Falloon AndrewANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to be taking a call this afternoon on the 2018 Investment Statement. A core part of that statement is the balance sheet. For the uninitiated it is one of the first times we are giving one of these debates in the House. For the uninitiated it is really just a simple what you own and what you owe."It's a statement of assets and liabilities in the same way that any business or farm or even household might do. So I turn to the balance sheet part of the statement and it says "The balance sheet has been growing strongly in recent years." and goes on to say that the "balance sheet is currently strong providing resilience in the face of the adverse events." I ask members of all parts of the House: why would that be? Why would it be that the current balance sheet is so strong? The answer to that really is down to good management.We had a strong and growing economy for the last few years of the National Government. We rebounded well from the effects of the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes. In the election year last year we went into the election having six years of unbroken growth with the exception of one quarter. We had an economy that was growing faster than the US the UK Japan Canada Australia and the EU. We had an economy that was creating more than 10000 jobs each and every month. The result of that strong and growing economy was that we were able to start paying down debt and improving the Government's balance sheet.Now members opposite from time to time do mention debt. They do mention that during that time that we were in Government that debt did go up and that is absolutely true. In the first few years we were in Government debt did increase. The reason for that was because when we came into Government in 2008 we had a global financial crisis to deal with and actually it was prior to that—New Zealand was the first country in the world that went into recession ahead of the rest of the world. So we did have to take on a lot of debt and that obviously affected our balance sheet.Subsequent to that we had two Canterbury earthquakes—two Canterbury earthquakes. So those twin shocks the Canterbury earthquakes and the global financial crisis both contributed to higher unemployment across the country. That meant the Government had less revenue coming in and more going out. So what does that mean? It means that we have to take on debt if we want to continue to live up to our obligations of paying people a decent amount so that they can get by and they can be supported. It happened across the Western World. Balance sheets across the Western World all blew out as a result of debt increasing.Every time during that time that we announced some sort of saving—some sort of saving to ensure that the balance sheet wouldn't blow out any further—we had Grant Robertson across the House saying "That's outrageous. You shouldn't be cutting expenditure; you should be increasing expenditure." Well that would have increased debt even more so it's a little bit rich to have members opposite from time to time complain that we took on more debt and made the balance sheet worse.That brings me to the next point in this statement which is "Seeking value for money". Now in the seeking value for money part of the statement it says "Direct Government ownership is only one form of intervention. The choice to own needs to be rigorously assessed against alternatives." I completely agree with that. That is exactly the case—it should be rigorously tested.The problem is with the Government we have now they're not doing that and we've seen that recently. We've seen that in three ways. The Government have ruled out any sort of public-private partnerships in education in health or in corrections. If you think about it that's actually quite mad because for every school around the country that I've met their biggest headache is buildings—the biggest headache is buildings. It takes up a huge amount of time that principals could otherwise be putting into improving education for their students. Instead they spend it on their assets.It's left the incredible situation that we have in Marlborough where we have Marlborough Boys' and Marlborough Girls' colleges who want to co-locate. It's what the community wants. It would be a public-private partnership. We have the incredible situation where the Government is saying "No we know best. The community doesn't want it. The schools don't want it. But we know best and we won't have co-location." They should be asking frankly the local MP Stuart Smith and talking to him about what the community wants. Unfortunately they won't listen.It also confuses me a little bit because we do already have a significant amount of private involvement in the education system. Actually if you removed private schools in the State-integrated sector that would lead to a huge amount more that the Government would need to spend on education and would further blow out the balance sheet.Dr Deborah Russell: That's not true. There are lots of places in Whanganui college. They don't have to go to Wanganui Collegiate.ANDREW FALLOON: Well the member opposite mentions Whanganui and that's actually quite a good example. There are a number of other schools around the country at the moment that will go to the wall unless the Government steps in and helps them and that's absolutely what should happen because if they don't do that then all it's going to do is put more cost on the New Zealand taxpayer.I now want to come to the state of the balance sheet. During National's time in Government there was a $97 million increase in total assets and that was a net worth increase of $16 billion. Now we did that at the same time as the mixed-ownership model. We sold down stakes in three energy companies and also in Air New Zealand. Now the reason I raise that is because what it shows is that you can both sell down assets and also improve the state of those assets and also increase the amount of revenue you get from them because that's exactly what happened with the mixed-ownership model. It is a tragedy that that Opposition opposed that and won't take it any further.I want to turn now to the Living Standards Framework. I was quite interested in this because part of that talks about natural capital. There's been a case recently where natural capital has been talked about. I specifically want to raise a point in here which talks about "Natural capital … includes land soil water … atmosphere plants … animals [and] minerals." Isn't that interesting—minerals. All of it sounds very nice except when you consider what the Government's done recently in Taranaki. They made a disgraceful decision to shut down the oil and gas sector.Hon Chris Hipkins: That's not true.ANDREW FALLOON: There was no—well it is true I'm sorry Mr Hipkins. They now have a death sentence. They've been told that there'll be no more oil and gas exploration any further from now on. Gas will run out. Oil reserves will run out. They have an absolute death sentence.Hon Chris Hipkins: That's not true either.ANDREW FALLOON: Yes it absolutely is Mr Hipkins. What's going to happen if the oil and gas sector can't continue to explore? It's going to run out. It's a pipedream if you think it's not going to run out.I want to turn now to a few comments made by my colleague Amy Adams. She had some concerns about the standard within the framework that's been put forward. She mentioned in her comments that it only envisages for one shock to happen whether it be an earthquake another global financial crisis or some sort of incursion and as we all know from recent history that's not always the case. As I mentioned before we had two earthquakes in Canterbury on the heels of the global financial crisis so any standard has to recognise that there could be more than one incident at any time.Unfortunately that could happen right now. We have unfortunately had an incursion in relation to biosecurity and that relates to Mycoplasma bovis. Amy Adams mentioned foot-and-mouth and that's a very good example. It wouldn't take six months to get over—it'd be much longer than that and in fact if you look at Mycoplasma bovis that's going to be a lot longer than six months. The Government themselves are talking about two years. That's going to have a huge impact not only across the regions that are affected—particularly in my area of mid-Canterbury and South Canterbury—but across the entire country.I just want to end by saying that this is a document that spells out how successful National was in our time in Government in getting the books back in order and we'll do that again in three years when we're required."