O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you Mr Speaker. This is shaping up as a fairly typical post-Budget day you know: we propose they oppose. That's what we're doing. I'm happy to be on the side that's proposing at this stage because there are no alternatives. But just in case there are people listening they'll listen to the various speakers here—and I'm now following the ACT Party. Now the ACT Party—there'll be accusations there'll be people yelling meaninglessly across the House as we're just hearing now but I'd just like to quote a little interaction that took place on the radio today—on Radio Live—where one very distinguished New Zealand economist Shamubeel Eaqub was speaking in fact with the leader of the ACT Party. And during the leader of the ACT Party's continual accusations that somehow this Government was responsible for inflation Mr Eaqub shook his head during most of Mr Seymour's speech saying it made him angry to listen to calling it economically illiterate": "It is not Government spending that is driving inflation. We had the UK hit 9 percent inflation yesterday because there is a global inflation crisis. Yes we should talk about inflation yes we should talk about Government spending but you can't just tell lies about what's going on in the economy. [The] whole thing that… is wasteful Government spending that is causing inflation is simply not true. If you're ACT you can say there are parts of the spending that we don't like and we wouldn't do that because it doesn't add value it's not efficient. That's fine. But don't do it on the basis of what I think we completely wrong to things to say" Eaqub said to Newshub. David Seymour: Point of order Mr Speaker. GREG O'CONNOR: So those who are listening to that—Hon David Seymour: I hope that Greg O'Connor didn't mean to accuse me of lying—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): In fact I don't think he did.Hon David Seymour: I hope not.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): I think what he did was quoted someone else—Hon David Seymour: Who did and read it—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): And he's entitled to quote someone else. He certainly wouldn't have accused you of lying himself.Hon David Seymour: —into the record because—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Order! Hon David Seymour: —the British have spending too.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): That's enough—that's enough.GREG O'CONNOR: I will never be the only person to do that Mr Speaker. Anyway I'm a fairly conservative sort of a chap and a lot of the accusations here are about the spending today. Going back to when we first had COVID and we were looking at basically shutting down our economy we were looking at giving workers or businesses the wage subsidy and I struggled to get my head around—I'll be quite honest—that we could do this and it would turn out to be the best thing we could have done not only for health but for the economy. But actually it turned out to be absolutely the best thing we could have done and even I think the greatest detractors of our Government across the other side will think that that's the case. Now come forward two and a half years we are at another crisis and a crisis that I won't repeat that's happening around the world—although I will repeat our economist's facts about what's happened in the UK: projected to get to near 11 percent by the end of the year. So we are in another crisis and we've got to look at a pragmatic approach to it because the losers of that are ordinary New Zealanders. Now those who are going to speak after this from the other side just imagine a world where none of these things had happened. Imagine we didn't have the winter energy payment. Imagine we hadn't increased benefits. Imagine we didn't have tax relief at the pump. Imagine we hadn't halved public transport. Where would we be? The accusations being made across the House there is "Get more money into the hands of New Zealanders" which is exactly what we're doing. On a select committee I'm on we've had the shipping companies in we've had the port companies in and the general belief that the crises we have in supply chains—caused by a shortage of ships caused by a shortage of containers and latterly caused by China's shutting down their ports—are things that actually can be relatively temporary. The other thing I would ask those who are going to stand up and cast aspersion on this say: what would happen if the Ukraine war were to end in the next month? I suspect that those petrol prices that we drive past every day would very quickly go down. So this is a world that there are things that could happen are likely to happen that actually could have us in exactly the same place as we were after the lockdown after the wage subsidy in particular that actually we'll look back and say that this was the best thing we did for New Zealanders. In the past we gave that money to the businesses; now we're giving it to people. In fact those that are great believers in the trickle-down theory might just stop and think that maybe what we're doing here and what we've so successfully done we've actually introduced the "trickle-up" theory. So I'm very happy to support this."