Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): I met Bill English the other day in the Koru lounge. Funny story—funny story. He said to me: I can't believe that the outrageous demands of the New Zealand First Party in that coalition agreement are now affecting 50000 teachers out there who aren't going to get their fair share." That's what he told me. We know when incompetent Ministers are under pressure. We know because the cracks start to appear and they start to lash out. Oh I know: car drivers—"They're fascists." Farmers—"They're whingers." Treasury officials are "kids devoid from reality". Business confidence numbers are "unreliable junk". Performance standards have "perverse outcomes" and hackers are "deliberate and systematic".Of course these guys are a bit tetchy. Their major flagship policies are abject failures—every single one of them—and they have systematically frittered away every single dollar that we left them. A couple of billion bucks on KiwiBuild—Phil Twyford has bought more KiwiBuild houses than first-home buyers have in this country. Three billion bucks on this Provincial Growth Fund which has not lifted the economy not provided any jobs and on the most important target it hasn't even lifted New Zealand First above the 5 percent threshold in any of the most recent polls. Because these guys didn't do the work in Opposition they have spent millions of dollars on 300-odd working groups: $1.4 million on a capital gains tax (CGT) working group that went nowhere $1.5 million for a Welfare Working Group—46 recommendations three that were taken up one that was already a promise; that's two recommendations at a cost of $750000 each—I am in the wrong job!So along with these nasty little outbursts that we're getting from these guys we also get excuses. Maybe we can play a little game: who said what here? What about "It's going to get worse before it gets better."? That was James Shaw on our emissions. "It's just aspirational." said Minister Nash about the police that he promised to deliver and isn't. "It was never a hard target." said the Prime Minister in the last couple of days about the one-year KiwiBuild budget. "We were never going to do it in one Budget."—David Clark. "We didn't realise it was going to be that hard."—Tracey Martin. "It's a promise yet to be delivered."—my very favourite from the Minister of Education.But while we can make fun of their nasty little outbursts and their imaginative excuses what is no laughing matter is that this Government has dropped every target and every measurement standard that could possibly hold them to account. We might have to dig around a little bit more here in the Opposition but we find the figures and in every single one it shows a trend and that trend is not wellbeing. While we wait for tomorrow's Wellbeing Budget I have only one thing to say to this Government: it had better be better than the last 18 months because wellbeing is not about having to wait an average of an additional 55 days for early childhood intervention for our youngest and most vulnerable Kiwis. Wellbeing is getting the healthcare you need. It's not about having 10000 fewer elective surgeries than we had a year ago. Wellbeing is about having a job not relying on welfare like an additional 11000 people. Welfare is about feeling safe in our communities not having serious crime up 25 percent. It's about actually staying in this country not having to go to Australia because the opportunities are here; yet more people are now leaving for Australia than are coming back. Finally wellbeing is about being financially secure and knowing that your kids and your grandkids won't be saddled with debt because this Government mismanages the economy.Yet here we have the Government pulling the ultimate swifty. Grant Robertson has done a Houdini with debt targets. It's a little bit like me saying my age is you know in a range between 30 and 40. We all know well that I ain't 30. It's more likely to be closer to 40—SPEAKER: How do we know?ERICA STANFORD: So when Grant Robertson reneges on the Government's hard and fast promise of reducing their debt target to 20 percent of GDP and he shifts it to between that range of 15 and 25 you know it ain't going to be 15 percent. Somewhere in a living room on the North Shore I bet you right now Steven Joyce is dancing a little jig and singing "Hallelujah" because he was right. The only thing he was wrong about was the figure because it ain't $11 billion; it's more like $15 billion or $17 billion. These guys tried to fix the hole. They tried to put their hand into New Zealanders' pockets for a CGT; we slapped it away. Minister Robertson has gone round the other pocket to grab out the nation's credit card to put his promises on tick. These guys cannot manage an economy. They cannot manage their expensive promises. They are destroying an economy that's gone from 4 percent to 2 percent growth and now they're going to put their spending and their election promises in 2020 on the nation's credit card and shame on them for doing that."