Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Mr Speaker. I must say having listened to the member who's resumed her seat Deborah Russell this is not this peace and love out there in the community. I don't see it recently. People are getting sick to death of being told to go round and be kind to each other when all they want is the Government to be competent. I think that instead of having a bill called the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill we could just have instead a Public Finance (Competence) Amendment Bill". People actually want the Government to do its job and what we're seeing is an awful lot of talking about how it's going to be peace and light and everyone's going to just be happy and friendly and everything's going well and we're going to start measuring it when we've got a Government that no longer measures the sorts of things that a lot of people think a Government should—for instance whether or not they're actually undertaking the COVID-19 tests on people when they come through the border. People strangely enough think that that's actually quite important and I know that the other side might not like hearing that but that is actually the sort of thing that people want to know about.They also want to know that something's happening about reducing assaults on children and yet this Government has actually scrapped the targets about reducing assaults on children. As part of wellbeing they might want to consider whether or not we could be looking at increasing participation in early childhood education and yet that target that the National-led Government had has been scrapped by this Government. They might also as part of wellbeing think that it's a good idea to increase infant immunisation rates but again that target has been scrapped by this current Government. The public might also think that part of a wellbeing amendment bill might actually be focused on things like reducing total crime and reducing reoffending and of course those have also been scrapped by this Government. This is a bill which is all about promoting an ideal which is that everyone's going to be all feeling well and it's all wonderful.Actually you can't legislate for that. It's not possible to legislate for people to be having good wellbeing. What it is possible to do is to actually have a Government showing competency. We talk about something like mental health. Huge amount of effort put into mental health over various years by very very many very deeply committed people who have tried their very best in difficult situations. Instead what we've seen is a big announcement in last year's Budget on mental health funding. The trouble is almost none of it's spent. What we saw instead on the ground was that the mental-health workers who had been for some years working with Counties Manukau police Christchurch police and also Wellington in the watch-houses—or as they call it the custody suites—removed; removed these people from the front line where they were doing a tremendous amount of good. Where's that in the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill? Where's that? Where's the practical application of wellbeing? And the answer is that this Government's simply not up to it.The member who's resumed her seat has talked about issues like jobs as being very important for people's wellbeing—it certainly is. And what we've seen so far are 40000 people whose jobs have been lost through absolutely no fault of their own. And that is the sort of thing that we're going to be seeing more and more in this country. Once the wage subsidy finishes once people start to realise that there are no jobs that they would be otherwise expecting when we see a generation coming through that is looking at their education having been completed and no job to go to that is what's going to affect people much more than a bill coming through Parliament telling us that we're going to take wellbeing seriously. People want their jobs and the one thing that we know from any person is that being able to work to be able to feel that they can contribute in a positive way and to feel that their contribution is valued and properly rewarded is the single-biggest thing that anybody can do to help someone else's wellbeing. That is also the single-biggest thing that anyone can do for themselves to help themselves mentally physically and financially.It is really important that New Zealanders have some confidence in this Parliament in being able to help set some of the leaders around how we can keep people in work. What we can do for instance is we could as part of this bill be thinking about whether or not we could be fast-tracking any infrastructure projects which we've talked a lot about in Parliament but seen nothing of. We could as part of this bill be thinking about how we can help get people back into work where they have lost their jobs. Think of all the people in the tourist industry who have lost their jobs. Where's their wellbeing going to be on any matrix that this Government may wish to implement? It's going to be pretty bad.I saw just recently on television a story of a man who is a pilot who is now working sorting mail for New Zealand Post. He showed the most incredible mental strength of being able to adjust his expectation of what he is able to do at this stage and showed incredible resilience. Most people in New Zealand will not have that sort of resilience. Most people will not be able to adjust themselves their expectations and their own mental health to be able to deal with the situation that's coming down the track at them and that is the economic crisis that we are moving into. This is actually a time when the core functions of Government need to be very focused on how to reduce compliance costs to reduce costs generally on businesses and to keep people in work. As that gentleman showed on television the other night all work is good work if you're paid for it and your health is actually part of that equation.Work is incredibly important. I am seeing people who are now deeply angry that their wellbeing has been put at risk by the lack of quarantine at the border. I have seen people who have moved from hoping everything was fine and their wellbeing would be fine to now wondering if they have not been told the full truth about what was happening and that is what we're seeing. That is the single-biggest concern—the fact that they do not trust what is being told to them on the health front. So how can they possibly trust what is being said on the economic front? This country is going through and is about to move into a very very dangerous economic time—a dangerous economic time for generations to have to deal with to repay debt to be able to deal with the fact that a lot of people who are used to working are no longer going to be able to work. They are going to deal with the fact that many students will be coming out of training and not being able to work. What this Government should be focused on is how to get people into work and one of the best ways is to make sure that those businesses that employ people are focused and able to actually employ people.Instead almost everything we've seen from this Government has been about restricting employers' ability to employ people by putting rules around them making it harder to take people on who you want to give a chance to. These are the sorts of people who are going to need help and the best way of doing it is not about imposing more costs and restrictions on employers but actually helping those employers to be able to take risks and to give people an opportunity. Most people in this country are not employed by the Government. We should be very deeply grateful for that. That actually means that most people are engaged in activities that the Government shouldn't have to constantly interfere in and most people are employed in small and medium size businesses. And it's those people those small and medium size businesses and the owners of those businesses the people who have risked their own capital and in many cases their entire financial wherewithal to employ other people—they're the people who need help. They're not the people who are going to be impressed by a bill called the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill.What they're going to be doing is saying "When is this Government going to give businesses a break? When's this Government going to listen to small businesses? When are they going to look at those who actually employ people who risk everything to do that and give those people a hand?" And that hand is not a hand to slap them down; it's a hand to build them up."