Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Well thank you Madam Speaker. It's my pleasure to be speaking on the Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and I have no doubt that every member of the House certainly those who are going to speak on it will have dived deeply into all 1024 pages of the Supplementary Estimates of Appropriations which as the Minister eventually pointed out has eight days to run before we reach the end of this. I must say I was super impressed with the Minister's ability to gild the lily about this Government's performance and then to portray himself as some kind of grinchy Minister of Finance controlling the spending with really super-tight fingers on the Government's purse. He said this is a limit not a target. Well actually he should've taken some of his own advice.Let's start with the positive. We are now coming to the end of the most extraordinary period fiscally I think this country has ever seen certainly in peacetime. It was necessary and appropriate for the Government to do a lot of things quickly and expensively. We acknowledge that. We supported those changes through firstly last year's imprest supply which basically wrote a blank cheque to the Government for about $50 billion. As the Minister points out these were in areas that were vitally important: the wage subsidy personal protective equipment managed isolation and quarantine the vaccine roll-out—matters that as he said were in response to COVID-19."He talked also interestingly about the Resurgence Support Payment for businesses but boy they were led kicking and screaming into doing that and still maintain that the wage subsidy was somehow a support to business. Well actually it wasn't. Businesses were the agents between the Government and the employees who were out of work potentially at risk of losing their jobs. It was a necessary and appropriate response but let's not pretend it supported business. It supported their workers but even in service industries with high levels of personnel costs that would still only constitute about 66 to 70 percent of the cost base of an average business. It was those non-wage costs that were killing business last year: the rent the leases the stock that was already on the water and eventually needed to be paid for but couldn't be sold the relatively high fixed cost for things like IT and insurance. None of those were being helped by Government.The National Party called repeatedly for some support for business because after all we had a $50 billion fund. We knew that businesses could collapse and eventually the Government did I think come albeit not to a party but at least to some form of rescue. But to say that the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund has only been used in response to COVID-19 is simply not accurate. In fact it's disingenuous because there's no doubt that that $50 billion fund was a slush fund for Government largesse and for matters that had nothing to do with COVID. I'm indebted to the reporters of Stuff actually for reminding me of some of the things that the COVID Response and Recovery Fund was being spent on. This was as early as August last year they were saying this so goodness knows what the list might be by now.But I wonder if members were aware that the ad campaign featuring two naked actors as porn stars as part of a Netsafe initiative was actually paid by the COVID Response and Recovery Fund. Like what did our kids spend six weeks off school watching porn because of COVID? A long bow to draw to say that that was a COVID-related initiative. That was one of 250 programmes which Stuff analysed and found had little or nothing to do with COVID-19.Actually we only need to look into the transport space because I've been doing that quite a bit lately and see in here the eye-watering amount of money over $1.3 billion being taken out of COVID Response and Recovery and put into the National Land Transport Fund. Now it may be necessary to do that because frankly the Government has made such a ham-fisted job of getting any of these projects up off the drawing board and into reality that over time the costs of those projects have gone up. But let's not pretend it had anything to do with COVID—$1.3 billion and there are a number of examples right through the Supplementary Estimates of COVID being used as a slush fund to pay for other things.As the Minister of Finance pointed out $50 billion and 15 months later we've got $5.1 billion left for a so-called resurgence. Who honestly believes that if COVID makes a comeback to the degree that it did in February and March last year $5 billion would be anywhere near what we need? It will be chump change. The wage subsidy I think was $14 billion on its own for the six to 12 weeks that that needed to be paid out for—$14 billion—and he's trying to tell us that because they went on a drunken spending spree last year and left only $5.1 billion in the kitty we won't be back here with another urgent imprest supply bill if COVID hits again. Why? Because $50 billion wasn't going to be enough and the reason $50 billion wasn't going to be enough was because it wasn't spent on COVID.Now the other theme of these Estimates as was examined by the Finance and Expenditure Committee over the last couple of weeks was the degree to which certain things were not spent. I think this is an interesting study of the non-delivery of things that this Government has said it was going to do. Now we've heard a lot about mental health today and over the last few days—five acute beds out of a $1.9 billion appropriation in Budget 2019. We are returning to the centre mental health services appropriations because the Crown has not got their act together. The response from Treasury was to say this money has been returned to the Crown as part of the Budget process so this could be redirected towards other high-priority initiatives or used to improve the Crown's financial position. Well those are weasel words for saying the Government didn't do what it appropriated funds to do and so it's returning it back to the centre.There are a number of health examples just like that. Maternity services: now it was an interesting answer from Treasury about why we were actually returning maternity services funding and it was because forecast demand didn't eventuate. Now it is true: we are having fewer children—in fact a concerningly low number in our reproduction rate at the moment. But actually that's not why this is being returned. This is being returned because lead maternity carers are leaving in their droves and are no longer claiming under section 88 leaving mothers struggling to find a lead carer and having to rely on the district health board for core midwifery services when they go into labour and birth.Actually what the Government could've done—should've done and the previous Minister of Health is here and knows it—is that had he listened to the very report that was commissioned by the previous Government and recommended significant increases in maternity funding for lead carers we wouldn't have been in this situation for two reasons. There would've been more lead carers still in the business and those women would've been able to find a lead maternity carer and therefore this funding would've been spent.So there's two themes here: COVID as a slush fund and some serious non-delivery by this Government and frankly the worst examples of that are in our health system."