Willis NicolaHon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): The current Leader of the Opposition decided to begin his speech talking about choices and is it any surprise when everyone behind him was sitting there thinking about choices: thinking first about a choice the New Zealand people made so definitively to boot them out and then thinking about the choice they need to make in the coming months about who in fact should lead them into the future. So it's right that it's on the Leader of the Opposition's mind.But actually that's not the speech I came here to give. I came here to give a more serious speech: a requiem for the worker's party because not content with delivering an intergenerational cost of living crisis to the working people of New Zealand we now have a Labour Party whose reason for being whose very reason for getting up in the morning is to rail against tax relief for working people. This so-called worker's party has its one political reason for being and it is to rail against the right of working people to hold on to just a little bit more of their own money.Now New Zealanders have had no change in tax rates or thresholds since 2010. For 14 years workers in this country—middle-income earners squeezed; middle-income families—have been taxed more and more as their incomes have risen and as inflation bequeathed to them by that party has pushed them into higher tax brackets. In 2011 a median-wage earner paid 15.5 percent of their average income in tax. Today that number is 20.6 percent and I know that these may just sound like numbers but can I tell you what they mean to people. That increase in effective tax is the difference between families being able to get their kids swimming lessons. It is the feeling in the supermarket aisle that stops mum putting a pack of chocolate biscuits there. That 5 percent is the number that makes people a little less hopeful each week because the pay packet gets stretched thinner and thinner and the idea of saving some disappears. The idea that their work and effort will let them get ahead disappears. Here on this side of the House we take that very seriously because we believe that those who work hard for a living deserve the rewards of their effort and what do those members opposite believe actually at the end of the day? Well what they believe is that if they only printed enough money if they only borrowed enough money and if they only spent enough money then every tear from every eye would be wiped and was it? Well no because all the while when they were spending New Zealanders' hard-earned wages the wait-lists grew the education standards declined violent crime rose and dairies were ram-raided. The members opposite have a special talent actually—let's give them that—of spending more and delivering less. An 80 percent increase in spending in six short years an outstandingly bad cost of living crisis and what do we have to show for it? Oh three waters the TVNZ-RNZ merger KiwiBuild Auckland light rail—failed initiative after failed initiative. But don't worry because what we also got was 18500 more public servants—so that really made the difference—and sky-high inflation and who paid for it all? Who paid for all of this? Working people paid for it. They paid for it with higher taxes they paid for it at the supermarket checkout aisle and they paid for it with crumbling public services. Well our Government is cleaning up the mess. We will deliver what working people deserve what is overdue to them and what that party would deny them and that is tax relief. I cannot in my heart understand why the people opposite would deny them that—the opportunity to have a little bit more cash in their bank accounts each week—because the people opposite make the choice that they think it's more important that they spend New Zealanders' money. We will match that with targets with accountability for the performance of our public services with more police and with rescuing the school lunch programme that they didn't leave a dollar for. We will drive better results. We will spend New Zealanders' money with the care it deserves because it's theirs—they earned it.