Appropriation (2025/26 Estimates) Bill

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. New Zealanders, I think, are realistic about the scale of the challenge facing this Government. They know that in November 2023, they voted for a new Government and a new direction and a change of approach away from tax, spend, and record debt. And I think over the last 18 or so months—because we are at the inflection point of this Government’s time in office, or at least so far—the scale of the challenge has become really apparent.

I think they intuitively knew back in November 2023 that things were going awry in the country. They knew that debt was up by 120 billion bucks in six years. They knew that Government spending had risen by around 80 percent in that time, and they did get to November and say, “What have we actually accomplished in the last six years? We’ve had a lot of talk about kindness and empathy. We’ve had banning of oil and gas. We’ve had a lot of spending. We’ve had a bucket load of discussion documents, working groups.”—I think we got to 275 or something by the end; we had David Parker issuing industry transformation plans as if the Government could sit here in Wellington in the Beehive and write these massive doorstop documents that no one ever read apart from the officials. I think they thought, “What have we really got to show for it? Because child poverty hasn’t improved. In fact, it’s got worse. The number of kids living in material hardship has increased. It’s got worse.”

They looked at our energy crisis and said, “Well, hang on a minute, we’re importing millions of tons of Indonesian coal at the same time as we banned oil and gas exploration.” They looked at our education standards and thought, “Why is it that in a country as wealthy on paper as New Zealand, kids go to school and can’t read and write? Despite millions of dollars poured into the education system, educational results are getting worse because we’ve got a curriculum based on airy-fairy notions, not based on facts, not based on knowledge.”

They looked at our welfare system and said, “Why is it that 18- and 19-year-olds who go on the benefit spend 20 years on average when they go on to the benefit?” They looked at law and order and said, “How is it that in a country like New Zealand, we have kids as young as 14 and 15 going out at night and literally ramming the doors of dairies and Four Squares and Pak ‘N Saves around the country, and there don’t seem to be any consequences for bad behaviour? Why is it that we live in a country like that?” And they thought, “Law and order is out of control, education is in crisis, you can sit around on welfare and there are no responsibilities—no, there’s all the rights but no responsibilities.”, and they voted for a better way.

But fundamentally underlying it all, there was a sense that the previous Government had no idea what they were doing about the genuine issues facing New Zealand. In particular, they had no real pathway forward when it comes to growth, because many of the problems facing New Zealand, like child poverty, educational underachievement, law and order, social inequity throughout our society—many of those issues—not all of them but many of them; I would say almost all of them—are so much easier to deal with when you have an economy that is growing. And we inherited, as a Government, a recession. We inherited an economy that had not really grown for a number of years. In fact, in per capita terms, we’ve been declining for a long time.

What we have now, and this Budget demonstrates this, is a Government focused not just on the short term—which is very important, and I’ll turn to that—but fundamentally, a Government focused on the levers of growth, dealing with the underlying economic settings that have held us back for far too long. You can see that through Resource Management Act reform. You can see that through the reforms we’re making around housing. You can see that in the reforms we are making to our education system and the reforms that we are making to our welfare system.

Because there’s no one silver bullet to our productivity challenges and our growth challenges. The honest answer is we have to do a whole lot of things really well. We have to focus on a whole lot of things all at the same time, and we haven’t been doing that; instead, we’ve put many issues in the too-hard basket.

But the first task of this Government—and this Budget reflects this—is to get back to some level of fiscal discipline because the fiscal Armageddon that we inherited in November 2023 was utterly out of control. What last year’s Budget and this year’s Budget does is—it’s actually a concept that used to be known. It was known in the 2008 to 2017 period. It was a concept that was deleted from the dictionaries in the six years after that, and it’s a concept called reprioritisation, which is that if the Government wants to spend more money on a particular thing, the first thing we should do is look at what the Government spends money on now and say, “Hang on a minute, might there be a better way? Might there be something we can stop doing and invest it in higher-priority areas?”

Education is a classic example of that. A focus on reprioritisation by the Minister of Education has meant that this Government—this Government that the Opposition says hates the poor and everyone who’s underprivileged in society—is making the single biggest investment in learning support in a generation. Hundreds of millions of dollars for more teacher-aide hours, for early intervention, looking after those who have been failed by the system for year after year after year. And we can do that while we reprioritise lower-value expenditure inside the Ministry of Education.

So reprioritisation is a concept that was a foreign notion to members opposite. Grant Robertson—here’s how I reckon he did his Budgets: all the bids came in and he put all the bids on his big notice board in his office, then he got out his big darts and he literally just threw them at the notice board and whatever he hit went into the Budget. There was never any savings, except right at the very last minute when he tried to save his skin during the election campaign and he realised that a 2 percent baseline cut—which even members on the Opposition, who were in the Government at the time, complained about that and said, “Oh, this is going to be a nightmare. How are we going to do this? You’re asking us to save money.”

This was in an environment when Government spending had gone up by 80 percent in six years—baseline increases. Remember all the operating allowances? He would dutifully intone at every half-year update: “This is going to be a tough Budget. We’re going to stick to our $3.5 billion new operating allowances.” Everyone would say, “Oh, yeah.”—and bear in mind, the operating allowance on this Budget is the lowest it’s been for a decade: $1.3 billion—and everyone would say, “Oh yes, well, he’s really tightening the screws on the economy this time around”. Every May, on the third Thursday of the month, he’d turn up and he’d say, “Oh, look, due to circumstances outside my control, we’ve had to break the allowance in $4 billion, $5 billion, or $6 billion.” In fact, Budget 2022, which was the nadir of this approach—that’s the Budget, remember, when dead people, French backpackers, and investment bankers in London got the cost of living payment; a billion-dollar payment in that year. That was counted as outside the allowance. He’d invented his own fiscal rule and said, “No, no, no, we’re not going to count that as recurrent spending. Just count that outside the allowance.”

So they never got to grips with the idea that, ultimately, it is taxpayers’ money. It’s not the Government’s money; it is taxpayers’ money. It is money taken from New Zealanders, who expect us to deliver public goods and expect us to deliver on the things that they pay taxes for, like a police force, like a prison system, like an education system that actually teaches our kids how to read, like a welfare system that doesn’t provide a hammock for people but makes sure that people who are in need get support, people in housing need get support, but not an endless largesse that just gives money over for nothing. And that is ultimately what they don’t understand.

Their response to the Budget has been instructive. In five days, they had five different positions on pay equity. Chris Hipkins firstly said they’d reverse it. Then he said that he’d changed his mind and that they’d have to look at it. Then Barbara Edmonds said that they would reverse it. Then they said that they might reverse it, and then, finally, they ended up saying, “Whatever happens, we’ll reverse it, regardless of the cost.”

Well, this Government has had to make tough decisions, and pay equity is one of those tough decisions to get the Government’s books back into the black in time and to refocus the Budget on priorities that actually matter to New Zealanders. They have no plan for New Zealand other than tax, spend, and borrow and hope. As New Zealanders showed in November 2023, that is no plan at all, and I’m looking forward to the next 18 months.

Clearly, there are no consequences for bad behaviour on the Government side of the House. For the last five minutes—again, just like leading up to Budget—all you heard from the Government benches was “Labour this, Barbara Edmonds that, Chris Hipkins this” because there’s nothing fun in their Budget to celebrate, which is why they’re concentrated on this side of the House.

Oute fa’atalofa atu ma le fa’aloalo, malo le soifua maua ma le lagi e mama. Manuia le vaiaso o le Gagana Samoa to the almost 214,000 Samoans in our country today. My parents came to New Zealand from Samoa to give their children a better education. Before my mother died from cancer, she was an aged-care worker who worked for various rest homes across Auckland. I come from a family of aged-care sector workers, with four aunts who have worked or currently work in that sector today. Caring is in our bones. Despite how hard the job is—whether you have to hand-feed someone, whether you have to shower them, whether you have to clean up after them when they’ve had an accident—I am so proud of my aunties and my mother who did this very humble job despite the long hours and the low pay.

What I’m not proud of is this Government’s Budget, so I wholeheartedly agree with Chris Hipkins and the motion he put to Parliament on 22 May that this House has no confidence in the Government’s Budget. It has chosen to pay for this Budget by cutting the wages of working women. This Budget will for ever be known as the Budget that cut women’s pay. Cutting women’s pay to make the Budget add up was a deliberate decision by Nicola Willis and this Government. The Government changed that law under urgency, wiping 33 claims off the books, and hoped they’d get away with it. But I give credit to David Seymour, the new Deputy Prime Minister: he was the one telling the truth when he said that their decision saved the Budget a staggering $12 billion—$12 billion.

When I reflected on the speeches given by the Government Ministers, both when the legislation that set the tone for this year’s Budget went through and their speeches in 2020, I heard a lot of words about our daughters and their futures. Let me make it clear: it’s not about our daughters. I have six daughters, and although they are front of mind when I have to top up their phones or give them money, they are not front of my mind when we are talking about pay equity. I am thinking about the daughters of community midwives. I’m thinking about the daughters of Plunket nurses, the daughters of aged-care workers and care and support workers, who are some of the hardest-working women that I know of. I’m thinking of their girls, because I know my girls will be OK—I know they’ll be fine. They have a tertiary-educated mother who is on a six-figure salary, parents who can provide a stable, warm roof over their heads and can top up their phones whenever they need it.

What this Budget said to the daughters of those hard-working women is that your mother’s contribution to the economy is less than a man’s. When you take money that has been set aside for future pay rises and you put it into something else, that is a cut. It is, very plain and simple, a cut. If we are not here in this House to lift the wages of low-income and our lowest-paid workers, why are we here? Ask yourself that question. Why are you here? Why are members of this House here but for lifting the wages of everyday Kiwis? If growth was a panacea for lifting wages, then why did we even need an Equal Pay Act in the first place? We needed it because there were clear structural issues. This National-led Government has lifted up the ladder after them, and they should be ashamed. Every single one of those Government members should be ashamed.

You hear a lot about the growth Budget, and, speaking of the growth Budget, I agree again with Chris Hipkins: this is a growth Budget all right—growth in unemployment. There will be 22,000 more people on the jobseeker benefit as a result of this Government’s decisions. Growth in New Zealanders leaving, as it’s clear to them this Budget had nothing in there for them, to keep them in our country, and the Government doesn’t value their skills. The number of graduate nurses I have spoken to in the last year who, due to the hiring freezes by this Government, have been unable to secure a job a year later, unable to secure a job despite finishing their studies and qualifying, is a shameful, shameful indictment on this Government, who seem to know about the cost of everything but the value of nothing. New Zealand might as well be known as the “University of Australia”, where you can train here, you can qualify, get a plane ticket, go to Australia where you will earn more money and buy your first home.

This is a growth Budget all right: this is a growth Budget for homelessness. Savings of a billion dollars by tightening the criteria in access to emergency housing is evident by the number of homeless people on our streets. You need only walk through the Auckland CBD; you need only walk through the Wellington CBD to see the number of homeless people who are on our streets every day. When housing support advocates are saying we have a problem—we have a problem—you need to listen to them. Vicki Sykes, the chief executive of the Monte Cecilia Housing Trust, says, “We see every day more and more people coming to us desperate for housing and finding it more difficult to navigate MSD.” Clearly, the Ministry of Social Development have a lack of resources, and the Minister has said he’s shifting the focus to the jobseeker support. However, that doesn’t solve the issue of homelessness and emergency housing.

This is a growth Budget: a growth in waiting lists by failing to adequately service our healthcare needs in this country. It’s no wonder why we have Middlemore Hospital, in one of our highest-needs areas in the country, reporting that we have 1,500—1,500—patients who were treated in corridors over a period of just over a month. This is an absolute disgrace.

This is also the Budget of growing hopelessness for our young people, for our rangatahi. This Budget raided their KiwiSaver accounts. It left more out in the cold by saying to 18- and 19-year-olds, “You now have to depend on your parents. You’re old enough to drink, you’re old enough to vote, but, actually, you now have to depend on your parents.” Where are the jobs for these 18- and 19-year-olds? When unemployment is now forecast to be higher than Nicola Willis’ own half-yearly economic update, where are the jobs? Where are the supports to get our youth into jobs, employment, or training? Where are the apprenticeships? Where is the support for our tertiary education sector? This Budget leaves our universities uncertain about their ability to deliver their programmes because of funding shortages. That’s not the New Zealand we need right now. These young 18-year-olds as well, due to the cuts in the KiwiSaver Government contribution, will now have $66,000 less when they go to retire—they will have $66,000 less.

Finally, this Budget just reinforces the economic mismanagement by this cruel and visionless Government. The Government have and are continuing to mismanage our economy. They have shrunk the economy, which is why they need to borrow more, and growth is lower than when we left the books in the pre-election fiscal update in 2023—it’s worse. Yes, every country has had post-pandemic issues; everyone acknowledges that, but we are doing much worse than others because the National Party and the National-led Government have mismanaged this economy. And Nicola Willis has just shrunk the pie. She’s given the best pieces of it to foreign tech companies, to landlords, to tobacco companies, and now the gas industry. But she’s telling New Zealand families, communities, workers, especially working women: “You can just have the crumbs.”—you can just have the crumbs. I’m still looking for that family, that mysterious ghost family who was applicable for a $250 tax cut. I’m waiting for the Government to tell me about where they are.

In conclusion, every Budget is a choice. These choices are meant to reflect the underlying values of the Government of the day. The decision to cut women’s pay is not just bad for the economy; it’s a direct assault on our values as New Zealanders. We, the Labour Party, stand with working women across the country. We’re not going to let the Government assault what we value as a country: a job with decent pay for a day’s work, a home that we can call our own, and access to healthcare when we need it the most. I do not commend this Budget to the House.

If you ever want any indication of how bereft the Labour Party are of ideas, take a look on their website—the Labour Party website. They have not put a media statement out for eight days—not a media statement out for eight days—in fact, their last media statement, on Monday 26 May, was talking about bugs on school lunches or something. They are so irrelevant with their ideas, they have no plan, they have no ideas, and now they walk out behind themselves wondering what’s coming up next. Well, I’ll tell you what’s coming up next. What’s coming up next is the Fieldays—oh, the Fieldays—and there is going to be a lot of fun at the Fieldays.

The Labour Party tent—and I think it will be a tent, because I don’t know if they’ll be bold enough to put up a marquee—it’ll be a very small tent, and they’ll be in very new red bands. And the Labour Party tent, what will it say? If you listen to everything that they say in the House, we can only anticipate that they will be going out there saying, “Reverse Investment Boost. Reverse Investment Boost.” Any of those farmers that wanted, or are getting already, 20 percent off their taxable income, off equipment, off tools, off tractors, and that—no, Labour, we presume, are reversing Investment Boost. What else are they going to be doing? Are they going to be reversing the KiwiSaver changes—bring back the Government contribution for those earning $180,000-plus? Is that the Labour Party policy? Did the Labour Party address that in six years? No, they just keep pouring in a Government contribution to those earning over $180,000.

What about reversing learning support? All the extra funding and all the extra support that this Government is putting in—are they going to reverse that? In fact, why didn’t they do it? Why didn’t they do it when they had six years, and frankly, an absolute majority. They could have whipped that up in the caucus room, brought it out here, and put billions of dollars towards learning support—millions and millions, over many years—and they chose not to. They chose not to. If I go around my schools in Upper Harbour, some of the schools say that up to—if not more than—20 percent of the kids have higher needs and need learning support.

We inherited an economy where inflation was 7.3 percent. Inflation is now down to 2.5 percent. Our fiscal policy and our careful fiscal management, our spending management, our constrained Government spending is complementing the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy beautifully. Our operating allowance, as Mr Bishop told us, of $1.3 billion—that new money—is the lowest it’s been for a decade, and that is due to the reprioritisations where every Minister—that we are so proud of, whether they be National, whether they be ACT, or whether they be New Zealand First—has gone through all their expenditure and found savings, putting it from the back office to the front office, putting it into high value projects. And that is what we are supporting today.

With the last Government we saw, from 2019 to 2024, net Crown debt increase dangerously from $58 billion to $175 billion. That is their legacy. That is their legacy. The saddest thing about that is it just loads it on the next generation. We will be bringing it down per GDP—don’t you worry about that. But the interest bill on that, in the meantime, is nearly $9 billion dollars—nearly $9 billion—nearly tripling under the last Government. As we often say, on this side of the House: thanks, Labour—thanks! We’re here to fix up the mess. As that ANZ economist said, in the New Zealand Herald, not so long ago, we are here to clean up the mess.

KiwiSaver: we are really proud of what we’ve done with KiwiSaver. We are really proud with what we’ve done there, and Barbara Edmonds can go on all she wants about the Government contribution. Let’s put that in some context. We have reduced the Government contribution—the maximum Government contribution—by $260 a year. That is $5 a week that we have reduced the contribution by. But by increasing the default contribution, by both employers and employees, over three years—from 3 percent to 3.5 percent to 4 percent—we are ensuring that our young working New Zealanders now will be hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth better off at the end of their working career, when they go into retirement, than what would have been, so forget about this end of the Government contribution; that is $5 a week. What we have ensured with this Budget is that our contribution, by default, is lifting up that much.

We’ve also ensured that the KiwiSaver is now extended to 16- and 17-year-olds. They are now eligible for Government contributions and for employer contributions, and why wouldn’t we allow our young people? Why aren’t they backing our young people? Why isn’t the Green Party—the supposed “party of the youth”—why aren’t they saying to 16- and 17-year-olds that are working part-time and full-time, “You too can get a Government contribution. You too can have your employer contribute and match”? No—they voted against that. They voted against that. This comes in an environment where we know that our superannuation costs are blowing out. They will be $71 billion in 25 years, by 2050.

Investment Boost: in the nearly 30 years I’ve been in and around politics, or as a member of the National Party, I’ve never seen a positive policy come out of a Budget that’s given so much traction and had so much excitement and so much positive response than the Investment Boost. And why is that? Because basically—I’m sure there’s a little asterisk and caveats here—it applies to every business in New Zealand. That means that you can get 20 percent off at tax time. It’s a rebate—20 percent off—whether it be office equipment, whether it be tools, whether it be tractors at the Fieldays, whether it be that $1,000 laptop, or whether it be the $1 million commercial building.

And we are a country of small businesses. Ninety-seven percent of our businesses in New Zealand employ 20 or fewer people. We have got over 600,000 small businesses, and now they have got this brilliant policy, where they can bring their investment forward, they can invest in their businesses, it will lift capital investment, and it will boost productivity. That is something that we are really proud of, and that is something, if you don’t know anything about it—and I’m talking to truth radio and Parliament TV here—then you need to get out and find out about it. Ask your accountant. Ask your business adviser. Investment Boost is an amazing thing.

Finally, I wanted to talk about what I think, for me, is the third most important thing in this Budget, and that is learning support. Learning support, as our fantastic Minister of Education—I know what one principal in my area said: “We are just pleased that there’s a Minister of Education that doesn’t start every sentence with ‘When I was a principal.’ ” That used to drive them completely mad: “When I was a principal.” No, this Minister of Education is putting in the biggest package into learning support in a generation, and what does that mean for additional teacher-aide hours? Eight hundred and ninety-six thousand additional hours this financial year, lifting to over 2 million in 2028-29.

This is a significant, significant package for learning support, for those higher-needs kids. As the Hon Erica Stanford said, “Parents across the country should know—if your child needs extra help, they’re going to get it.” This is great news for our principals; this is great news for our teachers. Because we’ve all been hauled into the principal’s office—I more so than most—and they have said, “We are sick of having to pick kids—who gets the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme funding and who doesn’t.” Well, this is demand-led. Any child in this country that’s got higher needs will finally get the support.

They call themselves a caring, compassionate Labour Party. They didn’t give this support. We’re giving this support. They didn’t make the changes to KiwiSaver. We’re making the changes to KiwiSaver. They didn’t back small- and medium-sized businesses. We’re backing business. This is a great Budget.

This Budget reminds me of one of the most difficult patients I’ve ever had to look after. I remember in the late 2000s working in old ward 16 of Wellington Hospital with a mid-aged 50-ish year-old man, a white South African migrant to New Zealand who had one of the worst gastrointestinal bleeds I’ve ever seen. I and three nurses worked all night to keep that man alive. We really struggled, and we were putting blood into him as fast as it was coming out. He actually made it, which we were very pleased about, but the fact is you cannot go on like that for long. That reminds me of this Budget because that is exactly what is happening to the health system. This Government will crow about record investment to the health system, but the fact is that funding is ripped away the moment it lands in the health system’s books.

Last year, the Government funded the health system to $1.3 billion, mostly by cuts made to the health system’s own budget. This year, they have funded the health system an extra $1.3 billion, and that is almost entirely swallowed up by the health system’s deficit, which stands at $1.1 billion. While there is money moving around the Government’s books, the fact is none of it is landing in the services New Zealanders need.

We’ve heard about how increased superannuation costs for employers—including the health system—are landing in Health New Zealand’s baseline, so they’ll have to find money for that. The Government’s botched pay equity promises have to be funded out of Health New Zealand’s budget, so that’s another call that they weren’t anticipating on their budget. That means very little is left for pay rises or filling the vacancies we know exist in our health system.

We need more doctors, more nurses, more social workers, more midwives because every year the health system has to look after more people, and older people. That is why every year the health system is said by Treasury to need that $1.3 billion or more, and yet it will not be available to our health system this year.

We’ve heard this afternoon in Parliament about Middlemore Hospital, and I think it is an example that shows the impact of this Government’s underfunding on the health system. They received a report that said a record 1,500 people waited in corridors over a month in Middlemore emergency department (ED), there were 46 instances of serious harm, and people dying in undignified settings. They raised the alarm about this. They asked for $3.6 million and that could not be found for a large ED in our largest city. That is the state of it.

The Government is underfunding the health system because it is not putting up the money it needs to keep going and to keep up with growing numbers. The Government will wave its hands and say, “Oh well, we’ve got targets.” Well, can I point out that a target without the resourcing to deliver it is nothing but a cynical exercise in shifting blame from the Government—who should take responsibility for funding—on to clinicians who struggle to meet those targets without resources.

We’ve seen a series of announcements in this Budget about capital expenditure. The total capital expenditure in this Budget is $1 billion, far less than in every other year under Labour except for the last year where it was nothing. The fact is this Government, when we know we have an infrastructure debt, is underfunding the building of hospitals. That’s why Nelson is only getting half the hospital they need. Dunedin’s hospital was scaled back.

Let me bring you back to Wellington Hospital—where I worked for all of my career before coming to Parliament. What happened there? Well, we moved into a new hospital in 2009 and moved out of the ward in which I cared for that man with his terrible bleeding event—we moved into a new hospital. The other day I saw Simeon Brown standing outside that new hospital saying it needed another 36 beds, only 15 years after we got our new hospital. That is what happens when you underfund capital expenditure. When you scale back every build, these once-in-a-generation projects have to be redone every decade.

This Government is underfunding health. Do not believe what they say about record investment. It is all going on Health New Zealand’s deficit.

We know things are pretty dire when the emergency departments at hospitals become the place of last resort for people with mental illness. That is exactly what is happening, thanks to this Government and a lousy Budget that put virtually no new money into mental health. We know that mental health is getting worse under this Government. When we look at the context, we can see cuts to places like Segar House in Auckland, which is needed for chronically suicidal people.

We have the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, which last week reported that fewer people are accessing specialist services and addiction services, despite the fact that the Government’s own reporting shows a significant increase in the waste-water testing with drugs showing. So how is it that they are not accessing it? Well, the Government’s own report from the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission says it is to do with the workforce gaps. The Budget would have been the perfect opportunity to address that, including the 1,594 fulltime-equivalents that the NCAT—which is the National Committee for Addiction Treatment—has identified as missing from the non-governmental organisation (NGO) front line.

But no they did not. Instead, they threw a paltry bit of money to help the transition at emergency departments for the withdrawal of police. That was far too little, far too late. We have already seen traumatised staff members, traumatised patients, traumatised clinicians, traumatised people under the Mental Health Act because there has not been a strategy in place. There is no comprehensive strategy. The mental health workers do not have restraint powers and do not want restraint powers. And the work has simply not been done to equip them. That is something that should have been thought of long ago. The money that went into that could have gone into the front line, into addiction services; instead, it’s a bit of a patch-up job.

Meanwhile, there have been cuts to the funded sector. There are some 56,000 people every year that access those front-line NGO services. And yet, we have had 5,000 people in the sector who now will have their pay equity claims cut. They are experiencing burnout. Many of them have gone to Australia. There is no pathway for them to get that pay equity sorted out. They are in a context of Oranga Tamariki contracts that have been cut. And now, just last week, many reputable addiction services throughout the motu have received a pro forma letter from this Government, saying that they’ve got contracts coming up, rolling over in 30 June or 30 September—didn’t even distinguish which timeline—and said, “You might get a letter saying that your services are being extended.” But no specificity of which contracts, no specificity of whether they will be able to keep their staff on, and just a pro forma letter—absolutely lousy. It’s probably a result of the fact that this Government has gutted the Public Service and didn’t have the staff to write the letters properly.

They would not run a business like this. How do they expect the NGO sector, who are dealing with a front-line mental health crisis and mental trauma, to be doing the work when they’re putting them in this pressure cooker? No pay equity, burnout, uncertainty over contracts, no workforce plan, and a little bit of money going towards transitioning away from the police. Absolutely hopeless Budget.

And then they talk about baselines. Even on TVNZ on Saturday night, the Minister for Mental Health referred to the psychiatry baseline of 33 psychiatrists. Well, where on earth did that figure come from? Because the royal Australia - New Zealand psychiatrists group have the information that the baseline is actually 44. They did that work in conjunction with the Government—it is a shared document with Health New Zealand. But the Government insists on making those baselines look better so that they can game them. We’ve seen that with the psychology roles as well. They gamed them from 90 down to 50 to make them easier to achieve.

Instead of putting money into this Budget, the Government instead tries to fiddle with the goalposts, fiddle with the narrative, and say, “Everything’s going OK.” Well, I tell you it’s not. And where we see the evidence of that is in the emergency departments. That is where we are seeing homeless people turn up. That is where we are seeing people with mental trauma turn up. That is where we are seeing people waiting for hours and hours, unable to be seen because there is not the front-line workforce to support them.

So when it comes to the health budget, mental health—which should have been a deserving recipient—got absolutely nothing. Shameful day. Mental health is getting worse under this Government.

I’m so proud to be able to speak on Budget 2025. There are so many good things to say about it, and yet I’ve only got 10 minutes to say it all. But the good news is that there are lots of us on this side of the House who are also going to share and take different parts to really break down the goodness that is the Budget.

I remember at campaign time, our Prime Minister said that we don’t have a tax problem in this country but a spending problem. Over the last couple of Budgets, we’ve worked diligently to restrain poor spending and reprioritise that into the things that are most important to New Zealand around health, law and order, and education, and I’m going to help break down just a little of that shortly. This Budget is a responsible Budget. It’s not just about rebuilding our economy but also the confidence of hard-working New Zealanders who deserve much better for their taxes and trust in Government. This Budget is a Budget that faces the facts. It doesn’t duck all the hard calls or scoot it off to the next lot; it deals with it head on, and it’s a perfect Budget for the environment we find ourselves in.

As a previous speaker, Cameron Brewer, alluded to, we inherited a debt problem of $9 billion interest a year—$9 billion. In a constrained environment and in a recessionary environment, with high inflation and high interest over the last two years, our Minister of Finance has worked diligently to claw that back and provide a Budget that New Zealand can be proud of, and I want to just focus on a few of those things today. I want to talk about KiwiSaver and I want to talk about the additional investment in health, education, and law and order; the launch of the Investment Boost and Invest New Zealand; our funding to support our Defence Force; the new infrastructure of $1 billion in hospitals and $700 million in schools; and, of course, the targeted cost of living to middle and low income New Zealanders, not to mention the largest boost in a generation to our schools with Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS) funding in our special needs. It’s so important and so crucial.

Let me start with KiwiSaver. I’m so pleased that our Government is lifting those minimum thresholds from 3 percent to 4 percent, both for employees and for employers. It’s such a key change and it’s only a small thing, but compounded over time, it makes such a big difference. We know that last year, 42,000 Kiwis used their KiwiSaver to get into their first homes—42,000 Kiwis—and now that not only are we dropping the age to 16- and 17-year-olds to get the Government contribution but employers can contribute up to 4 percent as well, it’s going to make a significant difference to getting our young people into homes.

The housing challenge in New Zealand is real, and we’re hitting it from all angles. From KiwiSaver and from an investment in infrastructure perspective to social housing, emergency housing, and affordable housing, we’re doing it all, and, of course, expanding the financial literacy programme in schools is just brilliant. Combining that with KiwiSaver at a young age, it’s just going to give our people the ability to retire with dignity, and we know that that’s a really important thing, which I think we agree on, on both sides of the House.

I want to talk a little bit about Investment Boost. We’re reigniting the engine room, as it were, and we’ve heard about Fieldays. I’m sure that just about everyone in this House is looking forward to Fieldays. We’re looking forward to being there, in force, with our blue Swanndris and our blue jackets and our gumboots, and we’ll even wander past the Labour tent and offer them a coffee. They might be a bit cold out there and we’d want to extend a nice coffee to them, as well.

But I was talking to one of the businesses that will be—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I was just wondering what this is about the cold!

RYAN HAMILTON: That’s right. Power Farming Waikato—they’re based in Morrinsville. I rang the CEO just before, and I asked what was some of the feedback he’d heard around Investment Boost. He said, “I’ve heard lots of good things. It feels like somebody is listening. Finally, a Government that supports farmers.”, and that’s awesome. They’re a major New Zealand - wide firm and they’re in Australia and they’re in America. They’re a big player, but they’ve got their feet on the ground and their feed in Red Band gumboots.

I talked to the new Fieldays CEO, Richard Lindroos, just before, and he said he’s had great feedback from both exhibitors and the farming community. He said that on the back of the official cash rate dropping—well, I added the banking inquiry—the banking inquiry that’s being conducted putting sunlight on rural lending, good Fonterra payouts, and now accelerated depreciation, he’s very excited about the Fieldays, Madam Speaker, and I can see by the glint in your eye that possibly you are too. It’s just going to be fantastic.

Fieldays is the largest event in the Southern Hemisphere, and over 100,000 visitors are going to be there. Will you be there, Dan Bidois?

Dan Bidois: I’ll be there.

RYAN HAMILTON: Will you be there, Cameron Brewer?

Cameron Brewer: Oh yeah, I’ll be going.

RYAN HAMILTON: Oh, fantastic. It’s going to be awesome.

Actually, on that note, mentioning Fieldays being the largest event in the Southern Hemisphere—just up from the good, fastest-growing city of Hamilton—may I just acknowledge the outgoing CEO, Peter Nation, who has served in that capacity excellently over the last few years and who was also a recent recipient in the King’s honours and was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to the agricultural industry and for governance. This is also on the back of international flights coming out of Waikato next Monday, with Jetstar flying to the Gold Coast and Sydney just before the Fieldays, which is going to be fantastic.

But back to the Budget. I want to talk about Invest New Zealand. We’ve got Investment Boost, which is accelerated depreciation—which has been talked about. It supports business investing in capital, which means they can invest in their business, which supports growth, productivity, and more employees, which is really important.

But with Invest New Zealand, our Prime Minister has been going overseas, and he said that Kiwis have been going over for a long time and it’s all very nice and they’re very polite, but we just haven’t had a commercial arrangement and not much commercial dealings. So what we’re creating is a one-stop shop. So $85 million is being established over four years to set up Invest New Zealand. New Zealand’s economy has been shrinking per capita, and we’ve been losing ground. Business confidence has dropped and the cost of capital has soared, so this Budget answers that with Invest New Zealand and, of course, Investment Boost, which I mentioned.

Invest New Zealand is a dedicated investment-attraction agency designed to bring high-quality capital into our regions, into our industries, and into our innovation sectors. It’s about getting capital flowing again, especially for high-tech advanced manufacturing, clean energy, and agritech sectors, where New Zealand can win globally. This isn’t about picking winners; it’s about removing friction, removing bureaucracy, and supporting regional start-ups, deep tech, and R & D, where Investment Boost can co-invest with private capital. This includes supporting Māori enterprise, regional start-ups, and a whole bunch of other capabilities and capacities.

This is really exciting. This is about New Zealand growing up and setting up the shop that will not only enable foreign direct investment (FDI) but actually show the pathways and create those opportunities. It’s about New Zealand growing up.

The main function of Invest New Zealand will be to facilitate and enable increased investment from overseas. It’s going to be fantastic. While not prescribed within the Act, it will also enable Invest New Zealand to operate activities such as attracting FDI, encouraging multinational companies to set up operations in New Zealand, and acting as a one-stop shop for all unsolicited investment inquiries. It will be maintaining a pipeline of investable opportunities and investor onboarding, facilitating collaboration, and supporting existing investors. It’s very exciting, and I’m looking forward to—I think, hopefully, we will go to the committee of the whole House later tonight, with Minister “Trade” McClay, and that’s going to be awesome to see that going.

I do want to touch a little bit on education. As has been mentioned by Cameron Brewer, this has been one of the largest investments in education—and particularly learning support—in a generation. I’ve been visiting schools this year. I was at Hamilton Boys’ High School, Woodstock Primary School, Hamilton East School, and Peachgrove Intermediate School, and when I’m sitting in those smoko rooms with staff, I’ll always get winged by a couple of people who are just saying, “We need help with learning support and the ORS funding. It’s our biggest challenge.”

Back when I went to school, there might have been a couple of kids challenged with learning and capability, but that demand has grown through attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, fetal alcohol syndrome, autism, English as a second language—all these challenges—

Dan Bidois: Dyslexia.

RYAN HAMILTON: —and dyslexia—there’s more. What’s the other one there?

Dan Bidois: Dyspraxia.

RYAN HAMILTON: Thank you. You know, that’s just such a challenge on our teachers. It’s not only an unfair disadvantage for those children but it’s a disruption to those in the class, and it was so good to see so much investment in this space. There is $266 million to extend the Early Intervention Service from early childhood education to the end of year 1 primary, which is also crucial and is so much needed. There is $122 million to meet increased demand for the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme; $192 million to ensure that over three years, all years 1 to 8 schools and kura are funded for a learning support coordinator; $43 million for an extra 78 fulltime-equivalent speech language therapists; $3 million of investment in our teacher-aides; $4 million to employ 25 intern educational psychologists; and $90 million of capital for our schools.

There’s so much good stuff in this Budget. I’m so excited and I’m so pleased to see it get through urgency the other week, and I look forward to continuing the other stages of legislation to help New Zealand to be all that it can be. Thank you.

This is a split call.

Madam Speaker, thank you very much. I first want to acknowledge that it’s pretty obvious that in Aotearoa, our people value our living systems, our thriving wildlife, our natural resources, our natural world. Whether it’s our fresh water, our oceans, our clean and healthy soil, our air, our native species—which includes our animals, yes, but also our plants and our trees—we love them all around the country, all different corners of our country. We have a generational agreement that we cherish our precious taonga of Papatūānuku, which is why I was not surprised but disappointed to see that this Budget, again, is a clear choice from this Government that they do not prioritise protecting and conserving our natural world, our natural heritage for mokopuna to come. Preserving our land, our natural living systems, is a responsibility that we have to mokopuna generations to come, to those not even here, and a Government Budget reflects the choices and the values that it places on different parts of who we are and what we believe is important. So this Budget is absolutely putting nature further at risk.

If I can, we are talking about Budget 2025, but I think it’s relevant to also note that no Budget sits in an isolated self, that we also note the funding cuts to the Department of Conservation (DOC) from Budget 2024. Hopefully, we’ll have seen that in this Budget, then, it recognises the massive pressure that our Department of Conservation are having to withstand, and we’ll have seen more investment into protecting and conserving nature. But instead, we saw more cuts—and I will go quickly over some of the cuts—but the impact of the cuts, and the ongoing cuts that we are seeing from this Government, means that, currently, we have 4,000 precious native species at risk of extinction. The cuts to the work to protect them means that we are going to end up saying goodbye to some of—and this is the only country where they are—our own native species. Once the species is gone, that’s it. We cannot reverse extinction.

One would think that every Government places at its heart a priority to at least protect our native species. What we have seen instead in this Government’s Budget, even just 2025, with things like closing the Mātauranga Kura Taiao Fund; closing the Nature Heritage Fund; ending the discretionary Treaty of Waitangi grant payments for conservation—look, which was already measly, where iwi and hapū already uphold incredible generosity—disestablishing—oh my goodness!—Predator Free, a cut of $12.6 million to one of the most successful community-led initiatives, one that I know National Governments have stood in communities and heralded—heralded over successive Governments as well—but a massive cut to that; the closure of the Crown Land Acquisition Fund; the reduction in policy services—the reduction in policy services, on top of a wildlife Act that was rushed through urgency to enable the killing of one of our native species like kiwi and that will require the Department of Conservation to actually do more administrative work to enable that legislation to go through. But instead, we are seeing more cuts to the back rooms of the people who actually need to do the extra work.

These are choices. These are values that any Government highlights, and I am proud to say to New Zealanders that we should be investing further in protecting our environment, rather than cutting; that the Greens in Government managed to secure the largest investment in conservation ever. We would continue to make those choices of prioritising the oranga of Papatūānuku for generations to come. Those are the choices that the Greens have always been clear about, have got a successful record on in securing. That is the differentiation: that we are clear to the people of this country what we care about. The continued squeeze on DOC funding ultimately puts its projects, its work, and our shared environment at risk. Our responsibility to generations to come to protect Papatūānuku under this Budget are made clear; that this Government is neglecting that responsibility. I am proud that we have given people another choice to what this Budget and its cuts have presented to the people. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of Te Rōpū Kākāriki to speak about the health system—and a cup of tea that I shared with a rural GP in Northland. He said to me—which was so disturbing—that he believed that our health system was on life support. He shared that, and he was shy, because he’s trying his best in rural Northland to serve a community that is spread across dusty roads with limited access and not enough internet to connect up and deliver sufficient services into backlogged rural Northland. And to hear that from someone on the front line, I’m disappointed in what the Budget has brought forward for primary care but also for hospital services and for our kaimahi.

When I reflect on what our unions have told us, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists have already said that the additional funding provided in this Budget is not enough to keep up the public health system, even at a standstill. Because we need to remember that health inflation is higher than general inflation—remember that. Demographics, population growth, looking at the rurality of our communities, our health inflation continues to rise and the investment of this Government continues to drop and create further inequities between the haves and the have-nots. Because healthcare is not a luxury; it’s a human right. And whether you live in Palmerston North; in Te Rāwhiti, Northland; in Central Auckland; or here in Wellington, you should be able to access quality, timely healthcare assistance—wherever you come from. And that’s what we’re not seeing in this Budget.

This Budget is shutting its doors on the very kaimahi who are on the front line as you turn your back on pay parity for our care workers and as you turn your back on the pay difference between those nurses who are in hospitals, “te hunga whai rawa” [“the wealthy”]—an up to 20 percent difference compared to those who work for Māori health providers and community services and primary care. Pay parity is a right. Why can we not recognise those who are on the front line servicing the health and wellbeing of our elders in aged care, our kaimahi as community health workers, and those who are in communities driving long distances, unable to get the parity that they deserve as wahine in community compared to those who work in the hospital system?

Now, if we look at what’s happening right now, I just received in my inbox an email from the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, who, on behalf of the staff of Wellington Regional Hospital, Kenepuru, and Hutt Valley, have reached out and said, “There is understaffing in our hospitals”, that the EDs are being crippled by the burden of so many whānau coming in through the front door. And they say, “Staffing is still an ongoing issue across Wellington Regional Hospital, Kenepuru, and the Hutt Valley.” That just dropped into my emails just five minutes ago.

Now, we can’t say that the Budget has delivered outcomes for all—not at all. You can say that you’ve provided a boost in primary care, after hours, urgent care—kia ora; additional funding for training of doctors and nursing and then extending access to prescriptions; oh well, kia ora tātou—but you’ve turned your back on the 33 claims for pay parity. You’re turning your back on Wellington Regional Hospital, Kenepuru, Hutt Valley as the staff are pleading for further resource to the front line, where they are saying they do not feel safe in the workplace because they don’t have enough colleagues and staffing around them, and that the charge nurses are under pressure.

And when do we really look at our EDs? We’ve heard it in the House already around our EDs being under pressure because the burden of health impact is hitting the front door of hospitals. It’s not in primary care. Our doctors are full. Our doctors are full in primary care. And yep, you might train a few more doctors, but half of them are retiring, too—just saying. We need to bring in a workforce plan that is connected and provides more space in universities than existing training programmes—not creating a new one at Waikato University that’s not even relevant. Just lift the numbers that are available in Otago. They just celebrated a massive anniversary, a milestone, last week. Lift those numbers—

Ryan Hamilton: We did.

HŪHANA LYNDON: —and provide the space. No, no, no, no, this is tangible. This is for rural Northland. This is for Palmerston North.

Andy Foster: That’s what we’re doing; you’ve missed it.

HŪHANA LYNDON: Oh no, no, I’m really well aware of what’s going on in primary care and they feel ignored despite the little bit of funding that you’ve provided. I look forward to seeing what this Government’s going to do.

This is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Budgets are about choices. This Government has decided once again that trickle-down economics are going to solve the challenges in this country. What they always forget is that the number one issue in the last election and even to this day—and their own polling will tell them this—is the cost of living crisis, the cost of living challenge in our communities up and down this country, not just the poorest communities but the working class communities and communities right across the country. What this Government believes is that their decision in this Budget means that eventually some kind of benefit will trickle down to those who need it the most—those who need it the most.

We’ve heard time and time again from this Government about how eventually it’ll get there, and things will start to look better, and these are the foundational building blocks to a brighter future. What it looks like to me is an attempt by this Government to once again brush aside what really matters to Kiwis, push aside the hard challenges that are facing this country, and once again make decisions in the interests of the few. We’ve seen that in this Budget. We’ve seen that in the rhetoric from this Government from the time they took office. It shouldn’t surprise us.

In the last Budget, we know that the choice was for the tobacco industry and for landlords. At this particular Budget, what we know is that the decisions by this Government have been against the healthcare sector, have been against women and our lowest-paid workers in this country, and against our young people.

Now, if you’re looking towards building blocks for the future, one would automatically think we should invest in our younger people—make sure that they have opportunities to train, make sure they have opportunities for employment. What we haven’t seen in this Budget is something that incentivises our young people to want to work, study, train, and stay here in New Zealand. It’s been clear to everybody across the House that the best ticket is the ticket to Australia. Nothing from this Government has said to our young people, “Oh no, we want you to be here and be a part of rebuilding our future for this country.” Absolutely nothing.

We know that when you turn 18 you can have a drink at the pub. When you turn 18 you can sign up for the army, the navy, or the air force. Now all of a sudden, our 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds once again have the spotlight put on them without any incentive to make sure that they are successful in life, because a successful young person is a successful future for this country.

What we also know is throughout the past year and a half this Government has talked big on health. My colleagues on this side of the House have made it very clear that simply because you set a target in the emergency department (ED) doesn’t mean you’re actually fixing the problem. What we’ve heard from this Minister of Health and in this Budget is, “Oh, we’ve got these teams that will go in and support different hospitals to bring down ED”—that still doesn’t deal with the issue.

What we know in places like Nelson—and my colleague will speak to that—and other places that have an expectation of healthcare and delivery in their communities is that it is not being met, and nothing in this Budget has said to them that that promise will be delivered upon. We need to look across places like the Dunedin Hospital. We need to look at places like the Whangārei Hospital. Just the other day I was in the Starship Hospital in the Auckland central region, and I can tell you even that place needs a lot of love. What did they get from this Government? Absolutely nothing.

What we do know from this Government is that wait times to see GPs are still on the increase. It’s hard to get to see a GP. Out in West Auckland we heard from a GP, a nurse, and a patient all in the same debate saying that the services that they get and receive in Waitākere are simply not good enough. We have patients with extreme needs who are sitting in the hallway waiting to be seen by a nurse who is overrun, overworked, overstretched, and underpaid. That’s what we heard. It’s clear from this Government that the Budget isn’t going to deliver for those people right around the country.

Just finally, in the final 50 seconds that I have, sadly, we didn’t get the opportunity today to speak about the 30-year commemoration of the signing of the deed of settlement between Waikato-Tainui and the Crown, a milestone moment that this House no doubt is proud of. What I want to say though, to this House—and to members in particular in the Government benches—is it is also a blueprint for how you build for the future. The success that they’ve been able to garner over 30 years with a long strategic vision to deliver for this country—and when I say this country I mean this country. Some members in this House believe, “Oh, it’s only benefiting the Māori.” It’s not. One need only look in Hamilton at the co-investment opportunities that come from settlements like the one Waikato-Tainui did with the Crown. We should be celebrating that, and we should be looking at that as the blueprint for the future of this country.

Budgets are a choice. You can choose to build for the future or to cut. Make no mistake: in Budget 2025, National and the Government are cutting back plans for the rebuild of Nelson Hospital.

Labour had a fantastic plan to rebuild Nelson Hospital. Our plan was for one large acute services building that would house all of the critical services inside that building. The building would have allowed for 255 beds, an increase of 92 beds; there would have been eight theatres—two new theatres from the six we currently have—and a larger emergency department. The entire building would have been designed to withstand the alpine fault rupturing at an eight.

Now, the first sign of trouble about the plan under this Government came before the election, when the then Leader of the Opposition, Christopher Luxon, said, when he was asked about Nelson Hospital, “We’ll look at it.”—we’ll look at it. Now, I raised the alarm in the media and I was accused of misinformation, but I was very clear that National’s approach to health and their tax cuts would put Nelson Hospital’s rebuild at risk. Unfortunately—and I say “unfortunately”—I have been proved right.

Last year, National instead announced a series of smaller buildings—two of them; two smaller buildings. At that time, I said, “I bet we’re only going to get one.” Well, guess what! I’ve been proved right again. In National’s health infrastructure plan released earlier this year, there was only one building—a smaller building. So gone is the large acute services building that will serve Nelson’s growing and ageing population based on the modelled number of beds needed, and now we’re only getting one small building. That was confirmed recently in the Budget: one building for $500 million.

Two hundred and seven points of care, including—I think the Minister forgot that he’s no longer the transport Minister—a transit lounge, whatever that means. So instead of Labour’s 255 beds, we get 207 points of care, including a transit lounge.

So we’ve got half the number of new beds, no new theatres, and no commitment that the buildings that will be refurbished will be able to withstand the alpine fault going at eight. I’ve asked the Minister about that in written questions and have not had a response, and that is not good enough.

Nelson, under this Government, is getting half the investment that they would have had under Labour, and half a hospital. We had a plan and we started that plan. We put the first amount of money into it, and the enabling works began under Labour. We had a plan to fix Nelson Hospital’s infrastructure, but National has kicked that can down the road.

Here is my prediction: it will be delayed. They’ll build this $500 million hospital, it’ll probably end up costing a lot more and it will be delayed, and we will be back in 10 years’ time to have another conversation, because guess what! The number of beds in that building does not meet the need of our growing and ageing population. Nelson is one of the fastest-growing areas in the country because people choose to retire there. Guess what they need! They need healthcare.

So I am livid because the people of Nelson were promised a hospital by the National Party prior to the election. Instead, we’ve had a delay. It is two years now since that election. They could have got on with that plan. We left it there for them. Here it is. It’s on a plate for you. Here is a plan to build a hospital for the people of Nelson. You delayed. You cancelled. You downgraded it. It is not acceptable for the people of Nelson to have to accept half a hospital, half the number of beds, and no new theatres—Dr Katie Ben said, last week, that we need more theatres; one of them is actually going to be out of action because the floor’s all over the place.

So this is a Government that doesn’t deliver for health. It never built hospitals the last time it was in Government. We’re not going to be seeing the hospitals that this country needs now.

I rise to call in strong support for Budget 2025, a responsible, future-focused plan that delivers for families, businesses, and communities all across New Zealand.

The member before me, Rachel Boyack, spoke about Budgets being about a choice. Well, unfortunately, the last Government didn’t really leave much of a choice for all New Zealanders, because when this Government took office we inherited an economy in recession, with inflation at high records, interest rates soaring, and a very unsustainable structural deficit. That deficit wasn’t just a short-term issue, it reflected a longstanding imbalance in public finances—very irresponsible by the last Government—that has burdened the current and the future generations, if left unchecked and unhelped.

Let me put that into real terms for all New Zealanders, those carrying home loans, business loans, and personal loans: in 2023—and I’ve done some checking—under the last Government, small and medium sized businesses were crushed by borrowing costs; average business overdraft rates reached an average 12.07 percent, with some as high as over 20 percent. Now, fast-forward to mid-2025; just 18 months under a National-led Government and borrowing conditions have remarkably improved. As of February this year, the average business credit rates have fallen to 6.63 percent, and a further reduction of floating business rates to 4.8 percent in May this year. In March 2023, under that Labour Government, inflation peaked at 6.7 percent, driven by rising costs in housing, food, transport—basic needs that affect all of us. By the first quarter of 2025, inflation had fallen back to 2.5 percent—safely within the Reserve Bank’s 1 to 3 percent target range. The moderation has also allowed a series of official cash rate reductions, from 5.5 percent in August 2024 to 3.25 percent as of now.

Now, these aren’t just numbers; they mean something for all New Zealanders. There are also decisions to reflect the current conditions in New Zealand, and it will help to stimulate the economy and ease financial pressure. So we’re now seeing the results. For homeowners, the relief is very, very tangible.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: What about renters?

NANCY LU: In 2023—and that also goes to renting—the floating mortgage rate was, in April 2023, 8.61 percent, and fixed rates averaged over 7.3 percent. Now, today, the one- to three-year fixed mortgage rates are as low as below 5 percent; that’s from as high as 8.6 percent to under 5 percent. So, for any family with a $500,000 mortgage, that is over $300 saved—

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Are they homeowners or are they landlords?

NANCY LU: —every fortnight. That goes to the landlords, the renters, and everyone in New Zealand. That is real relief, driven by responsible and disciplined fiscal management. So this Budget in front of us now gets New Zealand back on track. It is disciplined, it is growth oriented, and it sets out a clear path to return the Government books back to surplus by 2028-29. It restores balance and rebuilds resilience, and this is the Budget to grow the pie for all New Zealanders.

One of my most exciting points in the Budget is about Investment Boost, and some of the members on this side of the House have stood up and strongly supported the Investment Boost. I have to put it on record here: when we talked about Investment Boost and when we debated this last week in urgency, the week before in this House, a lot of the Opposition members actually voted down Investment Boost. They didn’t want businesses to invest; they want businesses to hold back, stop investing, or delay investing, so they don’t hire people, so we don’t grow the pie. But this Investment Boost—now, let’s put it on record—is actually a game-changer for manufacturers, builders, rural producers, and small businesses.

These are some of the quotes that I’ve found. Dunedin manufacturers call this tax reduction a great step forward. BusinessNZ says it will drive capital upgrades. The Employers and Manufacturers Association says it will boost productivity and eventually put more back into workers’ back pockets. This is what we mean. It is the investment that will go into businesses, that will go into fixed assets, that will continue to grow business, grow the pie, grow the return, and eventually grow higher employment for New Zealand, grow higher GDP for New Zealand, grow higher tax revenue for the Government so that we can invest into the front line and the Public Service. It will go back into higher wages for all of our workers—

Dr Vanessa Weenink: More jobs.

NANCY LU: —and more jobs. That’s right, exactly, from a great, great MP in Christchurch, Vanessa Weenink. That is very important for her and for one of the fastest-growing cities in New Zealand, in Christchurch.

I also need to talk about KiwiSaver. This really, really sings to my heart. From 2026, the default contribution rates will rise to 3.5 percent, and eventually to 4 percent by 2028, and with the update on the Government’s contribution, that is to be more targeted for people who really, really need that extra little bit of help from the Government to incentivise them to save for their future. Now, the Retirement Commission have come out and said, “Look, these changes could make savings that will last 30 percent longer.” Also on public record is that 80 percent of contributors will actually benefit from this eventual move and change by the Government.

I’ve also seen impact statements where an average New Zealander who retires at 65 years of age under the new scheme will have an additional $102,817 in their KiwiSaver savings. That’s a six-digit New Zealand dollar savings in their KiwiSaver. Now, who wouldn’t like an additional $100,000 in their KiwiSaver? Well, we on this side of the House want it. I’m sure every one of us on this side of the House wants it, but let’s put it on record: it’s the members opposite in this House that have said no; no to the change and no to New Zealanders who want additional savings for KiwiSaver, both from themselves but also from their employers. But that’s OK, there are far more—and let’s see if the Opposition will be happy with at least maybe one thing in the Budget.

In education, Budget 2025 delivers the largest ever investment in learning support in a generation, including $266 million to expand early intervention services, including 560 new specialists, including 900,000 more teacher-aide hours, including $39.9 million on hands-on science kits for years zero to 8 students, including $161 million for new school infrastructure in Canterbury. There we go. There is so much in the education budget but, guess what, the Opposition have said no. In health, Budget 2025 delivers $285 million in performance-based funding for primary care; over $1.3 billion to improve GP access, digital health services, and after-hours care; and $1 billion investment in hospitals’ infrastructures, including Nelson, Auckland, and Wellington; allows 12-month prescriptions, where clinically appropriate; and expands urgent daytime care. And guess what! The Opposition have said no.

There is more—there is more. We’re also giving additional budget for our rural communities, including a new $206 million for the Primary Sector Growth Fund; including continued support for catchment groups and rural wellbeing; extending Investment Boost to every single corner, including all of our farmers, including for their machinery and equipment. With all of this, Budget 2025 is forecasting a real GDP growth of 2.9 percent in the 2025-26 year, an additional 240,000 people in jobs over the next four years, and wage growth that is consistently outpacing inflation.

So, beyond all these numbers, the National-led Government, the Government side, have said, “Yes, we want that growth Budget. Yes, we want to grow the pie. Yes, we want everybody in New Zealand to be better off under our guardianship of taxpayers’ money.” But it’s the Opposition who have all said, “No, we don’t want additional investment growth. No, we don’t want additional superannuation savings. And, no, we don’t want better healthcare, better education—and no; I’m saying no.” But yet the Opposition have no plan. They have no plan, just to say, “We can do it better.” They don’t have any plans. So, with that, I commend this Budget to the House.

Budget 2025 is a turning point. It’s a Budget that restores discipline, rewards hard work, and invests in the services that Kiwis need. It’s also a Budget where ACT has delivered real results—not just promises but savings, reforms, deregulation, and reinvestment of taxpayers’ hard-earned money.

Why is this important? Well, this country is on track to have a national debt of over $200 billion by the end of the decade if we don’t make some savings and turn things around. This year, we’re forecasting to spend over $50 billion on welfare for New Zealanders. That is important, but we can’t afford to look after our most needy and our retired people unless we can find savings elsewhere. With a debt forecast to hit $200 billion, that means interest costs on that debt of somewhere around $11 billion in total. That’s more than we spend on defence and police and corrections combined—more than we spend on primary, secondary, and tertiary education combined. It’s completely unacceptable. We cannot tolerate it. That’s why ACT, as part of this coalition Government, is laser-focused on making the savings we need to so we can afford the things that are important for all New Zealanders.

ACT has done what we said we’d do. We’d said we’d cut waste. We said we’d rein in the bloated public sector. We’ve led the charge. ACT’s David Seymour has found $115 million in permanent public sector savings. Those are savings locked in every year. In total, this Government has found savings of $5.3 billion. I’m looking at the Opposition now. They’re just staring at me with blank looks on their faces. They can’t imagine finding $5.3 billion worth of savings, but that’s what this Government has done—that’s what this Government has done—with ACT as part of the coalition.

Now, we didn’t stop there. ACT’s Brooke van Velden has driven structural reforms—crucial changes to pay equity rules, ensuring fairness but without writing blank cheques that could never be cashed. Hear that, Labour? David Seymour has championed the Regulatory Standards Bill to stop unnecessary and costly regulations before they cost the taxpayer money. Imagine that? Identifying laws that probably won’t work, might not deliver the benefits, are just going to cost money, and stopping them before they happen. That’s what ACT has delivered. It would be fair to say that ACT would do even more than we have achieved in this Budget—

Dan Bidois: Tell us about it.

SIMON COURT: —but that this Government is doing much more than a Government without ACT. Isn’t it, Dan Bidois? Thank you. Thank you for your encouragement. Thank you.

Cutting the size of Government is not ideological—it is practical, it’s necessary, it’s vital. Every dollar we save from wasteful spending is a dollar we can either return to the taxpayer or reinvest in infrastructure and services that are vital, not just nice-to-haves. That is what responsible Government looks like. I know the Opposition members—they’re looking down at their phones—they really don’t want to hear it. It’s terrifying to them. It’s terrifying.

What’s the alternative? Well, why don’t we have a look at the Green Budget that the Green Party—Te Pāti Kākāriki—put up. Now, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan is clapping. He’s clapping like a performing seal, because that’s what the party of circuses was offering. The “Ministry of Green Works”: $8 billion for 40,000 cool-sounding green jobs that would produce nothing—

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Thank you for reading it!

SIMON COURT: —but the smell of unicorn farts, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan. The Green Party was proposing to buy back private shareholders’ shares in the electricity companies. Why would you spend billions of dollars buying shares off people or buying shares from New Zealand’s superannuation funds, for example, or some teenager’s Sharesies account, just so you can return the electricity companies to some bloated Government department? This is the madness of the Green Party budget. And all of this was to be funded by a new wealth tax; higher corporate tax; a private jet tax; and, incredibly, a tax on increased mining royalties. At least the owners of private jets and mines could feel safe under a potential Green - Labour - Te Pāti Māori Government, because it turns out the Greens are relying on private jet owners and mining companies to prop up their fanciful ideas. Well, it’s so wild it would be funny if that party being in Government wasn’t such a terrifying risk to current and future New Zealanders’ wealth and prosperity.

What is the alternative? Well, we heard that Te Pāti Māori—I mean, it would be fair to say that if they’d been here for the Budget, we might have heard more; but let’s just cast back—would propose a separate budget for Māori. Now, who knows how you would find out who gets some of this budget? Would you have to subject yourself to a DNA test, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke? I mean, how would we find out? Would David Seymour, the leader of the ACT Party, qualify for some of this Māori budget that Te Pāti Māori wanted? I mean, can I cast back in my whakapapa and potentially find a tenuous link to some of this pūtea that Te Pāti Māori wanted to reserve? Well, more shocking and disturbing than a race-based party is the silence of Labour.

Helen White: Fearmongering about us.

SIMON COURT: Now, that member, Helen White, has a lot to say for herself now, but what we haven’t heard from Helen White, or anyone in Labour, is what an alternative budget might look like, how to sustain the things New Zealand needs, where to find savings. Because, guess what, being in power for six years like the previous Labour-led Government, they couldn’t find any savings. Each year, they just added to and added to and added to spending. They increased core Crown spending by over 40 percent, doubled the debt from $100 billion to $200 billion, which my children and probably grandchildren will still be paying back unless we make the necessary savings.

What’s important about this Budget is not just the savings but being able to use that money saved to reinvest where it matters. We’ve been able to invest $5.5 billion more into the health system as a result of this Budget—as a result of savings in this Budget. We’re investing over $700 million more in education. Because, if there’s one thing that will secure our future, even in the face of some of the poor arguments and poor logic that we hear here in the House, it’s educating our young people so they can argue back against some of the foolish concepts we hear from Labour and the Greens and these race-based parties in Parliament. We’re building infrastructure—infrastructure like roads, bridges, and so on—that will serve New Zealanders for generations. That’s what ACT believes in: saving smart and spending wisely.

Thinking about business, because one of the things that we need to invest in is making sure that people want to invest in New Zealand—restoring our reputation. A reputation destroyed, caned, burned after six years of the previous Labour Government. Investment Boost for business will allow 20 percent depreciation on capital investments in the first year of that new investment. That means improving cash flows for those businesses who might be manufacturers wanting to invest in new equipment; who might be contractors wanting to invest in new diggers and rollers; of course, farmers who might want to invest in new tractors or other shiny new farm toys, which they’ll be able to test out at Fieldays next week in the Waikato. What it’s about is improving cash flows in that first year so that those employers can employ more people to operate that gear, to improve their productivity, to return greater profits for their business, which actually means—to those on the other side of the House—paying more taxes generated from productivity, not just by cutting up the pie into smaller and smaller bits.

ACT is proud to be the conscience of this Government when it comes to saving—the party that demanded value and got it out of Budget 2025. We’ve proven it’s possible to reduce the size of Government and still deliver more to everyday Kiwis. What New Zealanders up and down the country are telling us at our public meetings and when we go out on to farms, when we go to construction businesses and manufacturers: “Keep doing it, ACT. Keep playing that important, that vital role in Government. We need you.” And what I’ll say back to them is we’re just getting started. I commend this Budget to the House.

Just before I call the next speaker, Mr Court, I noticed you’ve changed speaking position in the House, as has your party. For a Speaker with an ailing eyesight, I can see a lot more now that you’re sitting there, including the fact you’re wearing your badge.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s been great to listen to some of the debates here today about the Budget. I’ve particularly enjoyed hearing from Labour’s finance spokesperson, Barbara Edmonds, and I’ve enjoyed hearing from her because in the last couple of weeks, I’ve heard a lot of public statements around the Budget: she likes our Investment Boost, she supports it, she likes the KiwiSaver changes. But it is good to hear from her today about her position on the Budget.

I wish to just address a question that she asked members on this side of the House. She said, “Why are we here?” I’m here to raise the productive capacity of our people here in New Zealand because it is through our productive capacity that we can raise wages and raise our standard of living. Actually, I think there’s a shared intention across this House around living standards, but there is a difference in the means by which we get there. We believe, on this side of the House, that it’s people that generate economic growth, not Government. We believe that a large and vibrant private sector is what we need in this Government, coupled with a very small and limited role for Government. On this side of the House, we back individuals to get on with it and to make a better life for themselves over the need for the State.

This brings me to today’s discussion about the Budget. Now, I must say, for members in this House, that Budgets really change lives. What they do is set the direction and tone for lasting change in the future. I wish to home in on a wonderful community in Auckland called Northcote.

Shanan Halbert: Tell us what you’ve done. Tell us your outcomes.

DAN BIDOIS: I’m so glad we’ve got the former member of Northcote in the House, who’s a great asset to the National Party. We want him to stand again because he is a huge asset for us in Northcote. But what I want to say is that Northcote is a wonderful place to live, work, and raise a family. I’ve got a child, and it is wonderful to know that he is being raised in a wonderful neighbourhood. But we want to make it even better, and that is what this Budget’s all about. It’s about going for growth so that the North Shore and the Northcote electorate is in a better position in the future.

I wish to focus on four areas of the Budget. The first is what my good colleague here Cameron Brewer loves to talk about: Investment Boost. Investment Boost has had great resounding support in our communities. I will talk about a great, large business in Northcote. I’ve heard from them, and I can’t say the business’s name because it’s confidential, but they have told me, “Actually, we’re looking at plans to roll out solar,” and bring their investment plans forward to invest in solar because of Investment Boost. That is great. It’s a win for the economy and it’s a win for the environment. OK, so that is Investment Boost and that’s going to make a difference to how many businesses in Northcote? Ten thousand small to medium sized businesses in Northcote, up and down my community, who are going to be able to apply for Investment Boost across this country. That’s 600,000 businesses across New Zealand. That’s not insignificant.

Now let’s go to KiwiSaver. Now, I’m on record as saying that there is nothing more we can do to position our future for this country better than savings. That is what this policy is about: it is about raising the national savings rates because savings equals investment. And guess what! You can’t grow the economy without investment. So that is what this policy is about: it’s about raising our superannuation, or dare I say “KiwiSaver”, contributions.

Shanan Halbert: There was more investment in Northcote under Labour.

DAN BIDOIS: And guess how much, Shanan? Guess how many workers in your electorate—that I represent, thankfully? Thirty-eight thousand—38,000—Shanan, our best asset for the National Party.

OK, so let us talk about learning support. We’ve heard a lot from Minister Erica Stanford about learning support, the best and most significant change in learning support in a generation. I want to talk about how many schools in the Northcote electorate are going to get a dedicated learning resource. Let’s go through them: Beach Haven Primary, Birkdale Intermediate School, Glenfield Intermediate School, Birkdale North, Birkdale Primary, Chelsea Primary is getting a dedicated learning support coordinator, Glenfield Primary, Kauri Park Primary, Marlborough Primary, St Mary’s School in Onewa Rd, Sunnybrae School, Verrans Primary, and Windy Ridge. They are all getting—guess what!—a dedicated learning support coordinator. So that is fantastic news because, Mr Speaker, I know in your electorate, like mine, you get the same feedback, that every principal has been screaming out for more support for those with difficult learning needs.

The last area is around early learning, early learning centres, and the operational funding increase that will enable them to do what they do really well for kids right across the Northcote electorate. I’m very lucky to have my son, who’s now at daycare, and to see the tremendous contribution that people in the early learning sector make to make sure that the future of New Zealand is looking bright, and it’s going to look even brighter thanks to the increase in operational funding that is going our way from the Budget.

So that is all part of our plan to grow the economy so that we’ve got a better future right here in New Zealand and don’t have to leave for better, brighter futures overseas. And through growth, this is our solution to the toughest economic challenge that we’ve faced in a generation. As Simon Court from ACT said, our debt is going to balloon to $200 billion by 2029. We’re dealing with huge public budget deficits because the previous Government doubled our debt. We are back in a positive growth trajectory after several years of negative growth.

As the finance Minister, Nicola Willis, has said, we’ve got massive structural deficits. If you believe The New Zealand Initiative and the OECD and the IMF, you’ll see that that’s one of the largest structural deficits in the developed world. So that is the challenge that we’re facing: cleaning up their mess so that we’ve got a better future right here at home. And we do face tough economic challenges in the future with an ageing population. By 2040, two out of every five people will be over the age of 60. That is going to put enormous pressure on our healthcare system, and that is why we have to review and look very deeply at the way we fund our services and make sure that we’re getting the best value from those.

That’s why it’s all about going for growth. Now, you might ask me, what’s the alternative to going for growth? Well, we’ve heard the alternative from the main Opposition party, the Green Party, and that’s an $88 billion plan to tax, borrow, spend, and hope our way to a brighter future. In fact, it is telling that the Labour Party don’t know what to do on this matter. They support it; they don’t. But that is the reality: if Labour get into power at the next election, we’re going to be dealing with an $88 billion tax plan that they’re going to be handed from the Green Party.

The Opposition has said Budgets are about choices—but this is all about a choice. Do we want growth or do we want debt and to tax and spend our way to a brighter future? On this side of the House, we are very clear: it is through growth that we can get ahead and create a prosperous society so that the over a million New Zealanders who live overseas see this country as a better place to bring their family up, and so that my son, in the future, doesn’t have to leave like they have and like I have done, and actually can stay in New Zealand and have the great opportunities to get ahead right here in New Zealand.

This has been a fantastic debate. I’ve loved every moment of hearing the speakers in this House, right up and down, from Labour’s finance spokesperson, who loves our Budget, and to our side of the House. I just want to say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you to the coalition Government for putting in place the building blocks for future success for our country and for our electorate of Northcote. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. They say that a Budget is a moral document, and it is, because it reflects the choices that a Government makes and it reflects the values that underpin decisions made in a Budget. This Budget—Budget 2025—was funded by the choice that this Government made to cancel 33 active pay equity claims. One of those was care and support workers—about 66,000 of them, mostly women who work across mental health institutions, disability organisations, addiction organisations; critical work to keep society going, but women largely who are underpaid and undervalued, and this Government has taken money away from their paycheques to balance their books.

What is in it? What were disability communities, for example, wanting to see in the Budget? A plan. A strategy. Some sort of cohesive action that would undo the trauma that this Government has unleashed on disability communities since they took office. They have narrowed what disabled people can use their funding for. They have taken away respite options for carers. They have stopped people who need residential care facilities from being able to access them. They have gutted Whaikaha, a ministry that disabled people fought for. And now NASCs—needs assessment service centres—that assess the needs of disabled people have waiting lists. For the first time ever, hundreds of disabled people who need to access Disability Support Services cannot, because of the funding that this Government has reduced. This is a Budget that barely keeps the lights on for disability communities.

They crow about learning support. I will accept that the sector has asked for more funding into learning support, but this is not it. The feedback from parents and principals that I’ve heard is that this is not transformative; it is just putting more money into a broken system, which is why we did the Highest Needs Review. They could have just implemented that. But no, it’s window dressing because it sounds good.

What about conservation? This is the “No BS Budget”—it’s the “No Biodiversity Support Budget”, for sure, because there was nothing in this to protect biodiversity while we have the highest rate of species extinction in the world. Nothing to protect biodiversity decline, but a cut to Jobs for Nature, Nature Heritage funding cut, and the disestablishment of Predator Free 2050 Ltd in the middle of a consultation that this Government is running about Predator Free—no heads-up, no warning; they were only told on Budget day with everyone else. How disrespectful.

Yet what is this Government doing? They’re just making it easier to kill protected species. They’re making it easier to protect pests. What are we seeing in train from this Government? A sanctuary for stoats. What’s going to be next, wetlands for weasels? Like, all they’re going to do is ensure that pests are protected and that biodiversity continues to decline.

Where is the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill? This week, it is one year since the Environment Committee recommended unanimously that that bill pass to reverse the decline of the Hauraki Gulf. Where is it? We haven’t seen it. We’ve heard that there’s going to be some eleventh-hour amendments to protect fishers and to continue the decline of the Hauraki Gulf—massive issue for Auckland, for example, languishing on the Order Paper. That was a bill—after 10 years of consultation—that Labour in Government introduced to the House, and this Government is just twiddling their thumbs, refusing to do anything about it.

The International Visitor Levy went up. This Government is going to make $190 million from that, and a measly $20 million is going back into conservation after all the cuts. Yet they’ve found $2.9 billion for landlords, $200 million for offshore oil and gas companies, $216 million for a tobacco company.

This is a “growth Budget” according to this Government; all we’ve seen is growth in the cost of living issues, growth in environmental degradation, growth in the number of disabled New Zealanders who cannot access support services, growth in unemployment, and growth in the number of Kiwis leaving this country in droves. This is a Budget that this Government should be ashamed of, because it makes life harder for those who can least afford it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to talk about this Budget, which is good for possums, good for utes—

Hon Member: We love possums.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —bad for women. That is what this Budget is about. Oh, and Government members tell us that they love possums, and we know that because that is what this Budget demonstrates. But they’re not commenting on my comment that it’s bad for women—crickets on that side of the House. We know it’s bad for women because we’ve spent a lot of time in this House talking about pay equity. Or rather, this side of the House has been doing all the talking, and that side has been crickets.

We haven’t had answers to questions from Ministers in committee stage. When the bill was introduced with no notice, we heard David Seymour say that it was saving the Budget. Next minute, we’ve got the Prime Minister saying, “No, no, no. This urgent legislation passed through all stages in urgency with no select committee process, and the Opposition didn’t see the bill until it was tabled when the Minister started speaking but this pay equity bill has nothing to do with the Budget.”

So what happens the next week when the Budget rolls around? Well, anyone listening closely to the House when the Budget dropped at 2 p.m. on the Thursday will have heard me give an audible gasp when I read a Newsroom story on Twitter—because that got to me faster than the Budget being delivered out—that $12 billion was looking to be saved from pay equity. Yet the Prime Minister had the gall to say to us just the week before, “No, no, no. This has nothing to do with pay equity.” It is astounding.

Possums, the thing that this Government loves: this Budget got rid of what the National Government established when it was last in Government. The John Key Government set up Predator Free 2050 Ltd. Then the Minister of Conservation was just the week or so before setting out objectives for Predator Free 2050, so maybe nobody had told him what was in the Budget.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Chaos.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: “Chaos”, my friend Priyanca Radhakrishnan says. It certainly sounds like chaos to me, just like the urgent legislation that he put through all stages—urgency for wildlife—where he didn’t seem to understand that his legislation did not apply to new Government roads.

Utes: let me speak about utes for a minute. Government members are saying that they love utes. I know this because I’ve heard them speak about utes so often in their Budget speeches. They are all there crowing about how wonderful Fieldays is going to be because everyone is going to be out buying new utes.

Now, productivity is a good word, and we’re interested in productivity. How it is that everybody going and buying a new ute at Fieldays is going to lead to productivity is a very interesting question, one that I have not heard answered from the other side. Here it’s a big Budget item and it’s something that I know many of my constituent manufacturing companies will be very pleased about. They’re interested in productivity and doing more of that manufacturing out of Dunedin, but there are no criteria for this scheme.

There was a great opportunity—you could have had a climate lens over this policy or even a productivity lens over this. But did we get that? No. Instead, did we get a $200 million subsidy to oil and gas? Yes, we did. That’s exactly what we did. Oh, international companies, come and look for something that doesn’t exist here, and we’ll give you $200 million. We’ll go against all of our international agreements that we do not subsidise oil and gas. That is what this Budget does, and it is a disgrace.

Again, before I call the next speaker, just relating back to the change in seating. I know when you’re sitting at the back of the House, you need big boys’ voices to be heard. You don’t need to be quite as loud when you’re sitting here, because, once again, the Speaker can hear you a lot more vociferously and may interfere.

We have heard the word: that it is about “choice”. I think it’s poignant to call on that narrative—that this is about choice—because I think the reason we have Budget 2025 is because the previous Government left us a mess. Because they didn’t make choices, they said yes to everything—an 80 percent increase in expenditure and no increase in delivery. What happened is that Budget 2025 is about choice. It’s about hard choice, it’s about difficult choice, it’s about the choices that need to be made to ensure we are not burdening future generations with crippling debt.

Budget 2025 was for everyday Kiwis; the Budget that recognises those hard-working Kiwi battlers, from whom we take tax dollars. For every single dollar we take from that taxpayer, we are entrusted to make really good choices. Every dollar that we take—ever dollar we are accountable for—we have to be accountable to those taxpayers, we have to be accountable for the outcomes that we need to deliver. And with every decision we make on how that dollar is spent, we have to speak about the investment that that dollar is going to deliver—the investment in the future of our economy, the investment in education, the investment in law and order, the investment in health, the investment in economic growth, and the investment in accessing our natural resources. When we do the right thing and we make the investments wisely, then we have the ability to make those bigger decisions, those bigger choices, because we have more funds to do it, without incurring further debt. It is essential that we take practical actions, which means those tough decisions—those difficult choices—have to be made.

I’m really proud to say that New Zealand First’s practical, pragmatic methodology has shone through in Budget 2025. We have seen the practical initiatives that are so important. We heard frequently in the speeches from the opposite side of the House about how we didn’t put money in, as if putting money in is delivery. Putting money in is a solution. Putting money in does not deliver accountability, it does not deliver measures, and it does not deliver targets. That is what we’ve done in this Budget. That’s what we are focused on.

I want to talk about the pragmatic investment in the valued demographic that New Zealand First has so long championed: our over-65s. This Budget has not only safeguarded the initiatives New Zealand First has championed throughout our political life; it has delivered more. Twenty years ago, we campaigned on the SuperGold card, the free off-peak travel—one of the greatest congestion-reduction initiatives—the 10 percent electricity rebate, which has become the winter energy payment; and we’ve passed more on the upgrade to the GoldCard, to access concessions through the SuperGold hub. Today, we have over 5,000 offers and thousands of businesses that are offering discounts to that demographic. In this Budget, we have invested a further $154 million in the rates rebate scheme. This changes the thresholds of eligibility, which means an additional 66,000 SuperGold cardholders will have access to the rates rebate scheme. This is the practical stuff. This is about the choices that mean we are delivering right now into the back pockets of our seniors.

This Budget allocation of super reflects New Zealand First’s commitment to retain the superannuation eligibility. The Rt Hon Winston Peters—my leader; champion for seniors—has long ensured that we will protect the age of superannuation so that we can live our lives with dignity as we age in New Zealand. Our over-65s have toiled long and hard to deliver the country we now inherit and enjoy, and we will continue to defend that.

As we discuss the issues of superannuation affordability, I would like to highlight some of the key statistics. At the moment, superannuation costs New Zealand 5.5 percent of GDP, and when you compare that to the OECD average of 7.7 percent, we know that we can continue to support our seniors, who have worked hard all their life and deserve the quality of life that we can deliver.

New Zealand First also ensured that the superannuation amount was tagged to the mean wage at 66 percent, increasing it from 60 percent as it had been previously. We know we can do more in this sector—and we will—but we are taking the difficult choices to make sure we can afford to do the things we are promising to do. We also included in this Budget a $24 million funding uplift to aged care, to help our older people get the care they need. We want to see older people being able to transition to the treatment and care in the best possible place that is the most suitable. This is a small step to be taken in a big issue, but it is a step in the right direction. We acknowledge the hard work that the aged-care sector does in delivering quality of care, and we will continue to support this demographic. Budget 2025’s commitment of the $24 million is an important step in the right direction.

There are other things that we have done in this Budget that New Zealand First campaigned for, that are important to our very core. Firstly, we have doubled the money supporting the wonderful volunteers who are the Māori wardens. They are the presence in our small communities. They are the presence that bind difficult situations, support events, and create a volunteer network throughout this country. This doubled funding will ensure that they can do more, they can grow more, and they can support more.

In addition, we have invested an extra $35 million into Customs to target transnational, serious organised crime. We know that we have a meth epidemic, and we know we want to do a lot more to fight it. But the reality is we cannot do it all—we do things practically, we do things in solid steps, and we will ensure this investment delivers the strengthening of our borders that we need to ensure that our communities are not victimised further by international cartels that make those that can least afford to pay it pay the highest price.

This Budget is exactly as has been outlined: it is about choice. It is about the fact that, sometimes, when the grown-ups are in the room, you have to make some tough choices. You can’t give everything to everybody all the time, because, ultimately, we are accountable to every single taxpayer dollar that we take off New Zealanders, and every decision we make has to be in the best interest of those that give us that money.

As we grow our economy—and this is the key point of this Budget—as we invest in how we can access our own natural resources, as we invest in economic growth, as we support those hard-working Kiwi battlers that give us those tax dollars, we know that we will be able to do more. But we will not do it by continuing to bind our future generations to a crippling debt that is completely unaccountable to the people that trust us with their money.

This is a good, solid Budget that is practical common sense; hard decisions that will make our economy stronger in the long run and make our country stronger in the long run. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Before I kick in, I’d just like to say hello to the members up in the gallery from Five Forks Primary School in North Otago: year 7 students up there with Miles Anderson, their hard-working MP. Welcome to Parliament. And they will be inspired—as I’m sure many people around New Zealand are—with this Budget, because, as the previous speaker the Hon Casey Costello was saying, this is a solid Budget, this is a responsible Budget, and this is a Budget that delivers for New Zealanders.

Look, the Budget secures New Zealand’s economic and fiscal recovery. And there were a number of challenges that we have been facing. We have moved to advanced reforms to make sure that New Zealanders can have a better way of life. If we take a moment to reflect, we’re coming off a very high period of inflation, soaring debt, soaring interest rates, and a cost of living crisis throughout New Zealand that hit the poor and the vulnerable hardest and delivered a set of circumstances that were challenging for significant segments of New Zealand society. This Government has been working extremely hard to get that under control and deliver the economic and fiscal conditions to bring down inflation, to enable the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to reduce interest rates, and that’s now being seen through homeowners throughout New Zealand. They have more money in their back pocket, and renters do as well because rents haven’t gone up—unlike the $170 they went up over the previous Government.

This is a Government that understands that the first thing you have to do to run a successful country is to get the books in order to run a sound economic gain, control costs, deliver economic growth, and go from there. We have planted a very solid base, and this Budget heads in that direction. And one of the highlights—and it’s been pretty well touted—is around the Investment Boost, which I’m afraid that not all members of this House voted to support. But it has been a very popular policy. As I was back in my electorate last week, I was going around doorknocking a fair bit and I did hear a number of people come up and tell me specifically what a fantastic—fantastic—policy they thought this was. I’ll read a message I got from someone very quickly: “Info for you, since the rebate was announced, the phone has not stopped ringing. It’s been mad. For the first time in a very long time, farmers and contractors actually feel like the Government gives a … and are trying to help.” It is a really, really positive thing and, as the finance Minister said earlier today, it’s giving companies and contractors the incentive they need—the incentive boost they need—to make that capital investment. We are building New Zealand’s capital stock that will result in growing wages, a growing economy, increased productivity. This is a step in the right direction, and it’s been very positively endorsed.

Some other key pieces: you know, as chair of the Health Committee, naturally I’m inclined to look at what has been happening in health. There were some good announcements in this piece: hospital and specialist services, an increase of $5.5 billion; primary services and community services, highlighted by the Minister as a very important piece that we need to get right, and it is, frankly, which is why we’ve seen a lot more investment in that. And it’s with that investment there that we can, hopefully, stop people from needing that more acute care that they need further on down the road by getting it right in the primary and community space. Over a billion dollars for additional cancer treatments and other medicines that Pharmac announced over the last 12 months. This is very good policy. And in Tauranga as well, very happy to see the Minister announce just prior to the Budget that there would be the ability for a 24/7 urgent care clinic. I’m definitely hopeful that it’ll be in my electorate. I can see Mr Luxton nodding his head. He wants it there too, I’m sure. He’d probably like it in Pāpāmoa. But look, I think this is a fantastic thing for our city and our region regardless. It’s a fast-growing region, and we definitely need that care to take pressure off the emergency departments.

Education’s been talked about a fair bit, and it really has. There were some really good announcements in the education space—fantastic announcements. There was a piece around learning support, and that was a fantastic announcement because the week before this Budget—dreadfully wet week; we don’t usually have them in Tauranga, but we did that week—I went out to Tauriko School and I took a walk through, and the teachers said, “Look, what we need more than anything is learning support.” And we went into a classroom, and it was clear that some students there had challenges, and that meant the whole class had challenges, frankly. What this will do is deliver that student who needs it the support that they need, and enable, then, the teachers and the rest of the students to progress with the lesson plans. It is a fantastic piece of news for schools around New Zealand.

I’ve got a little list here, if you’ll indulge me, of schools in my electorate who will be getting learning support coordinators through Budget 2025: Bethlehem College, Greenpark School, Greerton Village School, Merivale School, Mount Maunganui Primary School, Mount Maunganui Intermediate, Omanu School, Pyes Pa Road School, Taumata School, Tauranga Adventist School, Tauranga Intermediate, Tauranga Primary School, Tauranga Waldorf School, Tauriko School, and possibly in my electorate next term, Te Puna School. That is a fantastic piece of news for all of those schools, and I’ve already received some notes from them about how happy they are.

But wait, there’s more—there’s more—just when you thought I was going to move on to another topic. It’s a very serious matter, actually. It’s about mathematics and there is a significant boost—around $100 million—for mathematics. The stats are clear that the more you progress through school with mathematics and understand it—I believe it’s for every year you progress, you will earn 7 percent more on average. That makes a real difference to people’s lives, and it means that when they go through primary school, if they understand the concept, they’re more likely to continue with it. Minister Stanford has done a fantastic job in this space, and I was extremely pleased when I saw that announced in Budget 2025, as I’m sure many schools and parents around New Zealand were as well.

I also want to touch upon something that Minister Costello said a little bit earlier, and that was around the rates rebates for 66,000 people on a SuperGold card. They will be getting assistance with their rates. We know that people on fixed incomes can do it pretty tough, especially when inflation was running away like it was in the previous term. It’s especially important as well in Tauranga, a city that has the highest city council rates across New Zealand, when I checked yesterday. I know that the good people of Tauranga, a significant proportion of them as well, who are superannuitants on the gold card, will benefit from this scheme. It’s a fantastic scheme; thank you, Minister.

The last thing I’ll touch on is around KiwiSaver, and I thought the changes announced there were fantastic. Increasing the contribution rates to 4 percent default—we know we’ve got a challenge in New Zealand where we don’t have the retirement savings that we need. We are well challenged there, especially when you look over the Ditch and see where Australia is at: they have a huge amount of capital under asset management; we don’t have that. They are enabled, through that, to invest in a whole number of enterprises. But it also means that when people turn 65 or retire, they can sustain themselves in retirement. We have far too many stories in New Zealand where people are unable to because the pension simply doesn’t meet their cost of living—it simply doesn’t. We know we’ve got a demographic shift, a demographic challenge there, and we can’t have all people simply relying on the State, as much as the other side would like that to be the case. We need them to be self-sufficient, so increasing that rate is a step in the right direction; so is increasing it for 16- and 17-year-olds so they can begin that journey.

This is a very sensible Budget. It’s a grown-up Budget and it reflects a Government that understands the basic fundamentals of what is needed to run a country. From this point, we will deliver the economic growth that has been outlined, and this is a fantastic fiscal strategy report, which I would have liked to have got to, but it does outline where we’ve been and where we’re heading, and the great opportunities ahead for New Zealand.

Minister Bishop said earlier this afternoon around being excited for the next 18 months, and I can tell you I certainly am excited for those, too. This is a fantastic Budget—fantastic Budget—for New Zealanders. I commend it to the House.

A five-minute split call.

Oh yes, some of us look forward to winter and getting nice and cosy in front of the fire, but for far too many, winter literally means being left out in the cold and choosing between heating and eating. Why won’t this Government act for ordinary Kiwis, those who are struggling with energy hardship? It’s now winter. Why is the Government gifting $3 billion in tax cuts for landlords when people are doing it tough?

What really would have helped people—and helped landlords, even—would have been support for warm, dry, energy-efficient homes. But this Government, over the last two Budgets, has cut over $230 million from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. Everyone knows that investment in energy efficiency pays huge dividends, well beyond the financial: dividends in increased wellbeing, comfort, lower stress, healthy children, greater productivity. That funding has been cut right back, crippling the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. Why has this Government decided that ordinary Kiwis should be left out in the cold while landlords and big tobacco bank the gains?

Just this morning, my office received an email asking for action on the increasing hardship of electricity prices for a household in difficulty. Last week at Electrify Queenstown, Rewiring Aotearoa launched its 2025 policy manifesto, demonstrating that the barriers like our outdated regulations and biased pricing structures alongside limited finance are all holding us back from an energy system fit for the future.

The Government just seems to want to keep things the same, but if the Minister actually applied some energy, we could change things. The status quo is not delivering cheaper prices or cleaner power or smarter systems; the status quo is keeping fossil fuels in the system and energy hardship in our homes.

The burning of fossils for electricity doesn’t just increase climate pollution; it sets the price of electricity, and last winter we experienced significant spikes in wholesale electricity prices. Prices rose from around $300 a megawatt hour to over $800 a megawatt hour as a result of our broken electricity market. The Minister cannot seriously believe that providing a $200 million subsidy to a high-stakes gamble to open up a new gas field is the answer to electricity prices. Come on; pull your heads out.

It’s not only expensive fossil fuels that are causing the price spike; lines companies are planning substantial investment over the next five years in new lines. Lines company expenditure on growth and renewals is set to increase from $717 million in 2022 to $1.4 billion a year in 2031. That increase is going to flow through to lines charges.

Where is the innovation and flex here? The country cannot afford this type of expenditure, and the electricity industry has been slow to adapt. It’s time for the Government to act and set the direction. We can have cheaper, cleaner, smarter power. We just need some political will. So what is the Minister doing to get us into the 21st century? I heard that there’s some interest in solar. What I hear from people experiencing energy hardship, as well as from professionals in the energy sector, is that doing nothing is not an option.

We heard it’s time for boldness. We heard it’s time for clarity. We heard it’s time for collaboration. What we’ve got at the moment is disjointed, chaotic, incoherent energy policy that does not serve our people, does not provide relief, and does not take an intergenerational perspective. It’s a motley patchwork with no strategy, just slogans when we need leadership.

Is the Minister going to accept the challenge laid down by Rewiring Aotearoa, where he’s pictured as our nation’s hero, “Minister Megawatts”, to create a cheaper, cleaner, more resilient electric future that benefits New Zealanders? It’s time for the Minister to don his cape and fly into action, not hide.

Budgets are more than spreadsheets; they are a values statement. They are a window into who this Government does and doesn’t prioritise. In a country where over 156,000 children wake up in cold, damp homes; where families are skipping meals to pay the rent; where care-experienced rangatahi are still being harmed by the very systems meant to protect them—this Budget could have prioritised children. It could have invested in whānau, in prevention, in healing. It could have sent a clear message that every child in Aotearoa deserves safety, stability, and aroha. But instead, it does the opposite. Budget 2025-26 makes one thing clear: tamariki are not this Government’s priority.

Over the last year, we’ve had report after report exposing how deeply broken our child welfare system is. First, we had the Independent Children’s Monitor report in August 2024, which told us that children are no safer today than when Malachi Subecz was murdered. Then we had the Auditor-General report, which exposed a damning contracting process at Oranga Tamariki, where community providers—the very lifeline for whānau—were left in the dark, contracts slashed, and no analysis was done on the impacts for tamariki. Just weeks ago, we had the devastating UNICEF report, which confirmed what we already knew: New Zealand ranks last in the OECD for youth mental wellbeing, 35th out of 41 for child physical health, and our educational inequality gap is widening. This should have been the moment for the Government to finally centre all its decisions in children, a chance to transform our broken child welfare system and make real change. These reports made the need for action undeniable, but instead, this Budget turns its back on children.

Let’s talk about Vote Oranga Tamariki, a Budget which could have been a turning point. Instead, the Minister has cut funding to independent advocacy services by 37 percent from $6.37 million to $4 million. This appropriation funds service providers such as VOYCE - Whakarongo Mai, one of the only organisations independently tasked with holding the Minister and Oranga Tamariki to account on behalf of children in care, especially those who have suffered abuse or neglect while in the system. Let that sink in. At a time when the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in care has called for stronger, not weaker, independent oversight to protect these tamariki, the Government is cutting the very services designed to safeguard their voices and wellbeing.

And if that wasn’t enough, Oranga Tamariki is also quietly cutting $182 million in so-called back-office functions to meet the savings promised in 2024-25. Let’s be clear: these are the very staff responsible for managing contracts with community providers, where the Auditor-General reported damning contracting processes with no regard for tamariki impact. Prevention remains less than one-third of Oranga Tamariki funding, despite every single review calling for early, whānau-led support stopping the harm before it happens.

Let’s not forget about child poverty. The Child Poverty Report highlighted what we already know: this Government’s policies are keeping more children in poverty. It is likely the Government will not meet any of their 2028 child poverty reduction targets. Balancing the books on the backs of our most vulnerable children is not fiscal responsibility. None of this is inevitable. It is the result of cruel political choices.

The Green Party has a clear, costed plan to end child poverty, including a family top-up of $220 for the first child and $135 for each additional child, changing the abatement rates for the family tax credit under Working for Families, and doubling the Best Start payment. We would commit to real prevention by ensuring that at least 50 percent of Oranga Tamariki’s investments go to early intervention, whānau-led, culturally grounded support, and we would legislate to make child impact assessments mandatory in every major decision the Government makes. Budgets are more than spreadsheets; they are a values statement.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I couldn’t help but think, watching the kids up there in the gallery just before: what are they looking at? What are they listening to here in the House? I think it’s really important for people like that, and people that are watching on TV, that we are actually doing something that is a legal requirement of Government on an annual basis. We’ve had the Budget announcement—a little over a couple of weeks ago now, or not quite—and this is a requirement under the Public Finance Act; of us having to move the adoption of this bill, which actually sets in place the appropriations, or the way in which this Government is going to be spending its money.

If I was going to be talking to my kids at home about, well, what’s this Budget situation—if I took the analogy of just our home budget, and we all have one ourselves, we all look on an annual basis and think: well, what kind of income are we actually going to be generating in that 12-month period? That sets out what we are looking at spending that money on as we go through. Everything has a time and place. Sometimes you’re actually in a good position where the income is actually really good and you’ve got some options in your life to be able to go and buy things that perhaps you might call the nice-to-haves rather than need-to-haves. But then there are other times where things are tight. We talk about the cost of living, and the fact is the country is in a position at the moment where we’ve got to get things back in order with regards to it. So that dictates where our choices and where our priorities lie.

The Budget itself we’re looking at, we’ve got the revenue that comes in to the Government—we’ve got all the taxes that are earned, we’ve got the levies, we’ve got the fees, we’ve even got the returns of some of the Government’s investments that we have—and we’ve got a significant amount of money that actually comes in to the Government on an annual basis. But then there’s the money out component of it. We’ve got 28 Ministers in our Government, and they’ve got 78 different portfolios—a lot of portfolios—but there are also a lot of choices. At the end of the day, every Minister gets a quantum of money and it’s up to them to prioritise where that money is spent.

Now, the debate that we’re having in the House is about those priorities.

Shanan Halbert: Brewer will be there soon. Brewer’s next up.

DAVID MacLEOD: I hear from the Opposition with regards to the interjections that they choose different methods of spending the money to what we are as a Government. But this coalition Government is in lock step and committed, and the Cabinet is supported in totality of exactly what this Budget is portraying and what it’s conveying to the public. It’s good to know that we are going to be adopting this bill and setting it in place.

When you look at the economy, we all want a strong economy. What is it that strong economy means? Well, I tell you: when we came into Government over 18 months ago, we did not have a strong economy. The official cash rate (OCR) was out of control, inflation was out of control, everything was out of control. So it’s very pleasing that in 18 months—18 short months—we’ve managed to pull some levers, been able to get the OCR back down to about 3.25 percent. And who knows? We might even have another cut coming shortly—

Cameron Brewer: Yeah, no. You’re on to it.

DAVID MacLEOD: Cameron Brewer, you’d really like that, wouldn’t you—and that there, what does that dictate? That dictates the lending. We’ve got home loans that have now got a 4 in front of their percentages of what they’re actually paying. That is a great outcome and I’m sure that many New Zealanders are actually enjoying that. The inflation itself: we went from the highs of over 7 percent—7.3 percent at its highest in recent times—and we’re now back down to 2.5 percent. Thankfully, that’s within the bandwidth that we actually try to have with regards to our Reserve Bank of 1 to 3 percent of having that under control. So it’s great to see that we’ve got that under control.

One of the areas that we haven’t got under control—and we’re working so hard and that’s what this Budget is all about, and remembering that this Budget is called the “Growth Budget”—is about employment. So unemployment is actually relatively high—it’s at about 5.1 percent—but if we actually realise what this Budget’s going to deliver, that will actually help us in driving the unemployment rate in the right direction down itself.

If I look at some of the Budget at a glance, so to speak, there’s an amount of $6.8 billion that’s in new capital investment. Now, new capital was going into some great initiatives: the likes of hospitals—everybody’s been talking about hospitals recently and we’ve got announcements with regards to Auckland and Nelson Hospital. But back in my electorate, the New Plymouth Hospital, just the other day, our Minister of Health, Simeon Brown, came along and he announced that there will be the extra $59.2 million that’s required to complete the build there. Now, it has run over budget, that build there, but of course it was actually building in a very challenging time through the COVID area, through the significant increase in material cost, etc. All of that there has dictated that it’s needed more monies and I’m pleased that this Budget has allowed that and the Minister has announced that commitment.

The capital investment is also going into education. That’s good news. Education: we’re going to be having new schools, we’re going to be having expansion of existing schools, and also this is paying for the much-needed maintenance on the many schools that are actually struggling in that space.

Another area of capital investment is in the New Zealand Defence Force—$2.7 billion. Now, the Minister of Defence has actually announced that we are aiming for a 2 percent of GDP goal with regards to our defence spend by the year 2032-33. That’s an ambitious goal in a relatively short time, but it’s an important goal nevertheless. It’s actually a figure—2 percent of GDP—that’s often used globally of what is expected in some ways by some of our counterpart Governments around the world, of us actually playing our part in this space itself. New Zealand has a very proud history with regards to doing deployments overseas and helping not exactly at the warface or out there at the front lines, but actually behind that and helping local forces with education and the likes.

Other things that I’d like to mention that have been announced: we’ve spoken about the rates rebates: an extra 66,000 SuperGold cardholders are now going to be eligible for the rates rebate scheme—well, should I say more of it—and noting that that is moving the actual threshold of an annual income per household of SuperGold cardholders from $31,500 or thereabouts, up to $45,000. That’s a significant increase of the threshold that gives them the ability to gain the full rebate, and the rebate itself per annum has had a small increase up to the $805. So that’s good news for the SuperGold cardholders themselves.

We’ve also had the teacher-aides. Now, my colleague Sam Uffindell mentioned about the teacher-aides or the help within classrooms. I think every person in this House, if you go to schools, there is one common conversation that will be said to you by the principal, and that is absolutely the challenges that are presented in education for helping perhaps the more challenged children with education. We want our teachers to be teaching and advancing those other kids there, but we don’t want them distracted in any great way by what you might call some of the more challenged children in those classes. Having more teacher-aides in the classroom is of great assistance, and that’s to the tune of over 2 million extra hours of teacher-aides—is what the Minister of Education has announced—by the year 2028.

Now, we did hear the previous Green speaker, Kahurangi Carter, talk passionately about energy, and I do want to talk about energy. Basically, the comments were: well, where does gas fit in this? Of course, it’s in the negative mind-set from the Green Party and my mind-set is absolutely to the positive. And it may not come as a surprise; I’m from Taranaki, the energy province of New Zealand. But I say that because I remain unconvinced that without gas being our transitional energy, we’re going to be able to keep our energy trilemma in balance. The energy trilemma being making sure we’ve got secure energy, having energy when we need it; having affordable energy, making sure that our exporters—we are an exporting nation—actually have a cost structure with regards to energy that doesn’t make them uncompetitive globally, that’s going to drive the country bankrupt real quick if our exporters can’t deliver that there; and the other, third, leg of the trilemma is, of course, the sustainable energy, having as green an energy as we possibly can.

At the moment, we are reliant—when we have no wind blowing, no sun shining, in the middle of the winter when we’ve got the highest energy requirements of electricity—on burning coal. Natural gas is 40 percent—40 percent—cleaner than coal. I cannot understand why we have the huge stockpile of coal in Huntly when we can find natural gas. I’ve heard that from the companies that do the exploration: it’s not a fallacy, which is what I hear from some members of the Opposition. Gas is there; we need to find it. I’m very pleased that this Government has actually tagged $200 million to help regain the confidence by playing a stake in that and potentially having a stake of up to 10 to 15 percent in exploration wells. I commend the bill to the House.

This is a five-minute split call.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. There we have a member of the National Party extolling the virtues of a $200 million subsidy to the gas industry. Those are the choices they make. They make the choice not only to open up offshore gas and oil exploration but to pay people to do it, to actually hand over cash. Where does that cash come from? Well, it comes from KiwiSaver. It comes from halving the Government contribution to KiwiSaver. And you know what? When that gas company buys a brand new billion-dollar oil rig and puts a $200 million tax deduction in on that day, where does that money come from? Well, maybe that comes from the Best Start payments that they’ve cut. Maybe that’s where that cut comes from, because those are the choices that this Government is making. They are not supporting families, they are not supporting children, they’re not supporting women. Of course, we know the fallacy that that Government put out that the pay equity reforms weren’t about the Budget, when the only way that the Government could come anywhere close to having a respectable Budget was by taking $12 billion away from working women. Those are the choices that this Government is making.

But you know what? I just want to touch in my brief amount of time on two of the smaller Budget lines, because did you know that there’s one department that’s getting a year-on-year increase in funding over and above baseline? It’s a 5 percent increase every single year. Who’s that? Oh, that would be David Seymour’s pet ministry, the Ministry for Regulation. Every year, a percent increase whilst Oranga Tamariki is cutting funds and is in disarray, whilst the Police can’t recruit, whilst all around our country our Public Service is cutting services at the front line to meet Nicola Willis’ Budget demands.

David Seymour’s ministry is getting 5 percent more, year on year, for the next four Budget rounds. That’s so he can push his vanity bill, the Regulatory Standards Bill, the bill which says not that we must take into account the welfare of our community or our environment or biodiversity or our social cohesion, or Te Tiriti—no, no, what it’s got to preserve is the rights of property owners, that their rights might not be impaired; that if in fact their personal property rights are impaired, they must be compensated, so that when we next come to regulate vaping and tell people that they can’t sell vapes to 18year-olds, for example, we’d have to pay them for taking the privilege of selling vapes away from them. That’s the kind of Budget that we’ve got here.

Here’s another small cut. So we’ve got David Seymour getting a 5 percent increase, but in the Ministry of Justice and courts, Te Ao Mārama—one of our most effective programmes to make sure that the experience of the court process is good for victims and is effective in stopping reoffending—is being cut. It was to be rolled out around the country. It’s in eight courtrooms at the moment, in the District Court, and what it does is it connects offenders with appropriate services in the community to give them the supports to rehabilitate and not reoffend, and it’s been shown to be really effective. In fact, the Chief District Court Judge called it—on one occasion—transformative, and it also supports victims through the process, to reduce the harm of the offender. So here we have a programme which reduces the harm of offending, improves outcomes for victims, and basically makes the courts work effectively, but in her penny pinching and scrabbling around to find the cash for gas exploration, Nicola Willis has cut that programme. It will no longer be rolled out around the country, and our judiciary will do their best but won’t have the financial resources to do it effectively.

So here we have it, a Government of choices: money for gas exploration but not for early childhood Best Start payments; money for tax breaks for big businesses but no money for our lowest-paid women workers. That's the choices this Government makes; it's shameful.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I wish I could say it was a pleasure to stand up and take a call on this, but, actually, it is not. It is a shameful, shameful Budget.

I recall the Prime Minister out on the campaign trail or when they first became a Government, saying, “We’re going to have a laser-sharp focus”—a laser-sharp focus—“on the cost of living.” Well, I say, from the last two Budgets, the Prime Minister has had a laser-sharp focus on increasing the cost of living. If that was his goal, then he has well and truly succeeded.

I note that many of the Government members that have stood up and made contributions in the Chamber today, including senior Ministers and including the Prime Minister when he stood up and made his contribution a week or so ago, all they could talk about was Labour. I say that’s because they know that this is one of the most unpopular Budgets this country has seen in decades.

All Cameron Brewer could talk about in his contribution was trawling through the Labour Party’s website, because he had nothing good to say about this Budget, so he had to look for something to talk about. So he thought, “Well, maybe I’ll look on the Labour Party’s website. They’ve probably got something worth talking about.” So he trawled through the Labour Party’s website and then he said, “Oh, I was looking for media statements from Labour.”, because clearly it’s more interesting than talking about the Budget. Then he went to go on and mock the statement that had come out about “bugs in lunches”, as he referred to it. I say that is so dismissive. I guarantee that if it was his child’s lunch that had a bug in it and Labour was in Government, he would be screaming from the rooftops about it.

Ryan Hamilton talked about all the great things in the Budget and all the great things he was going to talk about. He listed a few things and then he went on to talk about Fieldays because Fieldays is fun, it’s interesting, and it’s exciting—and it is far, far better than this Budget.

Dan Bidois talked about how wonderful it was that his son was in daycare. That is the value that they put on early childhood education (ECE), by calling it “daycare”. We see that no more clearly than in the latest move by Minister David Seymour with regards to pay parity for the ECE sector, and pretty much just getting rid of it.

I want to talk about the Budget now—the Budget that takes away from our hard-working women in New Zealand who have been fighting for pay equity. These are the women that have paid for the National-led Government’s Budget—women that were our heroes during the pandemic; women who were essential front-line workers; women who this Government has, basically, said, “You don’t matter. Your workers have no value.” I notice none of the Government MPs have mentioned pay equity in any of their contributions today, because they are ashamed—and if they aren’t, then they should be very ashamed.

I want to talk about care and support workers. I have a Down’s syndrome sister who has wonderful care and support workers. One I want to talk about, in particular, is Rebekah Hope. Rebekah Hope helps to support my sister in her day-to-day care needs, taking her to doctors appointments, hospitals, and all those really important things that help Teresa live a good, good life. Teresa is quite an easy person to care for; she’s not hugely disabled and doesn’t require lifting and all the other things that plenty of our care and support workers have to do. Rebekah’s contributed to the local Ashburton newspaper. She said she was furious—and I’ll quote her—that she can see that this is all about making the Budget work: “All we want is what we actually deserve to be paid. Maybe they should come and do our job for a day and see what we actually do.” I challenge members across the House to take Rebekah up on her invitation to do that.

I also want to talk briefly, in the short amount of time I have left, around biosecurity. I’m concerned that the biosecurity budget has been slashed overall, and I’m extremely concerned about the issue of Caulerpa up in Northland and the issue it’s going to cause and is causing in our underwater seabeds.

Grant McCallum: You ignored it.

Hon JO LUXTON: No, we had not ignored it. Labour put money into it, but this is a shameful Budget. I’ve run out of time.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Happy to take a call on this and correct some of the misrepresentations that came from that last speaker, the Hon Jo Luxton, because, quite frankly, it was completely out of touch. Now, Mr Bishop, the first person who spoke in the debate today, mentioned the pay equity piece that the former member—the member that just spoke—said hadn’t been mentioned at all. It was in the very first speech. Labour have a history of not listening, and this is just another example of that.

Because, actually, they also have no plan, and we’ve seen that throughout. Mr Webb trying to find one little nit-picking thing to have a go at because, frankly, they know, on balance, this is a practical, pragmatic, and progressive Budget. This Budget is going for growth, and this Budget will help get New Zealand back on track. Because, unfortunately, we had six years of suffering under the lacklustre Labour lot that sent New Zealand into a terrible spin. Inflation at record highs: 7.3 percent—an outrageously high level of inflation—and an extra $100 billion of debt. Their only moto seemed to be: “Spending equals success.” As long as they spent more, then they must be achieving more. Yet, without a doubt, you could look across just about any portfolio area and see failure.

Labour failed to deliver better health outcomes for New Zealanders, they failed to deliver better educational performance for New Zealanders, they failed to keep New Zealanders safer in their communities, and they failed the economy. It was an utter mess. We heard that constantly on the campaign trail and I’ve heard it since—Kiwis that have been suffering because of the decisions made by the last Labour Government. They, frankly, let New Zealand down. They should have done better, but this Government now is stepping up and delivering a plan that will get New Zealand back on track.

Now, there are a number of aspects that we’ve heard canvassed on this side of the House that will help deliver on that ambition from this Government. Now, some of the ones that I’ve been hearing over the last week in the wonderful Waikato electorate, as I’ve been going around the communities, doing my regular cafe catch-ups—and last week was in Morrinsville, Te Aroha, Huntly, Matamata—hearing from locals, coming out to give their views on the Budget, what it might mean for them, and what they’re seeing out and about in the community more broadly. There was strong support for the Investment Boost policy in particular. The business community saw that as a massive opportunity to streamline or to bring forward some of the planned investment that they had to actually deliver on that project for them and their business in a more timely manner. Now, they would have made that decision—this is what I was hearing—in most cases at some point, but this policy will help bring that forwards.

Of course, we have the largest agricultural event in the Southern Hemisphere coming up just next week in the wonderful Waikato region: the Fieldays. I’m sure that will be a fantastic gauge of the impact of the Investment Boost policy as farmers and business owners head to the Fieldays with the view to investing, if they are looking to purchase, or, indeed, for exhibiters, confident that they will be increasing the level of sales that they would otherwise have had off the back of this policy. So that one in particular has been particularly strong.

Now, alongside that, I’ve also seen a strong level of support for the change in policy around access to benefits for 18- and 19-year-olds. Now, we must have more ambition for our young New Zealanders than letting them suffer in a life of benefit dependency like the Labour Government would have them do. They would have them languish, reliant on the State year after year. We know the stats. We know that if you go on a benefit at 18 years old, you are likely to spend, on average, 20 years on that benefit.

Hon Scott Simpson: How long?

TIM VAN DE MOLEN: Twenty years on a benefit, Mr Simpson. We all know, on this side, that it is totally unacceptable and we refuse to accept that as an acceptable level of ambition for New Zealanders. So we are saying to our young New Zealanders: “You must aim higher. Go into further study or get a job. And, actually, if you don’t do either of those things, then you need to step up and find a solution, because this is not up to the taxpayers of New Zealand to fund your lifestyle sitting on the couch.” Now, the Green Party might like that, and we hear time and time again about how we just need to give money to people and it will all be OK. Well, unfortunately, the problem is you run out of other people’s money to spend, eventually—that’s the problem with socialism.

Now, also, some of the feedback I heard around the Waikato was a strong level of confidence and enthusiasm for the new policy around KiwiSaver—enabling 16- and 17year-olds to now actually be part of KiwiSaver and to have those contributions going up over time. For anyone who jumps on to the online calculators, you can see clearly now with this new policy that they will have, on average, about $180,000 more by the time they reach retirement age. Now, that is another way that this Government is demonstrating ambition for New Zealand.

We are going for growth. We are getting the country back on track and we refuse to accept the mediocrity that the previous lot perpetrated. Our country suffered, and we heard that with the high inflation rates. We heard that with the lawlessness, the educational outcomes, the health performance—all of those areas that despite money being shoved out the door day after day to try and deliver better outcomes, it, frankly, did not. There was no accountability. So this Government is focused on bringing that back.

Now, the other one that I heard quite strongly in the community was around the prescriptions, actually, around the Waikato community when I was having my regular coffee catch-ups. It’s a great way to engage with constituents. For those of us on this side, most of us are constituency MPs, so we’re regularly out in our communities and hearing from the coalface what they see, what they’re feeling, and therefore what we can do in this place—

Ricardo Menéndez March: Spoke to a single homeless person lately?

TIM VAN DE MOLEN: —to help improve their lives. Now, the other side don’t have that. And I hear the Greens going off on a tangent again—no surprises there.

But the 12-month prescription was the other one that came through for a lot of people who are regularly going and getting prescriptions to now be able to only do that over a 12-month period, instead of three months. It saves cost in terms of doctors’ fees, it saves prescription fees, and it actually frees up capacity at those medical centres. In rural communities like Matamata, like Morrinsville, where there is pressure on the medical sector, we need to do anything we can to help alleviate that. This is a great policy to support exactly that.

Now, alongside that, we’ve heard some of the great investment in education. As a parent of primary-aged students myself, I’m very pleased to see that additional focus of learning support going into schools, because I’ve heard that too as I’ve engaged with them, many schools around the Waikato electorate, the need for some additional focus for those that have more diverse learning needs in the classroom to get that more one-on-one support to enable the class more broadly to continue with their learning plans under the teacher’s guidance. This will be a great contributor to delivering exactly that.

Of course, health, as I mentioned, is a big priority in the Waikato, and we’ve seen some great enthusiasm for that prescription policy. Alongside that, of course, is the 24/7 digital health that we’ll be rolling out and the improvement to infrastructure in the health sector. There is a lot of benefit coming to our health sector, indeed.

And we heard from Ms Luxton her concerns around the pay equity piece. Now, we on this side back pay equity, and that’s why we’ve realigned it to focus specifically on the pay equity piece. That happened before the Budget, because what had happened, unfortunately, under Labour, was they’d just given carte blanche to the unions to bring any sort of grievance as a faux mechanism to try and lift pay rates across the board. We are bringing it back—have brought it back—to focusing on pay equity.

That has enabled, under this Budget, the delivery of many of these beneficial policies that I’ve heard consistently last week around the Waikato—and I know my colleagues have as well—which are greatly appreciated by community members; policies that will deliver a direct, daily benefit for them in their lives. That sort of stuff matters. That’s why we do it. That’s why we’ve brought forward a practical, pragmatic, and progressive Budget to actually ensure that we are delivering for New Zealanders over the next four years and beyond, because, of course, we have more ambition than just focusing on the immediate future.

So alongside the health and education, law and order—more front-line police effort. That’s always appreciated as well. I’ve seen some great improvements there, but there is ongoing pressure that our police face day to day, and I really just want to thank them, because I know they do a magnificent job. I catch up with area commanders in the Waikato regularly and I hear the great work that they’re doing and I thank them and their members for continually putting up that effort.

Now, defence is an area that I want to touch on in my last minute, because it is fantastic to see a significant boost to defence funding. This is an area where, over a long period of time now, we haven’t invested as much as we should have, quite frankly. This is a critical function of any State, is to look after its citizens—

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Of us being the lapdog of the US.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN: —and to make sure that it maintains its sovereign integrity. Members in the Green Party might not like that idea, but, actually, that’s how democracy works. That’s what a Government must do and that’s what this Government is doing. We’re investing significantly in more advanced technologies, because, actually, that’s a critical part of ensuring we can respond to the evolving global situation. We are seeing storm clouds on the horizon, so we must do that, but not just from an offensive capability—of course, an offensive capability is an important part of any military—but, actually, to ensure that we can respond to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief needs around the Pacific region but here at home as well.

So I’m very pleased with these decisions that have been made in the Budget. It is a progressive Budget and New Zealand will have a fantastic future off the back of it. Thank you.

The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7.30 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 5.56 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Good evening, members. When we broke for the dinner break, we were on the second reading of the Appropriation (2025/26 Estimates) Bill and the amendments proposed to it. We are up to the Green Party call, which I understand is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This Budget has been balanced off the back of the people who are doing it the toughest, and you don’t have to believe me; you’ve just got to look at the numbers. If you look at, for example, what the Government has done when it comes to KiwiSaver, they’ve talked a lot about how people will be better off by the time they reach retirement, but if you’re a minimum wage worker, due to the way that the Government has balanced the Budget, you’re likely to actually be $9.40 worse off each week as a result of that. I think about a lot of the minimum wage workers who are living week to week, scraping by each day before the pay cheque, saving the few dollars that remained in their bank account, many of whom would have thought, “Why should I be signing up to KiwiSaver when, actually, I’m going to be worse off as a result of this Government?”

I think the Government has got a really disconnected and out-of-touch view when it comes to low-income people, because for them to keep talking about the so-called benefit that low-income earners will see down the line ignores the reality that too many families are doing it tough right now and they’ve found very little relief in this Government’s Budget. Once again, this Government has, for example, chosen to punish people in public housing and in affordable rentals by stripping them of the accommodation supplement, and 13,200 people will be worse off as a result of this Government’s decisions. Some of them will be worse off, on average, by $100 each week. Some of them—the rest—will be, on average, over $130 worse off each week.

That may not mean a lot to the members who spend a lot of time in the Koru lounge, but it certainly means a lot for families who struggle to make ends meet. A hundred dollars literally is the difference between being able to put food on the table and being able to afford your bills, and I’m sick and tired of listening to the Government members talk about these changes as if it’s about fairness when, actually, it ends up punishing and stripping thousands of households of their ability to make ends meet.

Today, we heard in the House about how Christopher Luxon says that we’ve got to do more to tackle child poverty. Well, more to do when? They’ve already had two Budgets to show us that they’re serious about tackling child poverty, and what’s worse in this Government’s Budget is we’re going to see, basically, nil progress on addressing child poverty. The material hardship of children, on the other hand, will continue to get worse. “Material hardship” is the definition that we used to talk about—the reality that children don’t have enough to live on.

Stuart Smith: You had six years—it got worse.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: And, yeah, it got worse in the previous Government, as well, and, yeah, the Greens were critical of that. The Greens have been championing for a guaranteed income so that we can lift all families out of poverty. We fought hard to end benefit sanctions in the previous Government and in the term before, and I actually think our families in poverty deserve far more than having the main parties taking jabs at each other and saying, “Oh, you didn’t do as much.”, and “You didn’t do as much, either.”

Do you know what? We could actually do enough. We could tax the wealthy few and actually guarantee livable incomes. We could have thriving public services if we chose to. But, instead, this Government is literally choosing to cut the potential wage increases of some of our lowest-paid women and to actually leave some of the workers in some of the most undervalued industries worse off, because employers will end up basically reducing wage growth as a result of the changes to KiwiSaver—and, again, you don’t have to believe me; that’s been reported and analysed for the Government’s own ministries.

It just reeks of complete disconnection with everyday people to have members on the other side—literally, in the call just before mine—talking about how they’ve been out in cafes talking to everyday people, but I bet you that they haven’t talked to a single person living in poverty, they haven’t talked to a single person who is homeless right now, and they haven’t talked to the people who have been rejected for emergency housing and been left to languish on the streets. Instead, they’ve decided to talk about their imaginary beneficiaries that they’ve decided to create and role play—you know, the so-called teenagers that are refusing to take a job and are playing PlayStation all day—when, I’ll tell you what: this Government has actively chosen to cut jobs to deal with inflation. They drove up unemployment and put the boot down on people on the benefit by preventing countless 18 to 19yearolds from accessing income support. This, again, just shows that this isn’t a Government that is ruling for the many, but rather for their wealthy mates, because those effective tax cuts that they’re giving to companies won’t trickle down to the everyday person. That hasn’t worked for 40 years, and it won’t work now.

What I want to tell people is that a different world is absolutely possible and it’s within our reach. If we choose to have a Government that is bold enough to tax the wealthy few and actually, potentially, tax work less than we do right now and tax assets and wealth more, we could have the public services that we deserve. Voters deserve far better than a Government that is telling the voters to eat coal this Christmas, and we deserve a Government that is serious about addressing child poverty. I think our communities have had enough of a Government that is quite willing to put the boot down on some of the families doing it the toughest, and this Government will be punished for letting poverty and inequality increase under their watch while they have no remorse about it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Government talks about the fact that they’re investing a lot in education in this Budget, so I think it is important for us to actually break down exactly what they are investing in. Let’s start with early childhood education (ECE). We know that the Government contributes roughly $2.7 billion in ECE each year. We also know that for parents, they are paying some of the highest costs for ECE in OECD countries.

This year, even more surprisingly, not only have we seen announcements by the now Deputy Prime Minister and from the Associate Minister of Education on more hardship and penalties and sanctions and also the further punching down of ECE teachers in Aotearoa, but what we are also seeing is an effective 0.5 percent increase in the ECE funding compared to what we saw before of 2.1 percent in terms of inflation. That is, effectively, a cut to the ECE sector.

We know the failed experiment of the Government when it comes to FamilyBoost last year that out of the 100,000 families they said they promised—only half of them have managed to get any money from FamilyBoost in reality. What we are seeing is the Government trying their best to put forward blue and yellow tape to the people and to the families of Aotearoa New Zealand to prevent them from actually accessing the support that they need.

What we have proposed in a Green Budget is to nationalise and to have free ECE services because, frankly, that is what our tamariki, that’s what our mokopuna deserve in Aotearoa. They deserve to have that. We should not be pushing the cost of ECE on to parents who are already struggling as it is.

When the Government talks about how much they care for the people of Aotearoa, how about our future generations? How about the parents who are just doing their best to support their child? Why would we consider continuously taking on debt—the Government hates debt, but the debt that this Government is taking on is against our mokopuna. That is what we are seeing in this Budget more than ever.

But one of the other things that the Government likes to talk about in terms of education is just how much money they have put into learning support. We have seen reports that they put something along the lines of $646 million into learning support, but let us break that down again. I am going to use Minister of Education Erica Stanford’s favourite term, which is reprioritisation, because that is what we see when it comes to the investment that we are making when it comes to learning support and education in this Budget. What we are seeing is that the Government wants to paint this nice picture of them investing a lot, but in effect they are basically taking it from one side and trying to put it in the other and painting it like we are putting more money into it.

When we are working from the summary of initiatives of all of the numbers around learning support—of the initiatives—balancing it with all of the savings they’ve made from learning support they have taken away, what we’re actually seeing is investment of roughly $180 million compared to the $650 million that they’ve been parading around saying that they have invested in learning support. That is disingenuous and frankly that is insulting to the educators of Aotearoa New Zealand.

The Minister today in oral questions talked about the fact that “One school tells me”—one school, one principal, “tells me”—because that’s all she could find. She could not use genuine statistics to rationalise her poor judgment and her poor decisions and lack of support on funding to the education sector. Because you know what? The Government has given $153 million to charter schools, which only support roughly—as at the beginning of this year—215 students. That’s how much money they have given to charter schools to that many students compared to $180 million for learning support for the entire country in this Budget.

This Government, when it comes to numbers, has a seriously inflated sense of numbers, much like their ego. This is not how we should be looking at the way that we look after our future generations. This is incredibly problematic, and the Greens will not support it because this is terrible for education.

I understand this is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Now, five minutes is just simply not enough time to address all of the concerns that I have with this year’s Budget, because I have the portfolios of education and children. But I’m going to do my best to highlight some of the key issues that I have with the Government’s Budget.

I will read out the response from the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association: “Bitter—

Grant McCallum: Oh, your mates—known for their balance!

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Oh, and not yours. Ready? “Bittersweet, “tainted money”, education dollars from money set aside to fund claims for “hundreds of thousands of workers.” New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa: it is being funded by “gutting pay equity” and defunding Kāhui Ako, resource teachers Māori, and resource teachers Literacy.

So this Minister stands up and boasts about the largest investment in learning support in a generation, but the teachers know because they understand—they can add—and they know that they are paying for the learning support they have been crying out for. That funding, that “reprioritisation” of funding from pay equity claims and from apparently underperforming programmes, has funded this learning support. Everybody needs to understand that this was not new money that the Minister got from the Minister of Finance. This is not new money from the Government. This is a reprioritisation, aka a cut to fund these. Right, that was two minutes just to explain that that $614 million has come from reprioritisation of programmes like Kāhui Ako, which is going to impact—as we know from the leaked documentation—over 4,000 roles, 600 full-time teacher equivalents (FTTEs), over $300 million in funding from an apparently underperforming programme—wait for it—introduced by Hekia Parata.

So is this the National Government, once again, getting rid of one of its own policies, one of its own initiatives to fund this? But resource teachers Māori, resource teachers Literacy—literally cutting jobs and learning support to fund jobs and learning support.

Two minutes to go; I’d better move on to children. We have this Government investing almost $33 million—$33 million—in their failed boot camp experiment. It has failed. The Minister will not be honest with the public; the Prime Minister will not be honest with the public and tell the public what the reoffending statistics are. We have asked time and time again to show us the evidence that this intervention is reducing reoffending. And the Minister and the Prime Minister both refuse to give the public that information. Yet they’re going to splash around another $33 million on the failed boot camp experiment. The pilot hasn’t even finished, they are bringing the bill back for its second reading in Parliament, and they have not evaluated that programme, and they’re going to be entrenching it into law and giving over $15 million for the young serious offender category and legislation.

Shame on this Government, who is supposed to be making evidence-based decisions and yet there is no evidence to support that significant investment into their vanity project of boot camps. The last vanity project I would like to talk about is that of David Seymour for charter schools. We heard this evening that over $100 million is being invested into charter schools. Not a single State school has converted in the last financial year. It’s five times more per student to fund a charter school than it is to a public school.

In the final 20 seconds that I have left, I want to say this Budget also was supposed to address the abuse in care, and we know that announcement and that funding that was announced from this Budget did not go down with survivors because they are simply putting more money into the system which they are opposed to. We do not support the Budget.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Madam Speaker, this is a “BS Budget”. It is a “BS Budget” because it takes $12.8 billion out of the back pockets of women workers: our mums, our sisters, our aunties, our nieces, all of the women that matter in our lives. This is a continual punch down from this Government on the groups that don’t agree with them, and this Budget is just one more example.

National is cutting and making women and young people pay. However you dress it up, this Budget is a cut for students, it’s a cut for staff, it’s a cut for tertiary education, and it’s a cut for women working in the sector through the cancellation of their pay equity claims: our clerical staff, our administrative staff, our librarians, women that matter in the tertiary workforce. It does not address in this Budget any of the funding challenges that the sector hoped for, no matter where they work, whether in wānanga, in universities, or in polytechnics.

When unemployment is at its highest, at 5.2 percent, and almost double that for Māori and Pacific, more people are choosing to study, and this Budget does not adequately address training a skilled workforce for the future. The 4 percent funding increase that equalled $64 million per year for universities has been cut by this Government. This was put aside to support the funding shortfall that universities have experienced for over a decade. Instead, this Government has chosen to only invest in science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) subjects. There is no net gain. As a result, this Budget will put some universities in a financial position that is no longer viable, particularly those who have less STEM subjects available. And what does this mean? It means more cuts, more cuts to staffing, more cuts to courses, and unsustainability of the tertiary education sector.

These funding changes just simply don’t make sense. Budgets are a choice to invest and build for the future or to cut, and this one does exactly that. This Budget subscribes to an unrealistic notion that Governments can make students’ choices for them and that is just not true. Even Universities New Zealand CEO Chris Whelan has said today, “There seems to be a belief that somehow universities”—and Minister Reti, if he’s listening—“if they’re given more funding for science, technology, engineering, maths-type subjects, can persuade students to drop doing the liberal arts or social sciences and shift across. The reality is that’s just not the case.”

Let’s be clear: all fields of university study contribute to building a skilled workforce in Aotearoa New Zealand, and it’s one that we desperately need. This does include arts degrees, it does include commerce degrees, and it does include nursing and teaching degrees that we must invest in. The reality of Budget 2025 is that students will be paying more to study because of this Government’s decision to allow institutions to increase student fees up to 6 percent. That is incredible during a cost of living crisis that the Government promised to change and they simply haven’t. And because of this Government, when they graduate they will have to pay back more in loan repayments despite not being any better off.

The transition away from Te Pūkenga remains uncertain under this Budget. It offers nothing to the providers out there, the staff, and the students. The Minister’s new industry skills boards only receive 46 percent of the funding that workforce development councils had, and they are expected to deliver the same work for the same pay. There is a theme that comes across this particular Budget.

So as I stated, this Budget does nothing for tertiaries, for universities, for wānanga, or for polytechnics. It’s a Budget that takes from women and young people, and I do not commend this bill to the House.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Social Security (Mandatory Reviews) Amendment Bill, the Invest New Zealand Bill, and the Rates Rebate Amendment Bill.