Wilkinson Kate: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilkinson Kate: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16463. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]2.Hon KATE WILKINSON (National—Waimakariri)to the Minister of Finance: What will be the focus of the Government’s economic programme going into the election on 20 September?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance):The Government will focus on building on the recovery that is now under way to support New Zealand households and businesses to create more jobs and to earn higher incomes. Now that we have been able to manage through a very significant recession and the impact of the earthquake and clean up some of the damage done by the last Labour Government we will look forward to helping New Zealanders organise the capital and the skills required to take advantage of the very substantial opportunities offered by a growing Asia-Pacific region.Hon Kate Wilkinson: What progress is the Government making with its economic programme and how is this helping households and businesses?Hon BILL ENGLISH: First of all the recovery in the economy is principally the work of New Zealand’s households and businesses supported by Government. Government policy that has helped to support that has been to get the Government finances under control and get back to surplus; and to focus on all those areas across the economy that support growth such as better infrastructure investment a tidier more effective and more efficient system for giving young New Zealanders skills reducing welfare dependency re-regulating the use of our natural resources so that we can be a prosperous economy as well as a clean green economy and of course there are many other ways we have been supporting New Zealand households and businesses.Hon David Parker: Why is he claiming that everything is going swimmingly when the $1 billion deficit to 31 January in his Government’s accounts is $637 million worse than he forecast in just December?Hon BILL ENGLISH: As I have pointed out regularly in this House we can control expenditure to a significant extent but revenue can fluctuate. In this case—Hon Members: Ha ha!Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well bear in mind that in the previous financial year we finished about $3 billion ahead of budget. On the most recent figures in this year tax revenue is about $800 million behind budget. The people who should take the most notice of that are the Opposition parties because it makes it pretty clear there is not room to splash cash everywhere in election year.Hon Kate Wilkinson: What are some of the ongoing economic challenges the economy faces and how will the Government work to overcome them?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Probably the main economic challenge is to manage our way through the next growth cycle avoiding the excessive damage created during the last growth cycle under the last Labour Government. For instance it is inevitable that interest rates will rise some time this year according to decisions of the Reserve Bank. We want to make sure that interest rates are not driven to 10.5 to 11 percent by bad Government policy and excessive Government spending. That is probably one of the best things we can do to support New Zealand households.Hon David Parker: Is it correct that having inherited close to zero net Government debt he is soon to clock over $60 billion of borrowings; and is this more than any other Minister of Finance in New Zealand’s history in nominal terms and the worst in real terms since Muldoon?Hon BILL ENGLISH: No but it is another symptom of “Planet Labour” a place where the global financial crisis and the Christchurch earthquakes never happened. Voters will increasingly see a party marooned on “Planet Labour”—1970s Fabianism at its worst.Hon Kate Wilkinson: Going into the election on 20 September what economic policies will this Government reject because they would impose costs on households and cost jobs?Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is pretty clear from lessons learnt from the last cycle through the early 2000s up to 2008 what policies to avoid. One of those is a sharp increase in Government spending because that will push interest rates up much faster than they need to go. The second one would be imposing a costly emissions trading system which is guaranteed to put power bills up by around $500 per year and in combination with a single-buyer electricity authority would make household electricity bills significantly more expensive not cheaper as the Opposition claims.Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I would ask you to reflect on the question that was just asked there to the Minister of Finance in terms of ministerial responsibility by the way the question began with reference to the election. I know that in the past when the Labour Party has tried to raise matters that were talked about in an election campaign we have been told that that has not necessarily been the responsibility of a Minister. I just wonder whether those sorts of questions are actually in order.Mr SPEAKER: And in this case I think it was a line-ball call by myself at the time. The question went along the lines of what economic policies the Government would reject in the lead-in. I think on that basis it was enough to get it across the line for the Minister to address it as a responsibility of the current Government. But I will be mindful of these sorts of supplementary questions between now and 31 July.