Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm happy to take a call this evening in the Estimates debate for this year as we review particularly the finance and Government administration sector of the Estimates. I don't think there'd be any great discussion or debate around the House that when you are fortunate enough to hold the Treasury benches and when you are fortunate to have the role Mr Robertson has as the finance Minister you've got a couple of core responsibilities that the country looks to you for. The first of those is to ensure that you make the most of the assets and the income of the Government for the well-being of New Zealand. The second I would argue is that you have a role to ensure that you're providing a platform for the economy to continue to grow well into the future. I have to say that looking at this first lot of Estimates from this new Government this first Budget for Mr Robertson it is a fail grade on both of those headings.We are seeing from this finance Minister who's talked up his fiscal responsibility and tried desperately to paint himself as some sort of fiscally cautious finance Minister who the business sector has nothing to fear from that despite having inherited a very strong and very well-performing economy growing surpluses—in fact even bigger than was anticipated certainly pre-election and even post-election—and money coming in all over the place and yet we are seeing already more taxes more debt broken promises and a slowing economy. That's the message isn't it: more tax more debt a slowing economy and broken promises. That's what this finance Minister is delivering to New Zealand so far.Even though the Government wants to brush over this and say Oh well you can't really read too much into that." over the next 15 years Mr Robertson is planning to run cash deficits in 14 of them. For 14 of the next 15 years the Budget documents show us this Government is intending to spend more than they earn in residual cash terms. Now that is not fiscally prudent. That is why we're going to see Crown debt continue to rise in nominal terms despite a strong economy—despite a strong economy. So my question to Mr Robertson is if you're borrowing money in the good times if you're racking up debt when there are big surpluses when times are good when there isn't a fiscal shock is the Government simply conceding defeat that debt will always go up? I think that is a low set of aspirations for this economy.If you look at how the Government is setting those fiscal conditions for our strong economy—well I just heard the speaker who resumed his seat trying to discredit Andrew Bayly for talking about the decreasing rate of jobs. Actually Mr Bayly is absolutely right. When you look at the number of new jobs being created it has more than halved under this Government from what we saw under the last years of our Government: 10000 new jobs a month created under the National Government; so far under this Government 4200 a month—less than half the rate of new job creation. Is that any surprise when you have a Government that is so dismissive so unconcerned about how many jobs there are in the economy? They wiped out the oil and gas exploration sector—8000 jobs; $2.5 billion—without Mr Robertson even bothering to get Treasury advice on how that might affect the economy.This is not good economic management. It is not good economic management to be putting up the cost of living on New Zealanders particularly some of our poorest New Zealanders. When you're ramping up fuel taxes when you are ramping up energy costs over time when you are ramping up the cost of the rental market all of that flows through to the cost of living. Petrol prices don't just affect New Zealanders at the pump; it affects them in the cost of every good that is transported across New Zealand—every piece of food every piece of furniture everything that they acquire. The cost of living is going up; job creation numbers are going down; the economy is slowing; we have more taxes already and more coming; and we have an economy that is showing very clear signs of slowing growth. What do we hear from the Government? "Well all of the experts are wrong. They don't know what they're talking about. Business doesn't know what it's talking about. Only we in the Labour Party know anything about these things. Everyone else is wrong. We're not interested in what they've got to say. We're right. We don't want to talk to anyone." That sort of hubris that sort of—Brett Hudson: Arrogance!Hon AMY ADAMS: —arrogance and dismissiveness will break this economy."