Joyce StevenHon STEVEN JOYCE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'd like to thank Michael Wood the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC) for his comments there. He makes a good point—the importance of reducing child poverty. The Budget Policy Statement talks about that. It talks a little bit less about how we've been able to reduce child poverty so far by the growth of the New Zealand economy and the announcements made in Budget 2017 prior to the election that were largely picked up by the new Government with a couple of changes. They were mostly set up by the previous Government once it had done the work of getting the fiscal books back in surplus so it could take the initiatives required to support those children and their families.What worries this side of the House about the Budget Policy Statement is some of the opaqueness in the statement which was discussed at the select committee. One of the areas of—and I worry about it because in order to keep making the progress that the previous Government made and to keep building on that the new Government needs to be clearly honest with itself about its fiscal position and manage its fiscal position.What worries us the National members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is a lack of clarity a lack of openness about the costs of some of the Government's expenditure plans. We had this very interesting situation where the Budget Policy Statement contained reference to the Government's 100-day plan but nothing beyond that despite the fact that those things had already been discussed with some precise numbers around them in the case of things such as the Regional Development (Provincial Growth) Fund.In fact we had the I think very unusual situation at the select committee where we were comparing two documents the Budget Policy Statement and the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update and the Government was talking about the $1 billion a year Provincial Growth Fund in one document and wasn't mentioning it in the half-yearly fiscal update. So Treasury presented a set of books that had no funding in them for the Provincial Growth Fund.Members of the committee asked Treasury why this was the case. Treasury said Because we've been focused on the 100-day promises of the Government." We said to Treasury "There is a whole lot of other stuff that needs to be costed into the forward fiscal projections." Treasury said "Of course and we've noted 29 separate new fiscal risks as an alternative to putting some of the money in the Government's accounts." The Secretary to the Treasury also said that he has accepted the Government's assurance that it will be able to meet all its spending commitments within its projected Budget operating and capital allowances.I think it's important to refer this to the House because the Secretary to the Treasury sounded a warning. He sounded a warning to the Government and said "I've made this clear to my chief executive colleagues that they're going to have to continue to run their departments extremely efficiently and extremely well and they're going to have to be ready whether it's to prioritise or support Ministers' reprioritisation decisions and to make sure evaluations of policy proposals" and so on and so forth. And then he finished: "There's no reason for me to doubt that it will but it will have to make some very tough choices."—very tough choices.The Government actually hasn't shared that with anybody. In fact even the chair of the committee popped his head up and talked about all the things that he wanted to see money spent on which incidentally weren't in the Budget Policy Statement. So we have a Government that is building up every day whether it's the finance Minister the chair of FEC other Government Ministers—building up expectations of expenditure of this Government. That's not surprising because the one thing the three partners in the Government can agree on is spending more money.But if we're going to make real progress in things like child poverty we will need money set aside for that. This Government is not heading down that path partly because of this transparency issue. I want to raise that again in relation to the Provincial Growth Fund which was discussed at length in the committee. We tried to get Treasury and the Minister of Finance to tell us how the money was going to be allocated. We asked something simple to start with. We said "What will be the allocation between operating and capital of the billion dollars?" They didn't know.We thought "OK" and we asked when it would be known. The answer was "Early next year." Well here we are. Last week the Government released a Cabinet paper that pointed out that in December they'd made a decision to actually allocate the balance of operating and capital by February of this year. Today is 28 February and there is no allocation—no allocation whatsoever. In fact the Government now says it won't be known until the Budget in May having said in December that it would be available in February.The other thing that was really interesting about this paper about the Provincial Growth Fund which was talked about so much at FEC is that all the money amounts were blacked out. They were all redacted. The Government had announced that it was spending $61 million as a sort of down payment on the Provincial Growth Fund. Not a very big down payment but nevertheless it said it had made a down payment of $61 million and said it with much fanfare. And then we have the spectacle of the Acting Minister of Finance in the House this afternoon unwilling to reveal how much money was actually new money—actually how much money was new money. If you go through the documentation with the Provincial Growth Fund and you have to go through it carefully because as I say a lot of it's been redacted that actually points out that the money that was allocated is already subject to existing decision processes because it comes from existing funds.So now we have a situation where the Provincial Growth Fund is not only opaque but quite possibly none of the money is new money and this is despite the Government itself saying that the Provincial Growth Fund will not fund any projects that would have actually been funded anyway. It's in the list of things to the Provincial Growth Fund: it will not have money spent on it that was already going to be spent.And that's interesting too because the big project so far announced in the Provincial Growth Fund which was discussed so much at the committee and which the Government could say nothing about is in fact a roundabout in Northland that incidentally was already being funded by the New Zealand Transport Agency through the National Land Transport Programme. It's number five on the list of projects for construction over the next three years in a report that was released before the election. And now it is the big new thing in the new Government's opaque not so transparent Provincial Growth Fund which is largely smoke and mirrors.So perhaps that's how they're going to balance the Budget. Perhaps that's actually how they're going to—they perhaps played one of those shell games with their coalition partner New Zealand First when the money is in fact imaginary where we're adding up existing transport money existing irrigation money existing broadband money and pretending it's a billion-dollars-a-year Provincial Growth Fund. Well we will find out no doubt in the fullness of time exactly what's going on but what we do know is that the projects announced so far are projects that are from money that was already allocated and that the biggest project was already going to be funded over the next three years.And that's the problem with this Government: they put out the Budget Policy Statement that doesn't have any of their policies in it even though we know how much actually needs to be allocated. In health and education we were told exactly how much needs allocated and yet none of it is in the Budget Policy Statement. The Provincial Growth Fund despite being mentioned in the policy statement has not actually been allocated for the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update. I come back to my first point: if the Government is not going to be honest with itself how can it possibly make sure that it has the funding available to reduce child poverty further as done by the previous Government?"