Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Hey well thank you Mr Speaker and I do acknowledge the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee Dr Duncan Webb. I just wish I was wildly excited about that speech. Gee I've got to say you are no Mr Hon Grant Robertson. Oh speak of—I was going to say the devil but I can't say that about Mr Robertson. I'm so glad he's turned up—the new Mr Muldoon of New Zealand politics Mr Grant Robertson. As we've all been debating just before that letter to the board of Air New Zealand Mr Robertson was a particularly bad piece of judgment.Anyway let's talk about the Budget. I think it's worthwhile just reminding ourselves where we sit at the moment. So this year we're going to report a budget deficit of $23 billion. Over the next few years to 2027 we're going to report another budget deficit continual budget deficit in every year amounting to another $83 billion. Our current debt—we've blown $40 billion in the last year. So we've gone from $60 billion to $103 billion I think and we will see it go up to close to $200 billion. And I think what people forget is yesterday we borrowed about $110 million. Today we're going to borrow $110 million and tomorrow we're going to borrow $110 million.Hon Simon Bridges: That's a lot of Trelise Cooper!ANDREW BAYLY: That is right Mr Bridges but I don't buy Trelise Cooper—you may have other reasons. But I've got to say this Government and the financial profile of where we sit at the moment—[Interruption] Oh there's someone who buys Trelise Cooper on the other side well done. I've got to say when you look at that financial profile it's a pretty ugly case unfortunately. And I'm not saying we should not have spent that money and I do acknowledge a lot of the spending has been worthwhile and I'll talk more about that shortly.But I'll tell you what else has happened over the last three years. We've seen house prices rise by about—Hon Mark Mitchell: That's right—47 percent.ANDREW BAYLY: Yeah 47 percent and house stock is worth just under $1.4 trillion—$1.4 trillion. It has exploded under this Government over the last three years. And you can't keep saying nine years of neglect when you've been in power for nearly four years.Christopher Luxon: Four years of failure.ANDREW BAYLY: Four years of failure particularly on the housing market.Then the other thing—and this is what's really going to hurt people soon and they're just starting to hear it; they're just starting to get this—is the cost of living. It's the issue around the increase in rents. We know rents have gone up $120 a week. And for people who rent they do not have discretionary income. That is everything that they have to pay and when it goes up by $120 they can't just take it from somewhere else. They have to pay it—it comes out of their salaries—they have little alternative. It means that they're going to not be able to save for the deposit on their house because they're paying more money in rent. It's a vicious circle.Then we're going to see the increasing avalanche of electricity prices and it's only just starting. And we've got a Minister of energy who really does not understand the energy market. I can guarantee you and I'll say this publicly: prices of electricity and energy in general are going to skyrocket under this Government over the next 2½ years and we will watch with interest because unfortunately the most vulnerable New Zealanders are the ones that are going to be missing out.But what else do you see when you look around? Well I see growing levels of poverty. And unfortunately the Government has not been able to match its wonderful words on reducing poverty and I think that's incredibly bad. The other thing is huge problems in health and particularly in mental health. And I've got to acknowledge my colleague Matt Doocey who has been prosecuting the case where they're grand on announcements and little on delivery and in fact even worse than that haven't actually put the funding into where they said they would go.Poor educational outcomes—big issues. When you compare us against the OECD we are going backwards at a rate of knots that is most worrying. And the worst thing is the Ministry of Education claim that we're going the other way but the Programme for International Student Assessment scores show a different result.Then we've got the issue around immigration and the broken families—the people that are living in New Zealand hard-working people who've immigrated to New Zealand who haven't seen their families for over 400 days who are locked in New Zealand just waiting for the Government to fix up the managed isolation and quarantine facilities and show a little bit of compassion. So what are we seeing from the Government? What's been the response? Well the first thing Mr Robertson's done is he's shoved up the tax rate—39 percent. And even according to the Treasury expectations—which I think are overstated—the first year they're going to raise $80 million. Well in the day that it took us to debate that in urgency under the watch of Mr Robertson we borrowed another $110 million. We went backwards that day—we went backwards that day.Then we have the issue around tax deductibility of interest. Well gee—well gee how that's going to impact on future developments. I was just talking to an ex-partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers who was telling me how it was having a chilling effect even on new developments. I've got to say the issue around where we are as an economy—we've gone backwards last year. I note that the chair of the select committee only mentioned the last sort of couple of quarters. Well actually last year we went backwards by nearly 3 percent in terms of GDP growth which actually put us behind Australia which was about minus 2.5. We're nearly 3 percent and Ireland who is another island nation who can control its borders well had positive 2.5 percent. We're 13th in the OECD list in terms of growth rates. And I know we hear those wonderful soothing words from the Minister of Finance but the reality speaks a different thing. We're middling in the order of growth rates.And then when you talk about—well I've got to acknowledge that Mr Robertson did a lot of good stuff through COVID to support New Zealand businesses and people. But I've got to say this to you Mr Robertson: what you did was really not much different from every other developed country in the world. And I'll give you the stats—I know you like numbers Mr Robertson—93 percent of all OECD countries implemented a wage subsidy. Big tick we did that too. Eighty-seven percent directly lent to small to medium sized enterprises. You did that. Good one. Sixty-two percent implemented some sort of debt moratorium. Good one. Forty-nine percent did training. You did that. Actually what this is just showing Mr Robertson is you did everything that everyone else did. But the one thing you didn't do that two-thirds of countries in the OECD did was they dealt with the issue of rents and you should have dealt with the issue of rents particularly for small and medium enterprises because they put in rent aid and you should have done it. It would have cost you $300 million a month—I did the numbers.So I hope this forthcoming Budget is how we reset the economy and I'm just hoping that in the forthcoming we see some issues and some initiatives that encourage businesses to actually go out and employ people and do the stuff. But unfortunately your record talks differently. What have you done? You banned oil and gas. That's not a big industry; it's a little industry. Don't worry about that; it's a minor one! We've increased sick pay we've reduced labour flexibility we introduced a new extra public holiday—we don't even know what the dates are because we've got to be able to work it out—we've made some changes to the Overseas Investment Office but the reality is we're still having trouble getting investors to come to New Zealand. We made minimum wage increases at a time that most companies are struggling for cash. What a beautiful sense of timing! We don't disagree with the principle of increasing the minimum wage but how rapidly you did it and what it means to the many hundreds of thousands of businesses who are already short on cash because you didn't do the rent subsidy—they're already struggling and you just came and gave them a double whammy. And then we've got the issue of fair pay agreements coming up—wow. All these things we reckon it's going to cost nearly $3 billion that you have taken and imposed on New Zealand businesses. And I love how you want to do these programmes of increasing minimum wage but of course who pays for it? Not you Mr Robertson not out of your Budget but out of the budgets of mums and dads who own businesses all around the country working hard every day and you're just socking it to them and unfortunately that's a bad thing to do.