7. Question No. 7—FinanceHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of FinanceQuestion No. 7—Finance7. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement on the Government's economic response to the August COVID-19 outbreak We do know that there will be businesses unfortunately who won't make it through this but we also know that the rebound on the other side has shown that the New Zealand economy does well when we get on top of this and businesses come back"?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I stand by all the statements I made to the Finance and Expenditure Committee yesterday in their context. That context includes the $3.6 billion in support that has been provided to businesses since this outbreak began to give cash flow and confidence. I would also note the context that we have modified our support through the outbreak by increasing the amount paid for the wage subsidy scheme and making the Resurgence Support Payment a more regular payment. In addition as I said yesterday we know from the experience of last year that the approach that we have taken has seen the economy swiftly and emphatically rebound and this means an environment that businesses operate in where they can rapidly improve and come back to profitability.Hon Michael Woodhouse: Does he agree that businesses that fail are not going to be able to bounce back?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As was noted I believe in March 2020 by myself and by the member's predecessor in the finance portfolio for the National Party it is the sad reality of a significant downturn or a significant disruption to business that some businesses will not make it through from there. But the overall resilience of the New Zealand business community has been seen throughout COVID-19 and I am confident in the context of the recovery we saw last year that we would see a similar one this time and most businesses will do well in that.Hon Michael Woodhouse: Has he seen reports from Deloitte that the number of businesses seeking help more than doubled during this lockdown and does he agree with David Webb's prediction that things could become worse for many of those businesses?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I haven't seen those particular reports but what I do know is that the resilience of the New Zealand business community is strong. Many of them built up their balance sheets very well over the course of the last year where economic conditions in New Zealand were far more favourable than the rest of the world where we had far fewer days of restrictions. This doesn't discount that it is a tough time for those businesses. What I would indicate to the member in terms of real-time information is we can say that there were 34 company liquidations last week compared to 21 for the same time last year and 27 for that week in 2019.Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is he going to revisit the level of support to businesses given that it's much more difficult for many customer-facing ones to survive under the current Delta alert level 2 restrictions than it was under the previous alert level 2 restrictions?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I've said many times in this House we constantly look at the support that we're giving and update it as is appropriate. I would note for those who are in level 2 in New Zealand at the moment that we are operating under the level 2 restrictions as we've known them previously.Hon Michael Woodhouse: Does he accept that more support for business from the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund would've been a better investment than the $710 million paid from that fund to entice councils to support the Government's three waters reforms?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well that comment from the member shows that he hasn't actually looked very closely at what that funding was for. It was to support work to upgrade the water infrastructure of New Zealand and create jobs. Creating jobs is actually something that on this side of the House we think it's important and it was a very important part of making sure that the New Zealand economy recovered. I should remind the member that when we went into lockdown last year we were being told we would have double-digit unemployment in New Zealand. We didn't: we've ended up with unemployment back at 4 percent. That in part is because of the investment made by this Government in supporting jobs."