1. Economy—Employment GDP Growth and Skills ShortageHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of FinanceORAL QUESTIONSQUESTIONS TO MINISTERSEconomy—Employment GDP Growth and Skills Shortage1. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Does he have confidence in the Government's management of the New Zealand economy?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes.Hon Amy Adams: Does he agree with economic commentator Bernard Hickey who today said This week's news is the worst economically for the Government since its election and should force it to recalibrate its response."?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I don't agree with the characterisation by Mr Hickey but he does make an interesting point in that article which is that years and years of under-investment in infrastructure are causing constraints in the New Zealand economy and are reducing productivity. That happened over the last nine years. We have an ambitious programme of investment in infrastructure that will start to turn that around.Hon Amy Adams: Does he take it as a signal of confidence in the Government's economic management that job growth has fallen by 60 percent since the Government took office and in the past three months 43 people extra have moved into unemployment every day?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I take as a measure of confidence is that yesterday's data released by Statistics New Zealand showed that 94000 more people were employed in the June 2018 quarter than the 2017 June quarter.Hon Amy Adams: Does he take it as a signal of confidence in the Government's economic management that this week not only has unemployment gone up but multiple construction firms have gone into receivership and businesses' confidence in their own prospects has hit a 10-year low falling to levels not seen since the global financial crisis?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The issue of the construction industry and the vertical construction industry and the issues facing that industry are not new. Mainzeal Hawkins Fletcher's are all things that happened under the last Government's watch. I'm actually not going to blame the last Government for that. This is an industry that does need some support. It does need some work. But for the member to conflate all of what is going wrong in the vertical construction industry with the last nine months of this Government is not right. Hon Amy Adams: Is he aware that just 1 percent slower GDP growth would cost the Government approximately $800 million in lost revenue every year and Government spending would also inevitably increase as fiscal stabilisers kicked in?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: There's a number of factors that would influence whether or not that equation worked but what I would remind the member is that the consensus forecasts as put through by FocusEconomics recently all say that growth will be around 3 percent over the forecast period and that's backed up by Treasury the OECD the IMF and the Reserve Bank. Hon Amy Adams: Well in light of that answer can he tell the House whether he is intending to stick to his own fiscal responsibility rules if in fact GDP growth does not live up to those Treasury forecasts? Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We've been very clear that our Budget responsibility rules are there for the term of this Government. We have been equally clear that if there was a significant economic shock we would adjust those accordingly. I am interested now by the confused stance of the National Party. Apparently they want us to spend more. They don't want the Budget responsibility rules but we're also spending too much. They actually no longer have a fiscal stance that the public can judge. Virginia Andersen: What is the Government doing to address the skills shortage? Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We are taking a number of steps to address the skills shortage. The first of those—Hon Gerry Brownlee: It's called a reshuffle. Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —is by making sure that we've got our first year—well no Gerry. There's a skills shortage on your side of the House. It's very very clear for all of us to see. We are addressing the skills shortage by having our first year free programme which is getting many many more people into the trades and apprenticeships and also by making sure that we're focused around issues in the construction sector particularly."