Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I listened carefully to the speech from the Hon Stuart Nash and I was disappointed. I was disappointed in the speech just as much as I was disappointed in the Budget from his Government because that was a member that used to come to this House and speak with passion and with pride and with energy and today we saw absolutely none of that. It was an apology. It was an apology for broken promises for an expectation that he in Opposition had set and now in Government has failed to deliver.In electorates like mine in the Coromandel police numbers are down and there's no hope of any relief any time soon because there's a Minister who is talking about extending the time frame for the provision of new police officers and he's changed the definition of what front line" means as well. So "front line" now is going to be non-sworn officers it's going to be non-sworn police personnel and it's going to be people who are driving desks and doing administrative work. That's not what his Government campaigned on that's not what they promised New Zealanders that's not what they said they would deliver and yet that's what he's now apologising for in terms of this Budget 2018.The National Government left this Government a legacy like no other before in a generation: a strong and growing economy an economy with a full head of steam and momentum and a Treasury bank account that means that they are awash with cash—awash with cash. It's a legacy that they have shown already to have squandered—not to take the opportunities presented to them not to take the opportunities to make significant change and worst of all not to fulfil the promises that they campaigned on and not to achieve what they said they would do. So they inherited a strong and growing economy and what have they delivered? A Budget of broken promises.I've got sad news for the people of Coromandel. There's very little—almost nothing—in this Budget for people in the provinces. There's very little—Hon Louise Upston: That's right.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —almost nothing—for the people of Coromandel. My colleague the member for Taupō acknowledges it's exactly the same in her electorate—Hon Tim Macindoe: And in Hamilton.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —and in Hamilton and around provincial and rural New Zealand. Nothing. The only hope the only plan that this Government has for rural and provincial New Zealand is Shane Jones' slush fund. There isn't a plan B there's nothing else—that's all it is. And it's the largesse that he and seemingly he alone will get to decide that most of it goes up to Northland. Not much of it's going to come anywhere close to electorates like mine or the Hon Louise Upston's or for that matter the Hon Tim Macindoe's. There's nothing in it for them.Barry Soper's been around this Parliament for a very long period of time a very long period of time and he described this Budget as—and I quote—"But even by Labour's own admission it was a boring Budget. [It] lacked pizazz" and indeed he's absolutely right. He said further—and I quote—"There has been criticism that this Budget wasn't transformational it didn't do what Labour governments have done in the past [which is to] give us something that we weren't expecting something that Labour could claim as their own that they could build on and be remembered for." because utterly unmemorable is this Budget.It wasn't only Barry Soper. Most of the commentators put this Budget to bed pretty quickly. Claire Trevett from the New Zealand Herald in a headline article described it as "A Budget of hand-me-down ties and slogans" and it's the slogans that this new Government is actually having problems with because in Opposition they campaigned on slogans. They were famous for campaigning on slogans. In fact there wasn't a matter that confronted our nation that couldn't be solved with a slogan—a short pithy slogan. The challenge that they now have and have so demonstrably been unable to fulfil is that they can't turn their slogans into real and meaningful policy. They're struggling with that because they weren't ready for Government they didn't have a plan and the Budget absolutely shows this.Claire Trevett went on to say that "There was also symbolism in the colour of the Budget documents themselves." Well they were red. There was a lot of red and not much else. The details are sketchy. They're not as fulsome as one would want.What this Budget—this first Budget of Grant Robertson—has really demonstrated is that this Labour-led Government doesn't have a plan. They haven't got a plan for actually making the pie bigger so that dividends from a growing and strong economy can be shared amongst all. They haven't got a coherent strategy. They haven't got a coherent strategy to grow the New Zealand economy. In fact most of what they have done so far has actually resulted in a diminishing of economic growth and a process by which the economy's going to slow the jobs will decrease and they are going to reap the rewards of that slowdown in the economy in the months and year or so ahead that they have.This is a tax spend borrow-and-hope Budget—tax spend borrow and hope. My dear late father used to always say that it would take a National Government about three terms to tidy up the mess of a Labour Government and that's what we're seeing now. It took John Key and Bill English about that length of time to tidy up after the Helen Clark years and in a few short months these guys have made fatal errors that are going to slow down the economy.As I said there was a lot of red on the cover of the Budget there's a lot of black in the writing but one thing there isn't is there's no green—absolutely no green. One of the real problems for this Government is that they campaigned on a policy of doing good for the environment and what do we find? The Greens utterly and totally humiliated—abject humiliation for the Greens in this Budget. Winston Peters and his party: billions of dollars—billions of dollars—delivered to the New Zealand First Party as a deal; as a price paid for coalition. And what did the Greens get? A hundred million dollars. The New Zealand First Party: billions. The Green Party utterly humiliated—$100 million.What do we find in the environmental spend in this Budget? Something that most New Zealanders didn't expect from this Government. What we find is that actually spending in this Budget is lower—lower than it was in last year's Budget. How could that be so? That surely couldn't be so from a Government that stands on the virtual symbolism of being good for the environment. Why wouldn't they spend as much on environmental protection as the last Government did? Well go and have a look at the New Zealand Herald interactive website because there it makes it very plain and clear for everybody to see for all New Zealanders to go and see that the environment actually suffered as a result of this Government's Budget. Vote Environment is down a massive 13.6 percent on last year.Hon Tim Macindoe: They didn't campaign on that.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Those are the numbers—they didn't campaign on that my colleague Tim Macindoe says. They didn't campaign on that—the environment vote down 13.6 percent. It's $132 million less than was spent by the Bill English administration last year.So what do we find? Things like the Contaminated Sites Remediation Fund—nearly $2.7 million less being spent on the remediation of contaminated sites. Improving environmental management is down about $3.5 million and the rest goes on. The real challenge for this Government though is that their actions in this Budget are going to put growth under pressure and as a result of growth being under pressure we're going to see the political uncertainty that comes with business confidence tanking and businesses being uncertain and businesses being careful or simply not employing new staff and as those business expectations fall so too do the aspirations of New Zealand business folk and indeed the whole country.Even though there's still plenty of momentum in the economy for now the policies and the initiatives taken in Budget 2018 by this Labour-led Government are going to put a dampener on all those things. Already we see capacity pressures that are getting aggressive and we know what happens when that occurs in the economy. We see that our exchange rate is down and we see that commodity prices are going up and what does that mean for our economy? Well it means fewer jobs and less opportunity for New Zealanders.So we see in this first Government Budget from Grant Robertson a speech that was pathetic in its totality—a disappointment a Budget of broken promises a Budget of low and no expectation. It's a Budget that has let New Zealand down."