1. Question No. 1—FinanceHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of FinanceORAL QUESTIONSQUESTIONS TO MINISTERSQuestion No. 1—Finance1. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all of the Budget Responsibility Rules he committed to in Budget 2018?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes.Hon Paul Goldsmith: How can he stand by his commitment to be in surplus every year until there is a significant natural event or a major economic shock or crisis when yesterday showed the Government is projected to be in deficit this year?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I believe the member will find that Budget 2018 the Fiscal Strategy Report of which I have a copy here says that we will deliver a sustainable operating surplus across an economic cycle. That is exactly what we are doing. We have had around $13 billion worth of surpluses up to this point and we'll have $12 billion worth of them up to the end of the forecast period.Hon Paul Goldsmith: What is the point of having fiscal targets if you simply pick and choose when to ignore them?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I completely reject the premise of the member's question.Hon Paul Goldsmith: Why does he think it would be ludicrously stubborn" to keep his promises?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Again I reject the latter part of that question. That comment was made yesterday in response to a question that really had at its basis the fact that consistently virtually every economic commentator in New Zealand has been calling for a boost to infrastructure spending—Kieran McAnulty: That's right—including the member.Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —yes actually that's exactly right—including the member opposite who also I might add I believe said that borrowing to do that was a good idea.Hon Paul Goldsmith: Isn't the fact that people were calling for a boost to infrastructure spending because the Government wasn't doing any quality infrastructure spending having cancelled or postponed most of the major projects that the previous National Government had left?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No. I believe the reason that that was was because of this graph here which represents the infrastructure deficit that the previous Government was left with.Hon Paul Goldsmith: How can New Zealanders be assured about the quality of his Government's spending when just today his Government released the Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy report the key financial assumptions underlining which Treasury has completely dismantled?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: That report was one commissioned by the Government undertaken by an independent group. It is now being considered by the Government. It is among a number of questions that the Government is now asking to finalise our position on that—look forward to hearing the member's position on that matter too.Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is it not the case that Treasury points out that the working group's preferred option of moving the port to Northport hinges on two assumptions neither of which stack up?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I'll just repeat the answer I've just given: that report from an independent working group has come back to the Government. The Government is now in the process of considering it asking a range of questions and we look forward to inputs from across the board on where people believe the port should go when it should go and that would include whether the member would like to make his mind up about that.Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he satisfied with the quality of the Government's increased spending such as KiwiBuild and the Provincial Growth Fund?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I'm very satisfied that this Government is addressing the long-term challenges and issues that we inherited as a Government and when it comes to housing inheriting 71000 houses less than what we should've had as a country inheriting the sell-off of State houses and inheriting increasing homelessness—we're working very hard to address those. We're making good progress on that but it is a big deficit to make up for."