Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. As the Minister quite rightly pointed out these two bills actually are very interrelated. First the need to reflect new or changed expenditure from the finalised 2019-20 Estimates which were presented prior to the Budget earlier this year and then of course needing to cover the additional spending for the first three months of this financial year which is 2020-21. As the Minister says the amount that's been set aside at $40 billion for additional spending at $5 billion for capital spend and also another $1.7 billion for capital injections is by any standards the most incredible level of financial expenditure I think probably in New Zealand's history. Even on a comparative basis I would imagine that these amounts are just so staggeringly large that every other time that we've had these types of initiatives even during the global financial crisis the amount of money that's been allocated to deal with the COVID-19 process is absolutely outstandingly large. I think that is a real question for all of New Zealanders to ponder because I don't think for a moment anyone thinks that we shouldn't be spending large amounts of money to support vulnerable New Zealanders and particularly vulnerable businesses in New Zealand particularly at a time when we've had the process of trying to at least eliminate the COVID infections in New Zealand. It was right and proper that support measures were put in place. The primary one has been the wage subsidy which has amounted to roughly about $11 billion so far. An interesting point it's 50 percent of the average wage in New Zealand whereas most countries around the world did 80 percent. That is a large portion of the additional spending.I think one of the areas we haven't seen any support in—I think this is a very disappointing area and one that we might have contemplated if we had been in Government—is the lack of support for businesses especially in the area of rental support. Using Reserve Bank valuations of commercial industrial buildings if the Government had subsidised 50 percent of all rents that were paid to independent landlords for industrial and commercial properties in New Zealand that would have cost $300 million a month or $1 billion for three months. I think unfortunately that is one of the big things that has happened. Even though we allocated $40 billion here the mix of spend that the Government has chosen to apply in my personal view has been that it's not well balanced. It underspent in terms of support for employees—wage subsidies during the actual lockdown period should have been 80 percent—but didn't deal with the issue of rental support for businesses. The result of that is that now many businesses three months down the track who've only just been able to do approximately 10 days of work last month and will have now invoiced for those 10 days of work and will now hopefully later this month receive the first lot of payment in three months—during that period not only have they had to deal with half their labour costs and labour normally reflects about 40 percent of any business's total costs they've had to top up half of that for the last three months. The second thing is they've had to deal with and pay for rent which accounts for roughly about 20 percent of everyone's profit and loss. On top of that and everyone seems to have forgotten that all businesses face another 40 percent of general overheads whether they're power lighting whatever it might be general overhead that they've had to incur. As a result we've now got businesses perilously close where many of them do not have cash reserves at all and are waiting and hanging on for the wage support. I think that is the travesty of where we've ended up. Even though we've spent a lot of money we've ended up with a travesty that many of our smaller businesses in New Zealand—we have 320000 of them mums and dads in many cases less than five employees—those businesses are so financially constrained now their owners—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I'm very sorry to interrupt the member. The time has come for the House to have a dinner break. The House will resume at 7.30. Andrew Bayly has four minutes 54 seconds remaining should he wish to take it.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.ANDREW BAYLY: Just to remind people what we're actually talking about right now this is the Estimates and the imprest supply bills. So as the Minister said just before the break what the Government wants to do is to put in place enough funding for the first three months of the 2020-21 financial year. So what this bill does is set aside $40 billion for working capital purposes—if I can use the business term—$5 billion for capital expenditure and $1.7 billion for injection into Government-owned entities. What I was saying before the break was that we do need to invest heavily and I was talking about the level of support given in terms of wage subsidy at 50 percent rather than 80 percent and the lack of any financial support around rental arrangements for small businesses. Having costed that that's worth about $300 million per month if the Government had chosen to do that. What that would have done is protect husband the cash that those small businesses have which right now are in a critical perilous state because they haven't been able to invoice basically anything for three months and they've had to carry not only the top-up of the wages but also the rent that they've had to pay plus the remaining overheads that all businesses incur.So we accept the principle that the Government needs to spend. But this $40 billion is on a herculean scale. It is something that we've never seen before in New Zealand's history. We didn't even do that level of spending during the global financial crisis and the total bill for the Christchurch earthquake was $20 billion for the Government and $40 billion for the wider industry. So that just puts this $40 billion for the first three months into a context of the scale of this.What we've seen is that we're going to see debt rise from roughly $60 billion over the next few months to close to $110 billion and the financial cost of that the interest cost of that is going to be $3.5 billion a year. Again to put that sum of $3.5 billion into context that is the same cost as the New Zealand Government writing out a cheque to fund the New Zealand police force in New Zealand every year. The cost to the police force is the equivalent of the additional funding we're going to have to find to service this increase in debt. What is worse this document this Budget document and the Estimates that are all part of it going forward—over the next four years this Government is proposing to run deficits totalling in excess of $100 billion which will result in this Government and this country and every New Zealander facing a $200 billion deficit or debt figure. That'll be an annual interest cost of roughly $7.5 billion. It is staggering. The largest surplus that the Government's ever recorded is about $7 billion. That is just servicing the debt; it is nothing about repaying the debt. That is the most dangerous thing about this.Part of this $40 billion that's in here we know that the Government has been clear that they have set aside $20 billion. It is yet to be specified what it's going to be applied to but it's going to be spent over the next couple of months prior to the election. That is the issue that we have. We do agree that good investment by this Government should be made to support vulnerable New Zealanders to support vulnerable businesses who employ vulnerable New Zealanders and we should be looking after our communities but this is a Government that has little discipline. It's interesting when you go through this document some of the Estimates that are included and some of the costs—like if I just look here: the Prime Minister's and Cabinet fund over the next four years is going to increase by $7 million.Hon Shane Jones: What page—what page?ANDREW BAYLY: Page 80. If I look at Saving the Crown's audio-visual collection" another $10 million to be spent plus $32 million of capital expenditure. If I look at some of the other aspects there's $6 million set aside immediately after the election for Ministers to be able to reassume their offices. That there is a staggering amount of money just for offices."