Simmonds Penny; O'Connor GregPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition to the appropriation and imprest supply bills. This Budget is a continuation of this Labour Government blowing out even their own spending limits. It's really important that we are under no illusion about how bad the situation is with our economy. We have $73 billion of debt—the most in the history of our wonderful little country—but when you team that also with high inflation; high interest rates; a recession; a current account balance worse than 40 other countries then you see just how difficult our economic situation is.Whenever I'm out in my community people express to me their absolute disgust and despair at how the Government could possibly keep spending at the rate that it is. They compare how much they have had to haul back their farm their business their household spending in the face of a cost of living crisis and inflated prices.I see farmers who are trying to face the reduced milk solids payout by going through their expenditure in their budgets line by line looking at where they can reduce or cut out completely expenditure. I see businesses going through their budgets trying to cut out unproductive expenditure and you see households going through and cutting expenditure that is going to hurt but they know they have to do it—cutting out things like kids being able to play sport or undertake cultural activities—because they have to prioritise their expenditure.But they are doing that and they see a Government that is doing none of those things to try and trim expenditure. They see a Government that is spending 80 percent more than it was back in 2017 when they came into Government. They see a Government that is spending $1 billion more every week—week after week after week—than was being spent back in 2017. They see a Government that has had record tax takes but that money has been literally sprayed around through undisciplined spending which does nothing to make New Zealand more productive; to get out of this incredible debt that we are in. They see a Government that has through its financial incompetence and lack of discipline saddled taxpayers with years and years of debt repayment. They see a Government who has treated our valuable agricultural sector with disdain and disrespect despite them being the ones keeping our economy afloat.There's been much talk recently of financial literacy and basic economics being taught in schools. But by golly what an own goal that set Labour up for. Because the ones that need this the most are Labour MPs who need to understand that if they keep spending the economy gets worse. If you hammer the productive sectors that bring in export dollars you impact the amount of money that is available to be spent on schools and hospitals and police and other essential public services. Because so many in this Government don't seem to have that basic economic connection. But I guess it's less obvious that you just keep borrowing and borrowing like this Government has but you can't keep doing that because eventually it comes to a very sticky end—and that sticky end is where we are at right at this moment.So I look at the education expenditure in this Budget and see the damage that has been caused in the early childhood sector: the absolute avalanche of home-based providers that have closed this year; the stress and uncertainty that centre-based providers are under. Then we take a look at the tertiary education sector where universities are being hit by the perfect storm of declining domestic student numbers international student numbers still not back to pre-COVID levels—unlike our Aussie neighbours—and the impact of inflation on their operational costs.For too long this Government tried to convince the New Zealand public that these were issues that were worldwide. But the universities know that we have lagged behind Australia Canada and other competitive countries in getting the borders open and getting international students back. So now the universities' strained finances are impacting on staff and the range of programmes that can be offered to local New Zealand students.Then we look at the mess of our vocational education sector: polytechnics and industry training organisations centralised into Te Pūkenga. And my goodness if any management tutor or lecturer ever wanted to see an example of how not to restructure Te Pūkenga is going to give them the information for years to come. How did Chris Hipkins get this through Cabinet in 2018 without full costings?In October last year Te Pūkenga put a business case through saying Oh gosh look what's happened. We need $1 billion dollars more over the next 10 years to make Te Pūkenga work." The Minister said "Oh that's too much. Go away." Fifteen times they reworked that business case and they finally came back with "Oh we need $423 million over five years." Those who have done even primary school maths will understand that's about half what they were asking for over 10 years.Quite rightly Treasury said they shouldn't be given anything. So what was put into this Budget? A $220 million loan—oh that's on top of the $200 million that's already been spent—to solve a $40 million problem. So now Te Pūkenga is faced with a $220 million loan to somehow try and get into shape a centralised entity to be able to get some efficiencies of economies of scale. It just can't be done. But in the commercial world would any bank have lent $200 million to undertake a centralisation and then find out halfway through it that they needed another $1 billion dollars to make it happen? If anything shows the incompetence of this Government that certainly does.This Labour Government wonders why the public has fallen out of love with them. Well I can tell you that any business owner any farmer any household budget holder understands that they have had to go through and do what this Government has not done in their Budget: trim their costs. This Government is incapable of doing that. They are addicted to spending they have been incompetent in pulling this Budget together and that is why the public will not stand for it any longer. They will not see our country being taken any further down this debt track than this Government has already done. Thank you Mr Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just for those aligning their speeches this is speech number 13. Anae Neru Leavasa."