O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Madam Chair thank you for this opportunity. I'm new to the Finance and Expenditure Committee and I'm learning things about finance every day. I have to admire the Opposition for the way they're trying to grow our economy: you go overseas and you get someone from the Inner Mongolia racing club to invest in our country growing the economy. They don't see that there's that much wrong with that so I see that clearly the Opposition have got all the answers there. I think one of the great summaries of the previous Government that I heard was They prepared it for sale." and of course preparing something for sale means that you put a bit of black shiny stuff on the wheels. You don't get the warrant you don't change the oil but you make it look nice and certainly that's pretty much what we inherited. We didn't buy it; we inherited it. I would say often there was a lot made by the previous Government about surpluses. Well anyone can run a surplus if you don't pay the bills and you don't do the maintenance and certainly that's been quite clear with what we inherited. We inherited an economy where no one had paid the bills and no one had done the maintenance and it's that which has fallen upon this Government to do. A rock star economy? Well there's no point having a rock star economy if no one can afford a ticket to that concert and again that's the situation that we have. So I'm very proud to be part of a Government that is actually tackling the long-term challenges which face this country: levels of investment reinvestment rebuilding on the things that we really need to do to ensure that we maintain the situation that we've achieved in 18 months—the fiscal responsibility. This is what I've enjoyed: catching up with has actually gone through the various Ministers that have come here and spoken during the appropriations debate to ensure our Government—the Government I'm proudly part of led by the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern—is doing the right things for this country. Anyone who has any doubt have a look and see just what has been achieved and what the various departments and various Ministers have addressed during this time. For example the books are in good shape delivering sustainable service and a strong GDP despite what we hear about—in fact to the extent that I notice there's some dispute on the Opposition benches—how much we should be borrowing. I understand there was someone saying we should be borrowing more. I actually do recall during the middle part of the 2000s when I was speaking with the unfortunately now long-departed Roger Kerr who was quite a well-respected economist in the Business Roundtable. At that time he was lamenting the performance of the New Zealand Government under Michael Cullen because we hadn't actually been borrowing at a time when countries like—and he named them—Portugal Ireland Greece and Spain were getting way ahead of us because they were borrowing. I understand the anachronism for that was the PIGS and we saw what happened to them. So I just look at the way that this Minister of Finance is looking after our economy. It's extremely responsible and he is carrying on from where Michael Cullen in that Government of the early part of the 2000s was which of course ensured that when 2008 came along when the global financial crisis came along and in fact when the National Government arrived they had 3 percent of GDP debt—3 percent. I think when we arrived it was around well over 20 percent. So that just gives an idea of the continued responsibility of the Government that I'm certainly very proud to be part of. Also it's said often that we're not doing anything for business. Well let's just go through Vote Revenue which is part of this appropriation. "Putting an end to unnecessary tax for workers with more than one job"—well that's pretty good. That's addressing something for workers. "Ensure companies in the digital economy who do business across borders as well as multinational companies pay their fair share of tax"—something again—"extending the brightline test to address property speculation". Again when I hear people complaining in the media about their prices going down—although one price went down a lot earlier than others I think from reading the New Zealand Herald today by about $500000 which was clearly less than what it was worth. So obviously that started to happen north of Auckland for some people earlier than it did. So my time come has come to an end but I'm very happy to be part of a Government that is addressing all the long-term issues that we inherited."