Robertson GrantHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Mr Chair thank you very much. It's a pleasure to take a call on the Estimates in this space particularly for my case on Vote Finance. The thing I want to do is project a more positive image of New Zealand than what we have heard for the last five minutes. For the last couple of weeks in the recess I've been going around the country talking about the very matters that are contained in the Vote Finance Estimates: the Budget that we have put forward and the economic outlook for New Zealand. I've got news for the Opposition. Out there in the provinces of New Zealand in Christchurch and Auckland—Brett Hudson: Confidence is low.Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —Blenheim Hamilton and Queenstown confidence is high Mr Hudson because businesses are getting on with the job as opposed to the negative backward-looking approach that we've heard from the Opposition tonight. When I was in Hamilton and Cambridge talking to the business people of the Waikato they were excited. In Cambridge they were saying Unemployment there is 3 percent—3 percent in Cambridge at the moment." I recognise that for many employers finding skilled staff remains the big challenge that they've got in an environment like that. We need to work hard and the Government is working hard on investing in skills and training and making sure educational opportunities are available—apprenticeships workplace training—and we're doing that but at the same time businesses are getting on with the job and they are very very pleased with what they are able to do. We want to work with them and we are working with those businesses to ensure that that carries on and is spread right around the country.It's really important to remember that among the doom and gloom scenarios that the National Party is determined to put in front of New Zealanders the consensus economic forecast released this month by FocusEconomics tells us we have 3 percent growth on average. That's good. That's solid growth. We want to keep that trend going. What we don't need is the negative approach and the lack of positive forward-looking 21st century solutions for the economy that come from the National Party. On our side of the fence we're focused on a more productive economy a more sustainable economy and a more inclusive economy.I just want to pick out two points that came from the Finance and Expenditure Committee and I thank them for the work that they did in assessing the Estimates. The first of those is around—and it was a point made just now by Amy Adams—the impact of the Government's decision to end new offshore oil and gas permits off the Taranaki area and indeed around the rest of the country. Ms Adams just told us that that has lost 8000 jobs. That is completely untrue because no current permit is affected whatsoever. There will be no change in that number of jobs whatsoever today from what there was before that announcement was made. It is that kind of exaggeration and scaremongering that does no credit to the National Opposition. They will be judged for that because that decision was about actually having a plan for an economy for the middle part of the 21st century—a sustainable economy: one where we transition away from an economy that relies solely on raw commodities solely on selling houses to one another and on population increases; and shifts to an economy where we support and protect the environment where we invest in clean energy just as we're doing through the Green Investment Fund in this Budget and where we invest properly in the regions of this country just as we're doing through the Provincial Growth Fund. That's what a modern economy looks like. It is one where we're focused on making sure that our productivity and our sustainability work together and where we look forward rather than in the rear-vision mirror as the National Party would like to do.The last thing I want to talk about in my contribution is around what will come next in terms of Vote Finance and that is the well-being Budget and the use of the Living Standards Framework. That's how we'll really create a modern 21st century economy—by looking at our success across the board not just at narrow measures. GDP's a good measure of activity in the economy but it does not tell us about the overall success of New Zealanders. We need to measure our success against a range of indicators from the way in which we live as individuals as communities and how we protect the environment. Next year's Budget will be a world first in looking at well-being and overall lifting of living standards. That's the kind of forward-looking positive thing that we can do not the carping and negativity that we constantly hear from the National Party and are about to hear right now."