Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): New Zealand is in the middle of a cost of living crisis. There are mums and dads I've seen in my local supermarket taking things out of the trolley and putting them back on the shelf because as they fill the trolley they realise that they've blown the family food budget for the week. I've got a family member who works in a tyre shop. He tells me Dad you wouldn't believe the number of people that come into the shop putting their tyres on buy now pay later; even people driving nice cars who look like they've got decent jobs." People are having to make choices about how they spend their money. That's what Kiwis do when their budgets are crimped. When we think about farmers who are making good money selling stuff overseas but whose input costs whether it's diesel or fertiliser or labour or red tape—the regulatory cost of having to apply for consents just to plant crops which is another imposition this Labour Government has put on the productive sector that's all adding to the cost of living. Now incomes in New Zealand rose by around 6.4 percent last year but inflation by 7.2 percent. Kiwis are going backwards. They feel it in the pocket. What causes inflation? More money being spread around the economy but not enough goods and services being produced for people to use and consume. And the Government has a role in that. Government spending increased from $87 billion to $139 billion in the last six years. That's an increase of over $60 billion—60 percent in six years. But inflation only went up 20 percent. All that extra Government spending is adding to inflation.Where did it go? Well the Government's spending another $200 per person per week on your behalf taken from Kiwis' tax money from their wages and from business profits. Think about the bike bridge; nothing got built but $50 million was spent on designing consulting and testing the waters. Auckland light rail: they've spent $100 million putting a business case together drawing lines on a map and maybe another $100 million before they'll finish that business case. Nothing is likely to get built this decade if ever. Let's Get Wellington Moving: well they managed to deliver a pedestrian crossing for $4 million that's slowing down traffic. Now Labour and the Greens have both boasted in the House this afternoon about how they're using the money from the emissions trading scheme to fund their pet green projects whether it's subsidising people to buy Teslas—$80000 cars—through the Climate Emergency Response Fund. I'm not quite sure what kind of emergency that's designed to respond to. Or the Green Investment Fund which James Shaw boasted he's put another $300 million into—of money that's been collected from the emissions trading scheme—to fund things like replacing boilers in businesses that could afford to do it themselves or subsidising New Zealand Post a State-owned company so they could buy electric scooters and electric vehicles for their staff to truck around in while their competitors who deliver packages faster and more efficiently than New Zealand Post have to go and raise their own money just to buy new trucks and vans. They don't get the benefit of this slush fund. Now Labour's policies have pushed up the cost of everything: fuel electricity cars and utes interest rates. They are feeding inflation. And when you look at the emissions trading scheme and the money raised from that as one example over a billion dollars a year raised that could—could—go back into Kiwis' pockets instead of going on to these pet green projects. What would ACT do instead? Well with about a billion dollars a year or more we would issue a carbon tax refund to Kiwis. So because they've paid for their emissions we think we should reward them for having done the right thing. We'd give them back about $250 per person per year maybe $750 per household so they could make choices about what they spend their household budget on whether it's on energy or whether it's on buying a new heat pump or actually saving up for a set of tyres. That's the difference between ACT and this current Labour - Green Government. We would let Kiwis keep more of what they earn and we'd let them make choices about how they spend their own money."