McClay Todd; Dean JacquiHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): The last speaker in the debate Ingrid Leary misunderstood my colleague from ACT Damien Smith and what he was saying. He wasn't being critical of the Prime Minister for her ambition to lift children out of poverty; he was being critical of her because she's put more children into poverty than she actually has lifted out. So we just heard a hundred and something dollars—$175—a week more for an average family since Labour came to Government. What they didn't tell you is that if you look at what's happened to rent and mortgages and the cost of food and the cost of petrol and the cost of almost every single thing in the country that family that the Government has not helped with lower taxes when they work so they can keep more of what they earn and spend it on things that they want—no no the $175 that the Government took off hard-working Kiwis in tax to then give back to those families to tell them they're better off and they should be grateful—are worse off because all of their costs have gone up.There is such a thing in the country today that has not been here for as long as I can remember: the working poor—people who get up every day and drive our trucks; and they go to our factories they go to our shops and they work hard work hard to earn money to pay their bills and pay for their family. They are poorer today than they were when Labour came to Government because the cost of living has gone up so very much. It has nothing at all to do with COVID. The Government would love to blame everything on COVID: Because of COVID we have to do this. Because of COVID we have to borrow $97.5 billion and use some of it for the arts and a little bit more for cameras on fishing boats."! Everything that the Government has done they say is because of COVID. But to mum and dad at home who are the working poor who are paying their tax and they can't afford to pay their bills—and for some of them that are having to choose to pay the bills rather than buy the food for the kids—the Prime Minister is ambitious for them but she is costing them dearly and there are more children in poverty today than there were when the Prime Minister took this on as one of her ambitions. We support businesses in New Zealand. We want them to be able to get out and to trade their way out of the mess that Labour has created. We want them to know with certainty what the plan is. We don't want the Government every single day to come up with another COVID rule a restriction or another change because nobody in the country particularly the Prime Minister actually knows what's going on. We actually believe that if 85 percent of the population are vaccinated—higher in many parts of the country—actually the Government's foot can come off the throat of small business and of households so they can start trading their way out. I ask the Government members this when they stand up and speak for 30 or 40 seconds on this bill—that's all the time that they've got available to them; 30 seconds to be self-congratulatory about what a wonderful job that they have done 30 whole seconds as we do this in urgency—can they please tell the New Zealand public why it is that when for the majority of the country that's currently under level 2 the Prime Minister's traffic light system comes in nothing will have changed other than greater restriction more cost and it's harder for them to run their businesses? How come today somebody can walk into a hairdresser here in Wellington to get their hair cut whether they are vaccinated or not? It's not so dangerous that they can walk in today vaccinated or not and have their hair cut but as soon as the Prime Minister puts in the traffic light system that she has just rammed through Parliament in one day it's too dangerous all of a sudden! Why is it a Kiwi on 15 January can come home to see their family from Australia if they're double vaccinated but on 24 December it's too dangerous for New Zealand for them to come back here to see their family on Christmas Day? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't add up. It is a policy that's being made up on the hoof. It's worse than that. It's every time there's a bit of criticism the media says something or there's a little bit of public movement from their polls or from their working groups that they make a change. And I've got to say I think mum and dad at home know that the very small amount of this bill the Government is giving them won't actually help with the large costs going up. In the committee of the whole House stage we're going to look at this in quite some detail because the support the Government wants to give businesses in this is not clear to them. They're virtually saying "We can give you support if we feel like it but we might not and we want a carte blanche to do so." And $97.5 billion has been borrowed by this Government to be spent because they say it's about COVID. It's these hard-working Kiwis whose cost of living has gone up so much that they don't know if they can pay their bills who are the ones that are going have to pay that back—and their kids and their kids. It's so much money. You can't borrow and spend your way out of a tragedy the tragedy this Government has created. That's what they're trying to do. This isn't good legislation; it's bad. We're voting against it.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Dr Liz Craig—five minutes."