Brownlee Gerry; Borrows ChesterHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Foreign Affairs): I rise to speak in favour of this year's Budget delivered by the Hon Steven Joyce and to speak in opposition clearly to the amendment to the motion put by the Leader of the Opposition. Not the least of which reason is that the alternative motion assumes that the country would have some confidence in his leadership and his party's leadership of the country compared with the benefits that are clearly there for all New Zealanders in this Budget. I think that is a completely wrong proposition.Budgets are never easy things to construct. Everybody has their requirements and everyone has their calls on the funding that a Government has available at any time. What a Government must always do is recognise that every cent it is able to expend in a Budget comes out of the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders. The Government itself whether it is accruing its funding from the tax base or from the various entities that are owned by the Crown must recognise that in the end it is the pocket of the taxpayer that is eventually funding all of the Government's activities. So with that in mind it becomes very important that Budgets do focus on opportunities for economic growth that they do encourage the expansion of employment in this country and that they do also set out the bounds and parameters within its own expenditure for New Zealanders to share in the benefits of everybody else's collective prosperity. That is what this Budget does.Firstly the changes that have been lambasted by the Opposition as being tax cuts in disguise is a completely rubbish notion. To say to people who are on incomes that they might have been receiving for some years that there is going to be a threshold movement that means that they will keep more of the dollars that they earn through their hard work is not an unreasonable thing at all. To be able to say to families Now all of the children in your family are going to attract support at the same rate as those in the current older age group." is also not unreasonable. It is recognising the pressures that people have.Then there is the argument that the accommodation supplement simply feeds landlords. It does not take a lot of exercise of the brain to work out that when you have got low interest rates as we have now with interest rates somewhere between 4.5 percent and maybe 6 percent the requirement for return just to meet the cost of that capital is going to be in that $4500 to $6000 per hundred thousand. You multiply that by the value of the premises being rented and you start to see that landlords far from gouging in this country are in many cases providing for people in most cases good accommodation at a reasonable cost. For the Government to say "Well if people are having trouble meeting that cost here is some assistance." is also very very reasonable in the circumstances.The New Zealand economy has benefited from the approach that this Government has taken over a long number of years and that is evidenced by the extraordinary job growth that we have seen over the last few years with some 200000 more jobs now expected over the next few years and with that same number—200000—of new jobs since 2014. Those are the sorts of achievements that can be put down only in part to Government policy but significantly put down to the response to Government policy by people who take an entrepreneurial view of their role in society. It is about people making that effort putting their capital and their reputation on the line and deciding to expand a business start a business or otherwise. It is all when you think about it relatively simple but high risk for people. It does have that effect of meaning that more New Zealanders are in work now than has ever been the case before.A consequence of having a growing economy and of being able to afford higher incomes inside that economy is that in this case some 50000 children who might once have been classed as living in more deprived circumstances are now living in more reasonable circumstances. That constant drive for improving the lot of people at the bottom of society is something that no Government should ever lose sight of and most certainly this Government has not. It is perhaps there that we are most perplexed by the Labour Party's idea that no one should support this Budget because somehow the benefit that comes from this Budget to so many working families is unfair and unreasonable on those who are not working. That is simply not a proposition or a philosophy that will ever see the economy growing and expanding.Another aspect of this Budget is the extraordinary commitment—biggest commitment ever seen by any Government in New Zealand—to expanding the infrastructure of the country. There will be those who argue that sometimes we get it wrong because we put money into roads and roads apparently are not a good thing. But for as long as economies have existed anywhere roads have been essential. It seems odd that you will have for example one political party in this House constantly complaining about the traffic congestion and such in Auckland but at the same time refusing to support a Budget that will do something about that congestion by way of making it easier for people to move around. Whether that is the rail system or the roads it does require investment it does require a commitment to infrastructure and while this Government has a very big reputation for investing in infrastructure this Budget simply reinforces it with such a huge sum of money going into that over the next few years.Then there are the core public services. Well the quality of any public service—education health and the security services etc.; our police and all those sorts of things—is always going to be somewhat determined by the ability to pay. Those services will get better when the ability to pay runs ahead of the demands of a growing population. That is also something that is very evident and clear in this Budget: $7 billion extra—$7 billion extra. And to quantify that that is $7000 million extra over the next 4 years for those core services. You would assume that Budgets in the next few years will further add to that very impressive sum making sure that those public services are just as sharp and just as capable of delivering to the families and other residents of New Zealand.Another aspect of this Budget has been the commitment that we have made in areas that are not so large and not so visible. One of those areas is of course our commitment to the Antarctic. It is extremely important that New Zealand keeps its interest in the Antarctic. We have had that for a very long time since the times of the first Scott expeditions down there and of course then the programme that we have that was started by Admiral Byrd in the 1950s. It is a part of the world where the conservation values and the environmental values do need to be protected and we therefore need to have an interest down there. This Budget sees money set aside for the redevelopment ultimately of our Scott Base down there.I want to conclude by just mentioning one area where there is a small cost increase and that is around the Earthquake Commission (EQC) levy. EQC is a body that is roundly criticised by people who do not appreciate its value. The first point to note in all of that is that in 1992 the cover for earthquake in New Zealand was going to be removed. Insurers in the private sector were not happy to cover that. So the Government expanded EQC and took the first $100000 of liability at a very low cost. To be able to meet that cost it does in fact require 20c in the dollar. For some New Zealanders where they are insuring the full $100000—which is practically everybody—the increases per year will be some $69. It is not huge for the cover that is going to be available. What it means is that we will not get caught short if we have another Christchurch another Kaikōura or wherever we might have a disaster that EQC's cover is required for. It is unique in the world and it is very very cheap. I hope that the opportunity that some might see for private insurers to leverage off that is not taken because it is the first risk that the Government takes on behalf of New Zealanders enabling this cover to be accessed by anyone who has a household policy.This is a very good Budget and I am very happy to support it. I look forward to voting against the amendment to the motion put by the Leader of the Opposition.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The next call is a split call. The first 5 minutes is Mahesh Bindra from New Zealand First."