SpeechFLETCHER TABUTEAU (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise in the House this afternoon on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to this Budget debate. As those members opposite and the team on this side will know this is a Budget about jobs. It's about jobs it's about jobs now it's about making more jobs in the not too distant future and then making even more jobs through infrastructure and productivity as we move forward.But Madam Speaker this is the first time I've had a chance to speak in the House in this reduced size capacity so I just wanted the opportunity to acknowledge yourself to acknowledge the members opposite to thank the previous speaker Jonathan Young for example for his contribution—90 percent of it he got right. His message was bang on the money. It is about jobs; it is about employment. What the member who spoke previously failed to note was that this Government is proudly doing the mahi to make sure that today tomorrow and the day after our focus is on New Zealand and New Zealanders and their jobs.So that is what this Budget is about and that is what gives me pride to stand up in this House of Representatives today to speak to a response to one of the most unprecedented disruptions to the world's economy to the lives of people around the entire world. We have seen disruptions before but we have seen nothing like this. The uncertainty around the world and the struggle to plan to look forward for a lot of the economies is stifling it's scary and what we are doing here is making sure that not only New Zealand businesses or New Zealand households but everyday Kiwis know that this Government has got their back.I just wanted to take this 10-minute contribution to explain how we are doing that.Simeon Brown: Oh please!FLETCHER TABUTEAU: So just for the member who interrupted Simeon Brown can I suggest he take another poll perhaps on last year's Budget and what we should be spending on that. It might be as useful as the poll he gave the Twitterazzi a couple of days ago which was a complete waste of time.But I digress. I just need to acknowledge the new Leader of the Opposition Mr Muller and the deputy leader. They have taken on an incredible gargantuan task of reconnecting with an electorate and it's not so much wishing them the best of luck but good on them. It was a successful bloodless coup d'état and all power to them within their electorate as it were.Let me first briefly outline the broad strokes of the Budget before I go into detail. So this is a $50 billion COVID-19 response—a recovery fund as I said before that is about jobs. But what probably has been mentioned a few times in the House and bears repeating is that the forecasts predict based on the budgets provided to the public a return to unemployment rates of around or less than 4.5 percent—probably closer to 4 percent—by 2022. We are looking at actual economic growth next year when and as this Budget takes hold and the wonderful people of New Zealand are allowed to get back out there and do their thing.This has been a Budget that is about saving jobs and the other side of the House seem reluctant to acknowledge that actually in saving jobs right now we are saving the economy and empowering it to move forward to move forward quickly and efficiently. I say that because most employers—well all the employers I've talked to—want to keep their people on board. They've invested in their staff they've spent money they've taken risk on the people working for them and they would rather hold on to the staff they have. And for the benefit of those members opposite I just put a simple economic equation in front of them to ponder this afternoon. In a very basic economic model there are two players in an economy—households and firms. In that model there are two lots of flows interaction between those two important sectors. You've got wages and goods and services going from firms to households. What are households flowing back? They are flowing their worker resource and their consumption. That seems to have been lost by the members opposite. It's an interdependent relationship and this side of the House as illustrated in this Budget response has shown that we recognise the interdependent nature of those two core parts of an economy.Yes absolutely talk about small business and our response to them—and if I have time I will go into some of the detail on some of what we've done—but you have to be able to talk about what it is we have done in terms of saving jobs through the wage subsidy scheme but making sure that consumers those households have that income in their pockets. Without households having money now there is nothing to spend in small businesses—or the big ones. So businesses need that confidence. They need to know that as they spend money on themselves as they take on those interest-free loans as they apply for those tax breaks—the carry-forward tax breaks for example—and take the risk and invest in themselves and make the hard decision to move forward now in this COVID environment—because I do know how hard it is for them—their customers have money. But they need to know also that the Government is there to support them.Barbara Kuriger: Tell us about their constraints. FLETCHER TABUTEAU: I'll talk to you separately and after this Ms Kuriger. So what they need to know is that small businesses are being looked after as well and so I wanted to bring to the House several examples. The first one that comes to mind is the loss carry-back scheme. It's a $3 billion fund from the Inland Revenue Department funded by this coalition Government which says to small businesses—well businesses of up to 50 employees; so it is about small businesses—Go and access that money. Go and look at your tax situation from the past. We will help you bring that forward as real money right now so that you can look at real fixed costs as you make decisions about moving forward." Not just the variable costs such as wages and the like but fixed costs around rent insurance those kinds of things—there is real money there.There's also the opportunity and I think this needs to be promoted more for more promotion there around small businesses being able to take out interest-free loans—interest-free loans. Several thousand firms have taken up the opportunity but many more could avail themselves of that opportunity right now.The one I wanted to talk about particularly out of this Budget was the research and development tax credit programme. New Zealand First is proud that in coming into this coalition we negotiated the return of a research and development credit programme. For those listening it was scrapped by the National Government almost as soon as they came into Government back in the day. We brought it back and we fixed it up because yes we acknowledge there were issues with it at the time but they just needed to be fixed and fixed them we have. What the Budget has done is make sure that small innovative firms who are looking to create jobs through innovation and that research and development opportunity can actually collect the cash now and not claim it back as a loss or as part of their revenue programme later—get it now.So I had about 20 more pages of notes on what we're doing for New Zealand business but this is a balanced response from the Government and we have done a lot of work to empower New Zealand. Thank you very much."