Appropriation (2025/26 Estimates) Bill

It’s been nearly a fortnight since Budget 2025 was delivered by the Minister of Finance, the Hon Nicola Willis, and what a wonderful, fantastic Budget it was. It was a Budget built on the clear strategy of going for growth and getting New Zealand’s economy growing and thriving again.

That has been the cornerstone of this coalition Government’s attempts to get New Zealand back on track. It’s a Government that is determined to encourage investors, entrepreneurs, business people, tradies, farmers, and anyone that wants to have a go to grow our economy and get it going, to employ people, to have a thriving and growing economy. It was a responsible Budget, responsible management of money, of taxpayers’ dollars, and a focus on the areas that matter to New Zealand. And it was a Budget that is designed specifically to unlock opportunities for more business growth, for communities, and for families—a relentless approach and a focus on that growth.

I could spend a very long period of time talking about aspects of the Budget that are so good, but I just want to focus on one matter in particular that I think is going to have a dramatic positive impact on the economy of New Zealand and that is going to have huge beneficial help and assistance to farmers, to tradies, and to business people up and down the countryside.

What am I referring to? I’m referring to the Investment Boost scheme. It’s a great programme and it’s a policy that is designed to make it easier for business people, whether they be farmers, tradies, small-business people in the beautiful Coromandel, for instance, who want to deduct immediately a 20 percent tax deduction on the investment and purchase of new capital equipment for their businesses. It’ll allow those tradespeople, those business people, to make that decision. And, boy, haven’t they been making those decisions quickly.

Now, in the week following the Budget, I had an opportunity to visit the nearly as beautiful as Coromandel electorate of the Wairarapa with the very hard-working local member of Parliament, Mike Butterick. We were literally a couple of days after the Budget and we went to see a number of local business people, and heard some great stories about how the local economy in those parts of the Wairarapa that the member worked so hard to represent in this Parliament are doing. For instance, we spoke to one business person. It was a local Mitre 10 franchise actually, a relatively young new owner of this franchise—keen, enthusiastic, growing the business—and he told us spontaneously that as a direct result of Investment Boost he was going to go out and buy a new van for his business, a new delivery van as a direct result of Investment Boost.

We spoke also to a local restauranteur who told us that actually the hospitality business had been a bit tough at Masterton, but she was struggling through and she was able to tell us another example of how Investment Boost was helping her business. Now, it turns out that in her restaurant, she’s got a series of refrigerators out the back, as restaurants often do—of course they do—and she told us that there had been a couple of condensers in these refrigerators that needed replacement, and she’d been nursing them along by just gassing them up for the last year or so. But Investment Boost had given her the confidence to go out and buy three new refrigeration condensers, and that’s an obvious benefit of Investment Boost.

So there you go—just a couple of examples of how good a scheme that was. Now, those examples will be reflected and replicated up and down the countryside, and certainly there will be cases happening in the Coromandel electorate that I have the pleasure and the privilege of representing in this House, because in the Coromandel electorate, just like Wairarapa, there are small-business people, large businesses, farmers, tradies who will be benefiting from that. So I’m really looking forward to seeing the impacts and the results that Investment Boost will have across the country.

But it will be ultimately real people—individuals, families, local communities—that benefit most from Budget 2025. And, of course, the underlying theme of Budget 2025 is economic growth. That’s not only the theme of this Budget this year but it’s the theme that this Government, this coalition Government, has been pushing right since its establishment exactly halfway through the parliamentary term that we are now at.

I want to spend just a minute or two talking about some efforts that are happening in my portfolio area of commerce and consumer affairs in terms of growing our economy, because the commerce and consumer affairs portfolio is part of the broader mosaic of Government portfolios that are designed to focus on economic growth. Recently, a package of three pieces of legislation in my name came before the House, and I’m pleased to report that all three received a positive first reading and have now gone for consideration to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. The three bills are the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill, the Financial Markets Conduct Amendment Bill, and the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill. Now, that might sound to many people as being quite a lot of words, but those three bills in collaboration work together to create a more open, encouraging, and positive economic environment.

I talked about these bills at length when they were introduced, but they are in their essence about getting the delivery in terms of a growing economy that our country so desperately needs. For instance, they’ll make it easier for ordinary Kiwis just to get finance when they need it, to borrow some money. That could be to grow their business or maybe it’s some finance they need in their personal life to fund a renovation of a home or something like that. Or just the kind of money that sometimes people need to borrow for a personal loan as well. It will mean that these pieces of legislation will assist New Zealanders just to get things done—just to get things done—because that’s what this Government is all about. And, of course, much of the red tape that currently binds and inhibits so much of what happens in New Zealand will be further eased by the passing and the passage of these three pieces of legislation.

So, just to recap, the main changes from these pieces of legislation are pretty simple really, but one of the things we’re going to do is beef up the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) and it will be the FMA that is given the tools and power it needs to effectively ensure compliance and to protect consumers. It’s a good common-sense change that New Zealanders will benefit from. And then we’re going to remove unnecessary personal liability because senior managers and directors will, when these bills are passed, no longer face personal liability for compliance failures. What’s going to happen is that the responsibility is going to sit with the businesses where it firmly and squarely should sit in the first place.

Then we’re going to streamline a range of licensing requirements. Financial service providers won’t need to any longer hold multiple overlapping conduct licences, and that’s going to reduce duplication, it’s going to reduce fees, it’s going to reduce compliance costs, and ultimately, it’s another step forward in removing some of the red tape that binds our economy unnecessarily. We’re going to improve the dispute resolution services. We’re strengthening the financial dispute resolution scheme so that Kiwis can have confidence in a fair and effective and supportive resolution service when and if they should need it. And then, of course, we’re going to have a fairer, more proportionate approach to non-disclosures.

Financial regulation—it might sound like a dry subject to many people, but I can assure people listening at home that it is exciting and that it is helpful to us. Budget 2025 is going to help New Zealanders in a way that many are yet to firmly discover. But these pieces of legislation help form that mosaic that is going to provide growth in our economy, stability in the future of New Zealand, not just for us but for future generations.

As we continue this debate, I know that colleagues on my side of the House are going to continue to proclaim and acknowledge the great work that Nicola Willis, our finance Minister, has done in bringing together a Budget in what are very challenging economic times. She’s done a great job. She’s done a great job and I and my colleagues across the coalition Government support her. We think she’s doing an excellent job and we commend this Budget to the House.

This is a split call. I call the Hon Megan Woods.

Spare a thought for Scott Simpson. He was the first speaker putting up after the polling came back that the National Party’s obsession with Labour wasn’t playing out for them. The memo went out: “Don’t create excitement.”, and he executed it beautifully. Well done, Scott Simpson.

Budgets are about choices. Budgets are about the time where Governments lay out, clearly for the voting public of New Zealand, their values and their vision, and this is exactly what happened in Budget 2025 from this Government. This is where Governments have a choice: do they build our future or do they cut? We know what happened in this Budget. This was not a Budget that looked to build our future. This was not a Budget that put out values that showed that New Zealanders’ jobs, New Zealand’s security of housing, New Zealanders’ health was at the forefront of a Government. Instead, we had a Government that showed it wanted to slash spending, hollow out our public sector, and not have regard for how New Zealanders are faring out there.

This will go down in history as a Budget that was paid for by the women of New Zealand. So let’s not make a mistake. Rather than Plunket nurses, hospice nurses, care and support workers, midwives—rather than these women and men employed in these traditionally female-dominated industries cracking on with their pay equity claims, this Government has shifted the goalposts. It has changed the criteria and it has made it harder. But what this Budget did was take away the money put aside for these hospice workers, for these Plunket nurses, for these midwives, for these care and support workers. These are people that are doing it tough, and this Government has used money that was set aside to pay them fairly to finance the Budget that they presented two weeks ago.

And for what? The Government tell us that this is the Government of growth, that this is the Budget of growth, and that their set piece, their centrepiece of this, was Investment Boost. Now, we’ve been very clear on this side of the House: Investment Boost is not something that we don’t think is a good idea, but we have some concerns about the policy in the Government. One is that it is untargeted. The second is that it is uncapped. And our fear is that it is unsustainable—that the Government has not done any modelling about what this could cost. The Government was so surprised that a Minister had to come down to the House during the committee of the whole House to find out if it really was true that multinational oil and gas companies would qualify under Investment Boost. And he was told, yes; the answer is yes.

The growth that is projected by Treasury from Investment Boost is 1 percent over 20 years. So let’s keep this in perspective. This is a Government that thinks it is the Government of growth, and the best they can do—their centrepiece policy—is 1 percent over 20 years. What’s more, wage growth out of that policy: 1.5 percent over 20 years. The changes to KiwiSaver: the advice that Government got was that, actually, there is going to be a suppression in wage growth because of those changes. So this is a Government that is happy to present a Budget that actually stalls the growth in New Zealanders’ wages. It is not creating jobs. In fact, what we are seeing is, actually, that unemployment is projected to grow under policies put forward by this Government. There’ll be fewer jobs; we won’t see wage growth.

So New Zealanders are rightly asking, “Where are the jobs? Where is the training? Where are the apprenticeships?” But, fundamentally, what New Zealanders are asking this Government is, “What is the plan for the future? What is your vision for our future?” Because they are not seeing it. There is a reason why this is the least popular Budget in 30 years, and it’s because it is a Government that is not putting New Zealanders at the centre of its decision making. It’s desperately trying to cling on to power, to keep its coalition of chaos together, and instead it is presenting a visionless Budget that does not take New Zealand forward and does not put the best interests of New Zealanders first.

This is a Budget that is built on the backs of working women. It’s a Budget that only works because that Government has taken away the pay equity claims of thousands and thousands and thousands of workers. They did it under urgency, without notice, taking away pay equity claims. That all happened a few weeks before the Budget, but David Seymour let the cat out of the box when he said of his Minister who introduced the legislation that took away women’s pay equity claims, “I actually think that Brooke van Velden has saved the taxpayer billions. She’s saved the Budget for the Government.” That’s the words from David Seymour on the day that the pay equity legislation was introduced to this House.

They have taken billions away from women, and then they’ve had the temerity to claim that this side of the House is spreading misinformation about pay equity. So let’s get the story straight. First up, they took away the existing pay equity system. There was a system, it was in place, it was working, there were claims working their way through it, people had spent years and years and years working on pay equity claims, and they took that system away and said, “Never mind. You can apply again.” That’s the first thing they did.

Then they scotched 33 existing pay equity claims, took away 33 sets of claims that people had been working on already—claims for 180,000 women. If you think I’m taking this personally, I am. My own two daughters are affected by that. People on that side of the House talked about their daughters in glowing terms. Well, I’m going to talk about my two girls and the girls of working women throughout this country who have lost their pay equity claims, the girls whose mums work in low-paid jobs and who could have gotten a little bit of extra income from a pay equity claim, and that’s gone too.

They took away 33 claims, and then they claimed that, even though they’ve taken away the pay equity system, they’ve put a new system in place and claim that it’s fairer. Well, their new system does not work. An excellent analysis from lawyers in the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions has shown that it’s probably going to be impossible to get a claim through the new system when you apply the new thresholds. And we can tell it’s going to be a lot different because they’ve saved $12 billion. That doesn’t come out of nowhere.

This affects so many women. Here’s the problem with it: under the new system—and it’s shown by teachers in particular—putting a claim forward means you’ve got to compare yourself to someone in a similar industry, so the obvious comparative for, say, primary school teachers is secondary school teachers. The obvious comparative for secondary school teachers is primary school teachers. But secondary school teachers are blocked from taking a pay equity claim—they don’t reach the threshold. Primary school teachers will then compare themselves to secondary school teachers, and no one gets the pay rise.

They also dismissed and treated as ridiculous the claims that people are making, saying that it was ridiculous to compare a librarian to a fisheries worker. No, it is not ridiculous. They both require skills of analysis. They both require skills of seeking information. They both have to deal with difficult people in difficult situations. Let’s talk about social workers versus aircraft controllers. Social workers require degrees. They have to work in complex situations. Aircraft controllers do not. When the skills are compared, those jobs stack up together. That Government has ridiculed the claims made by women, and it has taken away those pay equity claims. So when they talk about misinformation, it is their misinformation—their misinformation that everything is just the same. The reality of the situation is that if there is a $12 billion saving in this Budget, money that has been deployed elsewhere, that money has come in from the backs of working women who just want to be paid fairly.

It’s a great pleasure to rise today to speak about our growth Budget—the amazing work of our finance Minister, Nicola Willis, who, let’s be honest, was dealing with an absolute mess after that side of the House sent us into astronomical debt, a whole lot of wasteful spending, and record inflation. Well, we are getting fiscal management back on this side of the House. We are getting our economy back on track, and that’s why this growth Budget is amazing. It is investing in things that matter, deliver value for New Zealanders, and lift incomes. It is investing in education, health, police, and defence. It is investing in our hard-working families; investing in regional and provincial New Zealand and our rural sector.

There are many areas I could talk about today, but I’m also excited to talk about Investment Boost, because Investment Boost is going to grow our economy. It will encourage businesses to invest in productive assets like machinery, tools, and equipment, and it will encourage growth. Businesses can deduct 20 percent of new assets’ value from their year’s taxable income, on top of normal depreciation. Last week, I was out, in our recess week, in the mighty Hawke’s Bay, in the fruit bowl of New Zealand, visiting many of our incredible businesses. Many of our businesses are so happy to see Investment Boost. They’re so happy that we are backing business once again, so that they can create more jobs and opportunity.

Let’s take our Hawke’s Bay apple industry, for example. After everything that our growers have been through after Cyclone Gabrielle, they have bounced back. They have shown resilience, and, for the first time ever, the apple industry is going to surpass $1 billion. For six years, under the Labour Government, they never ever got there, because of the infliction of red tape and the restriction of growth. Well, we are saying now, “Let’s grow the apple industry, let’s grow the jobs, and let’s grow the opportunity with our growth Budget.” And it’s not just apples; it’s kiwifruit—up to $5 billion. The red meat sector, our dairy industry—record pay-outs over $10, because we’re backing primary industries and the backbone of our economy, which is what drives our economy here in New Zealand.

Look, it’s not just about our primary sector and our apple industry. I was also out at a cafe in Hawke’s Bay last week, getting a coffee, and the cafe owner said to me, “Thanks for Investment Boost. It is just such a fantastic policy. I was thinking about opening another cafe, but I was in doubt. This has given me incentive and motivation.” He said that Investment Boost would now help with the purchase of the assets that will result in him employing 10 more people. He will pay rent, he will buy products, he will buy food, and he will support many businesses and many families across Hawke’s Bay. This is why we need to encourage investment. It’s good for growth, and it’s good for Kiwi families.

Cyclone recovery is another fantastic area of this Budget. I’d like to touch on the funding boost that has been given to the cyclone recovery and the rebuild in Hawke’s Bay, because 2½ years after Cyclone Gabrielle, we’re still rebuilding in Hawke’s Bay. Just a few months ago, I was actually out at the Kererū Gorge. This community had been cut off for over two years, so having that road and that bridge reopened just meant so much to that community. That is why we need to invest in resilient infrastructure that is going to build communities once again. We’re seeing a $7 billion infrastructure investment in this Budget. Last year’s Budget invested $1 billion into recovery and resilience projects across Hawke’s Bay, to those areas that were hit by Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland anniversary weekend floods. We remain committed to rebuilding lives and neighbourhoods, so this Budget provides $219 million in additional funding to get the local roads across Hawke’s Bay repaired and moving again.

We understand that resilient infrastructure is what drives our economy forward, and just while I’m touching on that, I will also touch on our four-lane Hawke’s Bay Expressway, which is the first road of national significance to start. In fact, we just had our amazing Minister of Transport in Hawke’s Bay the other day, announcing the second phase of the four-lane expressway—the funding to start the enabling work. We’ve got diggers on the ground, shovels in the ground, and we’re getting going on that four-lane expressway, which is going to get our export products to the port faster, our apples to the port, our wine to the port, our red meat to the port and off to the market, so we can optimise the value out of those products. This is really, really good. We are not just dreaming about hard hats and shovels; we’ve actually got them in the ground and we’re off, we’re doing it. We’re a Government of delivery.

Look, the other area I just wanted to touch on, in the Budget, which I’m extremely passionate about, as a mother of four young children going through our education system at the moment, is the commitment and laser focus that we have on education. Education creates equality, and it’s not about lowering kids; it’s about lifting them up, and lifting them up over that bar. That is why we are targeting and focusing on lifting performance in education. That is why this Budget has the largest boost to learning support in a generation. The Government is delivering on the most significant investment in learning support in a generation, and that is significant for our kids out there who have learning challenges, learning difficulties. We’re investing $646 million to support kids with additional learning needs. That’s a substantial annual increase in teacher-aide hours, building up to over 200 million additional teacher-aide hours per year.

There are learning support coordinators for all schools with years 1 to 8 students, and we’re expanding early intervention services, from early learning through to end of year 1, and there’s an historic overhaul of the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS) funding model to ensure that demand for the service is met with guaranteed funding so that all students with high and complex needs who are verified for the ORS receive the support they need. Early intervention is so important. We must identify this early, so that we can give those kids the support they need—kids with dyslexia, ADHD, autism. They have superpowers in so many ways, but sometimes it’s just not realised. Well, we want to realise their potential so that they can reach their full potential and get the full education they deserve.

Health is another area that I’d also like to touch on in my contribution today. We’re making record investments in health—$5.5 billion for hospitals and specialist services, primary care, community, and public health; $1 billion for health infrastructure. And I’d like to acknowledge our Hawke’s Bay healthcare investment: $94.8 million for an upgrade to our radiology department, which lost accreditation, I might add, under the previous Government; a new cancer linear accelerator machine, which is going to mean so much for so many families who currently have to travel to Palmerston North—they can get that treatment now in Hawke’s Bay—and a 28-bed in-patient unit, which, of course, is going to take pressure off our emergency department and reduce wait times. We are absolutely committed to healthcare in Hawke’s Bay and getting better outcomes for New Zealanders. Also, the 12-month prescription that we added in this Budget is, of course, going to mean a lot. I was actually out at a retirement village on Friday, and that was certainly acknowledged as being a very practical, common-sense measure.

This is what this Budget is about—making some very practical initiatives—and it is growing our economy so that we can get New Zealand back on track.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I’m proud to stand and support a Budget designed to grow the economy instead of growing Government spending, and this Budget is just that. It’s about savings, investment, and enabling growth. It’s not quite as far as ACT would have gone alone, but it’s further than anyone else would go without us. So once again, ACT has saved current and future taxpayers money. But with all respect, there has been a great deal of work across this coalition Government to make sure that New Zealand is put on a direction that will ensure that this country remains a great place to live, going on into the future. Because when the Government reduces spending, there is more for businesses, firms, families, and farms to spend for themselves. It ensures that generations aren’t irresponsibly saddled with debt.

We have done things like Brooke van Velden laying the way with pay equity reforms that have saved the Crown billions. Now, if anyone is interested in going and seeing where pay equity can get you, I suggest you look at what has happened to the Birmingham City Council with UK’s version of those equity claims.

KiwiSaver changes have halved the Government’s contribution and ended subsidies for the wealthiest savers while ensuring that people will still be on track to retirement by having businesses make a higher contribution to their employees.

Additional savings have been found in all parts of the Government, but I think a long overdue reduction in the funding for RNZ is something that we really needed to see because businesses in the free market must be able to respond to and deal with incentives. When your listenership goes down and the trust goes down, perhaps your funding should go down too if you’re not sourcing it from a market and, instead, from the taxpayer.

We have done things that have invested in front-line services in health, education, justice, and defence. They are in the Budget and they are made possible with savings: $164 million has gone to urgent and after-hours care for health, which means less waiting times at A & E. Like my colleague the member for Tukituki Catherine Wedd has just outlined, $140 million has gone to schools for attendance services, and we’re also going in and funding to make sure that special-needs children can be uplifted, as she put it, to make the best for their lives and for their family so they can contribute to New Zealand with a good solid education.

We are making sure that there will be timely justice for victims, with $246 million for courts, from the Minister for Courts, the Hon Nicole McKee, working extremely hard in that space; $103 million for better youth justice facilities and initiatives to break the cycles of crime to get New Zealand children on a path to being helpful, contributing citizens that lift our country up instead of dragging us down. We’ve upgraded Oranga Tamariki facilities and this is what is helping contribute with this. The Hon Karen Chhour is leading some good, solid, heartfelt work in that space. Speeding up the courts is something that is going to lead to better justice.

The shift to 12-month medicine prescriptions is one of those obvious wins. It’s one of those things that’s just sitting on the floor; you just have to pick it up. It’s such an obvious thing to do. New Zealanders don’t need to go and get their prescription renewed all the time, clogging up our healthcare system by having to go in there every three months and have a yarn about your asthma so you can get your new inhaler. That doesn’t help anybody. We’re making sure that this is going to be sorted out.

We’re investing in defence to show that we’re a worthwhile ally in this changing world that is leading to countries with our value system feeling threatened. It’s time New Zealand played its part. ACT’s been campaigning on this for a long time. This coalition Government is delivering, and the Minister of Defence, the Hon Judith Collins, has been doing a great job in that space.

This spending is only possible because we understand that we need to have growth in our economy, and that’s what it’s going towards. We know that growth does not come from increasing the bureaucracy. It comes from getting the bureaucracy out of the way, getting regulation that doesn’t make any sense—otherwise known as red tape—cut, so that New Zealanders can go about producing for themselves and their communities without being tied up in what has always been colloquially called red tape. This is what the Regulatory Standards Bill is going to be doing. As part of the Budget measures, we’re going to be passing a bill that will identify problems, find cost-benefit analysis on the solution—will it actually solve the problem?—and then pass the bill, or at least let New Zealanders know if their politicians are ignoring that advice. This will get things out of the way that currently are sitting in our way. So if you’re trying to build a house and you have mountains of red tape sitting in front of you trying to just get the materials into the country, trying to get the right people with the right skills on the site to complete the work, to go through the anti-money laundering issues and all of those other issues that have built up in New Zealanders’ way over all this time because bad regulation has not been held to account, this is what the Regulatory Standards Bill will do.

Dr Duncan Webb, speaking against this bill, made his objection clear. He warned, “It entrenches property rights as essentially the centrepiece of that Government.” Yes, good; it absolutely should. That’s what all Governments should be doing: entrenching property rights. As Willie Jackson suggested, property rights are some “fringe libertarian perspective”. They are not a fringe libertarian perspective; they are the cornerstone of a liberal society. This country is proudly a liberal society. Liberal societies are how we provide the basis for a free productive country, a free productive society, and a better world. The fact that the Labour Party, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori have hostility to private property explains a lot. It explains why this Government has had to cut back so hard on red tape and regulation and it explains why we need the Regulatory Standards Bill. This draws a line in the sand: no more holding Kiwis back simply because the Government can, instead of good law being done properly.

A 20 percent capital expensing policy, otherwise known as Investment Boost, will let businesses immediately deduct 20 percent for the cost of new equipment, machinery, tools, and anything else like tech that you need in that year of business to get a bit of a fire in the belly of New Zealand business—getting out there and making jobs and making this country a better place.

We’re doing other things. Minister Chris Bishop, with the very notable hard work of Simon Court, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister responsible for RMA Reform, is getting the Resource Management Act out of the way, unlocking the future for housing so that New Zealanders can own a piece of this property-owning democracy.

We’re working in places like conservation. This Government has started on the track of working with hunter-led organisations such as the Wapiti Foundation so that we can have hunter-led conservation—it doesn’t cost the taxpayer a dime and gets better results. That’s the sort of thing that we need to be prioritising as a country: coming together, finding a way to pull things out of the Government bucket and put it in the community bucket, put it in the family bucket, put it in the business bucket. We’re cutting waste and prioritising growth, but we need to go much further. This is a positive step, but we need to go further to get away from a woke State and into a working State.

Other things that we could do in the future—I’ll throw them out as a couple of ideas for anyone to pick up if they’re interested. We need to further condense the size of Government, perhaps some less Ministers and departments and more accountability to the Ministers, therefore, for making the decisions. We can ask more questions about what the Government owns and why. It doesn’t really make sense that the Government should only ever buy stuff; perhaps we should look at the things we no longer need to own. We need to get smarter on health. ACT has floated some ideas about allowing people to take their taxpayer funding to any provider, public or private, that could provide an efficient and better service to them. This is something we should look at.

It’s a lot of positivity coming from this Government. I heard some amazing stuff yesterday. Yesterday, I think a Labour member was heard to say—and I couldn’t quite believe what I heard. She said, “Labour is interested in productivity.” Well, you might say that Labour has begun to swipe right on productivity, but I don’t think you’re going to find a match. Labour has tried putting numbers out in Opposition; I remember 100,000 houses being one of these. So perhaps it’s not a surprise that Labour doesn’t want to put out a fully costed alternative Budget. The former party of the working class wouldn’t want to have its vision put—

Camilla Belich: Where’s your alternative Budget?

CAMERON LUXTON: We’re getting to that, thank you, Helen White.

Helen White: Not me.

CAMERON LUXTON: It wouldn’t want to put out a vision for the country to see because it might shock them. But following the example set by the ACT Party in Opposition, the Greens have put out an alternative Budget. They have put it out and the country has been well served by seeing it because it laid bare the fantasy that the Green Party has as a vision for New Zealand. It’s a balanced Budget, but if you can sleep at night with filling an $88 billion hole by taking from future generations and fuelling the tall poppy dark shadow that’s a yoke that has been strung around this country’s neck for far too long, I hope you can sleep well. It shows Te Pāti Kākāriki are green, they’re just green with envy all the way through. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

It is extraordinary on the back of this Government’s Budget that there’s one word that they have not used. They’ve talked about the Opposition for most of their speeches. They’ve touched on a couple of initiatives. No one has talked about what this Budget does for housing. There is a very simple reason for that—because this Budget completely ignores housing. It cuts $1 billion that would have otherwise gone to ensure people that are sleeping on the street get into emergency housing.

It says a lot about this Government that they would use those that are most desperate and most vulnerable as a way to balance their books. We all know about the $12.8 billion that this Government has taken away from future pay equity claims for women workers. But one thing that hasn’t had that much attention is that this Government deliberately changed the criteria for emergency housing to save money, and they’ve been crowing about it—a billion dollars they have saved. The Prime Minister stood up in the House today and said essentially that they had fixed emergency housing, that they had solved the social housing waiting list. But that doesn’t tell the full story. In fact, it doesn’t tell the story at all. Homelessness is increasing at unprecedented levels: more than 50 percent in Auckland, more than 40 percent in Wellington, and double figure increases around the country.

I was in Rotorua last week. I spoke to front-line providers there alongside my friends and colleagues Jan Tinetti and Willie Jackson. Jan Tinetti and I took a 10-minute walk around the block, and we counted eight homeless people—eight—in the tourist jewel in our crown. This is what we are presenting to the world. This is how we treat our vulnerable people.

What concerns me the most is when front-line providers come to us and they give us examples such as women and children fleeing domestic violence being denied emergency housing. The Prime Minister stood up in the House today and denied that that was happening. So to New Zealanders watching or taking an interest in this, they have a very clear choice. They can believe the Prime Minister who needed numerous Ministers to stand up today in question time and try and deflect from the issue, or front-line providers across the country in Auckland, Rotorua, Wairarapa, Wellington, Canterbury, and many other places who all are saying the exact same thing. This Government is denying people in genuine need access to the emergency housing that they need so that they can fill the hole in their Budget.

Those changes—the new criteria that they brought in—essentially mean that it is impossible for people to meet them, and it means more people on the street, in cars, in tents, and in garages. When their drive to save money goes so far to deny women and children fleeing domestic violence a safe place to sleep, that is disgraceful. It is on each and every single one of them because they voted for this Budget and that Budget is dependent on the savings that they have extracted from denying women workers future pay equity claims and keeping people on the street.

Emergency housing is never the solution to the housing problem, but it is the solution to people sleeping on the street. When we have women and children sleeping on the street we have—in another example in Christchurch, a man was discharged from hospital, denied emergency housing, and readmitted to hospital after complications from sleeping in his car. This is the legacy of this Budget. These are the lengths that this Government has gone to to make it add up because everybody told them that their tax cuts are unaffordable. We’re now in a situation where there are unprecedented increases in homelessness, to the extent where the Wellington City Missioner says it is the worst they have ever seen.

They have room in their Budget—both of them—for tax cuts. They have room to give money to overseas tech giants like Google and Facebook. They have room in their Budget to give money to tobacco companies, and they have money to give landlords a tax cut, but they don’t have money to keep kids off the street. What is the most egregious of all is they’re denying it when everybody else knows that that’s not the case.

This is supposed to be a growth Budget. I ask people in this House and people watching to think about who will see that growth, who will prosper under this Budget. I want to talk specifically about a portfolio I have, which is family and domestic and sexual violence, because it’s a pretty harsh lens to look at anything.

We have a Budget that has decided that it will stand on women’s wages. We had a systemic issue where we knew that women had been discriminated against, and we were trying to put that right as a society. So we had made a deal with them: don’t sue for discrimination that has happened for many years; instead, we’ll do this deal with you where we’ll negotiate claims so that you can have your wages increase over time. Many of us have got mothers who went through that experience, and grandmothers. My grandmother was a librarian. Her husband was pretty violent. My mother saw stars as a kid because she was hit that many times. And she was a librarian—she would have been on something like 70 percent, I think, of the wage of a man at that time, by law. We’ve moved a long way from that, but we’re going back now. The same trap exists for women on low wages. I absolutely believe in high wages as a fundamental of our society. It gives people freedom. It takes them out of violent situations. What this Government did was compromise a movement towards that kind of freedom to pay for tax cuts for landlords. That’s what it did this year.

Now, I want to talk about another couple of changes I’ve seen. One really disturbed me when we were in urgency, and that was a decision that people who got the accommodation supplement should have to account for anyone who was a boarder. So they would lose $98 a week when they had a boarder. If I have a boarder, I’m allowed—and the tax department accepts this—to have that money because it helps me make ends meet. This Government came in in a cost of living crisis and it said “We’re gonna help you.” In fact, what it’s done is our lowest paid workers lose 98 bucks a week as they attempt to help themselves out of a poverty trap. That’s what it’s done. That’s a lot of money to families. Now, when Carmel Sepuloni asked in the committee stage about what happens if you’ve got somebody in who’s got a violent relationship and you’re charging them a pittance to come and live with you, they’re your boarder—what happens there? There wasn’t even an answer. That’s the kind of help, as a community, we give people, that actually is about a sense of community and a value. And there was no room in that legislation for a human act of kindness. There was no room for what actually happens in many parts of New Zealand—acts of generosity by one family to another. And that shows the priorities of this Government.

So I ask you: who will prosper when we actually entrench these situations? My colleague has just talked about his alarm about people now sleeping in cars or staying in violent relationships, because they can’t get out, because the gateway to emergency accommodation has closed. The Government congratulates itself that, in fact, there are less people in emergency accommodation. There are less people there because women in violent relationships are seen as having contributed to their situation and they are not able to get in the gateway. That is inhumane. That is a dreadful place to start, and I ask you: who will prosper, who will grow, what will grow? Because violence will grow. Violence will grow under this Budget and that blood will be on the hands of this Government.

Thanks, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this debate on our Budget. We have just heard from the Opposition, who, frankly, are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of New Zealanders. They underestimate the intelligence of constituents throughout the country, and I wonder if it’s because they don’t have constituents, because they no longer have a bunch of electorate MPs to get out around this country on a daily basis and actually engage with New Zealanders.

I believe in the intelligence of New Zealanders. I believe in the intelligence of people to understand that budgeting is not about a lolly scramble and that budgeting is not an aim to spend as much of their money as we possibly can. I believe that New Zealanders understand that budgeting is a process of looking at what you have and determining how you are going to spend it well, and New Zealanders know that that side of the House have no idea how to spend money well.

It’s all well and good for them to get up and question the decisions that are being made, quite frankly, by this side of the House with thought and consideration to ensure the betterment of this country. It’s all well and good for them to stand up and pontificate about how they would spend money, but let’s remember that in this Budget, we are spending more on interest than on justice, police, and corrections combined because that side of the House increased debt in this country by $100 billion in six years.

I wouldn’t want to take a math lesson from that side of the House, let alone try and understand anything to do with what budgeting actually means. We heard the worrying words from our friend who’s worried in Wigram, and I understand why she’d be worried in Wigram, because New Zealanders understand that budgeting is a process. It’s about making decisions and determining how we spend money well, how we spend money to get results, and how we spend New Zealanders’ money—taxpayers’ hard-earned money—to ensure that this country is a better place. Labour’s legacy—and for a long time, we’re going to be able to talk about this because it’s going to take a long time to pay off the debt that they created. That will be their legacy, and for Budgets—hopefully, not forevermore, but certainly for a decade, several decades, or more—we will have to speak about their view of their underestimation of the intelligence of New Zealanders.

Before I go on to speak about two policies that I particularly want to touch on today, I just want to speak about two things that Labour is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of New Zealanders on. First of all, it is pay equity, and, again, this afternoon we’ve heard this confusion between equal pay and pay equity. Literally, the member was talking about how one of their forebears earned 70 percent of what a male in the same role would have earned. That is something we call equal pay, and that is something that the National Government sorted out in 1972. Pay equity is about ensuring that men and women in comparable industries earn the same, and the system that that party put in place while we told them that they were getting it wrong had created something that wasn’t just about pay equity; it was about a system to enable negotiation on a whole range of issues, which was creating an unmanageable cost for this country. Let’s get it back to focus on what we are happy to support, and that is pay equity.

Secondly, they’re trying to tell us that if you’ve got a boarder, you should just be able to pocket the money and not be accountable to the taxpayer for that money. New Zealanders understand that budgeting means looking at what you get and working out how you spend it. The Government must be accountable for how we spend taxpayers’ money, and New Zealanders—they don’t want us just throwing money down the drain. They don’t want us throwing it around without accountability and certainly, from what I’ve been told by my constituents as I’ve gone around the electorate post-Budget, they are comfortable with us ensuring that every dollar is accounted for.

One of the keys that came out of the Budget was Investment Boost, and I’ve had the opportunity over the course of the last couple of weeks to speak with a whole range of businesses and business people who are clear that they are going to leverage the value that this policy creates for New Zealand. Surprisingly enough for, probably, my colleagues on the other side of the House, the first business that I’m going to speak about is an early childhood business. The owner of that business said to me, “Carl, do you know what? We are going to use this to bring forward the upgrading of the technology in our centre.” It’s not just farmers and it’s not just manufacturers that are going to benefit from Investment Boost; it is the likes of that early childhood business, and it’s the likes of the landscaper who said that they’re going to buy a digger. They’re not going to hire it any more. They’re going to buy it, and they’re going to be more productive as a result. It’s about farmers upgrading their tractors. It’s about firms like the one that said to me that they’re buying a new crane in order to ensure their building activity is happening faster.

Last Thursday night, I went to an event in Palmerston North: the chartered accountants annual awards. I was introduced as the local member of Parliament in Palmerston North because they don’t know who their member of Parliament is because that individual is probably never there, and they said to me on Thursday night in Palmerston North that the phone was going off the hook with clients wanting to understand how they could use this to ensure the spending of money. I want to acknowledge my friend who became a fellow that evening, as well: Luke McCleay, a chartered accountant in Palmerston North. I just want to acknowledge his fellowship and his becoming a Fellow of the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand on Thursday night, when, as I say, I was introduced as the local member of Parliament.

I received this text that afternoon, as well. It said, “Afternoon, Carl. The Budget looks great. The depreciation bonus will be a game-changer. There is potential for about half a million dollars of capital investment in our business alone, so this will definitely incentivise the spending for growth nationwide.”, and, at the end of the text, it had a thumbs-up emoji. New Zealanders understand the value of Investment Boost.

Lastly, I want to take an opportunity to speak about the impact of the significant increase in spending in education. For six years, the members on that side of the House talked about learning support, the challenges in learning support, and the problems in learning support, but did they do anything about it? No. Did they understand how to solve the problem? No, they did not. It took a Minister on this side of the House to get the Ministry of Education to go through 26,000 lines of spending—the first time that the Ministry of Education has been asked to do that. Surprise, surprise, it took a Government that was looking at taxpayers’ money and ensuring that outcomes were achieved for every dollar to go through 26,000 lines of Government spending on education and ensure that money would be spent in a way that achieved outcomes for our kids.

We have now had the single largest increase in learning support in a generation. It’s a fundamental change in how we care for students and for kids at school in the learning journey they are going on, because we are making sure that budgeting is what budgeting is about—looking at where the money is coming from and spending it in a wise way to get an outcome.

New Zealanders are sick of having the wool pulled over their eyes by that side of the House, who are trying to convince them that they know more about budgeting than New Zealanders do. I have trust in New Zealanders. I commend this Budget to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise as the member of Parliament for Southland to speak on this. Anyone who’s ever run a household knows that you need to run a budget, and to run a budget, you need to make decisions about how you’re going to spend your money, and this is a very good Budget, as it balances the New Zealand taxpayers’ funds in a very considered and careful way in a challenging domestic and geopolitical environment.

This Government inherited a structural deficit from the last Government, and the debt that the last Government had racked up had tripled in their time in power to the point that the payments on the interest alone were more than what New Zealand’s paying for police, for corrections, for the Ministry of Justice, and for customs. That is the picture of what this Government walked into, and this Budget is focused on two things, primarily.

One is growing the economy. Why is it growing the economy? It is growing the economy so we can pay for the public services that New Zealanders need—for education, for health, for the Defence Force, for corrections, for the Ministry of Justice, and much more—all of the things that New Zealanders want to see in their country. But we need to have our economy growing in order to do that.

A key part of this is Investment Boost, which is a tax incentive that’s all about getting businesses to be ambitious, to invest in growth, and to invest for growth. It’s already in force now. It lets companies write off 20 percent of the cost of new machinery, tools, and equipment. This is because the Government wants to encourage upgrades that drive productivity. We want—and this is whether you’re a farmer, whether you’re a hairdresser, whether you’re a restauranteur, whatever business you’re involved in—businesses to invest. We want to have more haircuts and less paper cuts. We want to drive economic productivity and less regulatory overload, and that is what this Government is all about.

But it’s not just that. In addition to focusing on growing the economy, this Government has also looked at some of the structural issues across New Zealand and has made significant investments. For example, there’s $447 million of new funding to support increased access to primary care, including urgent care and after-hours services across New Zealand, including in my electorate and surrounds. For example, there’s new daytime urgent care services in provincial cities and towns, including Invercargill, Gore, and Alexandra. Over the next two years, improved services will be rolled out to rural communities in places like Balclutha, Lumsden, Roxburgh, and more. And that’s not all. There’s a $5.5 billion boost for hospitals and specialist services, which is another significant investment in health, and that’s an example of what New Zealanders want to see.

But it’s not just health but also education. This is a Government that is making a historic focus on education, unlike that last Government that had a Prime Minister who before that was an education Minister and, frankly, allowed our education system to slide.

Sam Uffindell: Abysmal. Appalling.

JOSEPH MOONEY: And it was, as Mr Uffindell, my colleague says, “appalling”. But this Government has taken an absolute laser lens on fixing this and making sure that the future for New Zealand kids is going to be a bright one, because they will understand how to read, they will understand mathematics, and they will understand how to engage in the society that is changing rapidly. Education is a big focus.

In addition to all the work that the Government’s already done on embedding structured literacy, structured mathematics, and more in schools around New Zealand to ensure that all kids can read and all kids can understand functional mathematics, education got a historic lift in this Budget with a $646 million boost for learning support. That is the biggest in a generation. I just want to pause there for a moment—a $640 million boost for learning support, the biggest investment in a generation.

Now, I know this is incredibly important. Having visited many of the schools in my electorate and talked to many principals and many teachers and many parents and many students across schools in my community—and mine is one of many reflected across New Zealand—that learning support will make a huge difference to the children who need that support, but not just to them; it will make a huge difference to the teachers who need to deliver that support and need to manage those classroom environments for other kids who can be disrupted by children who aren’t engaged and don’t fully understand how to express themselves properly or how to engage with the learning properly and, therefore, become disengaged from the process and disrupt that process.

I say this: for example, a few years ago, I visited one school in a place that was a more deprived community in my electorate. It was at the end of a long day, and there had been one student who had disrupted their classroom, and they disrupted it to such an extent that the entire school had been disrupted. I remember talking to the principal and teachers, who were in tears. They really cared about that student who had caused the disruption but also about all the other students who had been disrupted. This learning support will make a really big difference to a lot of people’s lives, and it’s something that I think we can be really proud of, and I would like to hear the Opposition actually recognise the incredible work this Government is doing in that space, but I’ll leave that to them.

It’s not just that, though; this Budget is leaning into efforts to help other vulnerable Kiwis. For example, there’s a $700 million investment to bolster Disability Support Services. I’ll say it again: a $716 million investment to bolster Disability Support Services. In addition, there’s a $275 million allocation for social-investment initiatives to improve the lives of vulnerable New Zealanders, including the creation of the Social Investment Fund. Not just that, there was a $774 million fund in response to the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in care—something that has been in train for a very long time and that this Government is taking real steps to address. That’s to address the needs of vulnerable New Zealanders. There’s also money that’s been distributed to women’s refuges, including ones in my electorate and close by in Invercargill and Gore. That funding will provide advocates with mental health and addiction training and advisory support from clinical specialists so that local clients can access services more efficiently. And there’s more than that. There’s also the $480 million to support police on the front line, because we need security in our communities, and police perform an incredibly important role in providing it.

I’ll just touch on the education sector—just two more points. There’s also $100 million of new funding for extra maths support for those who need it in schools. So there’s $100 million of extra new funding. And not only that; this Government’s also supporting teachers, recognising the important role they play, and has put aside $53.3 million of funding to cover the fees and levies for teachers for the next three financial years, so that’s one less thing they have to focus on. We want them to focus on our kids and getting the best future for our children, so the Government is covering those fees for teachers.

It’s not just that; in terms of that broader security picture, we are in a changing geopolitical world, and it’s a very challenging one, and we’re fortunate to have the Hon Judith Collins as the Minister of Defence in a big moment in our history and a big moment in global history. There’s a number of investments that have been made in defence, a historic investment into defence in New Zealand, which has been long needed. It’s fantastic to see this happening, including a $660 million investment to improve core Defence Force capabilities across air, sea, land, and cyberspace, which is enormously important.

I just want to encourage everyone to really lean into this. I’m fortunate to represent a region which is a big contributor to the economy of New Zealand. Southland alone produces almost 12 percent of pastoral exports in the country, and if people lean into this Government’s approach around Investment Boost, there is an opportunity to grow that even further. It’s also hugely important in the tourism sector. One in three tourists visit Queenstown alone. We’ve just had an announcement today as well about the Government investment into Milford Sound / Piopiotahi, which is one of the iconic places in the world that people around the world think about when they come to New Zealand and wish to come here, and much, much more.

I’m going to take the opportunity to, in this debate, just say a couple more things. We often focus on what’s not working well, but I want to take an opportunity to mention what is working well. While the Minister for Space is also in the House, I will just mention that, last night, we heard from Sir Peter Beck, just pointing out that Māhia, in New Zealand, is the third most frequent launcher of all the satellites on the planet now, behind only the United States and China and ahead of everyone else. That’s quite an extraordinary thing, and that’s the man from Southland who had a wild dream and made it happen in a country that did not have a space sector. I think that’s an opportunity for all of us to lift our sights high, aim for the stars, and we can make it happen.

The next call is a split call. I call Lan Pham. Sorry, Mr Jackson, I understand from the previous Speaker that there’s just been a bit of reorganisation.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Budget 2025 and what we’ve heard today makes it crystal clear that this Government simply have no interest in protecting our environment or securing a basic livable future for our kids. It’s a Budget where they simply forgot to invest in the environment. And if economic terms are the only language that this Government understands, it’s that $133 billion in natural assets that deliver an estimated $11 billion in environmental services to us humans every year. And they actually protect the places, the plants, and the critters that Kiwis know and love. It’s that one thing that literally everything else depends on.

And it makes me reflect that we humans are really a truly bizarre bunch. We’re supposedly this intelligent species with unlimited access to all the knowledge, all the information, the mātauranga, and, dare I say it, if we actually listened to it, the wisdom, and yet here we have this Government blundering on, making all their decisions not based on evidence and knowledge but based on this false economy where short-term profit and trickle-down economics is some kind of Holy Grail. We hear: “Growth, growth, growth, growth, growth” and “Back on track” in ways that are totally blind to the genuine, real human needs in some of our most vulnerable communities; totally blind to the pollutants that we pour into our scarce and precious fresh waterways and our oceans, the microplastics in our bodies, the carcinogens that we put in our food. We’re totally blind to the increasing fossil fuels that we continue to release into the atmosphere, and this is the atmosphere we know is the only one capable of sustaining our very own lives.

The part that I find completely heartbreaking and really infuriating with this Government’s Budget is that they’re choosing to prioritise this ridiculous sugar fix of greed for fossil fuel and tobacco companies and mega-landlords over our kids, over the needs of our women, our grandkids, future generations. And they’re making these decisions right here in Aotearoa in our home, which could be such an incredible place.

This Government is so stunted in their aspirations and vision for an economy for our country that they can’t yet grasp that our only option for sustainable economic growth is actually through a nature-based economy. Just to provide a snapshot of what that could actually look like, accounting firm Ernst & Young did some research into this and they found investing in nature would provide a net benefit to Aotearoa New Zealand’s economy of $270 billion by 2050. Unfortunately, this Government hasn’t heard that at all. We’re not seeing it in any of their decision making.

They didn’t hear it in the science that’s determined that our major climate systems are actually on the verge of collapse. They didn’t hear it when the scientists have been saying that New Zealand’s ocean is warming three times faster than the global average. And they’re too busy just trying to resuscitate our dying fossil fuel industries with $200 million worth of subsidies. They respond to the Department of Conservation’s (DOC) own assessments that they need $2.3 billion to actually protect nature and do their job by cutting the Nature Heritage Fund, cutting Predator Free 2050, saddling DOC with even more responsibilities. And they’re even raiding the waste levy projects which were designed to provide some basic level of protection for te taiao.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Our Green Budget with our green jobs guarantee and expanded Jobs for Nature package was a clear, costed plan for a better world. It was about protecting our oceans, regenerating our forests, investing in our future—a better path was possible.

I just want to carry on the theme of my colleague Lan Pham, because what we have in this Budget is the Government expressing its profound disdain for the progress that has been made in this nation in terms of us upholding the principle of the environment being something valuable to us, of the climate being something that we treat seriously, our commitment to climate science, and of the relationship on which our founding agreement is premised: being vital to the wellbeing of our country.

This is a Budget that has cut, fundamentally, the support for Māori housing, for example, by a full $92 million. It has cut the environment budget left, right, and centre, and it does not take into account—and I speak in regard to the agriculture portfolio—the impact of wilding pines on our primary sector. A measly $2 million to deal with a problem that needs about $100 million, if it was taken seriously, for the good of conservation and for the good of our primary sector.

One of the things we learn when we do the Treaty settlements is that one of the negative consequences of colonialism is the destruction of nature. We see that the loss of land and the vast clearance of forest, the draining of wetlands, was a means by which Māori had their means of sustaining their economy destroyed by colonialism. Not only was the land stolen but the ecosystems of that land were destroyed, the rivers polluted. I live in a place in West Auckland and the Whau River was a frequent place where Te Kawerau a Maki and Ngāti Whātua would go to collect seafood, where the kuaka would fly in such abundance from the Manukau Harbour to the Waitematā Harbour that you could climb to the top of a tree in the middle of winter and literally bat them out of the sky. Such was the abundance of bird life in Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland. Such was the abundance of sea life in the Whau River. The leatherworks down there killed all that, in the Whau River, and that is the consequence—that this side of the House seems to be denying—of colonisation.

Now, another thing that has commonly been spoken of in this House—even today—is this suggestion that if we are to take climate change seriously, we are somehow denying the fact that New Zealand farmers are the most efficient in the world. Now, let’s just speak to this a bit, because at the same time as undermining the environment and undermining Māori and undermining everybody else—and, you know, declaring war on women as well as nature—this Government has—[Interruption] Excuse me, how did you save the Budget by cutting billions of dollars out of the Treasury books if it didn’t come from somewhere? I’ll tell you where it came from: it came from the future wages and salaries of women, and that is the fact of the matter. Learn how to read a spreadsheet.

Now, one of the consequences of this Government’s actions is to invest $200 million in fossil fuels, a direct subsidy to the very industry that is destroying our planet, that is driving the extreme weather events and climate extremities—storms, floods and droughts—that most impact indigenous people, women, children, and farmers.

I just want to clarify a point that was made by the Prime Minister today, because it might be of use to the House. It is this constant myth we hear told, that “New Zealand farmers are the most efficient carbon farmers in the world.” Now, this is not a criticism of farmers—I’m very fond of farmers in New Zealand. But we cannot address the facts of the challenges that we face in terms of climate change if we’re not honest about that situation. New Zealand is a less efficient carbon farmer in terms of per dollar earned from greenhouse gas emissions than Australia. We are a less efficient farmer—it gets worse—than Canada in terms of per dollar earned for agricultural production. We are a less efficient farmer than the United States of America, than every one of the 27 European Union countries. We are a less carbon efficient agricultural producer per dollar earned. It gets worse and worse and worse. We are worse than South Africa, Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Mexico. These—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry, Mr Abel, you’ve run out of time.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an absolute pleasure to be able to speak in this Budget debate. On this side of the House, we’re really excited about Investment Boost, and getting out and speaking to businesses in my electorate of Banks Peninsula has been particularly great in this last couple of weeks, just hearing about some of the opportunities from these great businesses that are in Banks Peninsula.

Investment Boost brings forward the depreciation, and that is absolutely vital, and it will change decision making about investing and capital for businesses. What that means is that businesses will be able to grow and grow their workforce, pay their workers more. It will ultimately lead to a more productive economy. I will mention a couple of the businesses that I know will find innovative ways to deal with this opportunity—one is Argus Group. And I just want to quickly shout out, if I may, to Nathan Hay, who won the leadership award at the inaugural Minister for Manufacturing Awards.

Hon Judith Collins: Very good; excellent.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK: Yes. So it was excellent to see that. Argus have been incredibly innovative in the way that they have changed their manufacturing business. They’ve created a lot of robotics that change the way that their production lines work. That’s the kind of thing that speeds up productivity.

Another incredible business in Banks Peninsula is Chiptech. Now, some of you may not have heard of this business. It’s incredible. They make all of the medical alarms that you may have seen—like yourself, Mr Brewer; you may need one of those sooner than the rest of us. But they allow you to be able to—if you have a fall or have a medical event—contact emergency services. It’s incredible the way that that works, and they have been evolving their business, reinvesting over many years, and now employ 70 people out in Ferrymead in the Banks Peninsula. An incredible business. They are dominant here in New Zealand but also in Australia and the UK. They have sold their products really well, and constantly reinvesting in the productivity of their manufacturing facility has meant that they are able to meet that demand and be really consistent about the quality of their product.

One of the things that they invested in, which was a really cool machine, was a packaging machine and a box folder. So they used to be able to do that with a person manually folding the boxes and they could do a few hundred. But when they got a robot that could take that job, suddenly they could do pallet loads and pallet loads in a day. So there are incredible kinds of opportunities that those businesses, fantastic businesses, in Banks Peninsula will take up.

Another thing that is great about going around and meeting people in the electorate is going to schools, particularly the last week, and hearing a consistent message that I’ve heard, which is that this will be a game-changer. Investment Boost was a game-changer. But when I’m talking to principals and they’re saying this is a game-changer, they’re talking about the record investment in learning support and what that will mean in their schools.

Some of the schools have had no learning support coordinators at all. And even the smallest school, which in my electorate is in Okains Bay, will have a day’s worth of a learning support coordinator to be able to help their young children to be able to develop.

Tom Rutherford: Make meaningful contributions.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK: Absolutely, make meaningful contributions to their development.

The thing that we’ve heard over and over—all of us that are going around the schools—over the last year and a half is about how hard it is for teachers to be able to manage behavioural problems or neurodiverse children that have got challenges in their learning. As Catherine Wedd pointed out earlier, those children have got amazing brains, incredible potential. They think in ways that are different to other people, so they have an incredible contribution that they can make to our economy as well eventually, but they need to have the support.

One of my best friends is a teacher and one of her children was clearly quite autistic and he could not concentrate. He could not get himself together to get to school, couldn’t participate, but through an incredible amount of her own effort but also wraparound services at school he was able to go on and is now doing a mechanic’s apprenticeship. But I know that other children who don’t have that same support don’t have the opportunities that he had. And unfortunately many people will know that in our prison system, it is overrepresented by people who suffer with ADHD and also have never learnt and have lost any opportunity to have literacy.

So these changes that we will be making through learning support, through more than doubling the number of hours for teacher-aides—an incredible number; up to 900,000 hours a year—will be incredible to support those schools.

Tim Costley: $2 million.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK: Yeah, eventually up to $2 million. It’s almost hard to believe that it’s going to be such a huge investment that I think the principals that I’ve been speaking to this last week hadn’t all grasped what it was truly meaning, because it was so significant. So it was wonderful to be able to explain to them the opportunity that that’s going to mean. One of the principals said, “Well, that means that I’ll have a half-day that I’ll be able to dedicate to growing and changing and working on our school.” So these investments will have far-reaching consequences that will ripple for not just this generation but for generations to come.

Another investment that is really an example of us listening to people—and our amazing Minister of Defence has listened to our Defence Force—is that we have made an incredible undertaking to go and really contribute with our partners. So it means that we are able to make those capital investments into the right sort of equipment which will enable our Defence Force—land, air, and sea—to have the capability to contribute. And I know what that’s like, being a veteran, as my colleague Tim Costley is as well. We’ve both been on deployments. We know how incredibly impactful those deployments are. It’s not just for the country that we’re working with; it’s the allies that are alongside us, it’s the other partners. And anyone who’s worked in defence knows that defence ultimately is about trade, because you cannot have stable economic conditions if you do not have a stable security situation. So that’s why we are going to be gradually increasing up to 2 percent of GDP.

Another area that I think is absolutely exciting—

Hon Willie Jackson: Is this ever going to end?

Dr VANESSA WEENINK: Some of my Opposition colleagues are not so excited, but I’m very excited to see that we are increasing the default contributions of KiwiSaver. Now, that is incredibly important. That means that someone who goes through and contributes throughout their life, potentially that will go up to about an extra $100,000. On the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, we heard from the Retirement Commissioner that the most valuable thing we could do as a Government would be to increase the default rate, which we’ve done. We are absolutely making that commitment and it will make an absolute difference over time.

These are the sorts of changes that don’t sound exciting, but for those of us who see behind the scenes and understand that these are actually fundamental changes—as we’re getting out and talking in our electorates—it’s a very easy sell. When we talk about Investment Boost, we’ve been hearing for a long time that people need a little bit of an economic boost to be able to make those decisions to invest. When they’ve made those decisions, ultimately, we know that it will come back and the most benefit will flow to ordinary New Zealanders because of the rise in wages, because general economic conditions are improving and there are more opportunities for everyone. This is a Budget that has been carefully worked out. It’s the right Budget for the right times, and I commend this Budget to the House.

This is a split call. The Hon Willie Jackson.

Well, that’s not what the people are saying. In fact, Talbot Mills, that great company that does polling, said that 33 percent of New Zealanders hate this Budget—hate this Budget. I want to follow up on what my mate over here the Hon Kieran McAnulty said. We went to Rotorua. We were ashamed of this Government. We walked the streets. We saw homeless on the streets. Why? Because they’re taking millions of dollars out of the housing pūtea—$1 billion; $1 billion disappearing out of emergency housing. And all we get is the stupid Minister, “Tick this, tick that, tick this”—and where are the people going? Out on the streets. It is a total disgrace—$1 billion. That side should hang their heads in shame.

Even more—and it hasn’t come out enough, because David Seymour has been dominating the media and it hasn’t come out—$1 billion has gone from Māori; $1 billion of targeted funding. The Minister for Māori Development has let us down. But there has been one winner—one—and that is the de facto Minister for Māori Development, David Seymour. No doubt about it, he has done so well. He has ripped the guts out of Māori funding. Over two years now, $1 billion out of the Māori targeted pūtea. And why? Because this miserable lot in ACT think it’s racist funding—racist funding. But I tell you what, the good old Jim Bolger—he’s a good Nat; he’s a great Nat, isn’t he? What does Jim Bolger say? He says to the Prime Minister to tell David Seymour to shut up. That’s what old Jim said. Oh, I like that Jim Bolger.

Hon Member: Comrade Jim.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Comrade Jim—that’s right. He says, “Shut up, because ACT are encouraging racism in this country.” Wise words from a 90-year-old—

Cameron Luxton: Point of order.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Jim Bolger said it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’ve got a point of order from Cameron Luxton.

Cameron Luxton: Considering the speech that’s just been given, I don’t think it’s appropriate for Mr Willie Jackson to accuse ACT of promoting racism in this country.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Madam Speaker, speaking to—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Look, I don’t need any speaking to the point of order. What we have said in the past, as Speakers, is that we don’t want personal attacks. But it’s OK to call a Government racist, and—[Interruption] I also have a question about the Jim Bolger—was that a quote, Mr Jackson?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yes.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Right, that’s fine. It’s always good to make that clear.

Tim van de Molen: Point of order. The Standing Orders are quite clear that it is not appropriate for any member, party, or Government to be called racist. It’s entirely unparliamentary.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: There have been precedents in the House. I will follow up. Mr Jackson, carry on. Just take care with that word, and I’ll give a ruling on that shortly.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Absolutely. I’ll give Jim a call, Madam Speaker. They’re Jim Bolger’s words—one of the best National Party people around. He’s just said to David Seymour: “Shut your mouth. You’re encouraging racism. We want to work with Māori.” The great Jim Bolger said that, and the National Party know this. Why? Because Jim believes in targeted Māori funding, and so did the old National Party Government. What did this lot do? They got rid of Māori housing—$650 million—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: They got rid of Jim.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: They got rid of Jim, too. We picked him up, me and Jim Anderton. Six hundred and fifty million dollars out of the Māori housing pūtea. They got rid of Māori trades training, got rid of Māori economic funding. Our people out there think you just want to get rid of Māori. I know that’s not true—I know that’s not true—because the Hon Judith Collins supported Māori targeted funding. She was a supporter. She’s ashamed of this ACT lot too. I know that. She lives in Papakura. She works with the people. The old National Party believe in targeted Māori funding. This lot have got rid of important funding that was so dear to myself and Cushla Tangaere-Manuel over here. We saw firsthand what Māori housing does on the East Coast, what it does in Taranaki, what it does in the North—what it does everywhere. And this useless lot, this National Party lot—because of the de facto Minister for Māori Development, David Seymour—buckled to the de facto Minister because the Prime Minister was so weak.

And where are the ACT Party today? You’re seeing the polls. They’re going nowhere—they’re going nowhere. Have you seen the polls? Seymour is going nowhere in the polls. ACT is going nowhere in the polls. All the media in the world and most of the country hates them. That’s just an undeniable fact. Seymour: 3 percent in the polls. ACT—Winston’s got their number. Ha, ha! He’s taken their votes—he’s taken their votes. They’re going nowhere, despite having the most septic, horrible, ugly strategy I’ve ever seen. They’re going nowhere. Aotearoa hates them. It’s a shame, because those two in the corner there are not too bad. But the leader is off to Oxford; he’s had enough. He’s going to Oxford University. We all know what’s going to happen over there, don’t we? He’s going to get smashed in the Oxford debate. That’s what is going to happen. Well, so much for your rotten strategy. You’re going nowhere. New Zealand hates you. Kia ora, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Jackson. Just before I call the next speaker—

Hon Judith Collins: Point of order.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry, point of order, the Hon Judith Collins.

Hon Judith Collins: : Thank you, Madam Speaker. I wanted to wait until Mr Jackson had resumed his seat. If I look at Speaker’s ruling 47/3—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’ve got them right in front of me, Ms Collins. I’m just about to read them out and make—

Hon Judith Collins: Are you?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes.

Hon Judith Collins: Right, thank you. I’ll hold it there just in case.

Thank you. I just did want to read Speaker’s ruling 47/2: “There is a difference between calling an individual a racist and criticising either a policy or a view as being racist. This will leave the freedom of speech, but it will stop people saying that individuals are racist, which I think most members would find offensive.” And 47/3: “If the word ‘racist’ is used in an insulting or demeaning way to any [member] or party, it is out of order. If it is used in a conversational way to describe something, the presiding officer must make a judgment.” So I think, following that, we’ll just be very careful to talk about policies rather than pointing that comment at individual people. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I, like other members on this side of the House, have been following this Budget debate, and what’s really interesting is that Government members seem to use their time talking about us. They seem to use their time talking about us, and you know what? I’m not surprised that that is the case, because they are embarrassed. They are ashamed of what is in this Budget.

Carl Bates was saying earlier that he spent some time in Palmerston North. This was his Budget contribution. Now, I can understand why many people would spend time in Palmerston North, but I certainly can understand why Mr Bates wants to spend time in Palmerston North, because he cannot face his own constituents in his own electorate telling them what this Budget will deliver for them, because it delivers absolutely nothing.

Mr Bates talks about how I wasn’t there at the various meetings of the accountants that he was out at on Thursday night. So I had a look at the diary. Where was I? I was at a citizenship ceremony welcoming many, many families to Palmerston North. Nothing in the Budget for them when it comes to housing or homes. Nothing when it comes to job opportunities. Later in the evening I was at Centrepoint, a wonderful provincial theatre, to see Cringeworthy Boppin’ in the ‘50s! I suggest to many members, actually, go to have a look. Why? Because they need your support, because nothing is in this Budget for arts or cultural heritage when it comes to Palmerston North. So while Mr Bates might be avoiding his own electorate, I suggest he thinks about what his own constituents would be saying were he in his own electorate facing them at a time when people are spending time out and about around the Budget.

This is a Budget that has no focus on jobs, and this really is the modus operandi of this Government. They have demonstrated that through their own Budget at a time where building and construction is doing it tough, where the number of job losses are in the thousands, there is nothing in this Budget that would seek to reverse the change that this Government wants to deliver.

When it comes to health, there is little to no new investment when it comes to facilities in health. We can talk about Nelson and we can talk about Dunedin, but the fact of the matter is that they are an insufficient proposal from the Government as to what was considered and proposed. Since this Government has taken office, the number one issue in my electorate office is health—the number one issue is health. There is little to no investment in this particular Budget that will create and deliver immediate focus on the issues that matter to Palmerstonians. Absolutely nothing.

They have announced a 24/7 urgent care operation. No further details around that except to say that it will be coming from 2027. That is far too late for the people of my community who front up to an emergency department because they cannot access primary healthcare and can’t afford to go and see a doctor when that opportunity does present itself. Health is the number one issue in my community of Palmerston North and there is nothing being delivered in that space for my constituents.

Now, I talked about homes. This is a Budget that does essentially gut investment when it comes to housing, and that is an ongoing basis for this particular Budget—well, it banks on previous Budgets, but that is the way in which things are heading. Previously in this House, I have talked about the observations that many will have when it comes to bollards that are being erected in Palmerston North. Add to that list the deconstruction of homes in areas in my community. There is no faith, no hope for the people in my community, let alone any other communities around Aotearoa New Zealand when it comes to housing opportunities as a result of the Government’s Budget.

Let’s remember who is paying for this Budget. Who are the people who are paying for this Budget? They are taxpayers, yes, but they are also actually hard-working women—women who form the workforce when it comes to Plunket, when it comes to hospice nurses, when it comes to care and support workers, when it comes to librarians, when it comes to those who work so hard. Also, it’s our Pasifika women, women who are often at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to pay, who are being sent a very clear message from this Government that they do not matter. I challenge the Government to think about that. They actually don’t have any Pacific voice in their caucus. There is no Pacific voice in any of the Government caucuses around this. Their demonstration in terms of what they have delivered is a huge way in which it shows that they have a vacant voice—actually, no voice when it comes to that.

This is a Budget that is not delivering for communities. It is not delivering jobs, it is not delivering homes, it is not delivering houses, or health opportunities. This is a particular Budget that has been tagged as one around growth. It is growth in all the negative areas. We’ve seen that over the last week and a bit when we’ve been out in our communities, and I certainly do not support this Budget.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The next few calls have been signalled to me as split calls. I won’t explicitly say that at the start of each call, but they’re all five-minute calls.

Good afternoon, Madam Speaker. Budget 2025: I want to talk to you about some of the recent Budget announcements and about the investment that this Government is making, and the positive impact that this Budget is already having and will continue to have in the Waitaki electorate. I’m talking about announcements like Investment Boost, learner support, rural wellbeing funding, an increase in Working for Families, rates relief for SuperGold card holders, infrastructure investment, and investment in healthcare have all been met with positivity in our electorate. The saying “Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.” is something that this Government understands—unlike the previous Government. They spent not only the pennies but the pounds, and then they went and borrowed so they could keep on spending. This Budget is about being fiscally responsible. It’s not about nice-to-dos or throwing away money and hoping like hell that that money sticks to something. This Budget’s about targeted funding when it can make a real difference. This is about reviewing and reprioritising, where necessary, to get better outcomes.

The CEO of Business South recently wrote to its members saying Budget 2025 can be seen as a measured and responsible response—responsible—to the current economic environment, delivered in context of a Government debt-to-GDP ratio sitting above 45 percent, and that it strikes a balance between fiscal restraint and targeted investment, with several initiatives that are likely to support business confidence with long-term productivity. In the Waitaki electorate, we’re already seeing uptake with Investment Boost, which is a significant move to support businesses to reinvest and grow, with no cap on business size or asset value. I spoke this morning to the team at Barker’s of Geraldine—and those of you who have had the opportunity to try some of their goods, I highly recommend them.

Tim Costley: Great little place. Sweet chili sauce.

Hon Member: Yep. Sweet chili is my favourite.

MILES ANDERSON: Yep. Now, they supply jams, preserves, and pickles to supermarkets across the country. They are currently in the process of expanding their business, and with this expansion comes significant investment in assets. They see Investment Boost as a really positive move.

Other local businesses are also having an increase in asset investment. Te Pari industries tell me that they have seen an increase in interest for their products, and that farmers are making decisions much more quickly with both sheep and dairy systems. Drummond & Etheridge in Oamaru, local farm machinery retailers, saw an immediate increase in sales and a significant increase in buyer inquiry. The National Fieldays at Mystery Creek will be in Hamilton next week, and word on the street is that Investment Boost will be the difference between farmers and tradies keeping their hands in their pockets or taking them out and spending the money on investment and assets, which will increase productivity and returns.

Tom Rutherford: Labour have a stand this year?

MILES ANDERSON: Ha! Who knows? Yesterday, I had the pleasure to meet a group of year 7 students from Five Forks School in North Otago, and a big shout-out to Five Forks School. I was able to bring them into the gallery, where they could witness firsthand what actually happens in the House. While they were here, a colleague of mine, from this side, was talking about the virtues of the recent Budget investment in education, specifically learner support and what that means to students, teachers, and parents. I saw firsthand the positive reactions from the teachers. They nodded in agreement—nodded in agreement, Tim—with every point of benefit that was made on what this investment will actually mean on the ground.

This action, and their visible agreement with what was being said, spoke louder than words. When we talk about on-the-ground investment, this is about making sure that people who need the benefit actually receive it. And Budget 2025 doesn’t stop there. There’s more investment in better health outcomes. Oamaru and Ranfurly will see improved after-hours services as a result of this Budget. In addition, we will soon receive 12-month prescriptions for medications, which will see patients on long-term medications save on extra doctors visits and prescription fees. To wrap things up, the Government’s Budget 2025 investments in things like infrastructure, education, healthcare, and the environment will make for a better life for everybody. It will create jobs, help our communities grow, and just make New Zealand an even better place to live in. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Geez, what a change of pace that was, the last five minutes, because wasn’t it a woeful contribution before that, from Willie Jackson, who’s made an art form out of just throwing stones around his glass house, to Tangi Utikere, who said there’s nothing—he went to a citizenship ceremony and said there is nothing here for these new citizens, and lamented the state of the hospital. Now, we know why Palmy hospital was in such a poor state, after six years of Labour looking after it, and the woeful condition that our—you know, when you think about these hospitals, wind the clock back to 2017, 2016 and there were less than a thousand people waiting for their first specialist assessment. When Labour left Government, that figure was 59,818. So it’s gone from not even a thousand to, basically, 60,000 people waiting under Labour. Elective surgeries went from a thousand to 27,500.

This is the state of it, and for Tangi Utikere to stand there and say, “Oh, there’s nothing for my community in it.”, clearly he hasn’t read the book. If he just picked it up—and he could just read the simple one with, you know, big words and a few pictures if that’s easier. It covers some basic things, like $5.5 billion—$5.5 billion—in new funding for hospital and specialist services in primary care. In Palmerston North alone, that means a new 24/7 after-hours facility. For Levin, in my electorate, that means a new after-hours facility that’s going to go 8 till 8 during weekdays and 9 till 5 on the weekend. That makes a huge difference.

I think of when my daughter broke her arm in Levin and we had to go up to Palmerston North to get help because it was on a weekend. Now, potentially, because of this new funding—thanks to our Government—it means people in Horowhenua can go to Levin from 8 till 8 on a weekday and 9 till 5 on the weekends. That’s huge—that saves an hour of driving each way. It means you’ve got support, you’re close to home. That is fantastic.

There’s also funding for a health shuttle trial in Kāpiti to get you to Kenepuru or Wellington hospital, because sometimes you do have to get to the hospital, and we need the support to make those transport links earlier. I’m really proud that we’re actually delivering things that make a difference.

And do you know what? We were in the House after the Budget; we were here till midnight on Saturday night. The next morning, I was straight up the road and I went to the launch of the new Coastguard shed, the new Coastguard facility at Waikanae Beach. I was talking across the car park in the Waikanae Boating Club—great club; great dinners on a Thursday or a Friday night—and they are setting up a new commercial kitchen. I said, “Did you see the news about Investment Boost?”, and they had, and they were about to buy all the new plant, all the new equipment, for a commercial kitchen, and immediately 20 percent of that value they get off their tax bill at the end of the year and then they still get to depreciate it every single year. This literally is transformational for businesses like this.

I was just talking this afternoon to a company that sells farm equipment, and they’ve got bookings all week for people to go out and demonstrate new four-by-fours and other equipment, because farmers now have the confidence to go and do it. That’s the difference that this Budget makes.

But we also, I think, have to move away from this culture that it all has to be about big spending and “why isn’t there another $5 billion for this and $2 billion for that?” We can’t go down the pathway that we were on for the last six years. We can’t just keep spending money; we have to prioritise it and put it into the right areas.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Oh, wage subsidies? A lot of spent money on wage subsidies.

TIM COSTLEY: And listen, the lady doth protest too much! Here they are all complaining over the other side because they know where this is going. They know what six years of spending and racking up the bills and taking on more debt and more spending with nothing to show for it—they know what that led to. That led to inflation, that led to higher interest rates, higher mortgage rates, higher rents—rents that went up by $185 a week on average. It saw people in emergency hotels, not in homes. It saw people struggling to pay the bills. That’s the pathway that we were on. We have to prioritise our spending.

I would much rather that our policies were targeted on getting young people under the age of 24 off the benefit and into work. I think of programmes that are getting support through Budgets like this, through Ministry of Social Development funding in Kāpiti, training people for the construction sector, that are taking on every six weeks another 12 people into the construction sector, getting them into work. These are people that were on a benefit, now into work. That’s where we want to put our resources, because that’s what leads to the productive economy, that’s what brings growth, that’s what brings opportunity for Kiwis. They don’t want to sit at home. They don’t want to be just left and have debt racked up on their behalf. That debt is real, because it meant that what we were spending on debt was more than we were spending on defence, on justice, on police, on corrections.

This is the kind of plan we need to bring growth to our country, to bring opportunity for Kiwi families. This is a great Budget, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, Budget 2025 is always going to be known as the Budget that threw women under a bus—threw women under a bus—because they had their pay equity absolutely ripped away from them and that was used to offset the rest of the Budget. It is poor economic management from the other side of the House, poor economic management from this Government, who used women to offset their Budget—women who had been waiting a long, long time for their pay corrections, women who had worked really, really hard to work in this area.

This Government, that Government, just ripped it away from them. And what did they rip it away for? They made a choice. They made a choice that women aren’t worth as much as giving tax breaks to tobacco companies, to landlords, to fossil fuel companies, and to tax cuts. Even when they got told that all of those things should not be done and we did not have the economic capacity to do it, they did it anyway, and they used women to make that choice so that they could put in what they wanted in this Budget. Women were just expected to sit down and be quiet.

When I hear that side of the House saying, “Oh, isn’t it great that we’ve got this and that farmers can do this and buy this?” Well, what about at the expense of women? Do they feel proud at the expense of women? That is shameful, absolutely shameful. We have absolutely got a Government in this country at the moment who are absolutely willing to throw women under a bus.

What have we heard since then? We’ve heard them blaming, we’ve heard them make excuses, and we’ve heard them denying. We’ve even heard the finance Minister say that she was really shocked at the size of the blow-out in this. What she was shocked about was the size of the contingency that was there to correct women’s pay. These are for workforces that are dominated by women. She was shocked. But this is what she was really shocked about: she was shocked at the size of the extent of inequality in this country.

Camilla Belich: Discrimination.

Hon JAN TINETTI: It is absolute discrimination and inequality that women have had to be in workforces that have been underpaid for so long. That is what she was shocked at. And to rectify that inequality, it does cost. It costs money, but that was something that both sides of the House had always agreed on. In fact, it was that Government back in 2017 who agreed with the pay equity working group’s recommendations to correct pay with the bill that they were then going to put through at that time. That was that side of the House that did that, and now they’ve reneged on that. They have gone back to way back in history. It’s like we’ve almost gone back to the 1950s.

The Minister does not want to fix those inequalities, because we have, as I’ve said, poor fiscal management from that side of the House. To fix those inequalities would mean she wouldn’t have that money to offset her bad economic management. She made choices that mean women, once again, in this country have to wait.

But when those choices are made to fix the inequality, we know that there are both social and economic benefits. So their short-term thinking—their short-term thinking—is actually going to have long-term pain for them. And this will come back. It is already coming back to hurt them. We are seeing it from the people as we’re going around, and I can tell that side of the House that many of us last week were out every single day talking to groups who have been hurt by them in this Budget, and they were saying how much they are absolutely opposed to what this Government is doing and will work really hard.

Not only are we seeing women thrown under the bus in the Budget, we are now seeing further decisions being made by this Government because they have not gone far enough. If people want to have a look at that, have a look at the early childhood education decisions that were made this week. They are disgraceful. Absolutely disgraceful. Once again, they are throwing a sector that’s dominated by women completely under the bus by breaking the pay parity conditions. I am shocked, I am disappointed, and I am ashamed to be in this country, where this Government is putting women second.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I thought it was worthwhile having a think about what New Zealanders want from a Budget. And it was time that we did a bit of an analysis on jobs, health, and homes, and how this Budget has a look at each of those.

So let’s take a first look at jobs, because that was front and centre, as we’ve just heard from my colleague Jan Tinetti. Pay equity was what funded the guts of this Budget. So women in lower-paid jobs were having their future opportunity of wages ripped out of their hands by simply wiping clean 33 active pay equity claims. We know that’s a fact. So this Budget has made it harder for those working women, and also other people in those professions.

There is absolutely nothing in this Budget for training or skills or helping young people to get on the right path. In fact, it actually does the opposite. It takes away from 18- and 19-year-olds the ability to get the jobseeker benefit. That is absolutely shocking, considering there is no investment in digital skills, in training, in apprenticeships. In fact, it even stripped money away from Māori trades training. That was cut in this Budget. So if this Government is so focused on jobs and productivity, where in this Budget—please highlight it for me, because I missed it—was the part that provided jobs, training, and opportunities for New Zealanders? Where are the incentives to get off the couch? Where are the incentives to make sure you go up and make something of yourself? Where is the ability to do that? Because this Government did absolutely nothing to provide training or incentives for people to retrain, upskill, or get ahead. Nothing.

So let’s take a look at health. Health is our second area. I’d like to take a brief—and it’s funny we talk, because I just received an open letter from the hospitals of Kenepuru, Wellington region, and the Hutt. And they’ve noted that despite the Government’s acknowledgment of the rising demand for healthcare services, funding remains critically insufficient. And Budget 2024—that’s the last one—allocated inadequate funding to maintain the current services, let alone improve current staffing levels and support retention. Hospitals nationwide are experiencing the direct effect of financial constraints with critical recruitment freezes—recruitment freezes to the front line and limiting the ability to fill vacancies and limiting the ability to address growing patient demand.

Furthermore, they note—and this links nicely with pay equity—that the failure to provide job security for new graduate nurses in New Zealand exacerbates this crisis. Many newly qualified nurses, who also won’t be able to receive pay equity, can’t secure employment—particularly if they’re working in a hospice, within the public system—despite clear evidence we need more staff on the floor. Without structured pathways into the workforce, we risk losing a new generation of nurses to overseas opportunities or to other industries altogether. That is an open letter to this Government from our health workforce post-Budget.

The last point is homes—jobs, health, and homes. So $1 billion was cut from emergency housing under this Budget, which this Government prize as a great record—a great success. During that time there was a 50 percent increase in homelessness in Auckland and a 40 percent increase in homelessness in Wellington. I went and I met with the Wellington City Mission and they said it was the worst it had ever been. And those opposite turn around and pat themselves on the back and say, “Well, we got the list down—we got that waiting list down.” You got that list down by kicking people off it or refusing them access to it. All of the housing providers and those who support those trying to prevent homelessness are being told they cannot access help. And those families experiencing family violence are being punished for being in a home where there is family violence, which is absolutely disgusting. They get a 13-week stand-down, with no access to housing because there is family violence in that house. Women and children are reaching out for support and they are turned to the streets.

I would hang my head in shame. This Government is heartless and this Budget delivers nothing for the hard-working Kiwis who just want jobs, health, and homes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, it’s great to be here on behalf of the people of Northland, talking about what a great Budget this is for the people of the North. There were a range of great announcements leading up to the Budget. Probably the greatest one was when the Minister of Transport came up and announced the preferred route for the new four-lane expressway to take us all the way, to carry on from Te Hana through to Whangārei. To stand up there on the top of the Brynderwyns and point out where that new route was going to go—the people of the North celebrated that point and they are looking forward to this road being built.

But there is one group of people in this House who take a different view. In fact, recently the Transport and Infrastructure Committee had a report brought in by the people of the North saying what they wanted from the road and what it was worth to the Northland economy. It was supported by the Government members of that committee, but there is a differing view that was brought forward by the Green Party and the Labour Party and it reads something like this: “The Green Party and the Labour Party consider that the evidence provided to the committee during this briefing is wholly insufficient to conclude that the Northland Expressway is the best way to improve transport links, improve economic productivity, and increase resilience for Northland.”

How out of touch are they? How disconnected from the realities of the North are the people from Labour and the Greens? Honestly, it just destroys me in the sense that the people of the North want and need decent connectivity. But, no, Labour and the Greens, once again, if they get into power—the last time they cancelled the road and they will do it again. But, actually, the most insulting part of the commentary was they also said in here, that “The NZIER report is advocacy research, paid for by people with monetary skin in the game to commercial providers of consultancy services, meaning its conclusions need to be regarded with caution by the public.” What an insult to the people that paid for that research to be done. These are Northlanders who care about the North, see a better country, and see a better future for our Northland region.

Now, the other thing I want to talk about from the Budget is Investment Boost. This is a great policy that will really, really help the farming sector of New Zealand, the sector that is dragging us out of this recession and leading us back out, just like we did in the global financial crisis; we are doing it again. Investment Boost will mean an extra 20 percent can come off the depreciation of purchase of new assets for the farming community—the Fieldays will be an absolute ripper. It will lead to economic growth through the regions and it will eventually flow into the cities.

There are other things that we’ve done for the primary sector. We’ve invested $246 million over four years in the Primary Sector Growth Fund; $2 million over four years in the contestable Rural Wellbeing Fund; $1 million extra over four years for rural support trusts, a group that do fantastic work in the rural sector of New Zealand; $400,000 over four years in direct grants to help the A&P shows of this country—the volunteers who get stuck in and help bind the fabric of our rural communities. There will be ongoing support for catchment groups: $36 million over the next four years will be provided. This is a vital—vital—investment because it’s catchment groups that are going to help deal with the environmental challenges in our rural communities. Why? Because it’s local people that can find local solutions to the challenges of water quality and environmental challenges.

The other thing that’s happened that’s been very helpful for the people of Northland is the health announcements. There’s going to be extended hours for the hospitals in Dargaville, Hokianga, and Kaitāia as well as extensions of other services for the areas of Kaikohe, Kawakawa, Mangawhai, and Waipapa. These are all benefits that are going to flow to the people of Northland from this great Budget, a Budget that is going to deliver prosperity over time for the people of Northland and the people of this country, because this Government understands what it takes to get growth so that people will be able to earn more wages, higher salaries, and do better for themselves and their families. I, with a great pleasure, commend this Budget to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s always really refreshing to speak after Grant McCallum, as two new members of the class of 2023 for the National Party. He’s the wise and I’m the young and it’s a great contrast from one another. I can be wise while being young, but it is refreshing to speak and spend time with you, Grant—absolutely.

This Budget shows that the adults are back in the room. This is a responsible Budget. Just like every household around the country who have to spend within their means, who have to a make pragmatic and reasonable decision—

Hon Rachel Brooking: Oh, we’re back to the Government Budget is the same as a household’s. You are the children in the room.

TOM RUTHERFORD: —based on what’s coming in and what’s coming out.

And Rachel Brooking across the House, well, she’s been squawking all afternoon. She’s been squawking every time a National member’s got up and spoken, hasn’t she? But she hasn’t actually contributed anything significant to the debate, so I’d look forward to her taking a call to actually talk and contribute to this rather than just laying back in her chair and making a contribution from the other side over there.

But our Government’s economic plan is working. We’ve stopped wasteful spending. Inflation is down—remember inflation at that record high of 7.3 percent? It’s down to 2.5 percent now, and mortgage rates are falling. It’s a positive outcome for my community of the Bay of Plenty and for all New Zealanders.

Treasury’s latest forecasts? Well, they show economic growth averaging about 2.7 percent a year, 240,000 new jobs created. And wages? Well, they’re growing faster than inflation every year. This is on top of the real average wage growing nearly $1,100 since the election and our tax relief that we delivered in last year’s Budget.

We know that New Zealand battled a protracted period of high inflation, high interest rates, and an economic downturn. The cost of living soared. Do you remember that? The cost of living absolutely soared under the previous administration. Rents went up $185 on average—$185 on average—under the previous administration.

And the Government’s books? Well, they took an absolute hammering. They took a hammering with unsustainable spending increases fuelling high levels of debt. Remember debt and think about how high that is and how much Labour just tapped on to the credit card for the future generations—my generations and generations to come—that we will have to continue to repay. They were the Afterpay Government. They were the Afterpay Government: pay in the future, but take the products now. But, actually, there were no products. There was nothing. For all the spending, there was no delivery for the general public of New Zealand.

One of the things that I’m really proud of from the Budget for my local community in the Bay of Plenty was our spending in healthcare and what it will mean for our local community. By far, it is one of the biggest issues that is raised with me as a constituency MP for the Bay of Plenty—people talking about their ability to access their GP. God forbid if you get sick or hurt after 8 p.m. in Tauranga, because at the moment your only option after 8 p.m. is to go to the hospital. But under our Budget, we will be delivering urgent care services 24/7—24/7 for the community of Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty. Access to urgent and after-hours healthcare is being expanded, and this includes in the Bay of Plenty.

We will have a new 24/7 urgent care service, which our community has been crying out for and I’m just so proud to be part of a Government that’s finally delivering for the 165,000-odd people that call Tauranga home. For the many, many residents and the wonderful community of the Bay of Plenty, this will make a massive difference. This will make a massive difference, and it will take off the increasing pressure on our hospitals and actually mean that hospitals can deal with those that absolutely need to be there. And then those that can go to the urgent and after-hours care will be able to go there for their alternative treatments as well.

The other part of the Budget in healthcare that I’m really proud of is the 12-month prescriptions. It hasn’t got a lot of airtime with everything else we’ve been doing with Investment Boost, the KiwiSaver changes, and the welfare changes that the Hon Louise Upston is leading. But this change around prescriptions and people now being able to get them for 12 months is going to make a massive difference and it’s going to make a massive difference in two particular areas. It’s going to free up our GPs. People won’t have to go back to the GP every three months to get the prescription to then collect it from the pharmacy. That’s fantastic news. And it saves the person themselves on average about $105 a year. It’s going to make a massive change. It hasn’t had a lot of headlines, but it’s a really pragmatic change. You still go and collect your prescription every three months, but you’ll be enabled to have that prescription over 12 months. It’s a fantastic change, and this is a wonderful Budget for Bay of Plenty and for New Zealand.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to talk about this Government’s Budget, which is paid for off the backs of working women. I want to focus on the pay equity changes that the Government has made to start with, because there have been a few polls recently about pay equity, and one thing seems to be really clear: people who understand it and who know about it really hate the changes that the Government’s made. But another thing which I think this Government should take responsibility for is there is also a large percentage of this population who is unsure about what these changes actually mean for them.

The reason I say the Government should take responsibility for it is because the pay equity changes that paid for this Government’s Budget were introduced with no process, no select committee, no notice, no education for the community, and no opportunity for the public to ask questions. So it’s not surprising that when they’re polled, the people aren’t quite aware of what is actually happening, so let me explain.

There are a few issues with what the Government has done. I’ve already talked to you about the process—the terrible undemocratic process—that allowed this Government to bring in under urgency and extinguish overnight the claims affecting 180,000 low-paid New Zealanders. Now, that is enough on its own for it to be an absolutely shameful day for this House. But the second thing that I wanted to mention is this Government had absolutely no mandate for these changes. When they were elected, they brought in lots of changes that we on this side of the House fought strongly against. One of the things they said in their defence when they passed legislation through urgency destroying the rights of working people was that they had a mandate for it. In some of those instances—although we fiercely disagreed with what they did—at least they were honest with the public about their intentions. That is not so with pay equity. They did not have a mandate for this, and when New Zealanders find out how bad it is, I’m sure that they will be very, very angry with what the Government has done.

So they said that they still have a pay equity regime that has paid for this Budget. But I want to tell you today that this bill is unworkable, and there are five reasons for that. The first reason is they have upped the threshold to 70 percent, effectively excluding people like secondary school teachers from taking a pay equity claim. That hard-working female-dominated profession, secondary school teachers—not allowed. They also have to make sure they’ve been the female-dominated for 10 years, a very high threshold that cuts a lot of people out.

The second problem with it is that you have to prove that your claim has merit before you’ve even started your claim. Now, just on a logical perspective from anyone—not even lawyers—you can understand how difficult that is. You have to prove that the claim stacks up even before you’ve started it. It’s completely unworkable and will be very difficult to progress without an employer that also thinks that there’s merit before it starts.

The third problem with it is the unworkable hierarchy of comparators. This Government has changed the way that comparators are used in pay equity claims to mean that you have to look at your own workplace and then a similar industry and then you’re limited. If you can’t find male-dominated workforces in a similar industry, you cannot take a pay equity claim. This is a distinguishing feature which makes it much worse than what the National Government originally proposed in 2016. So that is the third thing.

The fourth thing is blocking claims for 10 years. This locks out care and support workers like Kristine Bartlett who have been unable to take claims until 10 years after their claim expires, which means they’re unable to do anything despite the fact they have proven that are undervalued for 10 years.

The fifth reason is that they have provided no funding. There is evidence for this in this Budget. It is the fact that they have taken a significant amount of money out of the contingency fund, meaning that that money will not go to low-paid women. That is an admission by this Government that their pay equity scheme will not deliver the types of corrections for discrimination in the workforce that have been proven to be needed by the pay equity regime. That is the fifth reason that this particular pay equity bill will not work.

They have ruined the lives of many, many low-paid women by taking this away in this Budget, by putting this Budget on this platform, and it is shameful. There are a lot of other things that are bad about this Budget, but I think the thing that people will continue to remember in years to come is the day that this Parliament sat here and took the rights to proven equal pay that they deserved away from low-paid women. It is a shameful Budget built on the lives of working women, and I do not commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Budgets are about choices, and this Budget tells us exactly what National values. They had the audacity to say the quiet thing out loud and show us who they really are. And more importantly, they’ve shown us who they think should be paying the price. They’re not asking tobacco companies to pay. They’re not asking fossil fuel giants to pay. They’re not even asking property speculators or corporate mega-landlords to pay for the common good, to pay for the things that we all do for each other. No, they’re asking women and young people to pay the price.

This is a Budget that reaches into women’s back pockets and into the retirement savings of everyday Kiwis, but in particular our young people, and that’s what makes it so egregious. And it hands that money over to the oil and gas lobby, it hands it over to landlords, and it hands it over to big corporates. So if ever there was something to compare and contrast these two different sides of the House, it is this Budget. It says it all right there.

Let’s also talk about pay equity. My colleague Camilla Belich has just delivered a master class in understanding what pay equity is all about. After years of work to close that gender pay gap that people have done over many, many years, this Government is literally slamming on the brakes. They’ve scrapped pay equity and they’ve scrapped the 33 claims that represent thousands of women, mostly woman, for no other reason than to simply make the Budget add up. They say, and again, they’ve had the audacity to say that they’re making the system more sustainable, but that is simply spin.

National have made it harder and harder for women to get fair pay for the valuable, valuable work that they do. Quite frankly, it is not just a betrayal of women; it’s actually a betrayal of fairness, it’s a betrayal of justice, and it simply doesn’t even make economic sense. It’s disgusting. Women earn on average 10 percent less than men. And the Government’s answer to this very real problem is literally to take away the mechanism that can make that fix. They call it efficiency, but on this side of the House we call it stealing from women, because that is exactly what this Budget is doing: it steals from women.

Also, let’s not forget KiwiSaver. The Government has halved the Government contribution, which is one thing. It’s not even fiscally prudent to do that. It’s cutting into the retirement savings of everyday working people. And then, again, they had the audacity to wax lyrical, including in this House this afternoon, about increasing the default contributions. But in their own Budget, they didn’t even take their own contributions into account, because they knew they didn’t need to budget for that because they know that those increases in default contributions from the employer will simply eat into future wage rises. So they don’t need to take it into account. That is not what people need when they are saving hard for their retirement.

While they’re doing that, what are they spending the money on? So they’re taking all this money and what are they spending it on? A $200 million subsidy for new gas fields. That’s right, $200 million. Not to invest in clean energy, not to invest in insulating homes, certainly not to build public transport or more social housing, but to underwrite the profits of oil and gas industries. That’s not a climate plan; it is literally a fossil fuel slush fund. And while we’re handing that money over to polluters, they’re gutting public housing, they’re scrapping emergency housing, they’re doing nothing—nothing—at all to even address our housing crisis, and we’re watching homelessness grow and all of the ills that come from that.

In health, a previous contributor from the Government side went on and on about health initiatives. And the reality is there’s almost no new money in health, just enough to keep the lights on—if we’re lucky; certainly not enough to fix the wait-list, and certainly not enough to staff all of those initiatives or staff our hospitals properly. National will protect the profits of landlords, fossil fuel companies, and tobacco giants. And here, on this side of the House, Labour chooses to prioritise jobs, health, and homes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. If I can just have permission, please, I’d just like to acknowledge the passing of my uncle Adwan Raffoul Rahme. He was buried a few hours ago in Sydney. I’d just like to say I’m thinking of his children, Tony and Rony. الله يرحمك عمو ايدوين.

A week and a half ago when we were in this House and before the Budget was announced, we were taken to a little room. It’s called the caucus room, and the Minister of Finance let us know what was coming in the Budget. I remember we were just smiling. The energy in the room just lifted so quickly. And I couldn’t wait to finish from Parliament, even though Labour and Greens were playing their antics, making amendments like “let’s change ‘money’ to ‘moolah’ ” and saying that that was seriously defending people’s rights. But I couldn’t wait to go home to Takanini and, essentially, spread the good news. That’s how I felt. I felt like I needed a ledge somewhere to spread the good news about Budget 2025 from.

I’m going to just take us back to about a year ago when I was privileged enough to give a speech on Budget 2024. I envisaged and I gave the analogy of imagining that someone leaves their home for a few years and comes back, and it has been completely ransacked. Everything has been broken, and you don’t have the funds, automatically, to fix up this ransacked home. And that’s why we needed to be careful with how we were distributing taxpayer-funded money, taxpayer money, essentially, in fixing up this ransacked home that we were left with by the Labour Government previously.

So now in part of the fixing of this ransacked home, we need to generate income to be able to pay for the resources that we need to fix up that ransacked home, and this is what Budget 2025 is about. How do we grow our economy to generate those funds to fix up our ransacked home that we were left with?

In this fixing-up, what are we focusing on? There are a few key areas that Budget 2025 is focusing on so that we can grow our economy. But in the process of growing our economy as well, we’re addressing needs—very loud needs. One of them, as has been sprinkled about the House, quite rightfully, on this side, is health—yes, a record investment in health. And, yes, the focus for this Government and for Minister Simeon Brown, is how we address primary care, and Budget 2025 definitely addresses that. I am also—along with Tom Rutherford, as he mentioned earlier—really pleased and exceptionally happy to learn that we are going to get in Counties Manukau, which services my neighbours in Takanini, a 24-hour urgent care facility. Not only that, but with the $1 billion we’re investing in health infrastructure, we’re going to be uplifting the resources in Middlemore Hospital, which services a lot of families in South Auckland and beyond. Thank you to the finance Minister and the health Minister for finding that allocation to address the needs of my beautiful neighbours in Takanini.

When we talk about growing, in Takanini something that was extremely important to my neighbours during the 2023 election was the lack of law and order, and so how does this link to growing? Well, in my maiden speech, I spoke about education and how important education is for me, because, like many of us across the House, we agree that education is a key to breaking those cycles of poverty, those cycles of crime, and those cycles of intergenerational trauma, and I am so proud of the fact that this Budget, Budget 2025, is not only investing in keeping my neighbours in Takanini safe with restoring law and order but is also investing so much in education. I’m very pleased that the education Minister, Erica Stanford, was in Takanini just a few days ago, at Ormiston Primary School, letting them know how they will get extra support needed for those beautiful children that have those special needs.

There is so much more that is positive in this Budget. We, over here, do not have PhDs in “no”, like the other side. We believe in getting rid of a poverty of aspiration. That’s what this Government is about—instilling aspiration and starting at those youngest ages with our beautiful tamariki at school. I’m proud of this Budget. I’m spreading the good news. I will continue to, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to speak on Budget 2025. I think we need a little bit of context around how we came to be in the position that we’re in. And I want to reference who I think was the worst ever finance Minister in New Zealand: Grant Robertson, and his sidekick Adrian Orr, who were the fiscal destroyers on the economic seas that put us in the situation that we’re in now.

Not only that, when we came into Government, Nicola Willis assumed the role of finance Minister and opened the books and found all these fiscal cliffs to deal with, hamstringing her choices and our choices and New Zealanders’ choices, actually. It’s not about us; it’s about New Zealanders. So that is a shocking thing to come in and see.

Now, that has happened before. In fact, someone referenced Jim Bolger earlier in the debate. Actually, that reminds me that Jim Bolger, who was in a recent news story, turned 90 this week. He came in in 1990 and exactly the same thing occurred. All the rosy books that he thought of and the plans that he had ahead for New Zealand to take it forward, and when he opened the books, there were big holes everywhere. We call them fiscal cliffs now. That’s what he had back in those days. And that really narrows the choices that are available. But that all said, that context and giving the context of the situation, Nicola Willis has done—the Hon Nicola Willis; apologies, Nicola—a fantastic job and put a Budget together that actually hits all the areas that it needs to hit.

Of course, everyone’s talked about Investment Boost. I got an email land in my inbox this afternoon on an investment opportunity to invest in a solar farm. That solar farm was projecting a 10 percent return in the first year, but they say now, if I can quote from it, “A one-time 20 percent write-down on new assets from the Investment Boost programme”, that they are now forecasting a 16 to 17 percent return in the first year by being able to expense that 20 percent in addition to the normal depreciation.

Hon Damien O’Connor: It’s great if you’ve got the money.

STUART SMITH: And we hear on the other side people say, “But that’s not affecting everyone else. It’s all about business.” No it’s not. Businesses actually employ people—that’s right, they employ people. And that money goes through the economy. I think that there is going to be one error in the Budget: there’s going to be underestimation of the impact of the Investment Boost programme.

Speaking in the electorate to different industries, I said to the Minister earlier in the week that I think this is a thing that’s actually quite a slow burn. People are picking up on it and what the potential is. They’ve considered it and they’re going to actually put their hands in their pockets and spend money to invest in their businesses and boost the economy, and I think that’s a great thing.

There are other things like the $480 million for front-line policing. That was mentioned before about the real turn-around that the police have been able to do with some of the legislation that we’ve had. We’ve given them the tools now with the gang patch ban, but now we’re also giving them the financial resources to be able to maximise that opportunity.

One of the things in the fiscal cliffs that I referenced before is the iReX project, which is very—well, not dear to me, but it’s certainly in my patch and I know quite a bit about it. I was well aware that that was going to fail well in advance, because contractors kept coming to me with horror stories about the practices that were going on in that iReX project. There was no plan. They just wanted to spend money with no—in fact, I’ll tell you, Mr Speaker, in my time that remains. One contractor told me that he was asked to price a construction job for the iReX project and he said he couldn’t do it because he only had half the drawings that were required for the project. And he was told, “Don’t worry about it. Just put a price in. We’ll sort it out later.” Well, that sort of fiscal management has led to the problem that we’ve got today, and that’s why the iReX project fell over—and other projects that had no fiscal controls on them. It was irresponsible management and it started at the top.

As I said, if I circle back to what I started with, that goes down to Grant Robertson and Adrian Orr’s destroying tactics in the fiscal seas.

In reply, the Hon Nicola Willis.

It has been fantastic to listen to this debate when the voices have been coming from this side of the Chamber, because they’ve been voices grounded in reality and a sense of perspective and, frankly, a sense of aspiration about what New Zealand can be and should be, if only we make good choices. On the other side of the House in this debate, I have from time to time thought that members opposite are living in an alternative universe—certainly not on Planet Earth—because here’s the thing about the world in which this Budget was put together. It is the real world, and the backdrop to this Budget is relevant. Context is, in fact, everything, because we could wish to be in a time in which the books were full of money and there had been years of successive good fiscal management which gave us multiple options. We could wish to be in a time where global growth was going away to the races. We could wish for all sorts of things, but finance Ministers don’t get to live on Mars. They live on Planet Earth, and when they deliver their Budgets, they need to deliver them accordingly.

So New Zealand is in a very difficult fiscal position, a fact that those opposite seem very confused about. The Government’s books have taken a hammering. Over the past six years, debt has risen sharply, by more than $120 billion—more than doubling as a proportion of the economy—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Oh, is that the pandemic?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: —and, Willow-Jean Prime, that is unsustainable. At the same time, New Zealanders have faced significant challenges, with soaring inflation and soaring interest rates. The inevitable economic downturn that came after that means that New Zealanders have been doing it tough, and our country still faces many long-term challenges that went largely unaddressed for six barren years.

Productivity in this country is lower than it should be and it needs to be to fund the rightful aspirations of New Zealanders, who wish to be in a wealthier country that can spend more on medicines and that can invest more in its schools. I’ll tell you the countries that can do that: they are wealthier, growing, more productive nations, and New Zealand has a long-term challenge with that.

Despite the extraordinary increase in spending that went on with that other lot, we still have public services that require significant investment, a health pipeline of infrastructure that was not invested in properly and hasn’t been managed properly, and endless other investments that are required. So our Budget, necessarily in this real world, takes a longer-term view, with initiatives—particularly Investment Boost and our KiwiSaver changes—which are not just about the here and now and the headline that the Labour Party wants tomorrow but are about what is the right thing to position our country for now so that in the future we are stronger.

When you think about Investment Boost, what that addresses is a genuine challenge that even, I see, Opposition members agree on, which is that we need higher rates of investment in capital in our firms in technology, in machinery, and in the equipment that will allow our firms to be more productive. We must address this, and this is a policy that squarely addresses that at, actually, a time when it’s needed the most, because we know that the impact of global instability is potentially depressing people’s decisions to invest, and this is the spurt that they need.

When it comes to KiwiSaver, New Zealanders get it. They know that to have the kind of retirement living choices that they want, they are going to need bigger KiwiSaver balances, in many cases. What they also understand is that countries that have deeper pools of private saving are better able to make the capital investment in their economies that we wish to see. This Budget continues the Government’s investment in health and education and in law and order, and even in a very challenging global environment, it makes the wise decision to provide funding to boost New Zealand’s defence capability—an area that was disgracefully run down under the previous Government, and an issue that we take particularly seriously. We feel a solemn duty to take it seriously.

Importantly, we are doing all of these things within a responsible expenditure track, because over the forecast period in this Budget, Government spending reduces as a share of the economy, the books return to balance, the structural deficit left to us by the last lot of vandals is eliminated in this Budget—and you can thank us for that later—and the debt curve is bent from going up to going down. Highlights of the Budget also include targeted cost of living support, prescriptions, rates rebates, Working for Families changes for those who most need the support, health capital investment of more than $1 million—because while on the other side, they issued the press releases about what might be nice to do at Nelson Hospital, did they ever write the cheque? No, they did not. This Government has written that cheque, we are investing in that hospital, and there is $1 billion worth of other investments beside.

This is the Budget that in these tight, uncertain, challenging times, with the fiscal holes we have to fill in, still makes a transformational investment in learning support. Mark my words and make no mistake, that investment in earlier intervention and in better equipping young children who do have additional needs but who have boundless potential—we’re equipping them with the extra support they need. I’m telling you now that it will keep kids out of court, it will keep them out of police cells, it will get them into jobs that would not otherwise have been realised. It is a long-sighted investment. There is also a major uplift in Defence Force capability and a social investment fund.

So this has involved real restraint, careful choices, an acknowledgment—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Pay equity.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: —that despite the alternative universe in which Willow-Jean Prime and her mates live in, there is no money hose. There is no magic money tree. There is no one in this world who owes New Zealand a favour and says that they’ll just keep lending to us for ever.

I actually want to commend Barbara Edmonds, who, in her post-Budget speech—delivered to a packed house of 20 people, I understand, in her own electorate—said that “All Budgets are about choices,” and she went on to say, “and we would have made different choices.” Well, perhaps she could tell us what those choices are, and then people could see what choices they like the best.

At least, as she acknowledged, the Greens have a plan. They’ve set out what they would do differently, even if it means borrowing $88 billion more to do it and taxing New Zealanders more. Robbing from every pocket that is aching with the cost of living, the Greens’ solution is to whack more taxes on and hope for the best.

But let me just run through Labour’s choices, because I would summarise them as being somewhat conflicted. We’ve had these commitments: “We will return to surplus by the end of the forecast period on the old OBEGAL measure. While doing that, we will increase spending by $12.8 billion to reinstate the previous pay equity regime.”—and Chris Hipkins has acknowledged that that is a big number. He’s worked that much out. He said that it’s a big number, but he’s very confused about how we got it because somehow he infers that Treasury are making up numbers, or something like that, which is an interesting inference.

At the same time, in this fantasy land in which our friends on the other side live, they’re also going to spend more on health—there will never be another challenge in the health system because there will be so much money that is able to be poured in. They will also be building more houses because KiwiBuild was such a success, colleagues, and they will fund all of the savings that we made in the Budget. All of the reprioritisations are hopeless, they’re terrible, they’re cuts, they’re austerity, and so all of those will be reversed, and then—here is the miracle that happens on “Planet Labour”—they will do all of this while sticking within Treasury’s recommended debt ceiling of 50 percent of GDP, which was adopted by Grant Robertson. Although, to be fair, Chris Hipkins does seem to have some doubts about that. His maths seem a little bit better on that one.

But, actually, the truth of the matter is this. Actually, they won’t, because there are a lot of myths around about debt, and our spokesperson was, apparently, talking about the past, even while using the present tense.

My point is this: Budgets need to be anchored in the here and the now and in the realities that we face, but responsible Budgets make changes now that set us up better for the decades that follow. While we’ve had six barren years of a Government that thought its job was to just spend money at the fastest rate possible, we now have in New Zealand a Government that understands that the dollars you spend do not come from a magic ATM. They come from the work of ordinary New Zealanders, who will always have a choice with that dollar: should they spend it on their family and their business and their community, or should they give it to the Government to nurture and spend well?

I am proud that in this Budget, we are spending those dollars as wisely as possible for the now and for the long term, and we are doing it in a way that allows New Zealand to hold its head high and say that these are books that are sustainable, this is a country with a future in which it is growing more productive and a better place to live. The alternative is Labour fantasy land, and I’ll tell you a thing about that fantasy land—horrible place to live.

The question is that the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition be agreed to.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Invest New Zealand Bill, the Rates Rebate Amendment Bill, and the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill.