Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): There was a rebuke of the previous speaker in the Budget debate for reading his speech. Well there will be no chance that anybody on this side of the House will be able to read a prepared speech because we have literally had 3½ minutes to view and consider the bill.I don't think I have ever been as disappointed or disillusioned in speaking to a tax bill as I am right now because it is so deeply disappointing and underwhelming in the context of a Budget that is deeply disappointing and underwhelming. And boy does it focus on the wrong things. Yes it's important to support low-income New Zealanders and it's no wonder we have to because of the complete mess that this Government has led the economy into with massive increases in rent massive increases in electricity—and we haven't even seen the start of that—significant increases in other household expenses that low-income New Zealanders cannot afford. So in the context of that it was the right thing to do. But I would love to be standing here to talk about changes under urgency after a Budget that at least had its eyes up that had some aspiration for this country that supported the innovators that supported the entrepreneurs that simply supported working New Zealanders. There wasn't a thing in it for working New Zealanders; nothing for small businesses the very backbone of our economy; and the people that actually create the jobs that create the Crown revenue that enables us to pay for our social services and infrastructure—nothing for them. There could have been plenty to do. We could have been talking about a simple change—tax threshold changes—but no we're not doing that. This Government is too petty too mean too small-minded that they don't understand who actually creates the wealth in this country and it ain't the Government. The Government creates wealth by doing one thing and one thing only: taking a very long hand into the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders and lifting their cash out of it. The obligation on Government is to keep that action to a minimum but all this Government knows how to do is spend and borrow and hope. The saddest thing about this is that the vast bulk of the people who are going to have to repay the eye-watering level of debt that is being incurred by this Government over the next few years have not even been born yet. I will be long gone before we make inroads into the $180-odd billion of debt that we will reach if we're lucky. And I say if we're lucky" because this Budget gives no more money for the promises the profligate promises that they splashed around in election year. Remember the New Zealand Upgrade Programme? Of the $12 billion $6.8 billion was for transport projects. Most of that was for roading projects very few of which will be able to be afforded within the funding envelope that they appropriated last year. No more money for upgrades despite the fact that we know the Ministry of Transport and Treasury have said they're not going to be able to come within a bull's roar of doing those sorts of things with a—Chris Bishop: That's right. A 1 percent contingency.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —1 percent contingency. That's right Mr Bishop. So either of one of two things is going to happen. They either borrow more and leave a greater legacy of debt for our children and grandchildren or they break that promise and given that they're very good at making announcements and not delivering I think they'll break that promise. We could have been talking about relieving the regulatory burden not just the tax burden on hard-working New Zealanders but no. This is bereft of any ideas to take our economy into the 21st century. The innovation the technology the automation that is now being actively pursued by some companies here in New Zealand and many more around the world—nothing for them. You know they're spending $44 million on small business support which is less than half of what they're spending on the Hillside engineering workshops.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! This is not a Budget speech; it's on taxation so you need to link those to the bill.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The taxation pays for every single one of the things that I'm talking about—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah but that's not the bill.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —and I'm also talking about what we're not talking about and what we should be which is spending better and taxing less. But instead we are having to lift the minimum family tax credit to maintain the separation between those who work and those who don't. That's appropriate and the Minister said so. And the National Party strongly support—and in fact it is a core value that we reward hard-working New Zealanders while maintaining social supports for those who struggle to find work. But we're only having to do that because we have significantly increased benefits for those people who are not in work right now. Why are we having to do that? Because inflation on those core living costs for those low-income families is out of control. Rent is the number one. They were going to solve the housing crisis remember? A hundred thousand homes—871 built. They talk about increasing social housing. The easiest way to do that is to buy existing houses and that's what they've done. That's not increasing housing supply; it's taking houses out of the rental market and increasing rents. Low-income New Zealanders are struggling. They're struggling with their electricity bills and given what wholesale electricity rates are doing right now they can stand by for significantly higher costs for electricity—electricity I have to say that is now being generated by a substantial amount of imported Indonesian coal. If that isn't a metaphor for the abject failure of this Government to get on top of the issues facing our country this century I don't know what is. We've failed on COVID. We have failed to vaccinate our population fast enough so that we can open up our borders fast enough so that the people who we are going to be supporting through this Budget and through this tax change can actually get jobs. They crow about 221000 jobs in this Budget over five years—that's the forecast period. That's less than 40 percent of the jobs that were being created just 3½ short years ago. That is a scandal. We will be supporting this bill. It is the right thing to do. We need to maintain a separation between those who work and those who don't. Work must always be better financially socially for those people than not working. No one will find a pathway out of poverty on jobseeker support. That is the hopelessness that this Government is leaving them with—the sense of no hope so we're just going to beef up your supports and leave you on the scrap heap. That lacks imagination it lacks ambition and it's deeply deeply disappointing. Actually there'll probably be more job seekers not fewer. Some of the assumptions in Budget 2021 are frankly heroic in terms of Crown revenue projections in terms of job seeker numbers. There is nothing in here that even supports the 221000 jobs that they are projecting however modest that figure might be and that is also very disappointing. We'll talk more about that as this bill progresses and it will have to take in a broader context than just this on the face of it small change because what it does is it speaks to a much much broader failure. This is palliative this is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and that's what this Budget is. It's an ambulance for those desperately struggling people struggling under the mountain of extra costs that this Government has inflicted on them. It really is an indictment on a Government that has no imagination except about how to make announcements."