O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Sitting here all afternoon starting from the new Leader of the Opposition's speech we've heard that they are about small business. Now I think they are talking to small business but I don't think they're listening to them. I think they're telling business what they think they want to hear because I want to give you an example of what happened with me in my Ōhāriu electorate post the Budget.I walked into a cafe with a fairly hard-bitten group of businessmen—and they all are men—who are not necessarily always well-disposed towards my own politics. One of them—quite a cynical sort of a guy—for him was quite effusive in his praise of the Budget. What it did and he was quite clear was allowed him—he knows his business model is not sustainable. He knows his business model—it's to do with event management—is going to need some serious adjustment. What this Budget did was give him the opportunity to keep his workforce together to enable him to adjust to adapt and to get his new strategy right for his new model. So what he said and why it was so effusive was because it meant through our wage subsidy he was going to be able to do just that.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I'm very sorry to interrupt the member but the time has come for the House to adjourn for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.GREG O'CONNOR: Thank you Madam Speaker. Before the break I was just discussing the fact that while the Opposition may be talking at their small businesses I don't think they're listening to them. I talked about the experience of one of my cynical members and the pleasure he had at what the Budget delivered him. The other one was one who availed himself of the business finance guarantee scheme who once again said that that enabled him to keep his employees on. In both those cases it enabled their businesses to keep going and to ensure that for any adjustments they need to make in the new environment they have time to make it.The other thing is that having run a $40 million a year business for 20 years before I came here I did also understand that whatever you do for a business actually you need customers. To merely focus on what you are going to just give in a very short term you actually need to take a little bit of a broader picture which this Budget does to ensure that we're actually looking at what it will deliver by way of a broad base that will bring the customers back.I got another email from a land-owning gentleman in Scotland whose farm I'd worked on some years ago who actually sent me to very tentatively say Are you on Jacinda's side or not?" When I pointed out I was actually in the same party he then waxed lyrical about what those people in that part of the world think of her. Now that's not anything to do with necessarily—DEPUTY SPEAKER: You're right.GREG O'CONNOR: —an individual—DEPUTY SPEAKER: You're right.GREG O'CONNOR: —but what it means is this Budget—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Especially the Budget.GREG O'CONNOR: —is going to—and what the Budget actually does is it ensures that the customers we are going to need are those very people overseas who will be the ones that will allow our businesses to take advantage of what this Budget delivers because any Budget and any scheme can deliver to businesses but unless it broadens out and ensures that those customers that are essential—the life's blood of small business of big business of this country—can come here. So what this Budget is doing is ensuring that those very businesses keep intact their workforce they keep intact their skills and they adapt where they need to as I spoke to of the first case of a Khandallah business that is able to actually keep his workforce intact so that when the benefits of the work we are doing internationally come to pass when those customers that we're going to need that understand what a quality well-led country that got through COVID is we're already seeing it. We've seen the criticism. We've seen the American film industry coming back into town. Those things only happen because you are running an efficient well-led country. This Budget is an absolute example of that; that now we're going to ensure that all those various schemes we've put in place it's well-directed money it's money directed to make sure that those good businesses in Ōhāriu in my electorate in this case in New Zealand and particularly those who are dealing with the rest of the world will be in a position to ensure that they are able to deliver for this country and we're able to take advantage—the first advantage we've got—of being the country at the head of defeating of getting control of COVID. Noticed by the rest of the world this Budget sets the scheme—a great Budget."