investing in and increasing front-line services such as emergency departments, primary care, medicines, and public health so New Zealanders can have the healthcare they need.

On this side of the House, we’re laser-focused on education. You will see in those Estimates and in our 2024 Budget a heavy focus on education because education creates equality, and we are investing in our children and in the future of New Zealand, looking forwards, not backwards, like the member said earlier. It’s not about lowering the bar; it’s about getting more of our kids above the bar and on a positive pathway to a job and a better future.

This Budget commits—yes, this Budget and the Estimates commit—$1.5 billion for school property building and maintaining classrooms, getting more value out of the money we spend and a real focus on our front-line classrooms, ensuring money is going into our teachers and children, not wasted on the bureaucracy in Wellington. We have committed $67 million to roll out structured literacy across our schools. I have 61 schools in the Tukituki electorate, and I have been out and about visiting these schools, meeting the amazing teachers, seeing how they’ve been rolling out structured literacy, hearing about the huge difference that it is making for our children, seeing them sounding the words, and seeing their faces light up as they can suddenly read. We need to lift performance across education, and this starts by getting our kids back to basics.

Our Government is also committed to cracking down on crime and keeping our communities safe. In this Budget, we are investing $2.9 billion to restoring law and order—more front-line police officers, more support for our police on the beat, $1.9 billion to front-line corrections officers, more prison capacity, and more rehabilitation for offenders and support for the victims of crime. We are focusing on youth offending, including a military-style academy pilot.

Infrastructure is another big area in Budget 2024, because there has been an absolute deficit in our infrastructure, and we’re going to be investing $68 billion in infrastructure over the next five years. This is a record investment in infrastructure, and when we talk about infrastructure, we aren’t visualising and dreaming and thinking ideology of light-rail projects that haven’t seen a metre of track built or of cycleways across the Auckland Harbour Bridge, which, again, is absolute ideology. We are not a Government that talks about it; we are a Government of action and delivery on this side of the House, getting stuff built, fast-tracking consenting, and getting on with the job to tackle the infrastructure deficit in this country.

This is significant for Hawke’s Bay, which is a huge export region and will play a big part in helping us double the value of exports in this country over the next 10 years. This Government’s plans for infrastructure will be life changing for people across our region. Four-laning the Hawke’s Bay expressway is a top priority and is a road of national significance. The Hawke’s Bay expressway is crucial to driving more productivity in our region, getting our apples, wine, meat, and produce to the port more efficiently and off to markets around the world a lot faster.

We are also delivering on our commitment to boost funding for pothole prevention, as the member over here alluded to. During the campaign, people would complain to me all the time about the hundreds and hundreds of potholes across our State highways and our rural roads, because, on that side of the House, they failed to invest in infrastructure. In fact, we’re seeing over $82 million going into Hawke’s Bay’s potholes. So maintaining our roads is a top priority. Actually, that’s an increase of 51 percent, and it’s this type of investment that is going to make a huge difference, a focus on provincial New Zealand, stopping the centralisation in the bureaucracy and focusing on our regions.

Speaking of our regions, I’m going to make a reference to the cyclone rebuild and recovery funding that we have seen in these Estimates, because Hawke’s Bay is also getting an extra funding boost for cyclone recovery to ensure we can rebuild quickly and efficiently. Already, our Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, has been to the region, and he’s been speaking with our regional leaders just to see how we can rebuild more efficiently and faster and make sure that we are investing in that crucial infrastructure. That includes the State highway network, including State Highway 2 and State Highway 5, and there will be an investment of $609.3 million over three years to complete the State highway recovery works in the areas that have been affected by the North Island weather events. This is significant for my region.

Also, there will be an investment of $330 million over two years to continue the response and recovery work on local roads, and it’s this funding that will ensure the vital transport links are repaired so people and freight can get to where they need to go quickly and safely. Our Government is absolutely committed to cyclone rebuild in the Hawke’s Bay region and ensuring that our region gets back on its feet, and it was absolutely heartening to see such a significant investment in Budget 2024, which is going to make a huge difference for the people of Hawke’s Bay and a lot of those people who were devastated in Cyclone Gabrielle.

This Budget is focused on getting more value out of the money we spend, returning to surplus, stopping the ballooning public debt that we’ve seen in the past six years, and restoring discipline to public spending. We’re putting money back into the front line and giving hard-working New Zealanders tax relief, and that’s getting New Zealand back on track.

So many clichés in so little time—so little time—that the member didn’t even manage to address the bill that is under discussion. Now, the member is a new member, so I suppose it’s reasonable that she could be mistaken about the subject matter of this debate. But the subject matter of this debate is not—is not—the 2024 Budget; in fact, the subject matter of this debate is the imprest supply bill and this bill, the Supplementary Estimates, which are the Supplementary Estimates which amend the 2023 Budget—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The previous member did refer to the Estimates a number of times.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Indeed, she did, but she talked repeatedly about the Budget. However, if the member wants to open up the debate like that, well, I suppose we are going to welcome the opportunity to talk more about the Budget.

But I just want to retreat right back to this bill and some of the reasons behind it. First of all, any member who’s actually attended the Finance and Expenditure Committee meetings and read the report would know that the discussion there was very much on the extra money that has been appropriated, or not, in this bill, and there is a very dull, pro forma report that comes out. But the Minister of Finance—and the member would do well to listen to her Minister of Finance—said something very interesting in her speech. She said one of the reasons for this annual Supplementary Estimates bill is that “fiscal risks materialise”. Stuff happens—stuff happens between one Budget and the next. Stuff happens, which means that the Budget needs to be amended or changed. Sometimes it’s low-level stuff that just happens at the level of the department or a ministry. At other times, it is major and significant things that happen which then necessitate a change to the Budget.

In fact, the member, in amidst her speaking repeatedly about the Budget rather than the Supplementary Estimates, did spend quite a bit of time talking about the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle. I noticed she didn’t manage to talk about the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods, which were just as important, but talked about the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle. Of course, that is one of those things that happens and that a Government simply must deal with. It simply must start spending the money and making the choices, because a disaster has happened or because something completely unexpected has happened, and, in these Supplementary Estimates, we see some of that going on.

So, to help the member out, I will direct her to page 28 of this bill, which is the one we’re debating, and it talks about some of the extra money that is allocated there. It’s a decrease of $257,000, actually, for Cyclone Gabrielle, for the National Land Transport Fund operating cost pressure funding—it’s on page 28. Now, that’s because when Cyclone Gabrielle swept through, a huge adjustment had to be made to the 2023 Budget. It was done as best we could, and so, subsequently, the money got changed around because later understandings developed. Why? Because, as the Minister of Finance said, fiscal risks materialise.

What this bill, the one that we should have been debating, is doing is talking about the changes that have been made between Budgets, and it does. This bill does contain, as my colleague Megan Woods said, some signals—some stuff that we know about that was changed because of the choices that this incoming Government has made—and these choices are quite instructive.

I want to direct the member’s attention to page 20 of this particular Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, and sitting in there is a return of money to central government of $122 million—it’s a lot of money—for the establishment of water services entities. So the incoming Government has made a choice about how it is going to deal with the serious issues around water supply in this country.

It’s interesting, sitting in the Finance and Expenditure Committee in the last few days. In the public hearings—the stuff that’s already public—council after council after council has come to that committee and said, “How are we going to pay? How is our rating base going to manage?” Councils—like Rangitikei Council; councils, like Clutha Council—have come and said, “We just don’t have the money or the rating base to manage this.”

Hon Peeni Henare: Far North.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Now, the previous Government had come up with a solution to enable those councils to manage the real needs around water supply. Actually, my colleague Mr Henare has just mentioned the Far North District Council. They absolutely need assistance in order to get their water supplies up to standard, but off a low ratings base, they simply cannot pay for it. That Government over there, and it’s seen in this Supplementary Estimates bill, has told councils to go at it on their own—just go at it on their own—and some of the least wealthy areas of the country and some of the areas where there is no capacity to get further money out of the rating base have told the councils that they are on their own. That decision is recorded in this bill. It’s a shameful decision, and it’s one that council after council has rejected.

I want to direct the member’s attention now—because she needs to understand where this comes from—to page 52 of this bill. What it has in there is a return of $220 million to the centre, because there was going to be a Crown loan to support the transformation of Te Pūkenga and of our whole vocational education system in there, but that money is coming back. And it’s quite interesting because, even though that money has come back into the centre, sitting in the Budget this year, where, seeing as the Government has abandoned one plan, we might expect to see some plan in this year’s Budget—but sitting on page 90 of a summary of initiatives, where we’re looking at Te Pūkenga disestablishment and transition—a tad “contingency”—there’s not a single number in there. Not a single number there. What does this point to, between the Supplementary Estimates where the money is taken out because they’re not going to do that anymore, but no money is being provided for it in this document? There is no plan.

That Government does not have a plan. It does not have a plan for water services, other than charging the money back to councils. It does not have a plan for Te Pūkenga. It charged in to change things around because of its own ideological preferences and then couldn’t be bothered to allocate the money. It does not have a plan and does not have a sense of where it’s going. That is what this Supplementary Estimates bill records for us. That’s what we see coming through from it.

I also then want to turn to, again, another really interesting item sitting in this Supplementary Estimates bill, and I’m going to point the member to page 40 of this Supplementary Estimates bill. It’s some extra money that the Government has had to allocate to KiwiRail for the Project iReX wind-down costs—another area where the Government simply doesn’t have a plan. It has rejected the entirely sensible plan of the previous Government. The plan of the previous Government would have seen a secure freight connection between the North and South Islands that would have seen excellent ferry transport that would have promoted the use of rail to get our freight up and down the country, taking that pressure off our roads.

But that Government decided to just bin the contract. They decided they just didn’t want to do it. I don’t know why they just decided not to—and it’s going to cost us $300 million. That’s the money that’s been set aside in these Supplementary Estimates in order to cover off that Government’s ideological decision making where they’ve raced into decisions as a knee-jerk reaction and said they’re just not going to do anything that the former Government had done. So that is what is recorded in these Supplementary Estimates, and they are a shameful record for that Government.

Looking forward to next year, we can expect to see one more decision in some Supplementary Estimates. They ignored a promise they’d made on the campaign trail. They refused to fund the cancer drugs they’d promised to fund. They didn’t put it in the Budget, and so then, by the concerted action up and down the country, they were finally shamed into doing the thing they had promised to do all along. But they have not recorded it in their Budget—they have not recorded it in this Budget. They’ve written a cheque on the future, and I expect to see it in next year’s Budget, and right then we can think some more about their lack of planning, their lack of foresight, and their inability to follow through on their promises.

This is a Government that does not have a plan. It just races from one decision to another, and the record of that is right here. We will be voting against this bill.

I stand before you to support the Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and Imprest Supply (First for 2024/25) Bill, a critical component of our Government’s financial framework. This bill is essential for ensuring the smooth operation of our nation’s finances as we transition from one fiscal year to the next.

A quick fact for those who have tuned in to us on TV and who are listening to us: the financial year for New Zealanders runs from 1 July to the following 30 June. During this period, the Government requires appropriations or authorisations from Parliament to carry out its functions effectively. I believe it is very important for the New Zealand public to understand how the Budget is set, especially before, during, and lapsing over the financial period, and, more importantly, what actually goes into this year’s Budget.

Now, the supply process, which is what this bill is part of, involves the appropriation of funds—the taxpayer’s hard-earned money—that are necessary for the Government to continue its operation in delivering for all New Zealanders. While some of the supply is established on a permanent, regular basis under permanent legislative authority, the majority needs to be authorised annually through the House supply procedures in any given financial year. So here we are. This is why we are here tonight debating in the House to deal with the residual supplies from the previous year, current supply issues, and preparatory supply issues for the forthcoming year.

Since the Budget was announced on 30 May, released on Budget day by the Minister of Finance, the Hon Nicola Willis, everyone up and down the country is looking at what our National-led coalition Government can deliver for all New Zealanders. The Budget statement, delivered by the Minister of Finance, outlined the principal components of our Budget. This year’s Budget is particularly noteworthy for several reasons. For the first time in 14 years, hard-working New Zealanders will get to keep more of their hard-earned money through the Government’s tax relief measures. This Budget is shifting resources from the back office of the Government into the front line, investing in healthcare, in schools, and in police.

Why is the Budget so strongly focused on shifting resources from our back office, from the bureaucracies, into front line, and why are we investing in law and order? Why are we investing in improving public services, particularly in education and healthcare? Well, let me remind every member in this House, and also to those who have tuned in, watching and listening to this debate of one very important date, 14 October 2023, the New Zealand general election. That was the date where more than half of New Zealanders voted for change and voted for this National-led coalition Government. It was the turnaround date for New Zealand.

Members on this side of the House campaigned on turning the ship around for New Zealand. We campaigned on bringing down the cost of living. We campaigned on restoring law and order, and we campaigned on improving public services. We campaigned to improve our education and to stop failing our children. We campaigned on improving our healthcare so Kiwis can access world-class healthcare and the medical care that we all deserve. But, just in case, if the members opposite had forgotten that night, it was painful, I know. It was 14 October when half of New Zealand voted them out and voted us in to clean up after their mess, to rescue the country from many fiscal cliffs, to put a handbrake on wasteful Government spending, and to finally bring some good sense and good decisions with taxpayers’ hard-earned money and actually get our country back on track.

So here we are: this Government’s first Budget announced on 30 May 2024. I take this opportunity to thank all the Ministers and Government officials involved, going line by line cutting down wasteful Government spending to find recurring savings and to reprioritise taxpayers’ hard-earned income to tax relief and to bring relief on cost of living pressures, to restore law and order, and to improve public services.

Now, the 2024 Budget aims to put New Zealanders’ money where it can make the biggest difference, delivering value for money while maintaining a fiscally responsible stance. If I can remind every member in this House, this Budget is the most fiscally responsible in seven years, with an operating allowance that is the lowest in real terms since the former finance Minister Steven Joyce’s Budget in 2017. This Budget is designed for everyday New Zealanders, those hard-working New Zealanders who are managing and doing their very best for their families and dealing with the daily grind. It aims to provide relief for the squeezed middle of New Zealand—the shift workers, the people who are working multiple jobs, people who have young children, people who are making sacrifices just to keep every day possible.

The right measure of success, in my opinion, for the Government is not how much we actually spent or how much PR we did or how many conferences we held, but actually whether we make a positive difference to New Zealanders and whether I can actually front up to my community, to my constituents, and tell them that we’ve done a really good job with their money. In my opinion, a good Government is also about bringing sense back to the revenue and expenses and bringing things back into balance. This is why the National-led Government has focused so much on managing and just bringing down our spending. Now, the operating allowance, as I alluded to earlier, has been the lowest in real terms since the last seven years. It’s set at $3.2 billion. Future Budgets from 2025 to 2027 will have even lower operating allowances per Budget.

A major component of this Budget, as I said a bit earlier, is tax relief, which is long overdue, because we haven’t had a personal income tax threshold change for 14 years. This is talking about reducing the burden for the individuals and the families who are working so hard. But on top of that, we’ve also updated the independent earner tax credit eligibility. We’ve also increased the in-work tax credit. We’ve also provided and introduced FamilyBoost. Families with young children—and I am one of them, and I can say there are so many families from my constituents who have come forward to us to say that this is finally some hope coming our way, because raising children in New Zealand is challenging. Raising children in New Zealand is challenging, but with FamilyBoost we are providing help—up to 25 percent of the early childhood education fees back to parents, back to caregivers, for them to decide on what they think is the best for their family, not for the Government to decide.

Apart from the tax relief, this Budget also invests heavily in public services. We are investing heavily into the health service in Budget 2024. We are also investing heavily in areas of education. We are investing heavily into areas of law and order. And can I just very briefly comment and say that Budget 2024 invests $8.15 billion extra operating capital funding in health services. It is providing $1.77 billion to Pharmac to ensure New Zealanders can have access to essential medicines. The Government is also investing $2.93 billion in schools and early childhood education. The Budget is also putting in $2.9 billion to restore law and order. The Budget is for everyone in New Zealand.

But, if I can, in my last remaining 50 seconds, I wanted to make a special mention of a family in Pakuranga—a family with two young children—who messaged me on 30 May, Budget day, with their screenshot. They went on to the tax calculator and have said that every fortnight they will be able to get $116.50. They are getting an annual saving of $3,029. They are stoked that they are finally able to send their children back to the extracurricular classes that the parents, unfortunately, had to cancel. They’re now even saying, “Maybe we can afford to take our kids to the zoo once a year.” So this is significant. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The next call is a split call between Labour and National. I call Arena Williams.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Te Aka Whai Ora is gone—the Māori Health Authority is gone—Māori education has been slashed, and Māori housing programmes are being cut in this bill and in this Government’s Budget, because this Government has delivered an austerity Budget for Māori that takes New Zealand backwards. It takes all New Zealanders backwards because of the way it impacts on some of our most vulnerable New Zealanders.

To have David Seymour come to this House today in this debate and ridicule the previous Government’s record on Māori housing—which stepped forward not only Māori homeownership but Māori conditions of living, of Māori in rental situations in sub-standard—

Glen Bennett: Embarrassing.

ARENA WILLIAMS: It is an embarrassment. It is an embarrassment when we have a Minister of the Crown coming to this House and saying, “What’s a Māori home?” A Māori home means something to those whānau who call that their kāinga; for whom that is not only the centre of their family but that is their connection with their land; that is a part of their identity. And Māori have no other home. We are the indigenous people of this country, and our homeownership aspirations are being crushed by this Government.

In this Appropriation (2024/25 Estimates) Bill, the Government has gone out of its way to cut the increasing Māori housing supply appropriation that the last Government introduced. It didn’t have to do that. It was penny-pinching—penny-pinching—$7 million from a fund which enabled Māori to realise some of those housing aspirations which have been held back and which the Minister David Seymour came to this House to rubbish, because he doesn’t believe in Māori homeownership.

But Labour does, because Labour knows that, actually, the history is more peppered than that Minister understands. In the 1930s, Māori homeownership was higher than any other group in New Zealand, but over successive decades—because of choices of colonial Governments and the kinds of economy that disenfranchised Māori in not only our urban centres but from their rural lands—Māori homeownership declined more steeply than any other group. And now Māori homeownership is less than 30 percent. It has declined in recent years at an even steeper rate than the decade previous.

It’s also quite alarming—and I think I’d like to offer the Minister some education on this—that 40 percent of Māori live in damp homes. That is double the number of other ethnicities reporting that they live in damp, cold homes. Māori are less likely to be able to heat their living spaces, to be able to afford to do so, and to be able to live in properly insulated properties too.

So what did the Labour Government do? It introduced a number of special Budget appropriations to actually tackle that inequality head-on. Things like He Kūkū Ki Te Kāinga, which is the increasing Māori housing supply appropriation, which this Government has removed, were among four initiatives like Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei’s kaumātua housing at Bastion Point. It was a small appropriation to allow that building to be completed, and they have cut that. They have taken it away from kaumātua and kuia who need that housing and who would have been able to contribute to the visions and aspirations of that iwi to return not only to their whenua and to that place in Auckland to reclaim that history but also to be around their grandchildren, their tamariki and mokopuna, who were growing up there. It is a real shame that that appropriation is something that these members are proud of cutting.

It is a real shame that they are cutting things like the support for the Papakura Marae, with its housing builds that enabled not only older people to live around the marae but also people who for generations have been locked out of the housing market through transitional housing. Not only was that fund being used for proper housing to be built there, it was also wraparound support to get people into homeownership and ready for homeownership.

Those are initiatives that Labour is proud of. Those are initiatives which that Minister, David Seymour, has rubbished in this House, and I challenge him to tell us why he doesn’t believe that Māori should own their own homes and should aspire to that, because he is part of a Government that has cut first-home buyers’ grants, which will continue to lock out first-home buyers from the market. He is not only happy to lock Māori first-home buyers out of the market, he’s happy to lock all first-home buyers out of the market and to advance a programme of work which incentivises large-scale investors to buy properties at the expense of those first-home buyers by reintroducing interest deductibility, which doesn’t increase housing supply at all—it simply encourages large investors to buy them up.

This is a Government with its priorities all wrong, but Labour will defend Māori homeownership next time.

Budget 2024 is a Budget for the squeezed middle. For the first time in 14 years, hard-working Kiwis—like people in Mt Roskill—will get to keep more of what they earn through our Government tax relief. From 31 July this year, an average-income household will receive tax relief of up to $102 a fortnight, and eligible families will also receive a FamilyBoost childcare tax credit of up to $150 per fortnight. This will make a real difference to hard-working Kiwis, who have endured a prolonged cost of living crisis. Most importantly, these changes will be fully paid for by offsetting saving and revenue initiatives, meaning tax relief won’t require additional borrowing and won’t add to inflationary pressure.

I know my constituents are excited about the Budget and they want to know more, but today, as a member of the Health Committee, I would like to focus on how Budget 2024 is making a meaningful difference towards getting our health system back on track. Just now, we hear a lot of things from the opposite side of the House, talking about things going backward. They love to use data. Let’s talk about things going backwards and targets. Let’s talk about emergency department (ED) wait times. In 2017, 91 percent of the patients were being seen within six hours. What happened? Under the Labour Government, it dropped to only 76 percent. What does that mean? That means 90,000 more New Zealanders are waiting more than six hours at ED. Let’s talk about immunisation rates. The immunisation rate of children aged 24 months dropped from 92.4 percent in 2017, to 82.9 percent. This is what I call going backwards. Our healthcare system is facing a major workforce shortage. This is what I call going backwards.

As a part of Budget 2024, health is getting a significant funding boost of $16.69 billion, across three Budgets, as part of our plan to invest in our front-line services—such as emergency departments, primary care, medicine, and public health—to ensure New Zealanders can get the healthcare that they deserve. Let’s talk a little bit about health investment in Budget 2024 over the four years included. Well, listen: $3.44 billion for hospital and specialised service for Health New Zealand; $2.12 billion for primary, community, and public health through Health New Zealand; $1.77 billion for Pharmac to fix the shortfall left by the Labour Government. We will ensure that Kiwis can get access to the medicines they need. We talk about $31.2 million to extend free breast screening to an additional 60,000 women each year.

What we also target is the ongoing workforce issue in our healthcare system. Budget 2024 is also investing $22 million to train 24 more doctors each year—that’s enabled the University of Auckland and the University of Otago to increase their combined medical school first-year intake, which will see more doctors graduating and entering the health workforce. People in Mt Roskill are also concerned about the broken mental health system. Budget 2024 will invest $24 million in free mental health counselling services through Gumboot Friday, providing 160,000 hours of free counselling sessions for New Zealanders aged between five and 25. We are also allocating another $24.5 million for mental wellbeing support for primary and intermediate school students. This is how we target the issues.

Our Government, in Budget 2024, is committed to investing in our healthcare system because we are a Government that listens to people. We work for people, and we deliver for the people, especially for the hard-working people in New Zealand, especially the hard-working residents of Mt Roskill. I support this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand to speak in strong opposition because there is nothing in this Budget for the people of Christchurch East. In fact, there’s less than nothing, because this Budget actually takes things away. That’s what we see in this bill and in this Budget, and I’m going to give you a local example of that.

If you come to Acheson Avenue in the heart of Shirley—it’s a beautiful street—there’s a set of shops that were built post-war, after the Second World War, and they were given to veterans to help them settle back into the community. They could start small independent businesses. They could build up a precinct and area for the people of Shirley to enjoy. Now, in recent years, things being what they are with moves to malls and supermarkets, those shops were mostly empty. But when Ka Ora, Ka Ako was established, this community saw an opportunity to invest. It was an opportunity to invest in their kids, and it was an opportunity to invest in themselves. I can’t think of anything better to invest in.

So they established Nourish Ōraka, a small, local, social enterprise. “What does that look like?”, I hear you ask. I’ll tell you it looks like. It looks like 10 jobs for locals. It looks like making 525 lunches a day for the students who go to Shirley Primary School and Te Oraka Shirley Intermediate School. It looks like after-school jobs for some of those school kids—finish school, pop in, do a couple of hours of dishes, be paid properly for it, and learn some skills. It looks like no kids staying home because their family can’t provide them lunch. It looks like no single-use packaging being used at all. It looks like 100 percent of the food scraps being recycled at a nearby chicken-rescue organisation. There’s something else that it achieves, something that isn’t a number: pride. This bill and this Budget cuts pride.

Now, I’ve been there on a typical day through the week, when it’s busy. You walk in through the door, you have no idea what’s going on inside, but it’s a bustling, busy kitchen. The radio’s on. Those 10 staff are making perfect lunches—perfect, uniform lunches; exactly what they know the local kids want to eat. The garage door is rolled up out the back. There’s a view out to the park. It makes it absolutely safe for people to spend time there. The van gets loaded up. The healthy food gets delivered for those kids to have for lunch. That’s community. This Budget cuts community to its very core. So when our community heard that this National-led Government was wanting to make a choice to cut spending on Ka Ora, Ka Ako—on school lunches, that was one of the places that they wanted to cut. That was one of the choices this Government was making.

Now, cutting school lunches doesn’t sound like a good way, to me, to address the cost of living, school attendance, or educational outcomes. But that is the choice—

Carl Bates: Fiscal cliff left by Labour; we funded it.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: —that this Government is making. I’ll remind that member that the point of a heckle is to try and make me look silly, not them.

So the community called on me to have a public meeting to hear from them about what taking this away would mean. So our education spokesperson, Jan Tinetti, came down and joined me at the MacFarlane Park Centre on Acheson Avenue, and we had a public meeting for the community of Christchurch East.

Hon Member: Well attended.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: It was busy. It was well attended. We had to put out extra chairs—three times, we had to put out extra chairs—and there was still standing room only. That front row of chairs was full of people that the members on the other side of this House should engage with more often. It was full of principals from local primary and intermediate and high schools. They told us that since they’d had the healthy school lunch programme, there were no queues for the sick bay after lunch and kids now eat together. For lots of kids, this is the only meal they may have that day. We heard about the very real difference that providers like Nourish Ōraka, who work with the local kids and who work with the community to design those menus and to provide those lunches, make. Some of them stood up and spoke to the strength of the school lunch programme and the fact that they were concerned about the Budget cutting that out of their school. They’d taken a petition around their school and had every student sign it.

One of the local schools is a school that has seen a 600 percent increase in NCEA achievement—600 percent. That’s been down to the work of Peggy Burrows, the principal, and the teaching staff at Haeata. Some of those students had heard that this Government wanted to cut their school lunch programme, and 68 of them wrote letters. I’m going to read three of them.

Hon Member: Oh, please don’t.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: The first letter: “If you take away the school lunches, we will be hungry and won’t be able to learn properly. Our school needs school lunches so we can get our energy for the rest of the day. The lunches help me to concentrate.” The fact that you don’t want to hear the letter is a point that I will get to, surely.

The second of 68 letters: “My name is Tavita, and I go to a Haeata community campus. I’m Samoan-born, and I live in New Zealand. I don’t want you to remove the lunches, because parents have to pay for school clothes, power bills, Wi-Fi, and books. Please do not remove the lunches, because parents might not afford to buy lunches, and if children starve, they can get tired and fail school.”

A third letter finishes by saying—

Carl Bates: Give me the letters. I’ll send them a correct reply.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: —“Our school lunches”—I’ll get to that, Mr Bates—“give us the strength and courage to do our learning properly. Foods digest in our body, which brings us happiness. We have food that makes us full of how good these foods are, and happiness makes us want to be a better person. Being a better person allows us to learn better and be smarter, which means we’ll get good grades. Our school may be the smartest school; you will never know.”

Now, those students, when I visited, knew that I worked in this building, and knew that the very same people—some of whom are sitting opposite me tonight—who are making the decisions in this Budget worked in this building too. They asked whether I would hand deliver those letters to the Prime Minister. I said, “I’ll do what I can.” So I took 68 letters, and I stood in the hallway outside the House one day before question time—

Hon Louise Upston: With a video camera.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: —to catch the Prime Minister on his way into the House—

Hon Louise Upston: And film him.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: —to be able to give him the letters. For the record, I did not have a video camera. Although—

Hon Louise Upston: You had someone filming.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: —with a background in television, I could have been. For the record, I did not have someone filming. Disappointingly, whilst 68 children and many others in that community had taken the time to write letters to the Prime Minister with their concerns about the content of the Budget and the risk to their school lunches, the Prime Minister refused to take the letters from me. I offered more than once. For the record, he did have two available hands that he could have taken them in.

More disappointingly, after I mailed them to his office and they were received, the letter I received in reply said, “The Prime Minister appreciates people taking the time to write to him, but due to the high volume of correspondence he receives, he is not able to reply to every message personally.”—so he has asked me to respond on his behalf—“Your letters are important to the Prime Minister. It tells him how passionate you are about the issue of trying to stop free school lunches in schools. Keep up the excellent work at school, and all the best with your studies.”

Hon Nicola Willis: Point of order. Mr Speaker, I came into the House, thinking that I was entering the House for the imprest supply debate. I seem to have stepped into an alternative universe in which we’re discussing the postal system in New Zealand.

Tangi Utikere: Speaking to the point of order. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ve listened diligently to my colleague Mr Davidson—

Hon Nicola Willis: Oh God, you poor thing!

Tangi Utikere: Well, Ms Willis—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): A point of order will be taken in silence. Continue, Mr Tangi Utikere.

Tangi Utikere: Thank you, sir. I’ve listened diligently to my colleague Mr Davidson, and what he has done, from what I’ve heard, is actually reflect on the decisions that have been made that are relative to the Budget. While the member may have just indicated that she has only recently come down to the House, perhaps if she would actually understand—and she may wish to review the Hansard when she goes back to actually see that the context in which my colleague’s speech is currently being delivered is entirely within order.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Thank you, Mr Utikere. I thank you for the points of order. I do reflect that it has been wide ranging, in some cases, on both sides of the House today. But I would invite the member in his last seven seconds to wrap it up.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is a Budget that takes things away from the people who need it most. It won’t do more with less; it will do less with less.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s great to actually come back to be able to speak on the actual bill and talk about the things that we have been doing and are restoring. While the Opposition seems to take from the successful and give to the poor—that is the way of achieving equality or equity—we in the coalition are in the process or in the business of equality of opportunity. We believe in incentives, in education, in reward for achievement, and in keeping more of what you earn. We believe that staying on a benefit isn’t conducive to your long-term wellbeing and to setting up the next generation for success. That’s why we’re working on getting people into work so they can develop a sense of pride, be a role model, and fan the flame of mana within them.

There’s a few elephants in the room that I’d like to address, I guess, which provide context to the imprest supply allocations of the Budget, because those allocations in the Budget are there because of the context which we find ourselves in. One of those is—it’s like a myth buster. One of the Opposition loves to bring up tax cuts for the landlord—$2.9 billion tax cuts for the landlords. I just want to take a moment to analyse that and actually go: well, that tax wasn’t there until they came in, so really what we’re doing is restoring the status quo, like any other business structure around New Zealand that provides a taxable income. Then you have to ask yourself the question: did interest deductibility on rental incomes improve the housing situation across New Zealand?

Hon Tama Potaka: No.

RYAN HAMILTON: No. There were just more properties sitting empty because landlords were afraid to put tenants in them.

But it gets better, because I looked at a Stuff article from 26 February 2021, and there was analysis done. They questioned: “Do you know how many Kiwis had only one rental?” Did you know there was only 77.9 percent; nearly 80 percent of Kiwis only own one rental? So that will be mums and dads, aunties and uncles, related in many cases to the Opposition. Those are the wealthy landlords— and I quote—“While popular perception had it that all landlords owned multiple properties and reaped big capital gains as a result, the bond data suggested this was not true. Most of the landlords in the country are very much small-time operators, many of whom have the majority of their life savings in that property.”—mum and dad investors, which brings us back to the squeezed middle class. Now, actually, part of the working class has now incorporated some of that middle class because of fiscal drag. Hence the need for measured and meaningful tax reductions so they can keep more of the money they earn.

The Budget delivers on many key commitments. For the first time, as we’ve heard tonight, in 14 years—that’s a decade plus four years—hard-working New Zealanders will get to keep more of their own money through our Government’s tax relief. This Budget is for everyday people getting on with their lives, the mums and dads taking their kids to school and working hard. This Budget is for the people whose weekly budget expenses have now gone up by $300 or $400 a week because of mortgage increases. This is a Budget for the squeezed middle of New Zealand—the shift workers, the people working multiple jobs and making sacrifices for their kids. This should be Parliament’s focus every day, and we should be measuring a positive difference in the lives of New Zealanders, not just how much money we spend.

The Budget update expects core Crown tax revenue to be lower by around $18.5 billion, and yet we were able to deliver a significant Budget that will bring us back into surplus in four years’ time. After stripping out large one-off expenses and adjusting for the economic cycle, the Treasury estimates a structural operating deficit of around 1.5 percent of GDP this financial year. And, according to our great honourable Minister Nicola Willis, “structural deficit” is a technical term. To put it less formally, New Zealand has been borrowing to pay for the groceries. Yet, since 2010, inflation has pushed up wages in nominal terms, and, as a result, people pay more of their income in tax. The median full-time wage salary earner now earns $73,000 a year and is in one of the highest tax brackets. A minimum wage worker can face a marginal tax rate of 30 percent. Fortunately, we sorted that a couple of weeks ago, and, at the end of July, that will come into effect. We want people to keep more of the money they earn.

People’s individual and family circumstances differ widely, and if you haven’t yet availed yourself, may I encourage you to check out our tax calculator. Analysis from Treasury shows an estimated 727,000 households will benefit from at least $75 a fortnight. That’s about $150 a month—

Hon Peeni Henare: Missing $100.

RYAN HAMILTON: —$150 a month, and that would be enough to take your missus out on a hot date, I reckon. You take your partner out for a date—and may I recommend a couple of restaurants, Mr Speaker? If you’re in Hamilton East, you can go to Thyme Square Restaurant or Sage on Grey Street and keep the flame alight in that romantic love light. You might want to take your kids out tenpin bowling and get an ice cream at Duck Island. Or it’s an extra kilogram block of cheese, bread, milk, meat, and chicken, nourishing New Zealand - raised protein, sports uniforms, or a McChicken after netball with your grandparents who came and watched. We have heard that some people say that tax relief only benefits the well-off, but we know that’s simply not true.

Tax relief in this Budget puts $3.7 billion a year back into the pockets of New Zealanders. This tax relief is fully funded—

Scott Willis: And $3 billion to landlords.

RYAN HAMILTON: —fully funded. Did you not hear my first part on landlords? It’s probably your mum or your dad or your granddad.

I’m going to jump down to one of the other myth busters, because we’ve put a significant investment in law and order in this Budget. And again, why? Because of the context. I didn’t understand—I still struggle—why Labour said, “Let’s reduce the prison population by 30 percent.” I just couldn’t work it out. So, like all non-academics, I googled it. In the New Zealand Herald on 19 September 2023, former Minister Kelvin Davis was quoted: “When we became government at the end of 2017, our prisons were bursting at the seams … That was a trajectory the New Zealand public would never accept, so we set a goal to reduce the prison population.” They didn’t set a goal to reduce the impacts of crime or the causes, just to reduce the prison population.

Asked if today’s pivot, because remember then at the last minute, last year, the Labour Party reduced that—they removed that. Asked if today’s pivot was because of criticism linking the reduced prison population to increased crime, Hipkins replied, “Our overall goal here is to reduce offending in the first place.” But it’s a little bit too late. So our Government has committed to cracking down on crime and keeping communities safe so people can go about their lives in peace. In Budget 2024, we’re investing $2.9 billion in restoring law and order, including $497 million of reprioritisation, which was savings from the existing Budget.

This Budget delivers on the commitment made in the National - New Zealand First coalition agreement to add 500 additional front-line police officers. An investment of $226 million will fund their recruitment and retention and ensure they are properly equipped to do their job. A further $425 million will support front-line policing, including boosting police and purchasing vehicles. Our Government always backs the police. The Government’s commitment to restoring law and order means ensuring there are serious consequences for serious offenders. As previously announced, Budget 2024 will invest $1.9 billion in more front-line corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, including an expansion of Waikeria Prison. The Budget also invests $69 million to address serious youth offending, including a military-style academy pilot and continuing the fast-track youth offending programme run by Oranga Tamariki and Police. This is exciting.

In conclusion, I will just summarise a few of our key Budget things. If I haven’t already mentioned, with your tax relief, you’re welcome to come to Thyme Square Restaurant or Sage on Grey Street, Hamilton East. In fact, an offer to members of the Opposition—in fact, anyone in this House, if you come before 31 July, I’ll throw in a free glass of wine. Compliments. They’re not going to vote for me. Tax relief for hard-working New Zealanders: our tax reforms aren’t just about numbers; they’re about putting more money into your pocket. Imagine that extra coffee or a few more groceries. Picture a nurse comforting a patient, a teacher inspiring young minds, or a police officer patrolling our streets. These are the heroes we’re backing. Hospitals, schools, and law enforcement agencies will receive targeted funding to enhance services where they matter most. This is tax relief for the squeezed middle.

How about our top-up to the multi-year capital allowance of $7 billion so we can invest in the infrastructure needed for future growth and resilience? I’m so proud to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you for this opportunity to speak on this particular bill. And I want to acknowledge the member Ryan Hamilton for his kind offer for restaurants that one might find in Hamilton for people to visit. Well, I can tell that member that what he won’t find in Hamilton is a Super Rugby championship. That was won by the Auckland Blues, and we’ll just leave that one there.

But what I’d like to say about this particular bill is it does something that I like to say is “signed, sealed, and not delivered”. I want to acknowledge Dr Cheung, and why I want to acknowledge him is he did a very good job of not reading the National Party research group lines but he made an effort to quantify the investment in health. And while I commend that member for the statistics that he threw out into the House this evening, I want to just square off a couple of my own statistics with respect to health and what I perceive to be a lack of investment in this particular Budget on matters, in particular, of Māori health and rural health.

During the urgency that was had to take apart the Pae Ora legislation in the end of February of this year, the health Minister guaranteed this House that business per usual will continue after the Budget and into the next financial year for Māori health providers and rural health providers. That was a challenge that we put to him at the time. What we’ve seen in the Budget—and I acknowledge Mr Cheung and his statistics with respect to emergency wait rooms. While just over 70 percent of those in rural areas around the country will see their local Māori health provider and local health provider, they will not see a continuation on the funding that will support them to have outreach into those communities. I’m afraid we are going to need more money in those emergency departments because the health services that can stop families from ending up in the emergency department are not found in this Budget. And that is an absolute travesty.

That means that, for places like the Bay of Plenty, where Te Puna Ora o Mataatua have made it clear that this Budget has neglected to see the work that they do in order to stop families, both Maōri and Pākehā, ending up in the health system, where we don’t want them to be—where that is is in the emergency department. Let me be very clear for members on that side of the House: what many Maōri refer to as the emergency department, we call it the departure lounge because more often than not—and the statistics prove it, for Maōri who end up there—it’s already too late. That tells us then that the primary healthcare they need in their communities is not being delivered. And what this Budget has told those communities is there is no money for those initiatives that serve those communities well. It will continue to see the life expectancy of Maōri to be significantly less than those of non-Māori descent.

One of the other ones that Māori and non-Māori health providers are mentioning in their analysis of the Budget is when we look towards the diabetes numbers in this country. Yes, Māori and Pacific people are overrepresented in those particular statistics. An increasing number of our Indian community are finding a huge spike in those who are impacted and affected by type 2 diabetes. Service providers around this country who don’t have dialysis services in those particular regions have made it clear in their analysis of this Budget that they will not have the services to be able to provide the kind of support that these people so desperately need in the region.

What’s very clear to me is that this particular Budget and this particular bill and the details within it make a case for wrong decisions and make a case for a Government that had an opportunity to go one way but instead chose to go backwards, chose to take funding, and chose to take initiatives off the table and in the hope that they can fool the New Zealand public with a tax break. Well, the public aren’t that silly. When they get on to that calculator that’s been championed by the other side of the House, they’ll see that there is a pittance for them at the end of the week. But what they’ll also realise, too, is that many of the services that they relied upon have been stripped. Those services have been taken away, and now the cost for them to receive those services will go up, which means those tax breaks will mean bugger all, if anything at all. I do not commend this bill to the House.

Those bills are set down for third reading immediately.