Edmonds BarbaraFinanceBARBARA EDMONDS (Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee): Thank you Madam Chair and thank you very much for your guidance on that. I rise as the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee to recommend to the House that the appropriations for the year ending 30 June 2023 for Vote Finance be accepted. The Finance and Expenditure Committee also in our report back recommends that the House take note of the matters we considered in our examination of the Fiscal Strategy Report 2022 and the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update 2022 also known colloquially as BEFU. I would like to thank Treasury officials for their participation at the hearings particularly the Vote Analysts though from across all the different Votes for their work in Budget 2022. I would also like to thank the Minister of Finance for his work on what I believe is an excellent and balanced Budget. As I said in the House last week in relation to the Investment Statement the Finance and Expenditure Committee met with the Minister of Finance for an hour with the support of the Secretary of the Treasury Caralee McLiesh and then we also continued for a further almost two hours to go through the different policy statements and public finance documents which we were required to report back to the House. So going back to Vote Finance and the appropriations the appropriations sought in Vote Finance in 2022/2023 totalled $8.366 billion. What the select committee noted was that the funding sought for Vote Finance in this Budget for 2022/2023 is substantially less than the total spent across the Vote in 2021 and 2022. Apparently around $12.603 billion was the estimated actual spending in 2021 and 2022. We were told that the decrease largely reflects the spike in appropriations over the previous two years for COVID-19 - related expenditure and indemnity obligations. As in previous years the Crown debt and the superannuation cost were the two biggest appropriations with total appropriations worth $7.603 billion. Debt servicing is again the largest appropriation under Vote Finance which has been allocated $4.569 billion. And then the second-largest appropriation is the New Zealand super fund. Now I just want to spend a little bit of time on the super fund because when the Government first came in in 2017 they restarted the contributions to the super fund and I believe this investment is incredibly important because it reflects this Government's commitment to our superannuitants. So in Vote Finance 2022/2023 the Minister allocated $2.46 billion which is an increase of $40 billion from the previous fiscal year and the appropriation has increased substantially in recent years with an increase of $300 million in 2020/2021 which was after the increase of $660 million in 2019/2020.Of particular note for the House Vote Finance no longer funds several initiatives relating to the COVID-19 response. There has been a significant decrease between the money estimated to be spent and the budgeted figure for 2022/2023. I understand based on the Minister's comments during the committee debate that this variance is mostly caused by a one-off Vote Finance initiative in 2021/2022 which was not part of Budget 2022. The committee noted that the three following expenditure items that had decreased in 2020/2023 were $1.11 billion for liabilities arising from the Large Scale Asset Purchase programme and the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme. This scheme is no longer available. The second decrease was $939 million for grants to the Crown Infrastructure Partners which is around $817 million and to Ōtākaro Ltd $122 to fund shovel-ready infrastructure projects and $1.602 billion for share subscriptions in Air New Zealand and $400 million for its standby loan facility. I just want to take an opportunity to thank Ministers for that support for Air New Zealand as the borders have opened up as many members of this House have had to go overseas to travel for some of our inter-parliamentary obligations. I'm really thankful that the Minister has been able to keep our national carrier going. So the report is very fulsome from the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I thank all the different members across the House for their contribution to it. I did have one particular question I'd like to leave the Minister of Finance with and that was in relation to the clusters. If the Minister of Finance would like to just elaborate a little bit more on why they moved to a cluster approach in this year's Budget. What was the purpose of it and what are some of the benefits that the Minister can see as a result of it? Thank you Madam Chair.