Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Well thank goodness that's over. That's 10 minutes of my life I will never ever get back. That was a terrible wander through the broad subject and I do hope that we get a better quality of debate and speech from the members on the other side than that. What a difference three months makes because when this Budget Policy Statement was written and analysed by the Finance and Expenditure Committee things were very very different. About the only thing that's the same now is the fact that we've got the same Minister of Finance although he's got the wrong photo. He's grinning from ear to ear about this document. He's not smiling now. He's not smiling now because things have materially changed even in the three months since this statement was written. Actually there wasn't a lot of good news despite the gilding of the lily by the Minister in this statement because things were already going sour on the Government's watch. GDP growth was going down. Job creation was going down. Bear in mind that this Government inherited an economy that was creating 10000 jobs per month and by sleight of hand they managed to reduce that by 60 percent. Not in a recession and not in tough economic times like the previous National Government had to deal with but actually the very best of times when commodity prices were high and growing when inflation was low and when the conditions for growth and supporting the very families that they describe their Budgets as about—being wellbeing—and they've managed to reverse that trend. I frankly think one of the biggest mistakes the previous Government did was it didn't put a big flashy neon light sign on its Budget because it knew that every single Budget was about wellbeing—every single one. Every investment that we make into the people of New Zealand is to improve their wellbeing. Well words are fine; actions are what really counts when it comes to Budgets and Budget policy and the fact is we are now looking at a very very different picture. We started from a low base a much lower base than our economy should have been at and we're going backwards. Some of those things are matters that the Government does not control—and I'm going to talk about COVID-19 and the impact on both the economic update and the Budget which is being prepared—but some of them are. The imposition of significant costs on business and on families and on job growth is going to have a material negative effect and undermine—and actually we can throw this update out. In fact I do feel—I almost feel—a bit sorry for the Minister of Finance in trying to come up with the mathematical alchemy that he will need to put together a Budget in May that he can still call about wellbeing". This will be about not wellbeing but about being well because the COVID-19 outbreak has the potential to significantly undermine our country's wellbeing in the short term. It already has done economically and the degree to which the economic pain lasts will be a function of the Government's management of the health effects of the coronavirus outbreak and I have to say as shadow Minister of Health that my assessment of the Government's performance so far has been that it has been slow and lacking in energy. I want to compare what the Government has or has not done with the responses of countries with whom we and our friends compare ourselves. Even as recently as today our neighbours across the Tasman have committed a billion dollars.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Come back to the bill.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I'm sure they appropriated it Madam Speaker and it has a very significant effect—DEPUTY SPEAKER: It needs to relate to this.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well it does because it is very much—DEPUTY SPEAKER: You need to do that.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well it's a broad-ranging debate I would suggest.DEPUTY SPEAKER: It's not that broad. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well it's broad enough.DEPUTY SPEAKER: It is on the Budget Policy Statement. So relate it to that.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Right—I certainly shall. Things are bad and they're going to get worse. That is the simple measure. Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki: Pessimist.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The member says I'm being a pessimist and I think that was the accusation that was put by Fletcher Tabuteau to the previous speaker. I think there is a big difference between rhetoric and hyperbole and the reality of what's going on. Call me a number of things but you would never call me an optimist when it comes to the situation that we face and the conditions within which Budget 2020 is going to be written. All of the slogans and all of the fancy hyperbole that comes out of the Government is not going to deliver the improvements that this country needs and the strategies to keep New Zealanders well through a significant economic and health crisis.In particular the very immediate effects of that on the Budget Policy Statement has been on our balance sheet because our ACC investments our superannuation fund the New Zealand Superannuation Fund New Zealand fund investment vehicles are all taking significant hits to the point where the projections of income from those investments are going to be materially downgraded. That's the stuff that potentially the Government doesn't control.What it does control is spending and what Treasury also said in its economic update was that the financial risks to our DHBs in not meeting their eye-wateringly high projected deficits for 2019-20 are very real. Indeed that's been borne out by the fact that in the five months to date the combined DHB deficits are now 24 percent higher than they were this time last year. So we could throw those projections out. Treasury were right that that fiscal risk is being realised and the Government is going to need to find probably I would predict—because they didn't fund last year's deficits—somewhere in the region of between $500 million and $600 million just to stand still. None of that is included in the numbers that underpin these two reports.And that's before we get to the effects of COVID-19 and what we're hearing from the health sector is that that investment is not being made. We see our friends in Australia in the United States appropriating over US$8 billion over the weekend taking dramatic steps to reduce the financial impact of that and appropriate it through their Budgets. We've done nothing.We've got doctors telling the media that the DHBs are asking them to fund their own personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep those patients out of the very hospitals that the DHBs run. That is outrageous. It is penny-pinchy and it is not the actions of a Government that portrays its budgeting as being about wellbeing. And we're only at the start of the slide. I know that if we don't get a sustained community outbreak it will be because we got lucky. But if we do it will be because we did not take energetic proactive nimble steps to prevent the virus being spread.The Minister of Health in question time talked about how great the close-contact precautions to keep people safe from that virus were and yet being in a mosh pit at a concert with lots of sweaty people around them within a metre doesn't meet his definition of close contact. For that reason the risks of a sustained community outbreak and the significant healthcare social and fiscal costs to this country are significant and none of that's mentioned here. None of that is mentioned here.Never mind what kind of response they're going to give not a single dollar of extra money has gone into prevention or control or recovery. We've got our fingers crossed on the Treasury benches and that's not good enough. This Budget Policy Statement is a relic. It is out of date three months after it was written. The conditions on which it was built poor though they were have changed for the materially worse. That worries me. I think the Government needs to be much more realistic. People like Tamati Coffey and Fletcher Tabuteau can actually be a little more measured and a little less of a cheerleader for a Government that's failing to deliver for New Zealanders—because talk's cheap; actions matter.National delivers. It delivered through two earthquakes. It delivered through a global financial crisis and it will deliver again and the country will not need to wait. It will deliver from day one and that day is about 197 days away."