McClay ToddHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Well the last speaker in the debate Ingrid Leary said that these are not ordinary times. But that was a very ordinary speech on a very ordinary bill from a very ordinary Government. Because you see all we have seen for the last two years is any problem that this Government needs to borrow money to throw at is the fault of COVID. No fault on their side at all. It's always the fault of COVID.When we come to the House and we say that 28000 businesses have closed the finance Minister is very quick to say Yeah but that's not so much compared to last year." To the people that own those 28000 businesses the Government standing up with an answer that they think is smart in this House every day actually does them a great disservice because it's not the members of this House that have sacrificed. We keep getting our salaries. The Government under the Prime Minister says "Let's take a little bit last year from Ministers and let's do it from MPs." but we were still all OK. It's mums and dads that get out of bed every day that run small businesses in this country that borrow against their houses that pay their staff before they pay anybody else who are taking that money that they work hard for to raise their kids and put them through education so they have a brighter future. Those are the ones that are going to pay back the $97.5 billion that this Government has borrowed over the last two years and spent on many things most of them nothing at all to do with COVID but said it's all about COVID.We heard one of the other speakers over there who I guarantee in two years' time when he stands up in his electorate in Wellington will have a very very different tune. He won't be talking about Donald Trump then. He will be saying to them I guarantee you there's a road here that they need in this electorate worth $50 million but we can't have it because this Government borrowed $97.5 billion for COVID and took $50 billion on a study for a cycling bridge in Auckland that they didn't even build. By the way if they had built it for the last 100 days today the people of Auckland couldn't have used their push bikes on it even if they had wanted to because they have been locked down. They're the ones that are doing it hard.This is not a good piece of legislation. Members opposite are trying to say that the Opposition is not supportive of business. Actually we are the ones that have been advocating for and making the case for small businesses up and down the country in lockdown and getting the Government to make the changes. We heard the Minister in the committee of the whole House stage say that actually they saw there was a problem with one of the payments and if your business was younger than six months you didn't get the payment and they made the change of one month. We were here in lockdown arguing for that when they did it. I'm glad they did but they should have done it earlier. This is a Government under COVID that only shows urgency when they're forced to and often when it's too late.The announcement today from the Prime Minister of the opening of the border is more than disappointing. It is misleading in as far as its usefulness for people that want to get home. The Government still cannot tell us tomorrow on television the Prime Minister will not be able to answer why it is that a young Kiwi that wants to come home and see a family that's been overseas for more than a year because they can't get back to New Zealand they live in Australia they're double vaccinated they've taken every test they can to show they haven't got COVID it's safe for them to come back on 15 January but not on 24 December to see mum and dad for Christmas. The reason the Prime Minister won't answer that there is not a reason.The Government says that actually they're transitioning to the traffic light system. There's hardly a person in the country including the Prime Minister that knows what it's having to actually do. Do you know what the Government has to do? Stop making up rules day after day after day when members of the public or the media find a problem. Get a plan explain it clearly make sure it works and then get out of the way of hard-working Kiwis. They want to work hard. They want to earn more. They want to run their businesses. They do not want small Government handouts that will amount to $175 for a family when their rents have gone up by more than $100 their petrol's gone up their food's gone up everything they can imagine has gone up and now they call themselves the working poor because they have to choose between paying the rent or feeding the kids often. They don't want handouts from this Government. They want a Government that supports them. This isn't one.That was a very ordinary speech. This is a very ordinary bill. This is a very ordinary Government. Hard-working New Zealanders businesses large and small deserve much much better than us standing here just before midnight rushing something through because this Government couldn't get around to doing their job properly earlier."