Watts Simon; Rurawhe AdrianSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): It is an absolute pleasure to take the final call on this Budget on behalf of the National Party a Budget this year that represents Government spending in the region of $9.5 billion per year—$38 billion over the next four years. This is a Budget in which Kiwis are going backwards. We've got a Minister of Finance who is absolutely addicted to spending and Kiwis know it. Kiwis around this country hard-working Kiwis are suffering from a cost of living crisis and you know what? The solution that this Government put on the table was a payment of $27 a week for a three-month period that you can't even get if you're on the average wage in this country—one block of cheese and one packet of Weet-Bix from the supermarket. This is a Government that is out of touch with hard-working Kiwis in regards to the cost of living crisis that they are facing and a Budget in which is spent the most amount of money out of any Budget in history. You would expect it would come up with some solutions some substance to deal with the issues Kiwis are facing. But no this Government has squandered the opportunity and missed the potential that they could have created and as a result hard-working Kiwis are paying. The issue is we are now in an inflationary environment at 6.9 percent when the Reserve Bank had meant to keep it between 1 and 3 percent. This Government is spending like there is no tomorrow and what is even more concerning is the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research in June said—and I quote—signs that long-term inflation pressures are becoming unanchored". For those at home what that means is inflation is not going to magically disappear. Inflation is not a spike as the Minister continues to say in this House. Inflation is going to persist and inflation is going to be around eating away at Kiwis' back pockets and the money in it every single day and the more that this Government spends—and the non-tradable inflation portion of that 6.9 percent is 6 percent. That is domestically driven inflation. This is not all because of global supply chain issues or the war in Ukraine as this Government would like us to believe. No they have some responsibility around this inflation level and they need to take accountability for where this country is heading because the reality is the gap between earnings and the costs that Kiwis are paying at the supermarket and at the pump is going up and getting wider and there is no solution on the horizon in terms of how this Government is going to provide solutions around that. Hard-working Kiwis who own a home are paying more in mortgage payments as their mortgages are starting to renew. Nearly 50 percent of mortgages will renew in the next six months and the impact on the average mortgage for Kiwis of a 1 percent increase is $150 more that they will pay on their mortgage every single week. That is the reality of what Kiwis are facing and this Government has squandered an opportunity to deal with the underlying issues that we have within this economy and put money back into the hard-working Kiwis' pockets that they so deeply need. Mortgage rates are impacting the economy and hard-working Kiwis and we've got a Minister of Finance—Grant Robertson—who is absolutely addicted to spending. I want to give you a bit of an insight in terms of what we can expect this time next year. When we are sitting looking at where we are in terms of an economy it is no doubt going to be in a significantly worse position than where we are today. The Government has only got around $2.5 billion to spend next year and that is still a huge amount of money. But I can pretty much give some idea around the fact that I bet you that with this Minister of Finance there are going to be more taxes for hard-working Kiwis there's going to be more debt in this country for a country that can't afford it and there's going to be more Government spending. That is the reality of what we are going to face in 2023.We've got a finance Minister that is addicted to spending we've got a cost of living crisis and we've got a Labour Government that does not understand the principle of prudent economic management. What Kiwis need is a National-led Government that has a plan in order to deal with the issues that we need to fight around inflation a fiscally prudent Government and I'm looking forward to 2023 when National is back. DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Kieran McAnulty. You've got about 3½ minutes."