Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I do of course want to take a call in this third reading of the appropriations debate where we reflect on this first Budget of this Labour - New Zealand First - Greens Government.In my first reading on Budget day or just after Budget day when I talked to this bill I reflected that you had to see it as a Budget of wasted opportunities. The opportunities that this Government inherited—the economic platform the strong and growing surpluses the job creation rate the GDP rate—made us one of the envies of the Western World and frankly across the OECD. Some people have said that you haven't had a finance Minister as lucky as Grant Robertson since the Second World War. They have this tremendous platform of economic opportunity and yet what we've seen is a waste of that opportunity and a squandering of the opportunity and actually in the months since the Budget the position has become so much worse because not only are they squandering the opportunities that New Zealanders worked so hard over so many tough years to accumulate but they're now ensuring that the growth machine slows down to a crawl.It's always seemed to me that as a finance Minister you have two fundamental roles. One is to think very carefully about how you invest and spend the opportunities that New Zealanders have given you through their hard work and their taxes—and on that count I label this Budget a fail—and the second job is to make sure that the actions of your Government the policies and the economic direction that you set are going to support that growth going forward. I'm going to come back to that because there is no question to everyone now in this space—with the possible exception of Grant Robertson and Jacinda Ardern—that the economy is slowing down the indicators have taken a turn for the worse and the direction of travel is all wrong and yet the very person who's charged with ensuring that economic growth is asleep at the wheel. That is an unforgiveable sin being committed by this Government.We're hearing from the Government now that somehow the downturn in confidence and GDP and the upturn in unemployment and the very negative projections being released by our economic agencies and commentators—sometimes we're hearing from the Government: Oh well it's just part of the international cycle and a part of the international climate we're in." Well that's simply not credible and I point very easily to the fact that in the rest of the world the OECD growth average is still nearly 4 percent. It is 3.9 percent per annum growth which is where we ourselves were just 18 months ago and yet it has been squandered under this Government.If this was the economic cycle of the international economy we would be tracking with the world. The reality is we are going south when the rest of the world is still performing very well. Our biggest trade partner of course China is growing at 6.7 percent. Our second-biggest trade partner Australia—their growth rate is continuing to improve. When you look at OECD rankings on business confidence we have gone from the top of the world to frankly the bottom in 20 months. Now that is not the story of an economy that's going backwards because of an international climate; that is the story of a domestic economy that is going backwards because of the mismanagement of this Government.Instead of coming to the House and acknowledging that there are indicators of concern and that we're going to need to put plans in place to address it what do we hear from the Government?Hon Tim Macindoe: They call them junk. Hon AMY ADAMS: We hear that the businesses don't know what they're talking about. Business sentiment is "junk" it is "biased" it is "perception" and it is "bulldust". We hear: "Businesses are just wrong and if they only understood the Government better it would be fine." Well I put more faith in the opinions of the people who are actually running businesses than in the opinion of a finance Minister who's never run a business. He's never run a business. He has never in fact—to my knowledge—even worked in a private sector business and yet Grant Robertson has the arrogance to stand here and tell the business community that they are wrong. The Prime Minister has the arrogance to tell the business community that they just don't understand it properly. Well I'm sorry I say to the Government but that is unforgiveable dismissiveness of the core engine room of our economy.There is no doubt that when you look at for example Treasury now talking down the growth prospects of this country and when you look at the Reserve Bank having come out last week saying that the official cash rate (OCR) is now going to be lower for much longer—and that is a very simple report card from the governor which is him saying "I now have less faith in the economy than I did three months ago." because when the economy starts to heat up and pick up then the governor will move the OCR. The fact that the governor is now saying the OCR is unlikely to move until 2020 says that there is less faith now in the New Zealand economy. In fact when he did talk about moving it he indicated that if this slow growth continues we could see the OCR drop by another 100 points.Look at the dollar over the last few weeks. We have seen the dollar drop away sharply as again international markets are looking at New Zealand; they're looking at our economic performance and they're not liking what they see. This is the vote of no confidence in this country's performance from the international economy and the only thing that has changed is the Government. The businesses are as hard-working and as focused as ever. The country has the same exquisite natural resource potential to sell to the world. New Zealand continues to make and sell what the world wants. We're still getting very good export prices. The only reason the economy is slowing and slowing rapidly and slowing patently obviously to everyone except Grant Robertson is the change of Government and the uncertainty the poor policies the lack of process and the dismissive approach to how the economy functions that we're seeing from this Government.I mean to have a Minister for workplace relations who will say to business "If they don't like the extra costs and if they can't handle the extra costs well perhaps they should go broke."—it was an appalling statement. It was an appalling statement.We've just heard from David Clark that somehow National borrowed too much money under the global financial crisis and the Christchurch earthquakes. Well I challenge Dr Clark to go to Christchurch and say to every one of those businesses that we kept going through helping them pay for their workers when they couldn't return to their businesses that every single dollar that New Zealand put into the Canterbury recovery was wasted borrowing. That is an outrageous statement and if this Labour Government can't see the difference in borrowing through a global financial crisis and a series of natural disasters like we've seen in Christchurch Canterbury and Kaikōura then they have no right to sit on the Treasury benches and claim to represent New Zealand.Today we've got BNZ coming out saying that actually New Zealand could now be looking at a period of stagflation. Now I've become a bit of a pointy-headed watcher of the things but essentially stagflation—I know Madam Deputy Speaker will understand it well but let me just talk through it—is a period in which we see inflation lifting at the same time the economy is going backwards. That is now the trajectory that independent economists are saying New Zealand is on. That is an utter disgrace and it lies fairly and squarely at the feet of this Government but instead of acknowledging it changing pivoting or thinking about what they might need to do differently instead of providing the certainty that businesses are clamouring for they stand here in this House and say "Business is wrong; we are right. We the Labour Party know far more than anyone." It's fairly reminiscent of what they're saying to us on the waka-jumping legislation as well.In this Budget what we've seen is Labour locking in a trajectory of expenditure which will continue to ramp up in years to come because Grant Robertson is already spending those large surpluses that we left him. But he forgets that they're not promised to him. If economic growth goes backwards revenue drops. Every 1 percent drop in revenue is about $800 million a year the Government doesn't have to spend. I say to you very clearly Madam Deputy Speaker and this House that what happens when expenditure is going up and revenue is falling is one of two things. They'll either put it on the credit card for future generations add it to the bill—they're already spending $17 billion more than we would have had under a National Government. They're spending $17 billion of debt in the good times. When that economic growth line starts to deteriorate and when our income as a country goes backwards because Grant Robertson is asleep at the wheel and had his head in the sand about our slowing economic position I tell this House now that they will come after the money of hard-working New Zealanders.We've already seen $2.5 billion in extra taxes from this "no-tax Government". Now we've got Michael Cullen beavering away in his tax working group. This Government is going to look to take more from the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders. They're going to look to ramp up debt because they cannot control their spending. They've promised too much they didn't understand the costs of Government and they paid way too much for the price for Winston Peters and his motley mob. This is a Budget of over-promising and under-delivering—far too much expenditure in coalition negotiations poor quality spending—at the same time as doing nothing to support our economic growth room. Small businesses up and down New Zealand are worse off for it."