6. Question No. 6—FinanceNICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of FinanceQuestion No. 6—Finance6. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all of his statements and actions on tax?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes in the context in which they were made and undertaken.Nicola Willis: Has he considered that a responsible non-inflationary way to provide working Kiwis tax reduction would be to pay for it by stopping wasteful Government spending?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We are always taking a look at how we can reprioritise and save money and the Prime Minister's already given a number of examples of that to this point. It is always important when looking at the balance of a Budget to be able to say how you'll pay for the things that you want to do.Nicola Willis: Why won't he reduce spending on consultants comms advisers and pet projects to allow New Zealanders to keep more of what they earn?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well it's interesting the member raises that because while I—and we've already stated in the House that we do want to see spending on consultants and contractors come down. The member needs to answer a fairly basic mathematical question: how it is that the $400 million she has identified which has already now been used to pay for two National policies will somehow or other fund ongoing costs of billions of dollars of tax cuts. It doesn't add up.Nicola Willis: When he rules out significant tax reduction in this Budget does he consider that inflation adjusting tax thresholds or introducing a tax-free threshold would be significant?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The Prime Minister has indicated in his pre-Budget speech that the Budget will not contain major tax reform. In any Budget it is important to make sure that the numbers do add up that you can explain how you pay for things—and on this side of the House we make sure that we can do that. All parties at the election will be judged on whether they can do that.Nicola Willis: Can he explain why he is struggling to understand how the Government could deliver $1.8 billion of tax relief yet he very happily found more than $9 billion in last year's Budget to add to the operating allowance?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Firstly tax cuts and the tax cuts that the member is promoting will be ongoing. They are always there; they are baked in. On this side of the House we have continued to prioritise investment into health investment into housing investment into education investment into supporting our lowest-income New Zealanders. This is not some zero-sum game for the member. If the member wants to propose those tax cuts she has to explain what programmes will be cut.Nicola Willis: Why is it that under his reign as finance Minister the Government is spending $52 billion more every year—a 69 percent increase—and yet we still have deteriorating results in our health services our education services and a ram raid every day?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The Government is extremely proud of the record that we have had in making sure that unemployment is at record low levels. We have been fiscally responsible to the point that our debt levels continue to be among the lowest with countries that we compare ourselves to. Through this period of time that we've been in Government we've also had to deal with the COVID pandemic a period of time where we did spend money to make sure that New Zealanders stayed alive and to make sure that New Zealanders stayed in their jobs. During that period of time the National Party constantly called for us to spend more money during that period of time. I'm proud of what we have done through difficult times and we will continue to support New Zealanders through difficult times.