Debate on Budget Policy Statement

I move, That the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement 2025 and the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update 2024.

The Budget Policy Statement released in December set out four priorities for Budget 2025. They are: (1) lifting economic growth through measures to address New Zealand’s long-term productivity challenges; (2) implementing a social investment approach to drive better results from the Government’s investment in social services and thereby improve life outcomes for people with high needs; (3) keeping tight control of Government spending, while funding a limited number of high-priority Government policy commitments and cost pressures that cannot be met by reprioritisation; and (4) developing a sustainable pipeline of long-term infrastructure investments.

As the Minister of Finance, the Hon Nicola Willis, said at the time, on 17 December, progress has already been made in all of these areas, and, as this Government has demonstrated with great and unprecedented urgency since January, our work across all fronts continues. As has been well-established, the Government has refocused the education system on the core skills of reading, writing, and mathematics; fast-track legislation has been introduced to speed the consenting of major projects; bureaucratic red tape is being reduced; a new agency has been established to drive social investment; Government spending has been brought back under control; and an infrastructure pipeline is being developed. More on all of this will be said in the lead-up to Budget 2025.

December’s economic and fiscal data highlighted both the scale of the challenge and the extent of the opportunity that New Zealand faces. The Finance and Expenditure Committee has now reported back on the Budget Policy Statement 2025 and the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update 2024.

As part of our scrutiny, we heard from 12 public submitters in February and we had a hearing with the Minister of Finance and Treasury officials on 29 January. At that hearing, the Minister of Finance announced that Budget day will be Thursday, 22 February—of May. Otherwise, it’s already been—I feel like I’m reading it. Budget day will be Thursday, 22 May—for the benefit of the Hansard—2025.

She told the committee that in addition to the traditional decisions on spending and savings, Budget 2025 will also contain “several legislative and regulatory measures to encourage economic growth”. She described economic growth as “the single biggest thing that we can do to improve New Zealanders’ financial position, but also the state of the Government’s books”. The Minister made clear that it is unsustainable for the Government to grow the economy by borrowing money, noting the consequences of inflation.

The finance Minister described how economic growth is necessary for job creation, wage increases, and the sustainable funding of public services, and noted the importance of these outcomes to low-income New Zealanders. Making clear that productivity will support longer-term growth, the Minister of Finance identified five areas this Government is focused on to improve productivity: (1) education and skills; (2) regulation, including as it relates to competition; (3) overseas investment and trade; (4) science, technology, and innovation; and (5) infrastructure.

This latest policy Budget Policy Statement, or BPS, proves one thing: the Minister of Finance and the coalition Government has a plan to take New Zealand’s economy forward. Inflation is back within the target band at 2.2 percent, compared to 7 percent in December 2022 under the previous Government—2.2 percent inflation compared to over 7 percent under the last Government. In short, our Government’s economic discipline is making life more affordable for New Zealanders. In turn, lower inflation translates into lower interest rates, relieving financial pressure on households and businesses.

With the official cash rate now down to 3.75 percent, saving real money each week in mortgage payments for families across New Zealand is a reality. In fact, recently, Infometrics estimated that by the end of this year, New Zealand households will have another $45 million to spend every week due to lower mortgage interest costs. To give one example, a family with a $500,000 mortgage on a 25year term could expect to be about $180 a fortnight better off than it was a few months ago if its rate dropped from 7 percent to 5.75 percent. As we can see now, most fixed mortgage rates in New Zealand now have the magic “5” at the start of it—not at 7 percent, as we have seen a year or two or three ago. That is good news for Kiwi families, who in recent years have suffered both a cost of living crisis and the high interest rates required to bring that cost of living crisis under control.

At the same time, farmer confidence is at an all-time high—the highest since 2016, according to a recent Federated Farmers survey—with the farm-gate milk price for our 12,000 dairy farmers topping $10 this season. As well as growth, growth, growth—

Hon Members: Growth, growth.

CAMERON BREWER: —this coalition Government is focused on trade, trade, trade.

Hon Members: Trade, trade.

CAMERON BREWER: So we’ve got growth, growth, growth—

Hon Members: Growth, growth.

CAMERON BREWER: —and trade, trade, trade.

Hon Members: Trade, trade, trade.

SPEAKER: That’s enough of that.

CAMERON BREWER: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon will travel to India next week, accompanied by a very large delegation. Strengthening our relationship with India is the key priority for this Government, unlike the last one.

This week—tomorrow in fact, and the next day—is New Zealand’s Infrastructure Investment Summit. The Prime Minister and key Ministers will showcase New Zealand’s infrastructure pipeline, with some exciting growth sectors, to companies—get this number—managing about $6 trillion in capital. There will be companies in that room collectively managing $6 million trillion, or $6 trillion in capital—not $6 million trillion, but $6 trillion. How much is $6 million trillion? Well, let’s not work that out, but this is $6 trillion in capital.

The Budget Policy Statement reflects the determination and directional intent of this Government. It is a road map—it is a road map—for growth and stability.

Let me just take members through one more time the five priorities of this Budget Policy Statement as we head to Budget day on 22 May 2025.

Hon Member: It’s May.

CAMERON BREWER: It’s 22 May—have we got that record straight? We are: (1) lifting economic growth through measures to address New Zealand’s long-term productivity challenges, (2) implementing a social investment approach to drive results from the Government’s investment in social services, (3) keeping tight control of the Government’s spending, and (4) developing a sustainable pipeline of long-term infrastructure investments.

This is a Budget Policy Statement that directly addresses Kiwis’ top priorities: fixing the economy, restoring law and order, and delivering better health and education. I commend this statement to the House.

I didn’t want to interrupt the member’s speech, but let me just say that the sort of general supporting commentary from around his colleagues is not going to be tolerated too much more. This is a Parliament; not a revivalist tent, so let’s just have the speaker—alone—speaking.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to take a call on this special debate on the Budget Policy Statement. I do promise no revivalism in my speech, because this actually—

SPEAKER: The roof might fall in if you did.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Well, Mr Speaker, it will be far more mainstream, to which you and I are both accustomed. This is a serious debate and one this Parliament should take seriously, because the Budget Policy Statement and its examination at the Finance and Expenditure Committee is an important part of the parliamentary process. It is where the Government of the day sets out what the priorities for spending for the coming year will be—sets the economic context for the Budget that it’s going to deliver. Yes, it announces the date, but within a Budget Policy Statement there is a lot of detail, and it actually does reflect the priorities of the Government of the day.

I think, if we have a look at the Budget Policy Statement that was delivered and examined at the Finance and Expenditure Committee, rather than seeing a narrative of growth, growth, growth as the opposition will tell us, it is nothing more than a pretty grim read in cuts, cuts, cuts. One of the important things that a Budget Policy Statement sets out is the operating allowance. This is how much money a Government is going to have to allocate at the forthcoming Budget—what that looks like—and we can see, in the Government’s own Budget Policy Statement, on page 3 of that document, that there’s going to be a high bar for new initiatives. I think, when we say a high bar, we say an insurmountable bar. While there’s an operating allowance in the forthcoming Budget of $2.4 billion, after you take out the pre-commitments that have already been made—that is things that the Government didn’t fund in the last Budget and realised that they needed to do some political fix-ups on in between Budgets—we’re left with an operating allowance of $700 million.

I cannot emphasise to New Zealanders how low that is. That is for everything other than health. That is to fund the cost pressures that we see in education. That is to fund what we might want to see in new initiatives in health. That is to fund any increase we might like to have in the paltry allocation we’ve had to housing in the previous Budget. There are not going to be new initiatives. There is the highest of bars that has been set by the Government in this. Second, not only is there not going to be new initiatives, what this Budget Policy Statement lays absolutely bare is that there are going to be more cuts and they are going to be deeper. I read from the document where it says, “Second, savings will need to be found, beyond those already identified in the previous Budget.” What I say to New Zealanders is: brace yourself; there is more coming. You thought Budget 2024 was savage. Hot on its heels is coming Budget 2025.

What it makes absolutely clear, in case colleagues thinking of making their bids didn’t realise just how brutal this Budget was going to be, is it says, “with a small number of exceptions, government departments should expect to receive no additional funding in the Budget.” What we can see is that this is austerity laid bare. This is no new funding going in, but, worse than that, it is more cuts. If we are looking for what we need to do to fix our health system, to deal with the rising levels of homelessness that we are seeing throughout New Zealand, by once again investing in housing, you will not see it in Budget 2025. The Budget Policy Statement makes that abundantly clear. If we are looking for what we need to do to stimulate and drive growth—the kinds of initiatives that we might want to see in economic development—there will not be funding for that. That is not the kind of thing we’ll see.

We know—we just need to look at the economic indicators—just how tough it is out there. We can take our pick of figures to look at that. Net core Crown debt will peak at 46.5 percent of GDP. Last time it was this high was in 1994. And, when we come to think about the increased borrowing, let’s take our thinking back to Budget 2024 and just how irresponsible it was of a Government to borrow to fund tax cuts. That is becoming abundantly clear. We’ll see that net core Crown debt is 3.5 percentage points higher than it was forecast in the Budget. Between May and December, we’ve seen that increase, in terms of what net core Crown debt has done, so when this Government tries to blame it all on the previous Governments, it’s time for them to stand up and take responsibility for the Budgets that they have delivered.

We also see—and I think this is one of the most concerning things for us on this side of the House—what this translates to for ordinary people. Nowhere is that more debilitating than the rising number of unemployed that we are seeing in this country. That is higher in every year of the forecast, and that is what the Budget Policy Statement shows us. There are 20,000 more people forecast to be on the jobseeker benefit and support by 2026, and that is a direct response of the kinds of cuts that we saw in Budget ’24 and that we are being told to brace ourselves for in Budget 2025. Those cuts will be deeper. We are not going to see the level of spending that we need to start addressing some of these issues that New Zealand is facing.

The other, I guess, notable thing about the Budget Policy Statement, and an item that the select committee spent a substantial amount of time delving into, of course, was “OBEGALx”, the new economic measure that was introduced by the Minister of Finance. One of the reasons that we spent time talking to both the Minister of Finance and Treasury officials about it, of course, is because Treasury had advised against the introduction of this new measure, and they had advised against the introduction of this new measure because it would not allow for the continuity and ongoing comparison of the Crown account. “When you can’t make surplus, you just take some stuff out to make it better” would be the short and easy description of what OBEGALx is, and there is a reason why Treasury advised against doing this. For Treasury, the ability for us to do year-on-year comparisons and to look at the economic situation across years is an important part of how we prudently manage fiscal arrangements in New Zealand.

We heard from Treasury that their advice to the Minister was that changing those short-term indicators soon after setting them could weaken the Government’s fiscal strategy credibility, especially at the time when the fiscal outlook had deteriorated. They were particularly concerned that it was a change to those fiscal indicators in the face of a deterioration in terms of what they were projecting. Now, we know globally at the moment that modelling and projections are challenging, and we have seen that over the last five years. I think that what we have seen over the last five years is that we have seen economists and central banks struggling to understand the different factors at play. Even more alarmingly, what we also heard in the course of this hearing was just how uncertain a place the world is at the moment and how hard it is to factor in all of the moving parts that we’re seeing moving around the world. To change our fiscal indicators, and being told by Treasury that it could weaken a Government’s fiscal credibility, I think is a bold move for a Minister of Finance and for a Government to agree to do.

What New Zealanders need to see in this Budget Policy Statement is an indication that we are going to have a Budget in 2025 that will start supporting New Zealanders into work, that it will make jobs and incomes a priority, that it will make housing an absolute priority, giving people the security of the homes they need in the kinds of communities they need, and that we also make sure we are adequately funding our health system. What we needed was a Budget Policy Statement that prioritised homes, health, and communities as well as all the things New Zealanders need. But we did not see that.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Look, I know that we are in the realm of post-truth politics, but I don’t think that I have seen a clearer indication of the gap between rhetoric and reality than what we have contained within the Budget Policy Statement—the rhetoric and the promises that this Government came in on with regards to the cost of living, and the reality that is biting everyday New Zealanders as a result of the decisions that this Government had made to knowingly in its Going For Growth strategy grow inequality, grow child poverty, grow climate changing emissions, and actually de-grow the wellbeing of New Zealanders.

We have some pretty vague statements in the Budget Policy Statement, which were helpfully gone through by the chair. He stated—and it’s reflected in this Budget Policy Statement from the Minister of Finance—that the Government’s overarching goals for its term of office are to, and I quote, “build a stronger, more productive economy.” But when you really start trying to get into the granular detail, there’s just some vague gesturing towards the notion—

Hon Member: Oh, it’s coming. Hold on.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —of education and skills, towards regulation, towards overseas investment—which I will come back to later, for members heckling at the moment—for science and technology, which the Government has decided to cut 400 jobs in, and also towards infrastructure.

We are understandably starting to see quite a bit of bait and switch whereby we were promised productivity but now the fixation and the rhetoric is on growth, and the question has to be “Growth for whom?” Who will benefit from this fixation from the Government? What we have in the Budget Policy Statement, and indeed the Budget itself, is a Government that is intent on crunching Government spending from approximately 34 percent of GDP to 30 percent. The Government knows full well the private spending from households and businesses is not going to fill the gap. That is one of the deepest ironies from this Government that likes to call themselves good, sound, economic managers, because the decisions that the Government has made to crunch that Government spending as a proportion of GDP and not see it filled by private investment has resulted in a deeper and longer recession, which again is hurting average New Zealanders.

Every forecast for this economy shows that things are getting worse as a result of the Government’s decisions, that they have exacerbated this recession. The Reserve Bank initially indicated that we were facing just a light downturn. Now the growth numbers continue to get worse. This time last year, the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update was projecting a 1.5 percent growth for this year, but the actual rate now is negative 0.2 percent. Meanwhile, next year’s growth of the Budget in May was projected to be 1.7 percent, but it’s now projected to be 0.5 percent. This Budget does not increase productivity—in fact, it actively, demonstrably, evidentially does the opposite.

What do we hear from the Government about what their plans currently are? Well, we’ve currently got the Prime Minister embarrassingly simping to the international companies that he’s got at his investor festival, asking them to fill the gap because the Government refuses to take responsibility for building the infrastructure that all of us ultimately rely on. That is because this Government refuses to acknowledge the reality—which I might add many Governments before it have as well—that you cannot build a productive economy on the sands of speculation. We in the Greens believe that Aotearoa New Zealand can aim a heck of a lot higher than simply hoping to have an economy which is us selling houses back and forwards to each other. This is an obvious monopoly system, and we do not live in a game of monopoly. We can indeed change the rules when they do not work for the majority of New Zealanders.

Let’s talk about that attempt at fiscal consolidation which this Government is ploughing ahead with, whereby it is deciding to do so through a process of cuts, cuts, merciless cuts after cuts, instead of fixing the tax system—that tax system, which we hear them fire up about whenever we dare to mention the reality that the institution of the Inland Revenue Department in 2023 produced a piece of work which told us that the top 311 households own more wealth than the bottom 2.5 million New Zealanders. To connect the dots there, that does not just happen. That is an active consequence of political decisions which have been made to see those top 311 households pay an effective tax rate less than half that of the average New Zealander, and these guys have the gall to say that they care about hard-working New Zealanders. They are further entrenching a system which sees our nurses, our firefighters, our teachers pay an effective tax rate almost double that of the wealthiest in this country.

Not only is that so deeply unfair and so deeply inequitable, but it robs us of the very productivity that they tell us that they care about. It robs us of the investment that we could be making in that infrastructure that all of us need. The fundamental problem with the economy and the tax system in Aotearoa New Zealand is that we overtax work and we under-tax—indeed oftentimes do not tax at all—wealth.

Now, the $14 billion in tax cuts which the Government ploughed ahead with were promised to boost the economy and to boost growth, but as we can see, the Government’s decisions to hand out those tax cuts have in fact only exacerbated that recession and made things far worse. New Zealanders feel it in their back pocket. Those trickle-down tax cuts are not making up for the cuts to all of the public services that all of us rely on in the increases in fees for prescriptions, for bus fares, vehicle registration fees, and otherwise.

We’re also seeing the most, I think, immediately obvious manifestation of this Government’s fixation on privatisation with regards to the failure of their cuts to the per-child cost of the school lunch programme, whereby we are seeing the little guy—those hard-working New Zealanders that they once said that they cared about—being screwed over, and multinational companies or domestic versions of those multinational companies ultimately now going bust because this programme was always set up to fail. This austerity approach whereby we cut costs, set up programmes to fail, watch them fail, then blame them for failing—New Zealanders, I believe, can see right through it.

Now, there is no wonder that every other day we’ve got a new form of distraction politics from members of this Government with their latest imported culture woke wars or whatever it is. But I think that it is far more profound that every other day in this House we have the Prime Minister get up and say in response to questions—particularly from the Greens—that rents have stabilised. The facts are clear, and I would invite the members of the Government to go and look at Statistics New Zealand—the authoritative, non-partisan agency responsible for producing the database that we make decisions upon as a country—which tells us that rents have actually increased at double what Consumers Price Index inflation is. That is not what stabilisation means. Rents are double what we are seeing of average inflation.

The fundamental point here from the Greens in this Budget Policy Statement is that different decisions can be made. While the Government has decided to fixate on, for example, mining, which is reflected in the Budget Policy Statement report from the Finance and Expenditure Committee, whereby the Minister of Finance started talking about how we can apparently do this thing carefully—we have seen and we have heard from the Government that their plan for growth and mining is to go from approximately a worth of $1 billion to $2 billion. They want to increase the number of jobs from approximately 5,000 jobs to 7,000 jobs. This is worthwhile putting in context because right now the arts sector in this country—not particularly well renowned for being well resourced or supported by successive Governments—is currently worth $16 billion, i.e., 16 times the mining sector that they want to supercharge, and it currently employs 117,000 people. Far, far more than the 7,000 that they want to increase mining jobs to.

Different decisions can be made. The Greens have outlined our plan with He Ara Anamata whereby we have shown that we can reduce climate changing emissions five times faster than the Government’s plan in their emissions reduction plan. More so than that, we can reduce the cost of living and improve people’s quality of life. That fundamental decision looks like deciding to put the public good ahead of private gain. I know that that’s a scary thing for members of the Government, the notion that we collectively might look after each other and the planet that we live on, but those are the decisions that we are campaigning on, and we know resonate with everyday New Zealanders.

Just in my final remarks, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand the logic and the rationale behind this Government’s decisions, and, frankly, it’s clear at the end of the day there is none.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in this debate on the Budget Policy Statement 2025 and the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update for 2024. If people have just tuned in, we are actually not debating the Greens’ alternative Budget plan, yet they could have been confused for thinking that after the last speaker spoke so much about it.

I’d just address, actually, a couple of things in Ms Swarbrick’s remarks before I actually get on to the Budget Policy Statement. Again, she always talks about taxing unrealised gains and that’s actually not what we should be doing in New Zealand, and it’s not a wealth tax. It’s actually a capital tax you would be introducing, and what you do when you tax capital is you actually stop—

Dan Bidois: It’s a Piketty tax.

TODD STEPHENSON: Yeah, you actually remove money that we can use to invest in businesses, upskill staff, train, etc. We do not want to be taxing capital and stopping investment.

But I digress—oh, one further point, though, before I do, I do digress, because I know Ms Swarbrick is a fan of Stats New Zealand. She mentioned it in her speech. If she actually looked at the second page of the report that the Finance and Expenditure Committee—which I am a member of—has reported, she would see that Stats New Zealand did modestly upgrade GDP, real growth, and nominal growth. Now, it was only modestly, but it should be noted that it actually has been upgraded.

We were lucky enough in the Finance and Expenditure Committee to have some submissions on the Budget Policy Statement, and so I want to thank the 49 people who did written submissions and, as Mr Brewer outlined earlier, the 12 people who actually came and spoke to the committee. I want to thank them for that.

As was outlined by the chair, Mr Brewer, earlier, there were really four key things in the Budget Policy Statement around lifting economic growth, social investment approach, tight control of Government spending, and a sustainable pipeline of infrastructure projects. ACT is very proudly able to point out how we’re contributing to each of those as part of this tight coalition Government, using the different skills of our three parties to actually deliver for New Zealanders. In the economic growth through productivity, we have David Seymour, as the Minister for Regulation, dealing with bad regulations that hold back business, and we’ve had a number of announcements around that.

We are very interested in how we can use this social investment approach to actually make sure that the public services that Kiwis want and deserve are actually delivering results. Again, we’re looking at some initiatives there in relation to Pharmac.

Tight control of Government spending is, I think, a really, really important objective of the Budget Policy Statement. I do want to quote the Minister of Finance because she made some statements about that to the select committee. She said that the Government’s fiscal sustainability programme involves a high bar for any new spending. Ministers have been asked to reprioritise funding within their portfolio if they want to pursue new spending initiatives. Now, why she made those comments is we have seen over the last number of years that Government spending has got out of control. There are no proper checks and balances on what is being spent.

We want to make sure that we are getting value for money, so I know that the Minister of Finance, ably supported by her Associate Ministers, is looking at that and making sure that we are actually only delivering new initiatives and investing where we can see outcomes. That is very, very important.

Then the final one, which we’ve mentioned, was the sustainable pipeline of infrastructure investments. Again, we’ve already heard referenced in this debate the investment summit which will start tomorrow. I also want to call out to Minister Chris Bishop and his Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Simon Court, who have put in place frameworks to allow overseas and New Zealand investors to be the ones who can invest in the pipeline of infrastructure projects, which is one of the goals of the Budget Policy Statement.

I also do want to reflect on a couple of other things in the report that are actually in the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update, which we are also debating—which is this sizable document. It’s actually a very valuable and important document, and it’s worth bringing to the House’s attention some pieces of this because it is actually really interesting. If you, in fact, turn to page 8, there’s a really great graph showing the rise of inflation over a number of years, and you can actually see, when the previous Government was in place, the massive uptick in Government spending, and then the horrific, horrific increase in inflation which has really made all New Zealand households suffer.

What it does say in this official Treasury document is that with inflation slowing—again, we would say that was delivered by this Government—and spare capacity emerging in the economy, monetary policy has become less restrictive, the Reserve Bank has lowered the official cash rate 125 basis points since August, and what we’re seeing is a reduction in interest rates. The document goes on to say, “Lower interest rates will stimulate demand in time as lower debt servicing costs for mortgage holders”—so that’s everyday Kiwis out there who have a mortgage who are noticing their rates coming down, and we’ll also see more household spending and business investment. That is good news, but, again, these graphs are quite stark about the issues that we have inherited.

I also want to draw people’s attention to a page at the back, where it outlines all the fiscal risks. Again, the Minister of Finance, on 21 December 2023, put out a statement saying that she was going to ensure there were no more fiscal cliffs in the Budget documents and, in fact, in the accounts. Again, and people will be familiar with this, we found 21 projects left from the previous Government where there were fiscal cliffs. Now you can see in this statement of fiscal risks it actually outlines any programmes that have got time-limited funding, etc., and so we want to make sure that it’s very clear to New Zealanders and to everyone about what are the risks the Government is dealing with and if a programme has time-limited funding.

One other important thing I would like to draw the House’s attention to is Treasury’s commentary about some of the kind of more global risks. They actually talk about the trade situation globally. We’ve obviously seen different musings from the US Government. That’s why it’s really important—like we heard today—that our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs is actually on the way to the US to make sure that we have good relations with the US and can ensure that our trade position remains, because New Zealand is a trading export nation and we do need to make sure that those relationships are strong. We’ve also, obviously, heard about the other countries like India, where shortly a delegation—and we’re very lucky to have Dr Parmjeet Parmar from ACT joining the Prime Minister on that delegation. She is one of our only two Indian-born MPs. Again, that we can look to open up more export markets, because, as we heard earlier, lifting economic growth—and doing that will be by actually selling more of our goods to the rest of the world—is one of the key objectives of the Budget Policy Statement for 2025.

I am really looking forward to the Budget on 22 May 2025, Mr Brewer—just so there’s no confusion—when we will actually be able to see the cumulation of the work of all of our hard-working Ministers across the Government as they look to take the objectives that were set out by the Minister of Finance and actually make those into tangible outcomes for New Zealanders. Really, everyone should mark their diaries—22 May—because it will be great to see the culmination of all that work and of these important Budget processes like the Budget Policy Statement and the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update. Thank you to the House for listening to me, and I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First in this special debate on the Budget Policy Statement—the BPS. The Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU), as we know, was also released alongside the BPS as well, at the same time. Like the last speaker, I’m looking forward to 22 May. Kiwis across the country, as we all are, will be looking forward to Budget day, and it’s the day, I think, all New Zealanders and Kiwis watch Parliament, and they love to see what’s happening in the Budget.

This Government, however, has inherited a wrecked economy, and we heard today by the acting Prime Minister, a wrecked economy is what we are dealing with. We came into Government with inflation out of control, causing a cost of living crisis and skyrocketing interest rates. The economy was tanking and running out of steam, and when the Hon Shane Jones spoke of the Budget Policy Statement prior to Christmas, he also mentioned how Treasury itself says it has to go back and rework its own modelling to actually work out the situation we are in.

We are in a dire state of economy. We are on a knife edge and we have to start doing things different—what this Government has done. The New Zealand First party, also prior to the election, warned the people of New Zealand and other political parties of the path the previous Government was on, and as the Hon Winston Peters has laid out, we were right in this forecast. Those forecasts have come true—that we are in a worse position than we thought we were in prior to the election. The economy needs confidence, and this speech today, if I emphasise anything, is about confidence. We need a stronger, more productive economy.

In this Budget Policy Statement, it sets out goals and objectives for the Government in the forthcoming Budget. It talks of the short-term fiscal intentions and it talks about getting debt downwards—a downwards trend towards 40 percent of GDP. It also talks about long-term fiscal objectives, of actually reducing debt to in between 20 to 40 percent of GDP so we can actually budget or actually have wriggle room around economic shocks or environmental disasters or emergencies. It is important we put ourselves back into that situation.

The unfortunate thing is the Opposition does not agree with that. They actually want to ramp up debt. They come and they sit on that side of the House, and all they talk about is spend, spend, spend. They want to ramp things up, where this Government will get things under control.

Shanan Halbert: Did you read your debt levels?

JAMIE ARBUCKLE: Your debt levels—yes, I have read your debt levels. We have set a very high bar for any new spending, so we will get the public sector; we will get the Government books back under control. We have those three goals we have to build a stronger, more productive economy that lifts real incomes, increases opportunities for New Zealanders. We will deliver more efficient, effective, and responsive public services to all who need and use them. We will restore law and order, and we have been continuing doing that in this House with legislation. We will improve health outcomes and educational achievements. We will get the books back in order and restore discipline to public spending.

Yes, the Opposition have alluded to the operating allowance of $2.4 billion, and $700 million of that is left, remains to be allocated through the Budget, but that is being responsible. We aren’t blowing out the Budget; we are being responsible with the money that we have got allocated.

The last Government—in their mismanagement, we saw them spending like drunken sailors. They have left us a legacy of debt and bad decisions, and what did they finish? What did they achieve? Nothing. COVID money thrown out and parachuted to people overseas—not even in New Zealand. They wasted money on infrastructure planning—$50 million on a cycle bridge. Where’s that bridge? Where’s the cycleway? Not here. Four billion dollars, they got the ferries out to—$4 billion, that was going to cost. No prudence in their decisions. It is all about choices.

It also a relief to New Zealanders that inflation has come down. We’re seeing inflation back into that 1 to 3 percent range. We’ve no longer got inflation over 7 percent. That was killing our economy. There is now confidence within our business sectors and in our consumers. We are restoring public spending savings in Government, and this is something the Opposition can’t do: reprioritise spending and actually spend your money in a better way instead of just having to have more and more money.

We are removing the regulatory barriers, and we have a growth strategy in the BPS, on page 8, and it’s about export income. We can’t just sell to ourselves; we’ve actually got to grow our exports, and that’s something New Zealand First has always been very much aware of. We must be much more financially sound by our exports growing, and New Zealand First has invested, over our time in Government, in the regions, through the Provincial Growth Fund, through the Regional Infrastructure Fund (RIF), and through primary industries. Farming, aquaculture, fisheries, horticulture, and mining—they’re all going off. They’re all things that are bringing money and export money into this country.

The one thing the Opposition doesn’t understand is they would always kill the golden goose that lays the golden egg. They would always kill the exporters and put them down—no confidence in our exporters, where this side of the House and our Government, we believe in our exporters. We believe in tourism, and we’re putting money into tourism and bringing money back into our country. As the finance Minister said, growth of 0.25 percent of nominal GDP would increase $2 billion in the forecast period, so any increase in exports—it’s a good thing. It will give us more revenue, more tax money.

Infrastructure fast track—149 projects in the pipeline. Resource Management Act (RMA) reform, looking at capital requirements and how we can make that easier—blow away the cobwebs of the old RMA and actually allow 149 projects on the table to actually be consented and actually get some work done. All you guys will be there for the opening, but none of you will actually vote for it. Time and time again, we hear about renewable energy, we hear about aquaculture, we hear about housing, but all of you voted against those projects, but bet you’re all there when the ribbons are cut.

The economic outlook is better, inflation’s down, interest rates are down, and people are going to have more money in their pockets. We are at a turning point. We are heading back to a path of economic surplus, where this Government is going to take us back to actually having money in the bank and money in our pockets. And why would we want to put more money in the back of the pockets? What can we do with it? Why? Economic surplus will mean more hospitals. It will mean more doctors. It will mean more nurses, and schools delivering basics like maths, reading, and writing, because that’s where the real deficits are. It’s also about infrastructure and having the money for infrastructure.

Amazingly enough, I could go on for 20 minutes. It’s actually been quite pleasurable today, but I look forward and our colleagues look forward to 22 May, to the finance Minister, and getting the country back on track and taking back our country.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is an overwhelming feeling to hear all the speeches in this House and not once mention wellbeing. The last speaker talked about inheriting a wrecked economy. Well, I wonder how he feels when we’ve inherited or been subjected to a stolen one. This debate isn’t about numbers on spreadsheets; it’s about real people, real whānau, and real struggles. This is a Budget that doesn’t care about New Zealanders. It doesn’t want to invest in those struggling whānau working hard, the sick, Māori or Pacific Islanders, because they only want to serve those who want to exploit our country.

There are no wellbeing indicators in this Budget. What we have is a Government that doesn’t care about the social return on investment, because it only cares for profit or for shareholdings and for international exploitation. This Budget tells us nothing. It tells us nothing of the wellbeing of Aotearoa—nothing at all. They could fund Māori healthcare so whānau don’t wait months for care that others get in days. Or they could close mortality rates. But they don’t. And you know what? They continue to talk about equality. Liberal democracy is about equality, because it’s easier, but equity is what’s missing in this country.

We’re not talking about equity because equity costs, and this Budget talks nothing about equity and closing the gaps, closing the mortality rates, lowering Māori prison rates. Māori make up 50 percent of the prison population for males in prison. We’re not looking at how we close those gaps. That’s what equity funding does. That’s what this Budget should be talking about, but it doesn’t, so they come up with these catchphrases: woke—all of these woke things. Though, it’s not woke. Follow the data, follow the science, and stop being so stupid.

The politics of distraction—we heard it in one of the speeches, the “Americanising” of our country. We have got to stop allowing these types of Governments to run their agenda, and Americanising our country is not the answer to close inequity. You continue to use words that Trump uses: “woke”. Everything you disagree with is “woke”. Equity is “woke”. What you do is you cut funding—you cut funding to those who are struggling.

Mark Cameron: What about productivity?

RAWIRI WAITITI: It’s not about productivity, because productivity will be achieved once we have closed the gaps between those who have and those who have not. And the Budget doesn’t look at any of that. Actually, your last 16 months has absolutely blown equity out of the water. What you do is you use this race baiting - type politics to get your point across. It’s got nothing to do with Pākehā or Māori; it’s got everything to do with the economy, but you use those types of tactics to distract us from the real issues, and that’s what this Budget Policy Statement doesn’t do for our people.

I’ll tell you what, we’ll have a whole lot of trolls trolling us in the morning when they see this speech, because, in actual fact, what they don’t recognise is they’re part of the 98 percent that are getting ripped off as well, and that this Government is only tending to the 2 percent that control 50 percent of this country’s wealth. Removing Te Tiriti o Waitangi from any legislation—Treaty principles bill, regulatory standards bill; removing Te Tiriti from 28 pieces of legislation—all of that is to allow Aotearoa to be exploited by corporate greed and international investors.

If you think that’s where our economy should be going and if that is development or if that is making a profit for this country, we don’t want anything for it. Our country needs to wake up. Wake up in 2026; it’s our chance to make a change, because these types of policy statements in the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update do not recognise those who are contributing to it. That is 98 percent of the country that are working their butts off to ensure that there is some type of economy here in Aotearoa. We must stand up for the 98 percent of this country whilst this Government continues to feed the 2 percent, who control 50 percent of this country’s wealth.

That’s what this Budget is doing. That’s what this Government is doing. It must come to an end—2026, we will see a change. Kia ora tātou.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Kia orana, Mr Speaker. This Budget Policy Statement is the same old tired talking points that I’ve heard from National Governments for way too long. It harks right back to the 1990s’ absolutely failed neo-liberal concept of what the economy is and how we make progress, and it’s sad. I mean, I find it frustrating and sad because I’m sure that there are members on the other side of the House who genuinely believe what they’re saying; they just don’t know better. Like, they’ve confused excess profit with progress, the rich getting richer with success, and we’ve known since the 1990s that doesn’t work.

In the 1990s, inequality dramatically increased in Aotearoa New Zealand because of policies from a National Government in the early 1990s. As a result, New Zealand has been held back, and we didn’t make the investments in infrastructure that were needed. We haven’t invested into public housing. All of these things have contributed to the problems that we face today. And it happened again last time, when the John Key - National Government—which was less extreme than this one, I’ll be honest. It was less extreme; it was less ridiculous and Trump-like. But still, when we hit the global financial crisis and house building completely ceased in the private sector, they didn’t put money into State housing, which is what was needed to increase the supply of State housing. Instead, they’re like, “Let’s try to create jobs by building some roads.” And by “roads”, I mean the six highways that were announced in 2009, most of which weren’t even procured until the next term of Government and some of which have only recently been completed, many years later.

I bring up transport because, ultimately, if you really look at the numbers in the Government policy statement on land transport and the National Land Transport Programme, as put out by the NZ Transport Agency, it becomes abundantly clear that the Government’s policy on transport will bankrupt the country and it will come at the expense of investment in things like hospitals, schools, and other vitally important public services. Right now, as we debate this Budget Policy Statement, we’ve got the Minister for Infrastructure, and Transport, and the Prime Minister, up there at their—what is it? The private capital festival, which is a joke. I mean, they’ve had to push back this event three times. It’s a talk fest; there’s no reality to it. I believe the Prime Minister actually believes public-private partnerships (PPPs) are free money, that all this foreign capital is just going to come here and build infrastructure in New Zealand for free. No, we have to pay for it.

Those investors, my friends, want a return on the money they’re putting in, and if they’re putting money into roads, which are only going to raise a tiny fraction of their cost from tolls, that means that future New Zealanders will be paying back the debt that is going to be racked up by this Government. That actually is clear in the Budget Policy Statement, because if you look at figure 2 on page 2, you see very clearly that starting in 2008, net core Crown debt increased under John Key, it started reducing until we hit COVID, and now it’s shooting right back up again. There’s no sign of that reducing. Just because you sign up for a PPP doesn’t mean you don’t have to account for the future repayments to pay it back.

There’s a massive gap between forecast revenue from the transport funds and forecast spending once we get outside of this three-year period, and everybody knows it. It’s like the emperor has no clothes. This is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous that Government parties stand up and give their fiscal discipline talking points, say we can’t afford to have decent school lunches for our tamariki, but they can have burned plastic and a few big corporates can maybe make some money off it. It’s abundantly clear that when they talk about doing more with less, they’re talking about doing less with less. We’re not getting quality school lunches, and a vast majority of New Zealanders can see that. The old programme was working, it created local jobs, and it had massive benefits that flow on to the rest of our country.

Because we are a country, we are a society. They will blame individual failure for poverty when it’s a systemic problem created by policies they promote that do not actually benefit all New Zealanders, they benefit the top 1 percent, and a few big overseas corporates will be milking it off of the money that we’re going to have to pay back in the future. That’s no vision from this coalition Government.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to speak on this debate on the Budget Policy Statement and the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update. We heard from one of the other speakers—who has now left—from the Green Party. She used big words like “demonstrably” and “sands of speculation”, but then she has walked off so I can’t demonstrate the very things which this Budget yields—the very things of substance. Of course, on 22 May, there’s going to be a whole lot more as we approach Budget day, so it’s going to be very exciting.

This Budget Policy Statement (BPS) is all about economic growth. It’s imbued through the statements, and I will talk through some of those things and qualify some of those attributes. As has been mentioned by our chair Mr Brewer, and other speakers, the cost of living is coming down, inflation is coming down, and the official cash rate is coming down, and that means that for mortgage holders—which is the majority of mum and dads around New Zealand—they’ve got more cash flow in their bank, and an example was $180 a fortnight, based on some of those new interest rates. That’s serious savings, and we do take some tribute for reducing Government spending, which has reduced domestic inflation—we do take some credit—and that’s of benefit for Kiwis.

Our aim is also to grow incomes—not just tax but to grow incomes. I want to quote from the Minister of Finance, as per the Hansard at that January hearing, where she said: “Here’s a statistic I find compelling: additional growth of even a quarter of a percent of nominal GDP each year would boost tax revenues by $2 billion a year, by the end of the forecast period.” If we just think about that—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: But we’re in recession—we’ve been going backwards.

RYAN HAMILTON: —it’s just a quarter of a percent. Even you can imagine it, Mr Webb—just a quarter of a percent. If we can grow by that much over four years, that’s worth $2 billion in our tax revenues.

The Opposition talks about tax, tax, tax. Member Halbert over there was talking about tax cuts for landlords, and I think, frankly, they need a new catchcry, because we know at least a third of landlords are mum and dad Kiwis.

We want to grow the pie, not just cut the pie—not have a stingy pie and give everyone crumbs, but grow the pie. In fact, we want to give more pies, or grow the pizza, if you like. We know you can cut the pizza into smaller sections or you can just have another pizza. This Budget Policy Statement is all about growing our Kiwi pizza. It’s about job creation. It’s about wage increases. It’s about better public services.

Dan Bidois: More ham and pineapple!

RYAN HAMILTON: You can have pineapple, Dan. What do energy-poor countries have in common? They’re poor, and that’s why we want to grow our economy.

We want new money. The previous Green member, again, left the House and didn’t get to hear my contribution but she mentioned that this reminds them of the 1990s. When I think about the 1990s, I think about the Spice Girls, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, and the RMA—1991, the RMA—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: R.E.M—it’s R.E.M.

RYAN HAMILTON: —and again—R.E.M. for you. We’ll tribute a song to you. At the BPS hearing—again, if I could quote the Minister: “In the longer term, we have a productivity disease in New Zealand and our Government is intent on addressing it. Resource Management Act (RMA) reform is an example of this. We know that weaponising our laws against development and construction has been bad for our economy.”

I’m pleased that we are reforming the RMA. Obviously we’ve got some fast-track legislation which is now in train, and some hearing panels will be set up and enable those things to get on and do it. The great thing about them is they’re time consent - bound, so regional councils and consenting authorities can’t keep kicking the can down the road. Developers want to get on and do it.

We want to double our exports, and obviously our Minister is working really hard with free-trade agreements. The Prime Minister is off to India next week. We want to bring in foreign capital, and I want to talk about the business summit, soon, and there’s an example of that. I love talking about infrastructure, one of the key pillars of our productivity pipeline. We want to have 30 years of infrastructure certainty. We have invited, obviously, the Hon Barbara Edmonds to the business summit because, where possible, we want bipartisan support. We want our development community to have certainty into the future of New Zealand, so it means big contractors can invest in the capital requirement to employ and develop. Yes, building roads, because building roads takes a lot of employment. You know, the great thing about when the road is completed? Then we’ve got enhanced productivity and people can get somewhere faster and do more, more efficiently.

The former member talked about public-private partnerships. That’s just one tool, and we’re looking at special purpose vehicles. We’re looking at infrastructure funding and financing tools. We’re looking at tolling. There are multiple ways that we can fund infrastructure, but we can’t keep doing it the way we’ve done it. Councils have reached debt ceilings, the Crown has reached debt ceilings—

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: No, it hasn’t. The Crown doesn’t have a debt ceiling.

RYAN HAMILTON: —and we need to be innovative. Oh, you just print more money, is that right? You just print more money. No, we want to bring in the opportunity for foreign investment. In terms of the RMA at the moment, we’ve got resource management amendments, we’ve done the fast-track resource management amendments because we want to unshackle this RMA that the Minister spoke of, around infrastructure and energy, housing growth, obviously making the medium-density residential standards optional, which is really important for those councils to provide a nuanced solution so they can do infill housing around public transport and areas where it makes sense, rather than sort of a helter-skelter approach, and natural hazards and system improvements.

To talk about the investment summit this week, just to give, I guess, some context to what it might mean. Some of the members opposite might realise that there’s some other countries involved: Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia—I’m just going to take a breath—Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. We’re going to show our international visitors in no uncertain terms that New Zealand is open for business. We’re not just going on a trade delegation to say, “Gidday, mate, we’re from Australia; we’re from New Zealand.” We actually want to invite people to say, “Here’s a tangible way you can invest in our economy where everyone can benefit, including Kiwis.”

The financial companies and institutions attending the summit manage assets and funds worth around $6 trillion worth of capital. They include pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and major banks. The challenge for us is just getting out of the way and enabling this for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

We’re also moving quickly to provide a regulatory environment which will open up that framework, but also, even with local councils—with our Minister Penk—trying to make it easier for builders to get consenting projects and even unified across councils. In my local example, we’ve got Hamilton, we’ve got Waipā, we’ve got Waikato, we’ve got a regional council, and building developers don’t know who to talk, to half the time and it’s so confused.

I guess the word I want to bring to all of this is “alignment”. In the RMA, we’ve got Local Water Done Well, we’ve got the infrastructure funding and financing, and we’ve got consenting, and if we get all these things lined up, this country’s going to take off. You know who’s going to benefit? It’s going to be New Zealanders. It’s going to lift wages and lift prosperity and lift the economy for all of us. We’re also very passionate about innovation, science, and technology. Part of the—

Hon Member: You fired the scientists.

RYAN HAMILTON: You’ll see some efficiencies come out—just be patient—as part of the antidote, if you will, to our productivity disease. I was at Waikato University last week with Minister Shane Reti, at the Ahuora Centre symposium on decarbonising process heat. We heard about collaboration between structural engineers and chemical engineers designing things using AI. I even got to see some of the intellectual property in action with asparagus pickers and a machine that would go over a vineyard and analyse grape vines and could use AI tools to work out where to trim. These are the sorts of things that are going to be productive to our economy.

Of course, tourism; we’ve had a massive announcement this week of $3 million for the international visitor conservation fund. It’s going to be awesome. In fact, we’re really excited about tourism in Hamilton. Obviously, as MP for Hamilton East, Hamilton—of course, everyone knows it’s New Zealand’s fastest-growing city and the city of the future. We’ve got the Pullman Hotel, built by the Pisos and Sanjils of the world. We’ve got the Templeton Group eyeing up some hot property in Hamilton, overlooking the mighty awa. We’ve got the Regional Theatre, a $100 million project which is going to attract visitors, on top of the Hamilton Gardens, which has half a million visitors a year, and it’s in the top 1 percent on TripAdvisor. It’s all happening, and it’s a catalyst for confidence.

I know you’re ready to jump to your feet, Deborah Russell, but we’re not quite there yet. All these things are a catalyst for confidence. “Everyone must go” to New Zealand. We’re on a path of productivity, we’re on a path of delivering a great Budget on 22 May, and I can’t wait.

I want to remind this House about what New Zealanders really, really care about. They care about jobs. They care about health. They care about homes. There are a lot of fancy words and economic concepts in this debate—a lot of talking about fiscal ceilings and growth and measures of how we measure the economy, but at the end of the day, what New Zealanders really want to know is how what the Government is doing matters for their jobs, how it matters as to whether or not they can get healthcare, how it matters as to whether or not they have a warm, dry home to live in.

See, the Budget Policy Statement is full of lots of numbers, full of economic concepts, but the Budget is not just about numbers and economic concepts; it is the Government’s plan for New Zealand, the plan for the coming year, and it is a plan from that Government which is severely lacking. Let me take you through how it just misses out.

The Government has said that it has four policy areas that it’s going to focus on in Budget 2025. In the first of those, it says it’s going to lift economic growth through measures to address New Zealand’s long-term productivity challenges. Well, they seem to think they can do it just by saying the words, “Growth, growth, growth, growth, growth.”

Let me unpack what needs to be done in order to get growth up. It means we need ordinary people with well-paid jobs. It means we need scientists creating the innovative research that takes New Zealand forward. It means we need people getting good quality education. That growth, growth, growth, growth, growth and productivity, for ordinary New Zealanders, it means: do they have a well-paid job where they can use machinery and equipment that lifts their productivity? Do we have scientists doing the work out in the fields with the farmers to help lift the productivity there, and in the labs, creating innovative research? That Government has fired 500 or so scientists so far. It’s gotten rid of them, getting rid of some of our best and brightest. That’s their commitment to growth.

That Government has not put aside any extra money for education so far. It has a really limited amount of money it can spend this Budget because of the constraints it’s put on itself. So far, most of that has been allocated to health. There is no room even for inflation adjustments in education. That Government is not committed—much as it might say it is, it is not committed to ensuring that every New Zealander gets a decent education. How, then, are they going to lift growth?

The next thing they said they were going to concentrate on was what they call social investment, and they said what that means is trying to get better results from the Government’s investment in social services. But what have they done there? They have undermined the health system. There is less money per person in health. So much for an investment in social services.

In fact, there are some really nasty overtones that have come through from the Government. We’ve seen it in the policies mentioned by some of the parties in this House that when it comes to medicines—this is in political party policy agendas—perhaps medicines will only be available for people who are productive. I think straightforwardly decent healthcare ought to be available for all New Zealanders, and we know at the moment that New Zealanders just can’t get it. There’s nothing in this document that talks about how we’re going to ensure good healthcare for all New Zealanders.

They talk about how one of the four things they’re going to do is have tight control of Government spending, so they’re going to make sure that all Government money is spent really effectively. Just today, we had the Minister of Finance coming out with some new procurement rules, how Government departments would go about procuring services. Sitting in there is a line which says that they will no longer require Government agencies to employ only services that pay the living wage for cleaners, for catering, for security guards, and so on.

What does that mean for ordinary New Zealanders, the ordinary New Zealanders who are the cleaners, who are the security guards, who are the cooks? Well, if they are no longer paid the living wage and get the minimum wage instead, that is a drop in their wages of $186 a week or $9,672 a year. That is that Government’s commitment to ordinary New Zealanders—taking nearly $10,000 a year off the people who work hard as security guards, the people who work hard as cooks, the people who work hard as cleaners. That is that Government’s commitment to decent, well-paying jobs. It is taking money off the hardest workers who are paid some of the lowest wages in our country, and they are making it even worse. That is absolutely shameful.

In terms of those procurement rules they’ve come up with today, the other thing they’ve said is that they are no longer going to require Government services to have buildings built to a five-star rating standard, they should no longer be required to have battery electric or hybrid electric vehicles, and they should no longer have to use low-waste or recyclable products. There is no commitment to working on building a sustainable economy from that Government—not sustainable in terms of money but sustainable in terms of the environment we live in.

This Budget Policy Statement is remarkably silent about the hugest issue we have facing us, and that is the issue of climate change, but it’s lurking in there. It’s lurking in there in these cuts to Government services where they are going to cut any commitment to working on climate change. That is shameful too.

Then, in their fourth strategy, they’ve said they’re going to develop a sustainable pipeline of long-term infrastructure investments. The ferries—what happened there? A massive piece of infrastructure this country needs and they cut it. Dunedin Hospital—a massive piece of infrastructure that this country needs and is particularly needed in the South Island, and what did they do? They put it on hold and incurred more costs. We know that there’s about $800 million that has gone down the tubes because of the very short-sighted decision that Government made on the ferries. We know that they incurred more costs because they simply sat on Dunedin Hospital for a while, and now they talk about making good long-term infrastructure decisions. They’ve got a very poor record in that regard.

In terms of those strategies that the Government has for ordinary people in New Zealand, it has meant cuts, it has meant insecure services, it has meant that the sorts of jobs that we want are not being funded. If we talk about the sorts of things that we care about—jobs, health, homes—that Government is not interested in them.

Then they did a nasty, fudgy little cover-up job in the Budget Policy Statement. In the Budget Fiscal Strategy Report for Budget 2024, the Government then made a commitment. It said it would return the operating balance before gains and losses to being positive by 2027-28, but by the time they came around to doing the numbers this year, they realised they simply couldn’t do it, so they came up with a new measure, the operating balance before gains and losses, excluding ACC revenue and expenses. They couldn’t get the books to say what they wanted, so they fudged them instead.

We had a long discussion at the Finance and Expenditure Committee about this as to whether it was appropriate to create this new measure. Treasury said no. The experts we consulted said no. Everyone said it was just smoke and mirrors—smoke and mirrors designed to cover up the failings of that Government. Failing in the jobs front, failing with respect to health, failing with respect to homes, and trying to cover up that failure by introducing a dodgy accounting measure. The only person who wanted it was the Minister of Finance. Every single other person advised against it.

That is an absolute train wreck of a Government. They should admit it and should admit it right now. They should change their leader who’s leading them astray, and they need to do better by ordinary New Zealanders.

It’s an honour to actually speak on the Budget Policy Statement (BPS) and the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update in front of you today—well, the Budget that lays the foundation for a stronger, a more resilient economy, and relief for New Zealanders.

For those who have just tuned in on TV and for those who have visited us in the gallery right now, I think we should tell you what the BPS stands for. The Budget Policy Statement commences officially the Budget cycle for the Government. It sets out the Government’s fiscal strategy and the broad goals and policy objectives that will shape the upcoming Budget. This side of the House will tell you that the upcoming Budget is on 22 May—there we go. This is what the BPS is about and many of the speakers in front of you today are the members of Finance and Expenditure Committee and we had the first opportunity to scrutinise the BPS 2025.

Now, let’s be honest. The past few years have been tough—very high inflation, rising interest rates, and very slow economic recovery that has stretched household budgets and pressured our Kiwi businesses. Many families have struggled with the grocery bills, the utility bills, the rent, mortgages, childcare costs—everyday costs that people struggle with—but also our small businesses in New Zealand who are fighting to stay afloat with the reduced income revenue, with managing higher operating costs and higher wages. So many, many New Zealanders have felt the pressure and also the uncertainty about their financial future, but today we stand at a turning point. The largest economic indicators show that we are now moving towards recovery as a whole, but only if we stay disciplined, cut wasteful spending, and focus on sustainable economic growth.

So where are we right now? I think we need to be very clear about where we are as a country. Laid out very clearly in the BPS, New Zealand’s fiscal position has deteriorated over the last six years—this is actually on page 2; it’s a public document that everyone’s welcome to read. New Zealand’s fiscal position has deteriorated over the past six years. Crown expenses have risen faster than core Crown revenue. The operating balance before gains and losses, which is commonly referred to as OBEGAL, has been in deficit since 2019 and the 2020 year. And, yes, all of the above is during the last Labour Government.

The fiscal deterioration is due to many several factors, including large discretionary spending increases in previous Budgets; for example, in Budget 2022, the last Labour Government committed an additional $9.5 billion on average for the new operating spending. Yes, through the COVID period, but yes, also more debt. More debt, way more debt, and also the finance costs that we now need to service debt. Now, some members spoke before me in the Opposition, including members from the Labour Party and the Green Party, and referred to some of the diagrams in the BPS. I find it very funny that the Green member kind of stopped talking about the net Crown debt that went all the way up under the Labour Government. That’s very funny. But, hey, look—

Hon Member: Wasteful spending.

NANCY LU: Wasteful spending for sure. But now, after facing the economic downturn as a whole, Treasury’s Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update, commonly referred to as the HYEFU, in 2024 gave us some reasons to look to the future—some optimism. Inflation now is back under control after peaking at 7.3 percent in 2022-23. Inflation now has finally returned to the Reserve Bank’s target range between 1 and 3 percent.

What this means for New Zealanders is it directly reduces price pressures for households and supermarkets and petrol and in many others. The official cash rate (OCR) is also coming down. Since August 2024, the Reserve Bank has cut the OCR by 1.75 percent at the time of the BPS, which lowers the borrowing cost. What that means for our Kiwi households is that if you have a $500,000 average mortgage in your bank account, this means a saving of $180 per fortnight.

More great news: since the release of the BPS 2025, which was December 2024, the Reserve Bank has further announced another reduction in February, which is last month, that further reduced the OCR rate by another 50 basis points to 3.75. Now, this is four consecutive reductions since August last year, meaning our rates have fallen a lot faster. However, there is an upside. Business confidence has finally improved at a 10year high. Businesses are now starting to invest, they are hiring again, and they are signalling a turning point for job growth.

However, the challenges remain. Challenges remain, and we are very, very early in this economic growth space. Economic growth has been a little bit slower than expected, which means that things are sticky. However, we have a plan, and this is where the Budget Policy Statement becomes very, very useful. One of the biggest challenges that we are facing as a Government is fixing the Government’s books. Now, over the last six years, as I said earlier, the Government’s spending has outpaced Government revenue. Our net core Crown debt has surged from below 20 percent of GDP under the Labour Government to around 42 percent of New Zealand’s GDP. Treasury has also forecast a structural deficit, which means the Government is still required to spend more than we can cope with, so we have a plan.

Our fiscal strategy is very clear: No. 1 is to return OBEGAL to surplus by 2027-28; reduce core Crown expenses to 30 percent of GDP to ensure that spending is sustainable; lower net Crown debt towards 40 percent of GDP; and now I must quote from when we scrutinised and invited the Minister of Finance to our select committee to present. This is what she said: “It is unsustainable for the Government to grow the economy by borrowing money.” Noting the consequences of inflation, she said, “It is better to grow the economy by improving productive capacity in long-term growth prospects.” And we have heard from members on our side of the Government that any additional growth of just 0.25 percent of nominal GDP would increase our annual tax revenue by $2 billion. This is what we talk about—by growing the pie, like the member for Hamilton East, Ryan Hamilton said—grow the pie. This is what we need to do.

To achieve this, Budget 2025 has three very clear actions: cap the operating allowances to $2.4 billion per year, ensuring that there is disciplined spending in our Government agencies; performance-based budgeting to make sure that every taxpayer dollar that we spend must deliver results for our taxpayers; targeted capital investment so that funds would only go into high impact projects, not wasteful spending—so a shared strategy and the plan. But I now must go on to what it means for New Zealanders, because I think most people who have tuned in on TV and then also the people sitting in the gallery have listened to all the jargon. Yes, I am a chartered accountant; I love all the jargon and all the accounting, but what does it really mean for all of you sitting here today?

For families, a better economy means lower inflation, more affordability, more choices in your supermarkets, more choices for your kids and extracurricular activities, more choices when you decide if you are going away for a holiday or saving up for something really nice for the family. It also means a recovering job market, creating better employment opportunities, higher incomes, and therefore it goes back to more choices for our families and also easing mortgage rates, making homeownership more manageable and making rentals more manageable, and for all the small businesses and investors in our economy, which are the majority of them, better regulatory certainty, cutting out the red tape, and pro-business policies that will encourage growth, recognise their hard work, and support them for their expansion in New Zealand.

It also means lowering the barriers to trade and investment—for example, the investment summit that many of my colleagues have mentioned today—but also for the taxpayers. Ultimately, as a Government, we need to be responsible for all taxpayer money. It is your money, so we need to make sure as a Government that you are getting a better return because we have better fiscal management, ensuring that your hard-earned money is spent wisely.

This is a plan that will protect future generations to come, and this is the plan that will make New Zealand wealthier, make all New Zealanders wealthier, and we have a better future outlook. Thank you.

That was another terrible speech from this Government. It was so fixed on growth—growth. As you’ve heard from this side, jobs, health, and homes have to be the priority for this Government, but they aren’t the priority for this Government. They’re certainly the priority for the Labour Party and for the Opposition. I am proud that we have made that very clear in the last week. Our leader made that clear in his recent speech and in his recent reshuffle.

We’ve heard from a Government that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Their Budget Policy Statement is a vacant list of promises that won’t be met, because, ultimately, what we see from this Government is an economic policy that betrays the people for the donors’ interests. I think that’s what our communities are saying, and you’d have to agree with that. To claim, as they have, to have contained inflation with their austerity Budget is a nonsense and a falsehood. As we all know, inflation skyrocketed because COVID shut down global supply chains. For National to take credit for inflation falling because those global supply chains reopened is such a load of nonsense it’s not funny.

The severe cutbacks this Government has embarked upon to pay for tax cuts we couldn’t afford—that’s not good economic management at all. If it was good economic management, you wouldn’t be looking at a 5.1 percent unemployment rate, and we know that 9.7 percent of that is Māori, and 10.7 percent of that is Pasifika. Thirty-one percent of Kiwis are struggling to pay their power bill, 24 percent are struggling to buy food, 26 percent are struggling to pay rent, 29 percent are struggling with transport costs, one in four kids are going hungry—this is where the growth strategy has taken us. It’s just shocking at the moment. Violence against children is rising. Homelessness is rising. Inequality is rising. Mortgage missed payments and unpaid bills are at their highest level in a decade. This is where their great management has got us right now.

This Government’s economic focus is cutting more public spending and hoping that no one notices. They can’t manage to get basic edible food to our kids at school. It’s a total disgrace and embarrassment at the moment, and we’re seeing that every day in question time—the embarrassment that we’re seeing on the faces of Minister Stanford as she has to put up with Minister Seymour’s nonsense. As we all know, he never even wanted to feed the kids, which was the original ACT policy. You’re dealing with a Minister who never wanted to feed the kids, and you’ve got the shambles right now in terms of the school lunches.

I want to come to an area that not many have touched on, which is the investment in Māori, which has gone right down, and although the Government have talked about their four policy areas—lifting economic productivity, social investment. These are the areas that the Government talks about. The investment in Māori, as we see with this Budget, is minimal. We’ve seen a total decrease in terms of Māori housing. It’s really sad to see that. Yes, there are pockets of investment happening, but far from enough, and so we need to see our Māori groups being invested in. In the Māori health area, there is a real minimal investment there. As we know, in terms of the general investment in terms of health, per person it is way below where it should be. And, in terms of Māori social services, we’ve had the shocking news of Whānau Ora in the last couple of days.

A lot of questions there for our communities—hundreds of workers now being made redundant. Questions have to be asked about the process there, where we had a provider for 10 years, who had it in terms of Te Pou Matakana, in terms of our northern Whānau Ora commissioning agency—$155 million allocated. Now that $155 million has to go to an extra agency. Where is the investment in terms of our people at ground level? Should they be worried about this recent decision, in terms of Whānau Ora? We say yes. We say to the Minister for Māori Development to step up, and we say: invest in Māori, but invest in all our people—communities and people right across the nation. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Kia ora.

Look, I rise with great pleasure to speak about the Budget Policy Statement because this year, things are looking up for hard-working Kiwis. It has been tough for families during a cost of living crisis inflicted on them by the Labour Government, who spent big, taxed big, and fuelled inflation to record highs.

Well, the green shoots are here. Responsible fiscal management is back. Inflation is back under control. Interest rates are coming down. Hard-working New Zealanders have more in their back pockets with tax relief and mortgage rates coming down. There is business confidence. There is farmer confidence. In fact, farmer confidence has surged in the recent surveys, because they know that they’ve got a Government that is backing them. We know that farmers and businesses are the key to unleashing the economic potential in this country. Getting rid of red tape and regulation, and celebrating our primary sector and our exporters is key to everyone getting ahead in New Zealand. This year is all about going for growth. We need to grow the pie, as we have heard many times today.

I turn to education, because lifting performance in education is the way that we are going to strengthen our economy and create more equality. We’re developing a world-class education system. I’ve been out and about across my Tukituki electorate, where we have 61 schools across my Hawke’s Bay electorate. They are loving the new curriculum, where we are looking to lift performance in education with structured maths and structured literacy. I was recently, actually, in the classroom at Te Mata School, and the kids and teachers were loving the new maths books and the new structured maths programme, the Numicon resources, where they were learning maths, they were getting back to basics in the classroom—reading, writing and maths. Also, we’re improving teacher training, raising attendance, and strengthening learning support. This is what creates equality.

Infrastructure is another big focus in the Budget Policy Statement. We must have better-quality infrastructure and look out to a 30-year pipeline of infrastructure. On this side of the House, we aren’t just visualising it and wasting money on ideas and consultants; we’ve actually got diggers on site, shovels in the ground, roads being built, and fast-track legislation in place to actually make this possible so we can get things built in this country.

I’m so excited to see the four-lane expressway in Hawke’s Bay, the first road of national significance to get started. Every week I drive that road, I’m seeing progress. We’re seeing diggers there, and we’re seeing progress because construction has started. It’s something that we campaigned on in Hawke’s Bay, and we are delivering on it because we are a Government of action. We understand that infrastructure is really important in this country. Roads are what drive economic potential. It’s what gets our produce to the port—our apples to the port, our wine to the port, and our meat to the port—and off to market so that we can get that high value for our exports.

Not only are we investing in the four-lane Hawke’s Bay Expressway; but the Waikare Gorge realignment is also happening. Again, we recognise that that road between Napier and Wairoa is so important for our exports and trade and for getting people around faster. But the other infrastructure that we are investing in is water storage, because water storage creates water security. In Hawke’s Bay, we can’t even grow what we have, let alone grow any more, so water security is really important. It’s really amazing to see $3 million invested for the Tukituki water storage scheme so that we can unleash the economic potential that we have in the regions across New Zealand and support our primary industries.

This is what is going to grow our economy, and this is what is going to strengthen our economy, both in Hawke’s Bay and across New Zealand. With that, I absolutely support our Budget Policy Statement, and I look forward to the Budget on 22 May.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. We stand today in the middle of an economic crisis, a crisis that has been made worse by the decisions of this Government, the bad choices this Government has made. The facts are pretty clear. Unemployment is rising, jobs are being slashed, wages are stagnant, and hard-working New Zealanders are struggling to make ends meet. Yet, this Government has the audacity to claim that their economic management is responsible and effective.

The Budget Policy Statement (BPS) lays out the truth. It confirms what New Zealanders already feel in their day-to-day lives: things were better under Labour. It states right here: growth through 2023 and 2024 was stronger than originally thought. But since then, since National took office, the economy has taken a sharp downturn. The BPS itself states this was largely offset by a stronger cyclical downturn since then. In other words, National’s policies have made things worse.

Jobs, health, and homes is what Kiwis are after. When we hear National telling us that things are looking up for hard-working New Zealanders and I’m seeing green shoots everywhere, maybe they should talk to one of my constituents who wrote to me just yesterday and said, “I wish Chris Luxon would stop talking about putting money in the pockets of New Zealanders. The only thing he is worried about is lining the pockets of his rich mates and multinational companies. The latest line charge for my gas was $45 in February; I used only $14 in gas. The cost of power is expected to rise by $10 a month. My rates in the Hutt City Council are expected to rise by 16 percent. My home and contents insurance for my house in Petone has increased by 36 percent. I got $30 per fortnight in so-called tax cuts. There is no money in my back pocket. I have medical conditions and now have to pay for my prescriptions. I go to the doctor often, at $70 a visit. I live alone so no double income here. I’m paying a mortgage, paying bills, and everything is increasing in price apart from a reduction in my interest rates when I refix next week. My back pocket would like some money in it. I count myself fortunate as I can pay what I need to pay. I don’t know what others are doing out there who are doing so tough. I’m not rich. I’m not sorted for my retirement in a few years’ time.”

What’s the plan for people who are real New Zealanders, from this Government? There isn’t one. But we have one on this side. It’s called jobs, health, and homes. Let’s take a good look at what is happening right now with jobs, because there’s higher unemployment, with 213,000 New Zealanders now on the unemployment benefit. We have an economy that is operating below capacity, as the BPS states, and that means fewer jobs, less income, and more hardship for people.

Mass layoffs in a couple of areas—let’s just take a look at Callaghan Innovation. The Government came in and laid off scientists, research staff, and support staff, with no plan for an alternative entity. That meant all of those highly skilled individuals, those innovators and scientists, are left with no certainty in their future. They are applying for jobs offshore. I’ve met with them. They’re applying for jobs in the Netherlands and Australia because there is no certainty of employment here. The Government can announce a great PhD programme that they’ve given some money to and they can talk about saving 20 jobs in one part, but they have just laid off a vast majority of bright people innovating while yet still claiming to be going for growth—absolutely unbelievable.

The construction sector is another one. Significant infrastructure projects like the Interislander ferries being rail-enabled cancelled—a $300 million break fee, $300 million and rising just to break the fee. We’ve also seen big projects from Kāinga Ora right around the country cancelled and stopped. The result of all those big infrastructure projects being cancelled was 13,000 construction workers leaving the sector, enough for them to write to the Minister and say that the sector is on its knees and we need to be doing something. The answer to this is to hold a talkfest with a bunch of foreigners who are going to go and save us all and invest in New Zealand. No plan for us. We have a downward spiral of cutting jobs, losing people overseas, and no real plan to address this.

On top of this, we’ve seen losses right across the public sector, not just public servants in Wellington but right across in front-facing jobs—Oranga Tamariki, health workers, social workers cut by this Government. And what has that seen? A further retrenchment in the economy, because what we are seeing is less people out there being able to buy things in local businesses. That’s why, in Wellington alone, so many restaurants, so many cafes, so many small-business owners who have worked for 20 or 30 years to keep their doors open, are now closed permanently with higher levels of insolvencies than we have seen in such a long time. Every one of these job losses is a real person losing their income, their ability to support their families, and their sense of security, and yet this Government still pats itself on the back claiming fiscal responsibility.

National promised economic growth; instead, the economy is projected to be $20 billion smaller by 2028 than was forecast in Budget 2024. While they promised to create jobs, unemployment is to rise every single year in the Budget period. By 2026, there will be 20,000 more New Zealanders on jobseeker support than there would have been otherwise. That is 20,000 more families struggling to pay rent, struggling to buy groceries and to heat their homes in winter.

National’s obsession with tax cuts—and let’s not forget that while we’re having these cuts across, they borrowed for tax cuts for landlords, cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy. This has come at a massive cost to everyday New Zealanders. The $58.7 billion increase to debt and 46.5 percent net core Crown debt peak are direct consequences of bad choices that this Government has made.

Who is paying for it? It is those people I’ve spoken about—that letters I got from people, people who don’t have the money to buy the basics, people who work hard each day but still can’t afford to feed their families. The problem is it’s only going to get worse. The Budget Policy Statement signals that in Budget 2025 there is just $700 million available for all spending outside of health. That means more cuts to the public sector, more cuts to social services, and more uncertainty for those who rely on Government support.

Let’s be clear here. The Government has already pre-committed $1.37 billion per annum just to keep health services running at their current level. That leaves almost nothing for education. It means nothing for housing and infrastructure—I guess, hence why we’re having this meeting over the next few days. There’s nothing there and nothing for wage increases for our hard-working people.

Speaking of wage increases, I’ll just deviate for one moment to talk about what the Government’s announced today in terms of the procurement rules for Government contracts. Today, it was announced that out of those rules being changed, one is taking away the living wage. The living wage has come out of procurement in an announcement today. At the same time as trying to talk about productivity and trying to make the cost of living crisis better, you’re taking the living wage out of Government procurement rules—an absolute shame, and it is absolutely relevant to this debate.

Let’s talk about some of the real consequences that we are seeing, in conclusion. It is important to note that this Government has shifted the goal posts. While people are losing their jobs and financial security, the Minister of Finance has made a big deal out of reaching surplus, but now she’s had to push it out even further. She knows she can’t meet those targets that have been promised, so instead she’s created a brand new measure—operating balance before gains and losses, excluding ACC revenue and expenses (OBEGALx)—to make it look like she’s on track. The original OBEGAL measure has been used for years. A review in 2021 confirmed it was fit for purpose, but now, because National’s policies are failing, they’re trying to rewrite the rules to make themselves look better. The truth is that under the original OBEGAL measure, New Zealand will not reach surplus in its forecast period.

I leave with you: what is responsible about this Government, that it makes promises it can’t keep and changes the rules when it fails, and it pushes the cost of its failure on to everyday working families? We need a Government that puts people first, that puts their jobs and their incomes first, that makes sure we have a health system that functions properly, and people can go home at night knowing that they have a warm, dry home. We’re a long way from that under this Budget Policy Statement.

In the final part of this debate of the Budget Policy Statement, I wish to speak directly to Kiwi voters. In the backdrop of the Budget Policy Statement, we know times have been tough. Unemployment is rising, people are still struggling with the cost of living, and we’re dealing with the worst recession since the early 1990s.

We are in a mess. But who caused this mess? It was the last Labour Government. They are the ones that doubled our debt, that had wasteful spending on projects like KiwiBuild, light rail, Skypath, three waters, Health New Zealand, Te Pūkenga, and the highest crime rates in a generation. We are in a mess, but we take responsibility for getting us out of it.

I come back to the big Budget Policy Statement, because it is quite clear from the Minister of Finance that we’ve got Budget deficits right through to 2028. We’ve got increased public debt until 2029, low growth and productivity, an unproductive public sector. There are some green shoots, and we’ve talked about them today. The official cash rate is coming down because inflation is under control and we are starting to see, in fact, wage growth starting to outpace inflation.

I just want to zoom out because having just had a son—my first child—nine months ago, I just want to talk about the long-term fiscal challenges that New Zealand faces, because that’s what I worry about for my son and the future for this country. Alongside the Budget Policy Statement, a month earlier, the chief economist of the Treasury—who is a proud Northcote local—published a document on New Zealand’s long-term fiscal challenges. It’s quite sobering because it does talk about our long-term productivity challenges and the fact that our kids, our grandkids, inherit a future with high debt, low incomes, and low productivity, low opportunities, and poor public services if nothing changes. That is why we have to go for growth.

The other side will talk about an alternative approach, which is to tax everybody and everything more. That is not a sustainable pathway for New Zealand to follow. The finance Minister has talked about improving our productivity rates, which successive Governments have failed to actually make a measurable difference to, and by doing so, going for economic growth.

I want to touch on today a few key areas which I think are going to help power our economy up dramatically. The first is on trade, and don’t we have a great trade Minister in Todd McClay? “Trade McClay”, we call him. We’ve already done deals with the UAE, with the Gulf Cooperation Council, and we’ve got the big fish coming up soon where he’s off to India. Won’t that be good for New Zealand if we can secure a free-trade agreement with India?

The next is investment. I’m really proud of the Government’s work to make this an investor-friendly country to operate in. David Seymour’s work around overhauling the Overseas Investment Act is very, very important, as is our announcement recently to set up Invest New Zealand, a one-stop shop where overseas investors can come to and get advice on where the great places are to invest in the country. I think the simple answer to that is Northcote in Auckland. We have heard from great speakers here about our investment summit, and my best wishes to Ministers up and down our Government who will be attending the summit. This is an important summit for the future of our country.

Suze Redmayne: Going for growth.

DAN BIDOIS: Going for growth. The third area is deregulation. We are entering an era of deregulation both here and around the world. We’ve got important steps to free up the resource management, to fast track investment projects around the country, and we’ve got a Ministry for Regulation, which I hope the Minister for Regulation, David Seymour, may change to deregulation, because I think that is a more appropriate phrase for this Government’s agenda to power up and go for growth.

The next area is around our science reforms, and we’ve got some fantastic reforms around getting more value out of our science system. The final area is around competition. We’ve just come from a banking inquiry summit, ably chaired by my colleague Cameron Brewer. There is important work that we need to do to make our banking sector more competitive, but not only that, we can’t just stop at the banking sector. I come from the grocery sector, and this is another important sector that needs further competition. We’ve got here the Minister of Energy, Simon Watts, who is driving more competition and putting pressure on those energy companies to keep the lights on and at a cheaper price. Also, I want to single out the Minister for Building and Construction, Chris Penk, who’s doing some great work to lower the cost of building and improve the productivity.

We’ve got some great things that are going to make a huge difference for our growth projections both in the short term—and the Budget Policy Statement does talk about the fact that we are returning to growth this year. That is good news, but we can’t stop there because it really is about our future and making sure—not our future, actually; our kids’ future and our grandkids’ future. What are the things that this Government is doing today that are going to make New Zealand a more prosperous country in 10 or 20 years’ time? That’s what we’re really focused on.

I want to just touch on education because I think that’s a really good bipartisan issue across the Parliament; everybody wants our kids to have a great education. For years we haven’t had a disciplined enough approach around teaching the basics brilliantly. I’m really proud of the work that our Minister Erica Stanford is doing to make sure that in every school, no matter where you grow up in this country, you get taught the basics brilliantly. From the basics, you get to do really cool stuff like economics or engineering or robotics or accounting, but without those basics, those opportunities and those high-income opportunities won’t be unlocked.

It is a pleasure to round off the debate today, and I’ve heard a lot from this side about growth. I’ve only heard a couple of times growth echoed on the other side. That may be because the other side doesn’t know how to deliver growth. We’ve got a lot to do—we’ve got a lot to do. For New Zealanders out there up and down the country, my message to you is this: give us time to see the fruits of the labour that we’re doing and the reforms that we’re working on. I’m confident that by the back end of this year, people will start feeling like they can get ahead, they can feel safer, and they can feel that there’s a real strong future for them and their family. We are going for growth. The Budget is coming up on what date?

Hon Members: 22 May.

DAN BIDOIS: 22 May. The finance Minister has indicated that it’s going to be a growth Budget. She’s put some teasers out there, and even I don’t know what’s in the Budget, but I’m hopeful. I’m really hopeful around some tax changes because as an economist—there’s not a lot that economists agree on, actually, but the one thing economists agree on is the power of the tax system to spur long-term and short-term economic growth. I’m really excited about the teasing that the Minister of Finance has talked about in the media. We’ll be waiting for that eagerly on 22 May—which is the day after my son’s birthday, so he may actually be able to be down here while we’re doing these midnight speeches. Look, it is a lot to do. We’re going for growth. It’s all a part of our plan to get our economy back on track. Thank you.