Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. We all stand here today during challenging times for many New Zealanders and many people all around the world. We all see the international stories. Day by day the gravity of the situation is deepening and the lengths that various Governments have gone to around the world to try and hold back the tide of this disease are quite astonishing and unparalleled in terms of closing down economies and keeping people at home. We all wonder about what the outcome of this will be and we're naturally concerned—concerned about the health of ourselves and our families and our neighbourhoods and also about our economy and our ability to have good jobs and to care for our families and to have some security in the future.We note and acknowledge the Government's very substantial package yesterday. In broad terms of course of that package about 2 percent of GDP has been focused to the short-term battle against this disease—about $6 billion. The other $6 billion roughly will be spent over the next four years and is not directly related to the coronavirus but for long-term things such as increasing benefits. Now that may well be appropriate but we do need to recognise that the package in terms of trying to deal with the short-term economic issue that we're facing around coronavirus equates to about 2 percent of GDP. It's interesting; the United Kingdom overnight was talking about 15 percent of GDP. So notwithstanding the talk that we've heard about the size of this package we do need to recognise that in international terms it's relatively modest.Our point that we would be making here in the National Party is that we agree with the focus on wage subsidies in terms of helping people stay in their jobs and helping businesses. It's not a business support package; it's a workers support package that we need and what we're getting. It's about keeping workers in their jobs and keeping those businesses ticking over. Our primary point yesterday was to make the point that if you're spending $12 billion you're actually better to spend most of that money on saving jobs today not on something in four years' time. That's what we wanted: more urgent action. When we called for the package a number of weeks ago—actually two weeks ago; certainly a week ago—we were talking about swift and substantial action. We've got a reasonable amount of action and some of it is swift but most of it is not. So we're making a very clear call to the Government to move faster and more urgently and more substantially in order to save jobs.I was disappointed frankly today in the Minister's answers around the numbers of people. It's all a bit confusing: $5.1 billion has been allocated to these wage subsidies. Even in urgent and critical times basic questions should be answered and we should have the basic detail and assumptions upon which it's made. So if you're spending $5.1 billion to give a subsidy of $580-odd a week that's about 730000 workers you're talking about subsidising in the next three months. It's very hard to understand because only about 900000 workers would be eligible for it. The implication seems to be that the Minister thinks that nearly 80 percent of eligible workers will be being subsidised in the next three months. That I hope is not the case. It's a very bleak outcome if that's what he is thinking but I'm not sure the figures have been gone through in any detail.It is not correct and not acceptable that this Government says that they refuse to release the Cabinet papers and the information upon which this decision was made. We need to see right now what the Cabinet paper said and the assumptions that underlined that decision of nearly $5 billion of expenditure. We need to see that now. We don't want to wait six months or two months or three months—however long the Government usually takes to answer these basic questions. Likewise for the major decision on Saturday about closing our borders we need to see the Cabinet paper and understand the arguments that were used.Finally I do think it's also critically important that the private sector is out there trying to raise extra money to keep jobs and save jobs and that's capital raising. A lot of big companies are out there right now wanting to raise more capital. The first thing that a Government should do should be to make it easier for them to do the task. They should be sending a clear message to the Financial Markets Authority and the stock exchange to be swift with their regulatory work—don't muck around for two weeks but turn things around in 24 hours—and lift the threshold so that companies can raise that money that they need critically and swiftly. It's all about saving jobs. That should be the primary focus from an economic point of view. Of course one of the best things we can do is get on top of this disease quickly and that's why all of us right here today are encouraging the Government and authorities to test test test—get those tests out quickly so that we can understand the size and gravity of this problem. Thank you Mr Speaker.