Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Speaker. Like the new Leader of the Opposition Todd Muller I'm something of a political nerd in that I got interested in politics at a very young age and I've been listening to Budgets literally since I was a teenager. In the early days of listening to Budgets they used to be read at 7.30 in the evening as I recall and they were full of detail about how much petrol would be from midnight and how much cigarettes would be from midnight and how much alcohol would be from midnight. Then in the hours between the reading of the Budget and the midnight of that night there would be a rush on petrol stations and dairies to buy tobacco and cigarettes and on bottle stores to buy beer wine and spirits and I didn't think ever that I would in my lifetime get to experience a Budget of the sort that we have had this year in 2020. Not only are Budgets read at a different time but they are fundamentally structured in a different way and this year's Budget was structured in a way that I acknowledge—as do my colleagues on the Opposition benches—was done under incredibly difficult circumstances for the Government. The Minister of Finance has had to change what was inevitably his master plan for Budget 2020 probably something that he was well advanced in his thinking about towards the end of last year. Then he's had to pivot away to try and accommodate the challenges that we as a nation find ourselves confronting and the world indeed confronts internationally. But little did I expect that in a Budget that has literally sprayed around billions upon billions upon billions of taxpayers' borrowed money there would be so little focus and so little actual inspiration out of the opportunity that investing that money could have for the long-term benefit of New Zealanders of their way of life and of their long-term health and wellbeing and ultimately for the benefit of our natural environment. That's disappointing to me as the National Party's environment spokesperson and climate change spokesperson and now looking at Resource Management Act reform because here was an opportunity when so much more could have been done—when so much more could have been done—and what did we find? Well actually very little in the way of inspiration. I listened a couple of speeches ago to Marama Davidson the co-leader of the Green Party. She spent 10 minutes speaking about aspects of social policy and of social justice and spent about 30 seconds speaking on the Budget when she was required to do so. But not once—not once—did the co-leader of the Green Party for goodness' sake talk about the environment or talk about our natural resources. Not once did she talk about climate change. Not once did she involve herself in the name and understanding that New Zealanders would expect from a party that used to profess to be an environmental party. They've so long since forgotten their role as being an advocate for the environment that the co-leader now in a Budget debate speech like this simply doesn't even mention the environment and that saddens me. Some of the most difficult conversations I've had to have over the last month or two have been with constituents in my Coromandel electorate and they are people who have been impacted and affected dramatically by the events of the last couple of months. The economy in the Coromandel is by and large made up of small-business people: sole traders family-run enterprises—people who have been hit very hard. Some of them are farmers some of them used to run tourist operations some of them used to run international tourist lodges and some of them now no longer have businesses. Some of them have had to make some of the most difficult heart-wrenching decisions of their working lives of their business lives in terms of laying off staff. I particularly recall one tourist lodge operator in my electorate and he and his wife had over 20 or more years built up a business largely focused on international tourism. He rang me and said Scott every single one of my forward bookings for the next six months is cancelled." This was early on in the piece and I suspect that even more have cancelled since then. Effectively his business got turned off like a light switch and it's not a big business. He said "I employ four or five people but that's four or five people that won't be working and won't be employed in my Coromandel community and their families won't have a breadwinner."—their families won't have a breadwinner. What he was most concerned about was he said "Well look the wage subsidy's good as far as it goes but it doesn't help my business. It doesn't sustain my business. It doesn't make my previously viable profitable growing business sustainable in the short- medium- or long-term future." And I think that's very sad. We heard today in question time the Prime Minister who simply didn't get it—who simply doesn't understand how economies work and how businesses work and how enterprises work and the stresses and strains that go on small-business owners and operators when they have to make hard decisions about putting off staff who in many cases have been long-serving hard-working dedicated members of the family so to speak in terms of that business. I think that's very sad. One of the other sad things that was in the Budget was the lack of focus that was applied to the spraying of $1.1 billion of Budget allocation into the environment area in terms of make-work for what the Government expects or hopes on a wing and promise may be 11000 jobs for people who are going to be supposedly employed catching rats or hunting possums or pulling out wilding pines or otherwise doing that kind of work on the conservation estate and maybe doing a bit of riparian planting around the place as well. Now a little bit of quick maths: $1.1 billion 11000 jobs; that's $100000 per job that they've allocated—$100000 a job that they've allocated—for that funding. I'd like to have hoped that that would have been more focused. In a previous life I ran a company that sold and manufactured and distributed PPE or personal protective equipment and to use another acronym that was in the tail end of the days of the famous PEP schemes—the Project Employment Programme—which were a bit like this scheme that this Government is hoping to employ 11000 people with with $1.1 billion at $100000 a job to do some make-work stuff in our environmental area. That's good as far as it goes but I can tell the Government one thing for nothing and that is that of the $100000 that's been allocated to each and every one of those jobs the vast majority of that won't be going to the people who are doing the rat catching the possum hunting the riparian planting or the wilding pine pulling out. It'll be going into servicing those jobs and those companies that sell and manufacture and distribute PPE will be issuing a pair of boots a Swanndri a hard hat a pair of gloves a raincoat and probably a pair of gumboots for every single one of those jobs and what will happen is that those people who take those jobs up will find that working through a long cold hard winter in our natural environment as beautiful as it is is blimmin hard work. It's very hard work. Many of them actually won't last or stay more than a month or two or three and when they go all that PPE will go with them—it usually does—and then someone else will be employed and a new set of PPE will be bought and issued to another worker who'll do another couple of months. Now that's not a grand vision for our environment. Surely—surely—a Government of inspiration of aspiration particularly when it comes to the environment and natural resources could have been more imaginative more targeted and more on message in terms of the investment that they were making with borrowed taxpayers' money to the tune of $1.1 billion in terms of environmental spending. I think they could have done better and it saddens me that they didn't and that they didn't have an opportunity. But not only that there was no progress in this Budget towards any of the lofty goals of environmental aspiration that they so often used to talk about only a couple of years ago. Where's the progress on the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary? Where's the progress on improving water quality? Where's the progress on what they said was going to be a tax on exported bottled water? No this is a Government that has an opportunity to invest wisely given the authority that they have to borrow extensively on behalf of New Zealanders for our future—not only our future personal wellbeing but the future wellbeing of our environment and our natural resources—and this is an opportunity that they have squandered. They have squandered it poorly and that disappoints me enormously that they haven't been better at it."