Edmonds BarbaraHon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you Madam Chair. I now find it really interesting that the Minister likes to take responsibility for the official cash rate (OCR) coming down but she doesn't want to take responsibility for the economic outlook which is in the Monetary Policy Statement and which shows all the major indicators are falling down. So which is it: do you want to take credit for it coming down but not responsibility for the economic activity in the outlook or is it that you don't want to take credit for the economic activity which has caused the OCR to come down? That is the reason why in the Monetary Policy Statement and the OCR the Reserve Bank decided to pivot and to make those cuts earlier because all the indicators were going down. In the same way that the Minister's Budget and Economic Fiscal Update—why has economic growth been revised downwards since that Budget was released? Those are actions of this Government. You can blame as much as you want the previous Government but again the whole point about crying wolf which was reflected in question time today—the reason why I asked that is because we had the same credit rating. You have the same credit rating the same grade as Grant Robertson. So I'm confused on this side of the Chamber about what it is about this economic activity and why it's coming down progressively more quickly—which is why the Reserve Bank had to cut rates. The other question is this; the really good thing around scrutiny week wasn't necessarily the extra time we had with Ministers but actually it was the extra time we had with officials because we actually got answers to our questions. So one of the questions that we've repeatedly asked this Government is this: what are you actually doing about productivity? The response we've had back was around red tape. However what are the other things that you're doing around productivity because when we asked their chief economist in that Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC) hearing—when we asked them the same question in FEC—their response was that there was nothing in the Budget that gave cause for the Treasury to revise productivity upwards. These are all the facts that are in their own books. So as much as Ministers in commentary may want to try and gaslight the economy that Labour left them with the Government has the same grade as Grant Robertson did in relation to those credit risk ratings but what has changed is that the Government's decisions around economic activity have caused the Reserve Bank to have to cut things down. Economic activity in New Zealand is coming down which is why we've had so much migration from New Zealand over the Ditch to Australia. So my question to the Minister is: does she think that making cuts to the likes to Callaghan Innovation for example an agency that supports research and development which has been key to helping productivity which is one of the reasons why other commentators would say and why the Productivity Commission would say to invest in research and development—how will that help improve productivity? Again as we heard in the Finance and Expenditure Committee we've heard from her own officials that productivity did not need to be revised as part of the Budget.