Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to stand and take a call on this the Budget debate. First of all can I acknowledge the Government and their health response to what emerged to be a serious global threat and that was COVID-19. The only issue of course that I did have with it is that I felt very strongly that the Government was too slow to respond in closing the border and it pushed them into the inevitable position where they had to take the country into level 4. As we went into level 4 everyone could see very clearly there were going to be enormous economic consequences around that.What I've been very concerned about in this debate and in comments that have come from members of the Government is a complete disconnect in terms of what it actually meant taking our country into a level 4 lockdown. I think the best way—the best way—that I could describe it for the members opposite is when you made that decision to take us into a level 4 lockdown as it relates to small to medium enterprises (SMEs) is that you effectively cut your own pay.So Jamie Strange who's in the House—I'll use him as an example. Jamie Strange's revenue his pay his cash flow is cut off from that date—he has no cash flow but he's got a guy that comes and mows his lawns every week. How is he going to pay him? I'll tell you how we'll pay him; we'll pay him with the wage subsidy. So we'll pass that through Jamie Strange and Jamie Strange passes the wage subsidy on to the guy that's mowing the lawns but where does that leave Jamie Strange? He's still got his children that he has to provide for. He's still got his mortgage that he has to pay. His wife needs to be able to go and do the groceries each week. Tell me—maybe he can take a call—tell me how are you going to cover those fixed costs when your cash flow has been cut off? [Interruption] And they're joking about it they're laughing about it because they don't understand. The Leader of the Opposition Todd Muller had a very good line of questioning a very pertinent line of questioning to the Prime Minister today and she had no answer whatsoever. Her default setting was We've put a wage subsidy in place." She doesn't understand. She doesn't get it.I remember 10 weeks ago as we moved into level 4 every Wednesday on the Mike Hosking show with the Hon Stuart Nash and I said to him "Stuart you're going to have to make sure that you've got a cash-flow payment that's going into our SMEs and businesses." The wage subsidy that's great. In fact use that mechanism. If you're going to put that in place use that mechanism to get cash flow into the business. There's a saying in business: cash is king. You can't do much when you've got utilities to pay when you've got licensing fees to pay when you've got rent when you've got insurance and you've got no income. I was accused of being alarmist. I was only saying that because I did a start-up with my own business my own company. I had a thousand employees plus. Hon Member: Oh God here we go again.Hon MARK MITCHELL: I actually understood the importance of cash flow. And there's murmurings and little comments from the other side there. Take a call. Tell me how many employees you've had to care about or worry about or think about their families—looking after them making sure that you have cash flow to meet those payroll commitments. Take a call and tell us because I'll tell you what I feel like: employees are critically important—employees are critically important to any SME or business so look after them. We have to look after them.But this crew over there—listen to them. This crew over here they treat the employers like they're second-class citizens. They treat the employers like they've got massive cash reserves that they can just dig into and they somehow have to look after themselves. They treat the very people that take the risks to actually establish businesses that put their own cash into establish so they're not dependent on the State so they can actually create employment for those employees because no one on this side of the House is creating employment. No one on this side is creating the tax receipts that you are collecting; it's the SMEs that are out there. There is one person on the Labour benches and I acknowledge her that she does have a small business and she's nodding in agreement with me because she knows completely and understands the issues that I'm highlighting and that I'm making in relation to this.Hon Willie Jackson: Who's that?Hon MARK MITCHELL: It's Jo. Sorry I'm terrible with names.Hon Members: Jo Luxton.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Ha ha! Jo Luxton—it's Jo Luxton and I admire her I admire the qualities that she has to get out there and have go to start a business and have employees. She's agreeing with me. Everyone down here is trying to shout me down trying to say that the employers are bad and somehow a second-class citizen—they don't deserve the same respect as the employees themselves. Everyone except Jo Luxton; she understands what I'm saying which is great.So I do have some ideas. I would like to put some ideas forward to this Government because they're completely devoid of them. They have no plan. You do have a licence—you do actually have a licence from the public right now to borrow some money—you do have a licence to borrow some money and we support that. We understand that we're going to have to help the country through this without a doubt. This is the problem with a Labour-led Government though. How many times have we seen someone that's won the Lotto they've won the jackpot and they've come into a lot of money but they don't spend it wisely. All of a sudden at the end of it 12 months down the line all the money's gone and they've got nothing to show for it. This is the danger. This is the real danger that you guys are falling back into right now.I'll tell you why because you've come out with big announcements you've announced eye-watering sums of money—that's debt for the future generations and it's going to take a National Government to sort that out and get that worked out—but you've got no plans. You've got no details. You can't stand and give us any details. I see Marja Lubeck in the House that's great.Hon Members: "Mai-ya".Hon MARK MITCHELL: Sorry "Mai-ya" Lubeck. I told you I wasn't good with names.So Penlink—the great saviour and advocate for Penlink. If you are talking about investing in infrastructure let me give you this message: at the last election I stood up—finally I actually managed to get support from the National-led Government to say that we'd build Penlink and we campaigned on that right? We campaigned on that. Penlink would have already been three years into construction. Do you know what Marja Lubeck said in that campaign? "Labour will not commit to Penlink. We will not build it." Now all of a sudden—which is great news because we need Penlink it's a safety issue we have 30000 people living on a peninsula with one way on and one way off. To me it's always been a safety issue. If we have some type of civil defence event we've only got one way in and one way out. In fact we had a fatal motor accident up there two years ago that cut off the only way off the peninsula. Everyone was stuck there. They said "It doesn't matter we'll use the ferries. We'll get the ferries operating out of Gulf Harbour." There was one problem with that: the ferry captains were stuck in the traffic they couldn't get there. So it's a major safety issue. We need that road built off Penlink.Here's the challenge to Marja Lubeck: that project's ready to go. Why are we waiting two years? We're going to build it—we're going to build it we're going to start it it's ready to go it's shovel ready. So I hope that you are advocating and I hope that you are having the conversations now to get it going because two years is not good enough—two years is not good enough. So we'll get Penlink going—we'll get Penlink going post-September.Here are some ideas: e-commerce. What are you doing around e-commerce? Support companies to get online. Actually one good thing that might have been driven out of the level 4 lockdown is giving people the ability to actually work from home and have more flexibility around their employment—I support that. I think if that can work then we should go for that.Sports clubs: trust them work with them. They're going under. They're under enormous pressure. In my own electorate in the North Shore—Kiritapu Allan: That was in the Budget.Hon MARK MITCHELL: So where is the funding going? Stand and tell us the detail. Don't stand there telling me it's in the Budget; this is where you're getting it wrong. You're fantastic at saying "It's in the Budget. Look at the line item." What's the detail? Because they need help now they need certainty now and they need to know what the plan is. There is no plan.Business: an integrated proposal centre. Unfortunately I've run out of time because the Hon Shane Jones was talking about value-add. We signed under the World Trade Organization the Government procurement agreement—that's a trillion-dollar pipeline internationally that we've never been able as a country to play in. We've got a huge opportunity there to tap into that. We have to know what to do. And that's—thank you Mr Speaker."