Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to be talking on the imprest supply and the addition to the Supplementary Estimates or appropriation bills.First of all just in response to the member the Hon Phil Twyford who has just sat down—the previous Minister—when I was last in Hawke's Bay reviewing some of the flood-hit areas and talking to the people affected they were crying out for leadership from the Government in terms of trying to deal with the events that have happened there. And when I saw my good colleagues Catherine Wedd the candidate for Tukituki and Katie Nimon the candidate for Napier in the weekend—again there is an absolute need for clarity. Whilst the member has done their best to try and highlight what the Government is doing it is now three months four months since the flooding has occurred and there's a desperate need. It's no good and it shouldn't be appropriate to just sit there and talk about the councils. It actually requires a Government-led response and we're not unfortunately seeing that quickly enough.But I just returned from Christchurch this morning. I was meeting with between I think 80 and 100 business people and they were talking about and asking questions about what was happening to the business environment the economy in general. I think apart from all of the general concerns they had—about a lack of staff access to it the rules and regulations all those types of things that have been imposed on the business sector over the past six years—one of the underlying themes that came through is the level of wasted spending that the Government has undertaken. And of course that's led to high interest rates which are feeding through and meaning that for many customer-facing businesses—such as retail the tourism sector—those types of sectors are still struggling. They were talking and asking about it and what we were going to do about it. We simply have a cost of living crisis and to have one of the members stand up from Labour and say Look it's all down to excuses: it's all down to COVID it's all down to inflation it's all down to Ukraine; nothing to do with us."—actually what about the Labour Government? Isn't that the problem?The issue is the Government has been on a spending spree and these Estimates and supply arrangements enforce that even further. What we've seen is this Government dramatically increase expenditure over the past six years: from back in 2014 the Government spend was $71 billion; this year it will be $128 billion a roughly $50-odd billion increase. And you would expect even if you put COVID and say that had a major impact—what you would expect is the expense line of the Government to flatten off and be decreasing by now because COVID is long passed from our shores. It is not affecting our businesses it is not affecting the way people are going about doing their things.But no: the Budget documents all highlight this continual extrapolation of Government spending so that we're going to see another $30-odd billion of spending increase each year by 2027—that is the issue that is driving high interest rates. And the worst thing about this is tax income from New Zealanders—paid by hard-earning hard-working mums and dads out there both in their businesses and people who are employed in New Zealand—is ripped from their pockets by this Government. We've seen this increase in tax take and it has been incredible. We've seen a massive increase in tax take and what that's led to is that we have continued to run deficits.It's interesting just looking at the deficits. That's where the Government is losing money just like a household loses money and gets put under by their bank if they lose too much money. Over the last three years the Government has piled up nearly $40 billion of losses—nearly $40 billion. Imagine what we could have done with $40 billion if we had spent it wisely. But $40 billion has been lost and we're still projecting another three years of losses if Labour was to continue in this Government and let's hope it doesn't.The worrying thing about this in the Estimates is that the IMF recently did a review of the New Zealand economy Mr Robertson as you well know and it said that the management of the pandemic had been very good but it said the economy had been overheated because of a "generous"—inverted commas—financial monetary support and was now going through a necessary slow-down. "Macroeconomic policies should retain a restrictive bias."—that means stop spending the excess money and get our Budget back in order Mr Robertson. And that is what has been happening: it has never been back in order we just keep spending everything we get. And what we've got in here is more money. And then it says: "A well-designed tax reform could allow for lower corporate and personal income tax rates." Well we know that's not going to happen don't we Mr Robertson? Nor do we know it from the Greens who've come out with the most absurd wealth tax proposal that will still defy even just ordinary New Zealanders with just a reasonable home in Auckland. It will be the worst thing that could ever happen in New Zealand. But let's hope that the Labour-Greens coalition never comes to pass because that would be devastating for New Zealand.But the worst thing about this is when I look at the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update the documents states that "return to surplus … in 2025/26"—that's a few more years away unfortunately—"is underpinned by expected decline in … expenses and stable growth in revenue". Well there's two issues with that. First of all we're now in recession—and all this stuff about a technical recession is garbage. On a per capita—when Mr Robertson was the Opposition finance spokesperson he used to ask repeatedly about per capita because it suited his argument. The last quarter when we had this so-called technical recession quarter of 0.1 percent on a per capita basis is 0.7 percent and we had a previous quarter that was even worse. We are in recession. Just talk to any business owners—as I did this morning in Christchurch—and they will tell you that is the case.So now we're looking at our future tax revenues that are projected and they will come under pressure because that is not what is anticipated in the Budget forecasts. That means that we're more likely to have higher losses or deficits than is already projected in the documents and then the other thing is about decreasing costs. Well the one thing Mr Robertson has been good at—and it's been consistent and I've got to congratulate him for consistency if anything—is his ability to spend even more money than even he budgets for. That has been the ongoing issue with this Minister of Finance because unfortunately he spends spend spends and allocates stuff in Budget and spends even more money.The other thing that's happening now is the current account deficit. The Budget projections thought we were going to have a reasonably high level of current account deficit but it's even much higher: $33 billion deficit just recently 8.5 percent of GDP. We were at those levels miles ago back in the seventies when we were really out of control and the IMF were worried about New Zealand. We've got this high level of current account which means that basically New Zealand is not paying its way. Our exports are less in value than in terms of our inputs. So this imprest bill needs to be seen in this light: it continues spending it makes generous allowances for even more spending that's already provided for in the Budget and we are just going to see this continued increase in debt—which I think is one of the most worrying things for New Zealanders. Our debt back in 2014 when we left office was $60 billion; now it's about $150 billion. That is a staggering amount of increase over a mere 5.5 years. The final bit is the lack of transparency of spending. We've had the Auditor-General come and talk to us and the Finance and Expenditure Committee made public representations—actually being quite forceful more forceful than virtually any other Government entity—and have made it clear that the transparency around Government spending and particularly the slush fund called the COVID fund which thankfully has now been disbanded has been appalling. It has been very difficult to understand what the money has been spent on. New Zealand should be transparent about the way the Government is spending its money but unfortunately that has not passed. We are going to have a big job to do if we were to win the election in October but we're up for it."