Smith DamienDAMIEN SMITH (ACT): I wonder what Mr Thomas Piketty would make of this in terms of the structuring and hastiness of this social policy. I was very interested in how the coronation was met between this payment and rising sea levels and methane emissions by the associate health Minister so that left me rather confused.In terms of prioritising funding from this—let me just imagine what happened in Cabinet. Newshub poll came in three-quarters of New Zealanders said This Government's just not helping with the cost of living." and everybody sat around and went "What do we do? What money have we got? Let's reel a billion dollars out of the last of the COVID fund." "Yeah. That's good. Let's use that to give a payment to everyone out there and that'll get us through that two-month period." I think that's probably what happened. I think it's probably very simple to ascertain that several of the Ministers would probably have went "Hmm. This is not maybe the way to go." but public pressure is an amazing thing when it comes to polling and politics at this time.That's what the ACT alternative budget which is fully costed would give people thousands of dollars to help with this crisis; not $27 a week.Hon David Bennett: What about services?DAMIEN SMITH: And then—we have kept essential health services; we've just reduced Government spending. That is the logical way for the Government to have embraced the significant milestone in this Budget today. But nope the golden goose doesn't apply to Kiwis. A key part of the Budget is to tokenise payments which are exciting a lot of young people actually tonight around the country. People between 18 and 20 are all thinking "Right here's some money to go down to the pub. It's all good." There's four in a household that's a good old session if you get these payments rolling in. Surely that should have been thought about and tested as being inappropriate; a mass blanket payment under this Budget.So if you're weighing up what's happening in Australia there's still a $6000 gap between what they earn and what we earn. Structurally we've got to embrace getting this right and doing it right as opposed to this type of payment.If you look at the COVID fund and the uses over the period it's had many many iterations but not one like this sugar hit that's come out today. We have to believe that a cost the living payment for a short period of time isn't going to solve the long-term problems of inflation in this country. The Green Party have recognised that the cost of rentals the costs of superannuates people without savings—there are social issues out there that over the last four years has led to a gap significantly increasing between what people were paying in tax with a Labour Government and now what they're paying today.In terms of oversight of this payment it must be pretty embarrassing to a Government and Treasury to be not on the same page. This is the cost of a vote I guess in terms of pacifying people. But what happens now in six months' time in a year's time at the next Budget? Will we have the tax cut Budget then or should it have been done now? In terms of our view of the world it's clear that the Government sees and Mr Robertson sees Kiwi people's money as being something that is to be consumed by the Government and even before it's taxed. So he's once again used a Budget to reward political support.We have to be honest it says that this cost of living payment doesn't really secure anybody's future tonight. It helps with someone that comes in and buys a couple of loaves of bread some cheese maybe a little bit of butter—and I've probably overestimated those.So in terms of taking this seriously we still want to encourage the Minister in the next Budget to adopt ACT's two-step principles of reducing income tax for hard-working people to 17.5 percent up to $70000 which would help nurses it would help families it would help teachers it would help anybody who now the Labour Party are recognising aren't the squeezed middle after this speech tonight. It would allow a top tax rate of 28 percent to be put in place for people who already pay their tax at the top end and work hard and contribute to this economy.Inflation is not going away. The Reserve Bank have said that in the Monetary Policy Statement next week. The Official Cash Rate uplift will be heading towards 3 percent to 3.5 percent which means extensive raising of interest rate payments in mortgages and also if you've got young people under the roof of your house the expenses are going to go up even further. This is a very serious situation. Growth estimated at now 2 percent per annum as opposed to 5 percent. So we have a lot of forces that is going to cause potential instability.The appetite for Government spending is just insatiable; we'll know in two years' time whether it's worked and/or we've got billions of dollars that have been put out the door that haven't got any traction haven't achieved any results—especially in the health sector—and we know that people aren't going to stop complaining tomorrow about the cost of living crisis that is here in New Zealand. This is not going to stop this. There'll be another poll in a months' time which will still say people have still got the same issues that they have and nothing has been fixed by this Government. So we will be opposing this bill but we'd like to speak to the Minister and the parties about a more extensive tax structuring philosophy when it comes to the Budget next year."