Woods MeganHon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): It is a pleasure for me to take a call in this debate. Budget 2020 is a Budget unlike any other that we have seen in recent years. We all know that it was set against the backdrop of the greatest health and economic global crisis of our time and the fact that we were able to deliver this Budget in a level 2 world is a testament to the team of 5 million who sacrificed to get us into the position where we are today.We said at the outset that the best economic response to COVID-19 was a strong health response. Our strategy was to go hard and to go early and in doing this we now find ourselves in a position that very few countries are in. Our children are back at school we are able to have mass gatherings we have crowds at our sports games we have people at concerts watching live music and live theatre but most importantly we have COVID contained at the border and this has put us in a very strong position to bounce back. This Budget is the first step in our recovery and our first priority is jobs jobs and more jobs.I would like to take a moment of this speech to acknowledge the work of the Hon Grant Robertson for putting together this Budget. This was a Budget where he had to rip up the work that Governments start doing in the previous calendar year to put together a Budget to deliver in May. Clearly that had to be thrown out the window as we entered into a period of history like no other that we had seen together. He did work tirelessly through that period of lockdown to ensure that as a Government we were in a position to deliver a Budget for New Zealanders that would take us on the road to recovery. It would be a Budget that could help us begin that very important task of rebuilding. The fact that this Budget was titled Rebuilding Together talks about the kind of thinking that lay behind the work that he put together to get us on that road to recovery. So I think it is important that we acknowledge that work because it is a Budget that outlines our Government's plans to create new jobs to build roads and houses to develop our hospitals and to protect and enhance our environment. This is about us investing in infrastructure.We are also in this Budget helping people to get the skills they need for the jobs that we need to rebuild New Zealand through free trades training and apprenticeships. We are investing in our people through this Budget. We are investing in our future through this Budget. We extended the hugely successful wage subsidy in a targeted way and made interest-free loans available to small businesses. We ensured the support was there for our businesses. This is how we get on with the plan to rebuild our economy together. As the Minister of Housing I was incredibly proud of the Budget that we presented to be part of a Government that is committed to delivering an extra 8000 new public and transitional homes through Budget 2020 and this of course will be part of a programme of work to stimulate the residential construction sector create jobs and reduce housing shortages. As a Government we are committed to a range of measures to ensure we do not see what happened to the residential construction centre post the global financial crisis—that being the collapse of the building of affordable housing. We are committed to working with our residential construction sector to make sure they have a secure pipeline of work they can continue to build and importantly from our perspective they continue to build affordable homes.Through Budget 2020 we funded a total of $670 million in Income Related Rent Subsidy which means not only have we made a commitment to the number of homes that will be built as public and transitional houses but there will be families who have access to the subsidies required to move into those homes. Too often we have seen the announcement of houses saying X number of houses are going to be built" without the appropriate appropriations for that Income Related Rent Subsidy and I was proud that we put all of that into Budget 2020 because this will bring the total number of public and transitional builds in the pipeline or completed by this Government to 18350 homes and that is something we can be proud of. That is more houses than any Government has built in a generation. It is something that we stand with pride and talk about. I am proud of that record of delivery on public houses. We are building them; we are not selling them. We see that as the job of our Government.We also provided through Budget 2020 a $56 million boost to Warmer Kiwi Homes our Government's insulation and heating programme. We're increasing the grant proportion available to low-income households from 67 percent to 90 percent of the costs to deliver an estimated 9000 additional retrofits of homes. Insulation and heating helps to prevent respiratory illness and the Warmer Kiwi Homes programme protects the most vulnerable people in our communities. We are a Government that started three years ago with a commitment to warmer drier homes for New Zealanders and that is what we have delivered.I also recently announced the work that we will start on the business case for investigating pumped hydro storage options for New Zealand. This is a critical issue that a Government needs to show leadership of. This is the critical issue of dry-year storage and how we overcome it as we move on the pathway to 100 percent renewable electricity. If this business case stacks up pumped hydro will be a game-changer for securing sustainable cheaper low-emissions electricity for the long term for our future. This could be and would be a truly transformational project. It would be a significant step to delivering on that 100 percent renewable electricity generation target.As the research science and innovation Minister this Budget also provided much needed support to our Crown research institutes. Critical scientific capability was an integral part of our response to COVID-19 and New Zealand's economic recovery. I am proud as a Government in the tough times we didn't do what we all too often see and that is people look to the research budget and slash it. We invested in our science. We invested in our innovation to the tune of around $400 million through Budget 2020.One of the many things that we have learnt in recent months is the importance of clear and coherent science communications in a world of disinformation. We have seen the very best of our scientific capability on display. I want to pay tribute to those scientists in New Zealand who have stood with us and explained things to us throughout this year and we are proud to be backing those scientists. This funding will also assist in attracting and retaining world-class talent in high priority areas such as sustainable forestry science health research resilience to natural physical hazards and primary sector innovation for sustainable productivity.We could not take it for granted the fortunate position we find ourselves in today. Many countries are still dealing with the immediate effects of COVID-19 on their communities. Budget 2020 is an important first step. Now we have an incredible opportunity to recover from COVID-19 and we are firmly focused on the opportunities in front of us. I am grateful that we have a leadership in our Government that chose to put the umbrella up when the tough times came as the Minister of Finance explains it. Although the Opposition spokesperson on finance took umbrage at the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister calling out his call to return to deep deep within 30 percent of GDP within a decade as saying that austerity wasn't on the table under the thinking from the Opposition that was the language we heard very clearly from the speech he delivered. As the Minister of Finance has described it $80 billion less borrowing means some of the harshest public service cuts we will have seen in decades. We are a Government that are proud that we have invested in our future and Budget 2020 does that because we are backing New Zealand."