Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to be talking in this debate. Being a member of Finance and Expenditure Committee I thought I might just turn my mind to some of the financial aspects of this debate. Of course we were fortunate—and I think all New Zealanders were glad to hear—that during the course of 2016-17 New Zealand posted through the counsel of the New Zealand Government a large Budget surplus commonly referred to as operating balance before gains and losses. That was $4.1 billion up from $1.8 billion in the year before. When you actually look at the population that means that for every person in New Zealand $1000 of Budget surplus was achieved by good prudent management. At the same time the net worth of the country went up by $25 billion and the levels of investment in places like health and education all went up by record levels. Stretching forward we had $32 billion worth of infrastructure investment planned and that is what good government is about. It's interesting to note that the eight months' accounts to February this year show an operating balance before gains and losses of about $2.85 billion—again much more $500 million more than was budgeted before that Government came into power. Also at the same time debt levels have gone down to just over 21 percent. So what I find intriguing is that this Government has inherited the best set of books that we have seen for such a long period of time. Not only that even before they came into power they didn't even anticipate the extra $500 million that has flowed in from hard-working New Zealanders and corporations paying their fair share of tax. So $500 million up and yet what do we know? We know that this coalition Government wants to increase our net debt by 20 percent from $59 billion to $69 billion because even when they get this additional money they don't think it's enough. They don't think it's enough even when as I said before we've invested these record amounts and that's what I find most disconcerting about this approach. When I asked the Minister of Finance who came to our select committee about this issue about debt—because I seem to recall during the last term the 51st Parliament he was always crying about the level of debt in New Zealand. He was always saying It's too high." "Our percentage is too high." and "The net amount is too high." and yet that same person now the Minister of Finance is saying "No let's forget about that." even though we've got these record operating surpluses occurring. "No we're going to borrow another $10 billion."—another $10 billion. Well in my view that is not required. But the even worse thing is that now they've got this working party headed by Sir Michael Cullen and of course what's his ambit? His ambit is to look at a whole range of new taxes—a whole range of new taxes. Even before he's come out with his working party conclusions what have we got? We've heard about the fuel tax and in my electorate south of Auckland 23c it's going to cost every time someone goes to the pump—23c a litre. That means roughly $15 every time someone in my area fills up their car so that they can get to work on a congested motorway and we had those motorways—we wanted to create some new motorways to try and reduce some of that congestion and yet they will be paying all that amount of money. I'm deeply worried about the situation—why we need to have a Government that thinks they can tax and tax and tax hard-working New Zealanders when they have inherited one of the best sets of books that this country has seen. I think it's something that we're going to hold their feet to the fire on over in the coming months. Reports relevant to the Finance and Government Administration Sector noted."