Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call in the debate on the Supplementary Estimates. Can I begin by thanking all of the select committees that dealt with the separate Estimates committee by committee and reported back to Parliament; and too the officials who serviced those select committees including those from Government departments but also from the Audit Office. I hear from the Opposition claims about a blowout in expenditure that is being poorly spent by the Government. They use nominal figures which do show that in nominal figures Government spending has increased by tens of billions of dollars. Of course nominal GDP which you should compare expenditure with has also increased hugely—in 2017 nominal GDP was $275 billion. This year it's over $400 billion so the economy has grown from the start of the period when we took Government of $275 billion—and a few hundred million—to over $400 billion projected for this year. Indeed the forecast as at the time of the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update for the year ended 30 June 2024 was $415 billion and it will be there or thereabouts. So those numbers don't mean much to people; they're enormous numbers and the House is better to consider core Crown expenses as a percentage of GDP in order to assess whether there's been a massive explosion in Government spending. Core crown expenses—and I'll use a slightly different time series here—in 2013 under the National Party five years after the global financial crisis the core Crown expenditure was 32 percent of GDP. This year it's projected to be 33 percent of GDP. Now it's true that in the intervening years after 2013 National did drop expenditure as a percentage of GDP because that's what National Governments do—they have a fixation on reducing Government expenditure. Wise use of Government expenditure is always appropriate but I can recall a speech of the then Minister of Finance—or he might have been actually by then Prime Minister—in Australia where he said his prime indicator of whether he was doing a good job was whether he was dropping Government expenditure as a percentage of GDP; that was his driver. From the point of view of the Labour Party by the end of that period when they had dropped expenditure further we had virtually no new hospitals built—Hon David Bennett: Waikato Hospital was rebuilt.Hon DAVID PARKER: Beg your pardon?Hon David Bennett: Waikato Hospital was rebuilt.Hon DAVID PARKER: Waikato Hospital was rebuilt that was—Hon Dr David Clark: That was under us!Hon David Bennett: No it wasn't. Hon Dr David Clark: Well I committed the funding.Hon DAVID PARKER: So we heard then from the list member for Hamilton claiming credit for the Waikato Hospital build when it was the Labour Government that funded it because the capital funding hadn't been provided by the National Government. And indeed the Hon David Clark just interjected to confirm that he was the Minister that authorised the expenditure. In respect of other issues of course they ran down housing—and we had questions in the House today about housing. The number of State houses in New Zealand or public houses decreased under the term of the National Government because they didn't spend on them and in fact they sold them off. They sold off the capital stock—they rented a few more; but they sold off and used the capital that they realised from those sales to put into other things which is why by the time they left office they had less funding. They froze the funding for the police: in inflation-adjusted terms they defunded" the police. The so-called "party of law and order" defunded the police—the National - ACT Government—and by the end of their period they had fewer police officers employed by the Government than was the case earlier which is why we've reversed that and now have more than 1800 more police. In respect of debt levels: in my opinion New Zealand hasn't had a fiscally irresponsible Government since the Muldoon government when debt increased hugely and it was on an unsustainable trajectory and there was no route back to surplus. The next Labour Government the Lange-Douglas Government got debt under control. The following Bolger Government continued that trend. The following Clark-Cullen Government probably had the best record of anyone: nine surpluses in a row which reduced net debt to—on the current measure—zero; in fact we had net assets and well-funded public services as well. Then the last Government they had to deal with the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquake rebuild but they so reduced taxes that actually during the period of their Government net debt increased for a start quite substantially—before it reduced towards the end of their term. And they left office with net debt excluding the super fund at 18.7 percent. I'm reading the Budget documents here Mr Bennett. You could read them; you pretend to be an accountant but I don't hear you actually opening up the Budget documents—referring to the actual documents—rather than making superficial inaccurate comments that show your ignorance when it comes to the matter of public finances.Hon DAVID BENNETT (National): Point of order. The member is very much aware of Helen Clark's last Budget and the deficits they left behind—DEPUTY SPEAKER: No no. I'm sorry—if the member is going to engage in vociferous debate then that will obviously open the range of ability for a speaker on the other side to actually respond. Be aware. Carry on. Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you Mr Speaker. So when we took office net debt excluding the super fund was 18.7 percent and net debt including the benefit of the assets in the super fund was 5.9 percent of GDP. That's the 2017 figures. In 2018 net debt decreased to 3.8 percent under a Labour administration before COVID and net debt excluding the super fund decreased to 17.2 percent. It's the same the next year again: in the year ended in 2019 net debt excluding the super fund was 16.4 percent—again down—and net debt including the super fund was down to 1.8 percent. Then COVID hit and COVID is the reason why—Hon Members: No.Hon DAVID PARKER: Oh they say no—you know the biggest increases in governance expenditure during those years were the expenditure on COVID support payments. There were lots of other supports that were necessary in the economy as well but the biggest one was the wage supports that were paid through businesses. Those businesses were saved partly because their employment costs were defrayed without laying off their staff. To this day this country benefits from that because even in the midst of a technical recession unemployment is low—is it 3.4 or 3.3?Hon Rachel Brooking: 3.4.Hon DAVID PARKER: —3.4 percent unemployment: very low by the standards of New Zealand and lower than a lot of the countries that we compare ourselves to. Now what happens going forward? Well core Government expenditure as a percentage of GDP did go up to 34.6 percent of GDP in the year ended 2022. It has since dropped 33 percent of GDP this year and drops further to 32.3 percent the year following 32 percent the year after that and 31.5 percent. And I again compare that to 2013—when it was 32 percent. What exaggerated rhetoric that we have from the Opposition trying to present those facts as irresponsible spending on the part of a Government—Sam Uffindell: Very irresponsible.Hon DAVID PARKER: Oh "very irresponsible" we hear from the member for Tauranga. You never hear them talking about these percentages of GDP because they'd rather talk about the gross numbers and as I say those gross numbers are hard for people to interpret given that GDP has risen from 2017 $275 billion to $415 billion forecast for this 2023/24 year.In respect of the Supplementary Estimates other members have covered those in detail. I do note that the Supplementary Order Paper which has been presented—which I'm sure that Minister Robertson has spoken to or will speak to—has a single item in it which is unusual but it relates to the storm events and there is $500 million set aside for Crown payments to local authorities and other eligible stakeholders. That of course is something that is not the fault of the Labour Government although it is our responsibility to help."