Robertson GrantHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member David Clark for the questions and I think all of them are on topics of importance so I'll try to cover all three of them. On the savings point as noted there were $4 billion of savings in reprioritisations across this period—Hon Dr David Clark: $4 billion?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes $4 billion. And I do actually want to acknowledge that and just to give a broad breakdown of where they came from. So $1.5 billion of that was a result of what was started by the previous Prime Minister towards the end of 2022 when she asked Ministers to go away and take another look at what we were doing to make sure that it was necessary it was being delivered well and it was a priority for us in the face—as we've been discussing previously—of needing both to get our expenditure back down to levels that were more sustainable post-COVID but also an acknowledgment of the overall deteriorating global economy. As a result of that around $1.5 billion of savings were found the largest component of which was the ending of the clean car and social leasing schemes that were within there. Colleagues will recall the exercise that went through and the new Prime Minister picked that up from the old Prime Minister and carried through that work.We then went through as is done in the March and October baseline updates which is when on a six-monthly basis essentially Government agencies come through and say Here's how we've got to with our spending here's what we'd like to roll over to the future here's what we can bring back to what's called the centre."—that represented about $1.1 billion of that and then another $1.5 billion which we did during the Budget process where we literally went through each vote and said "Are all of these programmes necessary? Can we find ways of saving ourselves money?" and that was about $1.5 billion. So that brings us to the $4 billion of savings.The answer is 6 percent—a just on 6 percent larger economy than we had until before COVID. The New Zealand economic story in COVID is one that is worth telling in the sense that it did require a significant investment from the Government to support businesses and households to get through. But as a result of that we didn't experience the levels of unemployment that had been expected. And today we saw unemployment at 3.6 percent a tick up from where it's been but significantly below where it was when we came into Government and very much below where people thought it would get to. And that's because of the actions that we took. So yes the economy is larger—several sectors have been very challenged through this period of time and it is tough out there for a lot of businesses. It is tough out there for a lot of households but we have been able to get the economy through at a macro level in a way that I think has been very helpful. And then briefly on the themes of the Budget as the member requested—I mean quite clearly the cost of living was always going to be one of the main themes in this Budget. What we did was we went looking for things that could support New Zealanders with cost of living pressures but that would not unnecessarily exacerbate inflation and had other benefits. And so if you think about things like the removal of the $5 prescription charge that's an example of where we know that will improve health outcomes. We know that will mean that fewer people will end up presenting in some cases to the emergency department. So it removes pressure within the health system while also taking a cost of living pressure off. It's evidence-based and it remains important to me and in the Budgets that we do. There was a fantastic University of Otago study that identified that about 135000 New Zealanders weren't picking up their prescription each year because of the cost; we responded to that with that. So that cost of living theme—and there are many other examples which we don't have time to go through right now that fitted within that theme as well. We did also want to make sure we continue to deliver the public services New Zealanders need. You know it is absolutely clear that in a high-inflation environment we need to put more money into our health system more money into our education system to make sure that we are able to keep up with and employ people and pay people and so that was clearly a big theme. Recovery and resilience as the member has noted: there was a significant investment in making sure the regions of New Zealand could recover from the weather event but also to make sure that we're making our economy more resilient with a big investment in infrastructure support for skills and training apprenticeships and so on—the core kind of building blocks of that strong economy. And then the final theme was around fiscal sustainability because we do need that journey back to those more sustainable levels of spending and so that's why the savings programme that we talked about before was so important. So those broad themes were the themes of the Budget. They were the right themes for the Budget that we were dealing with. They are a balanced approach; they are a part of a long-running approach that we've had that we support people to get through difficult times but we also are making sure that we do that in a way that looks after future generations' financial stability."