Clark DavidHon Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you Madam Speaker. What a pleasure to speak into this debate based as it is around an important parliamentary process where the Budgets Supplementary Estimates and imprest supply funding are given scrutiny of the Parliament. Of course we had a Budget not so long ago which introduced some really important new measures—20 hours free early childhood education for two-year-olds; $5 prescription fees scrapped; free public transport for under-13s half price for under-25s; 100000 more warmer Kiwi homes. Those kinds of things are things that we will all be familiar with and I want to congratulate the Hon Grant Robertson on another superb wellbeing Budget that he has delivered. But just today we had an announcement from the Hon Jan Tinetti and the Hon Grant Robertson of some changes to appropriations and they related to university funding. Now those changes will be reflected in the next set of Supplementary Estimates as some of the appropriations were changed to make sure that the funding goes to the most appropriate purpose. These are the things which we as parliamentarians have a job to scrutinise—these kinds of measures—and I do want to congratulate them on their announcement today especially the $48 million total that will end up at Otago University all private and personal interests aside. So this Parliament of course has the job of scrutinising what is spent and what will be spent over the coming year. I want to acknowledge not just the process itself and the importance of it but also one of the characters who has advised this debate over many years and that is the late Peter Lorimer ONZM who died earlier this year and who had advised many across both sides of the House on the importance of parliamentary processes like this one. It is a shame that Peter is not here to hear this acknowledgment in the House but I think members of both sides of the House have been guided by him over the years and would acknowledge the wisdom he's brought to parliamentary debates in drawing distinctions between the technical matters that are dealt with by officials and the important public scrutiny which politicians lead on. And this is one of those debates where we have the public scrutiny of decisions that the Cabinet has made to fund things like as has been debated in this debate the merit of responding to weather events. I think the whole Parliament will agree that responding is essential and that is often done through imprest supply. Imprest supply Acts are a regular part of the annual Budget cycle. Basically the Crown cannot spend public money or incur expenses or capital expenditure without appropriation or other authority from Parliament and spending that occurs outside of these categories then becomes unauthorised expenditure. As someone who was once a Treasury analyst I received instruction from Peter Lorimer who I've mentioned earlier on the importance of getting appropriations right. As the Minister of Finance said at the outset of this debate these are not targets but they are a licence to spend this money as appropriate as required in the interests of the citizens of New Zealand. I want to thank all members for participating in this debate because I believe it is truly an important debate that we have in Parliament. Appropriations are a licence to spend and that includes I think—just for those watching the debate—things like for example if departments charge fees for certain things and then recycle that revenue into other activities. These things are all monitored by the Parliament; all gathering of revenue and spending of revenue is to be scrutinised and that is indeed appropriate. So the imprest supply bill that we have in front of us seeks to provide sufficient authority for the Government to incur a maximum of $27 billion of expenses $9 billion in capital expenditure and $1 billion in capital injections. That total imprest in the bill—what's called imprest supply"—is lower than what was provided in the last three years and I think people will understand that given the events of COVID. At that time it was necessary to ensure sufficient money was set aside in a very uncertain environment. Imprest supply bills are there in a way to account for in advance some of the fiscal risks that Governments sit with those risks of expenditure that may be incurred that we can't be certain we'll incur but money has to be set aside—it's normal in any budget. In a household there are things we know we will incur and there are things we think we might incur put in simple terms and those things we think we might incur are called "fiscal risks" in parliamentary terms. There's another factor which imprest supply bills deal with and that is uncertain expenditure in terms of timing—we don't sometimes know when we will incur certain things. We might know that the clutch is wearing out in our vehicle but we don't know quite when we'll have to get it replaced to use a household example. But we do know that we should account for that spending because it will be ahead of us. And this has been a Government that has been incredibly responsible in terms of management of the books. We have a debt amongst the lowest of those countries we like to compare ourselves to across the OECD—again I want to thank and congratulate the finance Minister for his leadership on that matter and for the very proud record this Government has in Budgets and in accounting to the public for expenditure and delivering on that expenditure. I commend this bill to the House."