Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Well isn't a week a long time in politics because last week petrol hit $3 a litre and MPs' inboxes around the country were filled with constituents saying I can't afford to top up my car."; inflation was at 5.9 percent twice the rate of wage inflation—so in other words Kiwis are going backwards—food prices are up 6.8 percent in a year the largest increase in a decade and it wasn't according to the Prime Minister a crisis. She used every word under the sun she could possibly think of to call it anything other than a crisis. It was challenge it was a problem and she acknowledged the difficulty many people were facing and what happened last week was there was a poll which showed the National Party ahead of Labour for the first time in two years. What did the Government do? They panicked. They went into panic mode and they were embarrassed over the weekend into announcing on Monday a 25c reduction in fuel tax and road-user charges. Panicked—an embarrassed response from a Government that is out of ideas and is out of energy. The Prime Minister refused to call it the cost of living crisis that all New Zealanders know they are experiencing every time they go to the supermarket every time they go to the petrol bowser and fill up and every time they pay their landlord. For the third of New Zealanders who live in rental accommodation rents are up 150 bucks a week in the last four years. In Lower Hutt Mr Speaker—an area I know you know well—rents are up 200 bucks a week in four years. Up from $375 when Labour came to office to $575 per week in Lower Hutt alone and this is replicated in many places around the country. The simple reality is this Government is addicted to spending and they can say all they like that it's the fault of Ukraine or it's the fault of international factors. Why Vladimir Putin's got anything to do with the rents that people in Lower Hutt pay I don't know but I'm sure we'll hear more from Poto Williams about that in due course. It is of course true that there are international factors driving fuel prices but inflation of 5.9 percent is caused by Grant Robertson's addiction to spending: a 68 percent increase since 2018. Now I've got a question for New Zealanders: do they think Government services are 68 percent better than in 2018? Are there 68 percent more hip operations being done? No. Are there 68 percent more elective surgeries being done? No. Has there been a 68 percent reduction in child poverty? No. Has there been a 68 percent reduction in the number of people receiving the jobseeker benefit for longer than a year? No. Actually child poverty has increased and the number of people on long-term welfare dependency has increased by 50000 people so we're spending more but we're not necessarily getting more. To make matters worse Grant thinks it's all OK—SPEAKER: Order!CHRIS BISHOP: Grant Robertson thinks he's all OK because he's proposed in this Budget the single biggest permanent increase in New Zealand Government spending in history: $6 billion in the operating allowance which from this year onwards will be baked into Government spending. In other words it gets locked into the forward Estimates and it's a permanent increase—$6 billion in this year alone. Even if you take out the National Party's very sensible and very pragmatic proposals to just reduce income tax thresholds to what they were when Labour came into office just what they were four years ago or 4½ years ago—even if you take the cost of that which is about $1.6 billion to 1.7 billion leaving Mr Robertson $4.3 billion it's still the single biggest increase in the operating allowance in New Zealand history. So this idea that Grant Robertson is a fiscal conservative is just belied by the reality. He is addicted to spending and New Zealanders are paying the price for it. We think tax thresholds should be adjusted for inflation. We think that's a reasonable and sensible step to take that would put real money in the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders to allow them to get ahead at a time of a cost of living crisis. There are two big problems with this Government. The first is they think that good intentions are a substitute for good policy. We all care in this House; it's what you do that actually makes the difference. The second problem is they think that Government has the answer to everything that Government can do everything and that every social problem is solved by more Government and more Government spending and we know from the experiment over the last four years that the truth is the opposite."