Willis Nicola; Robertson GrantNICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): This Estimates debate is very well-timed. Today some very serious reports have emerged about New Zealand's allegedly rapidly deteriorating financial position. We have been led to understand that the Labour Government is now in financial panic mode; that today public servant leaders have been belatedly far too late told to batten down the hatches and desperately dig up some majorly needed savings in order to cover up a crevasse in the Government books.What we have here is a set of Estimates which show us that the books were already teetering on the edge with net debt having grown from $5.4 billion in 2019 to $71 billion today with very little to show for it. We knew that surplus had been delayed until 2026 we knew the credit rating agencies were watching us carefully and yet the finance Minister's refrain has been: Every dollar is well spoken for."Again and again while we on the side of the House have said "Look the house is burning. Inflation is running at record levels and yet still you spray that money hose around. You are spending with wild abandon show some restraint." The finance Minister has neglected to bring in any fiscal rectitude and claimed that all of his spending is appropriate.Yet today we are told public servant heads have been told that the situation has become so desperate that now he is finally reaching for restraint and has finally far too late demanded that they offer up savings or else the hole will be too large and all of us will be at risk.So my question is a very simple one Minister. This is your opportunity to front-up in Parliament and to come clean about just how much worse New Zealand's financial position is today than at the time your Budget was published. This is vital information in the public interest and I would ask that you front-up about exactly what's going on.Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Well that was quite the moment wasn't it? I want to perhaps take the member back a couple of steps just so we can have a conversation about the Estimates and about the questions that she's asked.The first of those as the member well knows in the Estimates and the process of putting the Budget together the Government sought a savings exercise—a similar exercise to ones that we've done in the past but we definitely put the foot to the floor this time because we are aware that it is important having had the period of time through COVID where we did need to invest significantly in the New Zealand economy—to support our households and our families and our businesses through COVID—that the time had come for us to be able to say "We now need to begin that journey back to a more sustainable fiscal position." So we clearly made those decisions.We also obviously were faced with the situation around the Cyclone Gabrielle event and the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods. That also put further pressure on the Government's books and the Government's accounts making that savings exercise that we did during the Budget very important. It gave us around $4 billion worth of savings which we were able to use to offset many of the other expenses that were required in the Budget that we're talking about here.It is obvious to anybody who is following along that the global economy continues to provide challenges to us. Just within the last few weeks we've had the IMF sound a warning about China's economy and the impact that its slowdown would have. Our exporters will be able to tell you that as well.So yes this is a very challenging environment. I'm not sure quite about the breathless tone—I could point the member to my media release from 5 July this year when we did get an update postBudget of the Government's accounts and as the Member well knows in that we did see that revenue was not as high as we had hoped or had been forecast by the Treasury at the Budget. I made the comment in that particular media release that we would indeed need to look at tough decisions and trade-offs on Government spending.That's the reality of being in Government. That is the reality of being responsible with the way we manage the Government's accounts.So the member I'm sure in her past life—in working here in the building—and in her current life is aware that that needs to be a constant process. We are facing difficult and challenging economic times. We have made savings as we've moved through this Budget process. We will need to continue to look as I said in July at tough choices and decisions about how we go forward from here.In the member's comments she made a reference to ratings agencies. I do just want to highlight for the member a report that actually came out overnight from Moody's which talks again about the fact that they have a stable outlook for the New Zealand economy. It goes through in some considerable depth actually around why that is and the fact that they do believe that New Zealand both has the economic strength also the way in which our governance and our institutions work that are all strong and that all contribute to solid credit ratings for New Zealand our fiscal strength—all of these things are factors that the ratings agencies take into account. That was produced overnight reinforcing their view of the stability of our system here.So I don't think the members should scaremonger about what the ratings agencies are doing. I do think the member should acknowledge that throughout the last period we have been looking for savings. During my Budget presentations I think across the country I've talked about the need for that and I believe actually in the Budget document on page 64 we talk about the importance of a fiscal sustainability and effectiveness programme.In order to make that happen it is of course necessary to work with the Public Service to do that just as we did in arriving at the savings that we have. The members should be very careful about believing everything that she hears on the radio.NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): How big is the hole that has emerged in the Crown's books? What specifically precipitated the meeting with public heads today? Does the Minister ever take a moment for pause or reflection to think that perhaps last year's decision to embark on the biggest-spending Budget in New Zealand history with an operating allowance of $6 billion was in retrospect rather reckless given the inflation position and the position that the books are now in? Has he had a moment to think that his late-life discovery that efficiency and care with public finances should be ongoing is something that perhaps he should have listened to a little earlier? Wouldn't it be nice for the finance Minister to give us some honest answers to these questions given the alternative is that New Zealanders will have to wait until September to find out what's really going on?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): As the member well knows and as I said in my answer to her just a few moments ago we have been driving for savings and efficiencies across all the Budgets that we've done and in this Budget we had $4 billion of that.It is of course important to keep doing that. That's why on Budget day when we released the documents we talked about a fiscal sustainability and effectiveness programme. We have to keep doing that if we are going to meet the fiscal goals that the Government has.It is important to me also to note that ongoing conversations of the public sector are an integral part of being the Minister of Finance. They occur regularly. Those sorts of meetings are significant and important to making sure that the Public Service understands what the Government wants from it and they occur throughout the time that somebody is Minister of Finance.The pre-election fiscal update is Treasury's update. It will be done when it is done. None of that takes away from the importance of us making sure that we do keep the foot to the floor on finding savings and finding efficiencies in as I have said numerous times in this House—just about every day in this House—what is a deteriorating economic environment. That is the truth. We saw in the accounts at the end of May that they had not matched with the Treasury's forecast from earlier in the year. That is the reality.What I think the problem is here is that the member does not know how she's going to pay for the promises that she's making. That's actually the issue that is at play right now because the member is sitting here saying "I haven't been following along when the Government accounts came out in May. I haven't been thinking about that. I've just been promising things that I cannot pay for." And so Madam Chair that is actually what's going on right here right now: the only panic that you are seeing is from the member asking the questions because she knows that she can't pay for what she's promising."