Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. We've heard some very impassioned excited speeches today and it's been a pleasure to listen to so many of our colleagues on the Finance and Expenditure Committee speak with such passion. I thought that Dr Deborah Russell spoke really well. She's one of the I think outstanding members of the Labour caucus and I look forward to her elevation in due course. I also just heard obviously the full five whole minutes from Kiritapu Allan and she also was very impassioned. She spoke about this being the Budget. No it's not actually the Budget; it is in fact simply the Finance and Expenditure Committee's report on not the Budget but the Budget Policy Statement. So when she talked about all the spending that was going on actually none of it is what's going on today. This is just a statement a report back from the Finance and Expenditure Committee of which Kiritapu Allan is a member which is actually all about what the Budget's focus is going to be. So it's not quite what she said but I thought that that impassioned excited speech was possibly designed to set off Dr Deborah Russell who is my personal favourite on the other side—apart from obviously Michael Wood who is also one of my personal favourites and of course as we all know the Hon Kris Faafoi who is absolutely our personal favourite. So that should by the way finish them off completely with any careers in the Labour Party. Let's come back to the issues. Hon Carmel Sepuloni: We can't vote for you Judith. Hon JUDITH COLLINS: And the Hon Carmel Sepuloni—well isn't she a delight? Just a pleasure. Let's come back to the Budget Policy Statement. Well let's have a look at this well-being outlook—oh for goodness' sake. OK creating opportunities for productive businesses regions iwi and others transition to a sustainable—I mean everyone would agree with most of this stuff I would have thought. I would have thought most people would say that lifting Māori and Pacific incomes skills and opportunities is a good thing. Frankly I'd say that's good for everyone in New Zealand. I don't think it's race-specific although I do acknowledge that Māori and Pasifika are very much overrepresented at the lower end of the income scale. But many Māori and Pasifika are not at that level. Many have done extremely well in life and continue to do so. So I think that's all about learning from those who have been able to do really well and seeing how we can do that better. Reducing child poverty and improving child well-being including addressing family violence—well who could be against that? I'm very on to that and I think one of the best ways of doing that is to treat children as though they actually are humans. I think that's quite good—respecting them. Every Government thinks We're going to come in and do something on family violence."—we certainly did—and sometimes that works but the vast majority of what Governments do does not work in this area and I'd be delighted to see something more innovative coming through that's going to work. I thought this week we'd hear from the Prime Minister in the press conference following the Cabinet meeting about what she was going to do about child poverty. I thought we'd hear something stunning. What we heard instead was that she's going to ban ticket scalping. So "Ban ticket scalping" was the topic in the post-Cabinet press conference from our Prime Minister of New Zealand. A whole lot of people who are supposedly affected by all the things they want to do in this Budget are not actually going to be worried about ticket scalping. What they want to know is what this Government is prepared to do. What we have seen today—yet another example on KiwiBuild—is a Government that's happy to sign up all sorts of contracts and not get much done. Contracts without an end contracts that just go on and on and on—currently $5.5 billion spent up in advance for 10000 houses. The problem with that is that we've got 300 buyers interested—10000 houses. That's 10000 houses over the next 10 years and we have a Government that's also committed to 100000 houses over those same 10 years. So if you take $5.5 billion and extrapolate that out by the power of 10 that's $55 billion set aside—or actually one of the liabilities that this Government is signing us up for as fast as it can. The trouble is that we've got 330 people interested in a KiwiBuild house. These are the sorts of decisions that actually make this Budget quite an important Budget coming up as to how this Government intends to address this issue. So when I look at the Budget Policy Statement how could anyone not be in favour of supporting mental well-being for all New Zealanders with a special focus on under-24-year-olds? We know that the Government has set up yet another working group on mental health—230-something they have now—yet another one. We had some really good stuff happening in mental health that we'd started particularly around corrections and police. We had funding for police and the reason why we had funding for police around mental health is that police are primarily the first responders in any mental health issue. Whether it is a suicide attempt whether it's a suicide that has been completed or whether it's a self-harming it's the police who are phoned straight away and ambulance as well at that stage. I was so distressed that the incoming Government cancelled the police's mental health funding that we had set aside from the justice sector fund for projects like this. That was an absolute disgrace. Now that was 18 months ago. Let's see if this Budget actually reinstates that money—let's see if it does. I doubt it will because so much money is having to be put aside for things like KiwiBuild and other things of that ilk—low-value spend unfortunately—because it is going to take up a lot of the fiscal room that the Minister of Finance has. We also see here that he would like to support a thriving nation in the digital age through innovation social and economic opportunities. Well I think that's a good thing. I think most of us would agree on this side that that's a good thing. We're not quite sure how a capital gains tax is going to help that. Most of us would think that that's going to actually stop a lot of innovation and let's say investment in the digital age. One of the reasons I say that is that many start-up companies—particularly in the IT software area—don't have a lot of money to start with. So what they generally do is they tend to pay people quite a minimum wage and at the same time they give them shares as part of their salary. We had to address this issue when I was the Minister of Revenue in the last Government. What we saw was that if we had gone after those shares in terms of capital gain we would have forced those software development companies that have set up in places like Cambridge and all around regional New Zealand as well as in the metropolitan areas offshore. That is actually a very serious issue because we would all agree I think in this House that the digital age is very much here to stay and it is only going to grow more important for a country like New Zealand. Let's have a look at some of the issues that this Government is going to have to face in this Budget. We know that tourism has been a huge bonus for New Zealand over the last 10 years. We are very fortunate that we have had some very good tourism numbers coming through in increases. That's not something we can guarantee and I think that the Budget Policy Statement would have done well to address the fact that we are living in quite uncertain times. I say that having heard Air New Zealand the biggest provider I would have thought of tourism services in New Zealand saying just the other day that international tourism numbers are down. We know that China cancelled—unilaterally it appears—the Year of Tourism between China and New Zealand. That is something we should be very concerned about. So I would like to have seen these issues addressed. It's all very well saying "Let's all be happy and have great well-being" and we all agree with saying "Let's all be happy and have great well-being." but also we have to have a way of encouraging business at the same time and encouraging good employment encouraging good wages encouraging people to stay in New Zealand and encouraging tourism. But what we don't seem to see in this Budget Policy Statement is any statement at all about where the money comes from—not a dicky-bird about where the money comes from. It's all just "Let's have world peace and happiness." Everyone wants world peace and happiness—especially me because everyone in this House will know what a peaceful person I am. We do want to have that but you've got to have the money to produce all the things you want to give away as a Government and that's the issue here. There's nothing solid nothing concrete about building the economy. They're talking about it but there's nothing in here in the detail."