Joyce StevenHon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): Can I start by thanking a few people for this Budget. I would like to thank firstly my predecessor in this role our Prime Minister Bill English because I would not be able to give the Budget that I have given this year without his hard work leading the finance team over the last 8 years. Can I thank too my parliamentary colleagues and ministerial colleagues for the work that they have done in putting this Budget together. Can I thank too the businesses and workers of New Zealand who have built this economy so that we get the opportunity to make the decisions that we have made in this Budget. Since the Budget I have listened very closely to the speeches and to the commentary on the Budget and there have been some very interesting reactions. Paula Bennett has given some of the reactions to the Budget that have been mentioned but of course there have been reactions in this Chamber too. I have to say some of the more interesting reactions have been from the New Zealand Labour Party members in their comments on the Budget. We have seen a succession of days when they have been—how can we put this generously—road-testing some reactions to the Budget. For example they started off by saying: If you only look at the tax part of the Family Incomes Package then it doesn't work and some people don't actually succeed." They then realised that actually people would look at the whole package so they turned around and said "If you look only at the independent earner tax credit and don't look at anything else well then people do not win out of that." and some people do not—well done to the Labour Party. Then those members said: "If you don't look at anything but Working for Families then you will find some people who don't win out of this package." Then they said—and this was on about day five—"If you only look at the accommodation supplement changes then you'll see some people who don't win out of this package." I have got a hint for the Labour Party. The clue is in the name. It is a package—it is a Family Incomes Package—and you look at the four pieces and how they work together. That is how you do it. Actually to be fair I think the New Zealand public clicked on to this pretty quickly. They clicked on to it within about an hour of the speech being done. There were others who clicked on to it pretty fast—the Green Party for example. It worked it out. It was able to vote for the Budget and it was able to vote for the package. In fact the New Zealand First Party clicked on to it—it was later that same day. It was able to vote for the package. Only the Labour Party did not get it. The New Zealand Labour Party is still trying to work out how to react to this Budget. In fact I think this is the strangest thing. It was so busy trying to work out its attack lines that the party of Michael Joseph Savage—the New Zealand Labour Party we are talking about; the party of Michael Joseph Savage—managed to vote against lifting the incomes of low-income working people and low-income struggling people. It managed to vote against that and I just cannot believe that. What sort of convoluted logic applied in the strategy room of the New Zealand Labour Party that it landed up voting against this package? But that is OK because it managed to do some other things that it got a little bit wrong as well—there is more. The New Zealand Labour Party is in a parallel universe at the moment where it sees a $7 billion investment in public services—$7 billion more in public services—as being somehow a cut. That is its current plan. It is to announce it as a cut. It actually thinks that $3.9 billion more in health—the biggest increase in health spending in 11 years—is somehow a cut. That is ridiculous the New Zealand public know it is ridiculous and actually that is not the way the New Zealand public view this Budget. This Budget is a Budget that is—oh the countdown clock is now correct. This Government in this Budget is investing in the future of this country. It is investing in the public services for a growing country it is investing in the infrastructure for a growing country and Labour is still focused on the issues that do not matter—now notably the speech clock. That is what the New Zealand Labour Party is now focused on. It is the clock in this Chamber. Once again those members have had weeks of opportunity to actually focus on things that matter to New Zealanders and here they are on the final night of the Budget debate focused on the sort of silly stuff that they focus on all the way through with Grant Robertson and his schoolboy debating antics. That is how they ended up voting against the Family Incomes Package. I am proud that this Government has had the opportunity to invest in public services for a growing country in this Budget. I am proud that it has had the opportunity to invest in infrastructure for a growing country in this Budget—infrastructure that will mean we spend $32.5 billion over the next 4 years investing in the infrastructure of this country. I am proud also that this Government gets to invest in a Family Incomes Package that in particular looks after the opportunities for low and middle income New Zealanders as well as actually giving all hard-working New Zealanders a return on their investment in this country. I am also very proud that we get to do all three of those things in one Budget. There is only one reason that we get to do that in this one Budget and that is the hard work of a whole lot of Kiwis over the last 8 years as they have taken on the challenge of the global financial crisis as they have taken on the challenge of the challenge of the Canterbury earthquakes as they have worked hard and as they have saved and scrimped and done the hard yards to ensure that this country—not this Government but this country—gets the opportunity to make some investments in this Budget here in 2017. This country has taken on the job of being responsible fiscal managers it has taken on the job of running a good macroeconomic economy and running a good focus on supporting New Zealand companies and as a result of that people have the confidence to invest to grow and to add jobs for New Zealanders so that this economy actually grows and it delivers a dividend for New Zealand families. I was most proud and most privileged on Budget night to be able to stand and watch the television and see those Kiwi families saying that this was a good Budget for them that this would help them bring up their families and that this would make it easier for them to succeed in life. It is not the whole answer—it is just one Budget—but I tell you what those families made me proud. They made me proud of the New Zealand companies and the New Zealand workers who have worked hard to give those families the chance to do better in the years ahead. That is what it is all about. That is what coming to this Parliament is all about—helping New Zealanders succeed. I am proud that not just this party and not just our colleagues in coalition but even the parties of the Opposition that were smart enough to work it out—the Green Party and the New Zealand First Party—have stood up in this Parliament and said they support a dividend from growth for hard-working Kiwi families. That is what this Budget delivers. It delivers for New Zealanders and I am privileged to have had the opportunity to present it to this House. Thank you."