Prosser RichardRICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and on behalf of my colleague Fletcher Tabuteau to take a call in this Committee of the whole House as we debate the Appropriation (2016/17 Estimates) Bill. This is not intended to sound glib but I really do think that this bill would be better entitled the Appropriation (2016/17 Wild Guess) Bill" because that seems to be very much more appropriate. Bill English is no fool. He has been doing this a long time—he has delivered what eight Budgets—and he should really know what he is doing by now. We would like to think that—you would want to hope that he does. But there comes a time and there comes a point in most administrations where hubris begins to set in where incumbent Governments develop a sense of complacency and arrogance when it comes to matters pertaining to the public purse. I believe that we are beginning to see this now with this National Government and with Mr English's eighth Budget and Estimates bill. So this Budget really is more like a set of wild guesses than a set of Estimates. There is too much about these appropriations that is vague that is contradictory and that appears to have been crafted without proper consultation without proper forethought and without proper planning. Time is limited. I want to touch on a few things that this Budget contains—a few things that concern billions of dollars of taxpayers' money things that are obscured with smoke and mirrors. The time was that this might have been an opportunity for ridicule and a chance to score points but I think we have gone past that. I actually believe that the nation has had enough and not just the New Zealand nation; peoples around the world have had enough of Governments abrogating responsibilities or Governments hiding behind the façade of "We're in charge. There's nothing you can do about it. Just trust us; we know what we're doing. We're not going to give you the details because well you know you don't need to know. We'll tell you what you need to know." The first of these things is under Vote Revenue. It is a billion dollars for a new computer system for the Inland Revenue Department (IRD)—a billion dollars. How on earth does a country the size of New Zealand have a requirement for a billion dollars' worth of computer hardware and software for the sole purpose of collecting the taxes that pay for the computer system? And that is on the cheap apparently because IRD has discovered a company in Oregon that does something off the shelf that will do the job better than anything that it could have had designed and built on a bespoke basis. You could be forgiven for thinking that where billions of dollars of taxpayers' money is concerned the first thing you would do is check whether there was something out there already that would do the job off the shelf which would mean you would not have to go reinventing the wheel but apparently not. That is not really the point; the point is not what IRD has bought or even the fact that it is going offshore when we have a perfectly capable IT and software industry in this country. We have a large number of very bright very well-qualified and very innovative professionals designers technicians and young people who are passionate about IT and software who could quite easily have been called on by this Government to create something specific for New Zealand—indeed something that then could have been onsold to the rest of the world. It is not really even about that. The point with regard to the appropriation for that is that the reference to the cost of the system is buried so deeply under so much detail that it is almost impossible to discover within the body of the Budget documents as to where it is going. The best I can find is this reference buried in "Departmental Other Expenses". It says: "Expenditure in the years before 2015/16 included the feasibility mobilisation and high level design phases of the transformation programme. … In addition 2015/16 and the subsequent years include an allocation for the implementation of the transformation programme's four stages as well as to cover on-going costs. The allocation is funded through new Crown revenue as well as through fiscally neutral transfers from within the existing departmental output expense appropriations." To the uninitiated—indeed even to some of the initiated—that probably sounds like "waffledegook". I presume it refers to some sort of acknowledgment of the need to put some money aside to actually pay for the thing but it is an uncertain call. Under Vote Finance and Government Administration Sector itself there are several other anomalous and fairly poorly explained expenses detailed. One of these is the increase in non-departmental output expenses for the management of anchor projects by Ōtākaro Ltd. I have to confess I had not heard of that company until just the other day. This jumps by almost $16 million from about $7 million to $23 million or thereabouts. In the absence of any explanation you can only assume that this is concerning the takeover of the Christchurch Convention Centre anchor project by Ōtākaro Ltd given that the private partners appear to have pulled out of that process. We do not know why they have pulled out. We can only presume that the deal was not sweet enough for them in the end. They would have been expecting to make a return on the investment. Had that been the case then we could perhaps have accepted that some cost on the Crown's part coupled with investment from the private sector would have returned something that was a good deal for both sides. The private sector naturally wants to make a return on its investment and deserves to and the Crown would get something back perhaps in an intangible manner but perhaps in a tangible manner. But they have pulled out and we have not been told why. Not even Ngāi Tahu wants a bar of it now and that is quite telling because Ngāi Tahu as everyone knows are quite superb capitalists. They can make money out of almost nothing at all and they do. They are a shining example not just to Māoridom but to the whole of New Zealand to private and public sectors alike. If they do not want a part of it—if they cannot make a dollar out of it it probably cannot be done but we are doing it anyway. The Crown is going in and building this convention centre as part of the Christchurch rebuild on the basis you can only presume of "Build it and they will come". And I guess they will. I guess the private hotel chains and mall developers and so forth will come in. When the convention centre is built at public cost then the companies that know that they can make money out of certain parts of that project will come in. The hotels will be built the malls will be built the shops will be built. They will make money and they will make money for their private investors and the convention centre will lose it. So yet again we are privatising the profits and socialising the losses. To get back to what I was saying at the very beginning I think it is probably pertinent to point out to the Government at this point that there is too much of this going on now. There is the wind of change blowing around the world. We have seen it in Canada with Mr Trudeau's Government we have seen it with Brexit and we have seen it in Australia. This sort of thing—and perhaps the Government could take this as a warning—probably will happen here in New Zealand. The public has had enough of the arrogance of the hubris and of the establishment and of matters like this appropriations debate this Budget that contains a great deal in the way of numbers a lot about money very little about detail too much in the way of subterfuge and things being hidden and details not being given and too much that is put out on the basis of "You don't need to know; we'll tell you what you need to know." It is a terrible appropriations bill. We oppose it and frankly what is coming to the Government as a result of this it deserves to have. Thank you."