Smith Damien; Robertson GrantDAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair.Hon Gerry Brownlee: So Treasury are happy to give it away but they don't care where.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Does the member want the call?DAMIEN SMITH: Yes it's just Mr Brownlee was speaking.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Does the member want the call?Hon Gerry Brownlee: I was talking to a colleague—sorry Damien.DAMIEN SMITH: Oh sorry—OK. So a quick three questions to the Minister one around debt servicing the second one around super and the third one around funds.So in 2017 the Vote Finance debt servicing cost was $3.4 billion. In 2023-24 it's now $5.8 billion which is over $3000 per household. So the taxpayers are paying more than $2.4 billion on interest payments. The operating balance excluding gains and losses is expected to record a deficit of $7 billion in the 2022-23 fiscal year and a deficit of $7.6 billion in 2023-24. So the first question is: what is the likely debt servicing in future years?In 2023-24 there will be $21 billion on payments of New Zealand superannuation. The previous year was $19 billion—an extra $2.1 billion—and before that New Zealand superannuation costs increased by $1.8 billion. So the cost of superannuation is increasing and increasing by a huge amount: is setting aside $1.6 billion as a New Zealand Superannuation Fund contribution going to cover the annual increase in future years and what is the interest paid on the Superannuation Fund in the past two years and what is the interest being paid by the Government on its debt in the past two years?I will ignore shovel-ready projects and the loan to Air New Zealand because they are hopefully going to get some return. But on the Green Investment Finance Scheme since 2019 the $500 million was intended to both invest into reducing emissions and invest in a commercial basis. The question is: what are the projected returns on the investment? In 2022 it was 5.89 percent—so was it actually an OK investment in 2022? And on the venture capital fund there was an appropriation of $300 million so what has been the return on that fund? Finally from the ACT perspective the $6 million for the Productivity Commission: has it proved to be worth it in value for money when its reports have veered from a focus on economic productivity to all sorts of fashionable itches that the Labour Government wanted scratched. So those are our questions on the appropriation.Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): A veritable potpourri of questions from Mr Smith there which I will endeavour to cover off. On the cost of borrowing clearly the member will be aware that interest rates have been increasing globally and so it is a statement of fact that the cost of New Zealand's borrowing will have increased. I don't have the number right there in front of me but I'm sure I can grab it for the member before we finish up this particular debate. As a percentage of GDP the cost of borrowing has remained you know around 1 percent a little under 1 percent—it will maybe go a little over that now. In cash terms obviously it's significantly higher than it was several years ago it is a function of the markets and a function of where we're borrowing our money from.The debate about how much we have borrowed is one the member and I have had before and I appreciate the fact that we hold different views on that but from my perspective that borrowing was what New Zealand needed to do to get through COVID and of course there is a cost for it and that is the cost that we are now facing. But it is not unreasonably larger than it has been in the past in terms of the percentage of GDP particularly in the face of a natural disaster.On the question of the Superannuation Fund it's always been the case that the contributions that the Government makes to the Superannuation Fund and the growth of the Superannuation Fund was never going to meet the full costs of superannuation. The ideal has been that it would start paying out in around 2033 and play its part in defraying the costs of superannuation when we have an ageing population. It ultimately does become a policy choice as to whether or not a Government decides that investing the amount of money required in order to keep the current settings of superannuation is a good investment. The Superannuation Fund's role is to support that but it's never been—ever—the idea that that would be sufficient in order to actually pay out it's merely to defray those future costs. In terms of the member's question around the returns again I can get the specific number but it's outperformed the kind of core Government bond and core portfolios that it measures itself against and in fact over the years has done significantly better—I've got the number around sort of 10 percent growth in my head but I'll get the specific number for the member. So yes the Superannuation Fund continues to be a well performing fund and it continues to be worthwhile for New Zealanders that it's there and that it will contribute in the future to paying out.The final—oh no two more. The venture investment fund. Look I can't give the member that number but I can say for sure that it has been investing over a period in a number of quite significant potential growth areas. The nature of venture investment is that not every investment will succeed and that some of them have quite long runs in terms of being able to get to a point where they're making big returns. So I'm happy to get some numbers for the member on that. But as a fund as a concept we endorse its role in supporting early stage companies and making sure we get ourselves New Zealand companies to grow and be productive and profitable.On the question of the Productivity Commission I note the member's comments and would say that we did take some decisions when we came into office that we wanted the Productivity Commission to take a broader view. Having read a lot of Productivity Commission reports over the years we wanted to make sure that we were capturing a broad set of topics around what is productivity. And again I acknowledge that this is not necessarily something the member and I would agree on but again if we're going to have a wellbeing approach—which we do—then we do need to be analysing other things beyond just really very very traditional measures of productivity.Having said that I note that a couple of the recent reports have been well received certainly by the Government and by others outside. One of those was around frontier firms and actually gave us some very good recommendations that as a Government we've been trying to enact—working with New Zealand Trade and Enterprise but also looking at Māori businesses for example and how they're going. So those reports I think have been useful. We've had a more recent one which is more about questions of social mobility which are significant in other parts of productivity not just kind of that core economic side. So we believe the Productivity Commission still fulfils an important role but obviously we should continue to monitor that and continue to assure ourselves of that as we go on.