Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): This is a valedictory of a Budget. It is a farewell Budget from a Government that has been unable to respond to the times and the needs of the New Zealanders they are meant to serve. In this Budget we have Grant Robertson at his symbolic best: taxing more spending more and digging us into deeper deficit more debt and lower growth. That is the testimony of six years of Labour.In 2019 before COVID came to New Zealand our core Government debt was $5.4 billion. In this Budget Grant Robertson has delivered as we stand here today $73 billion worth of debt and it's set to blow out even further to $95 billion. The question that New Zealanders ask me up and down the country is Nicola what do we have to show for it?" Because when they look around them they see that in their family and their household they are beset by a cost of living crisis that means they struggle every fortnight to balance their bills and their income. Groceries have gone up petrol has gone up their rent has gone up their mortgage has gone up—everywhere they look costs have gone up.Steph Lewis: You want to drive their rent up further by allowing foreign investors back.NICOLA WILLIS: Well to that member let me inform you: rents have gone up $175 a week on average under Labour. That's what you have delivered for renters and that's before we talk about those with a mortgage who have seen interest rates climb so fast that those with mortgages—firsthome buyers in particular—have been left scrambling trying to find hundreds of dollars a fortnight to service their mortgage. While on that side of the House they like to say "Oh well incomes have gone up" New Zealanders aren't foolish; they know that while their incomes have gone up in nominal terms it hasn't kept up with the real increase in costs. So every fortnight they find themselves slipping backwards. What National says to the members opposite is that you can't care for people if you don't care for the economy and in this Budget we have all the signs of a Government that has given up on caring properly for the economy.What it does is it increases spending without delivering more for the people that spending is meant to serve. When we compare the amount the Government promises to spend in this Budget this year with how much was spent in 2017 we see an 80 percent increase. Again wherever I go in the country New Zealanders say to me "Nicola which public service is 80 percent better?" It's not as if the hospital waiting lists are 80 percent shorter. It's not as if people are waiting 80 percent less time in the emergency waiting room. It's not as if educational standards have risen 80 percent or violent crime has reduced by 80 percent. What this Government has done again and again in Budget after Budget is mistake the act of spending money with the need to deliver results.It is not enough to simply take more tax from New Zealanders—more of what they earn—and throw it at big promises; actually what New Zealanders want is the delivery of results and they have not had that under Labour. This is another Budget which refuses to give them more of what they have earned to allow them to keep more of it and instead promises to spend and spend and spend.This Budget should have delivered income tax reduction. It should have put more dollars in the back pockets of working people who have been pushed into higher tax brackets because of inflation. The Government is collecting around $100 million a day more in tax and yet it says it couldn't possibly afford to let New Zealanders have income tax reduction. Well I would put to you that a Government who even in the middle of a cost of living crisis with New Zealanders unable to pay their bills can't see the case for tax reduction but thinks it must continue to spend New Zealanders' money is a Government that has lost sight of the people it is meant to be serving. This is a Budget that continues to allow the cost of living crisis to burn on. I remember when Grant Robertson promised New Zealand that inflation was a short-term challenge. Well here we are and we are entering the third year of a cost of living crisis in which inflation is outside New Zealand's target range.What all of the economists warned was that if the Government keeps doing these expansionary big-spending Budgets they will add fuel to the inflationary fire but Grant Robertson took no heed. In fact in every Budget he has delivered according to the Treasury's own analysis he has on average spent $600 million more than he promised he would six months prior in his Budget Policy Statement. This is a Government whose spending is completely out of control and who has allowed that to fuel the cost of living crisis. We learnt last week that as a result of that persistent and sticky inflation interest rates are likely to stay higher for longer. That will burn not only New Zealanders with a mortgage who will find that they have less discretionary income in their household because they're having to service bigger debt repayments; it will also hurt the small and medium businesses which we desperately need to see growing this country out of recession. Those who took on debt during COVID to get through are now flipping on to higher interest rates that many of them simply can't keep up with. So we see the recession rolling on. What this Budget should have done is provide a path out of inflation and high interest rates with disciplined spending. It should have reduced the taxes that New Zealanders pay and it should have had a focus on delivery for results.The finance Minister in his remarks talked about his fiscal goals. Well when this Budget was set out it promised that New Zealand would return to surplus in 2026. The surplus noted is around half a billion dollars. We've now had multiple people come out and say it is highly unlikely that the Government will meet that target because recessionary conditions are such that the books have completely blown out. So actually what we have in this budget is a Government that is delivering higher deficits into the future huge debt huge spending and huge tax. And could there be anything more Labour than that? Six years of a Government that got the money hose sprayed it all around—with very little care for what results they would get for it or what discipline they would take from it—and who has left New Zealanders worse off by almost every measure: health services described by those who work on their front lines are in crisis; schools where standards in the basics of reading writing and maths have declined so much that the education Minister Jan Tinetti has decided to adopt the National Party spokesperson Erica Stanford's policy; crime that's up so much that when I knocked on someone's door recently she was almost in tears when she told me what her staff have had to put up with in the shop that she owns including being bitten by another human being and threatened with a hammer.So the point here is that Labour has not only managed to spend without getting results they've now burdened future generations of New Zealanders with cleaning up the mess that they have left. As we stand here today New Zealanders are being overtaxed paying more tax than ever both in individual terms but as a proportion of the economy as a whole. The amount of money that the Government is soaking up into its own spending is much greater as a proportion of the economy. Our deficits are bigger and deeper than they should be and we have debt that as I say has risen to $73 billion and is forecast to go up to $95 billion.As I said at the beginning this is a valedictory of a Budget because it's a farewell Budget. It's a typical end of a Labour Government: to leave the next Government with the books in a mess huge amounts of debt public services that have gone backwards and everyday New Zealanders struggling because they lost sight of the basics of economic management of disciplined spending of ensuring that their actions didn't put more pressure on inflation and interest rates.They can dress it up with all of the slogans and attack lines as Grant Robertson attempted to do but the reality is being felt by New Zealanders who know that under Labour they are worse off than they once were and that the team opposite me cannot be trusted to deliver for them. The good news is that a National Government can deliver will reduce their tax bring discipline to spending solve the cost of living crisis and deliver better services by ensuring value for their money. That's what a good National Government will do."