5. Question No. 5—Prime MinisterDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Prime MinisterQuestion No. 5—Prime Minister5. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government's statements and actions?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes.David Seymour: Has she seen reports that KidsCan has had to expand the number of lunches provided to school children by 10000 every day this year and if so how can she believe her Government has been successful at reducing child poverty?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I don't have details on where KidsCan have expanded in to but what I can say is we have recognised the difference that healthy free lunches can provide our lowest-income families which is why we are now delivering a million of those lunches per week into low-decile schools across the country.David Seymour: Does she accept her Government's policies in the past two years have led to the highest inflation in 30 years meaning parents are choosing between paying the rent and filling kids' lunch boxes with charities like KidsCan filling the gap?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again I challenge the member's assumption that it is the policies of the Government that are creating what we are seeing as a global phenomenon. I've already noted in answers previously in this House that we see inflation for instance in the OECD at 10.3 percent the United Kingdom at 9.9 percent the US at 8.2 percent the Euro at 9.1 percent and interestingly we've seen rates rise across Asia as well. I doubt the member would claim that it's the New Zealand Government's policies that are causing that.David Seymour: How does it help parents choosing between paying rent and feeding their kids to hear from their Prime Minister that other countries' Governments have made the same mistakes as hers and so they have a cost of living crisis too?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That is not my answer to families. My answer to families is the cost of living payment. My answer to families is a reduction in the cost of fuel at the pump. My answer to families is a halving of the public transport costs an increase in the family tax credit increases in the minimum wage the Best Start payment increases in benefit payments making it free for under-14s to go to the doctor and 1 million free lunches across low-decile schools across the country. That is my answer to families because when we were elected as a Government we recognised child poverty was a problem we wanted to address it and we continue to do so. I note that member would scrap every initiative I just mentioned.David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister stand by her statement earlier today that people's rents are going up due to the cost of building materials or is a better explanation that her Government increased expenditure from $87 billion to $151 billion in just three years and the Reserve Bank printed $53 billion leaving the economy awash with cash and inflation?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member asked me a question about non-tradeables and I gave her an answer around the contribution to the increases in costs in construction and it's an answer I stand by. Another point I would make is that actually earlier this week we saw that in some parts of the country we are actually starting to see the increase in housing supply making a difference. We have seen parts of the country where rents have started to come away. We've got to keep building houses. Just this week we made further investments into the critical infrastructure needed to ensure that that will happen. That includes making sure we have the water infrastructure that will enable another 11500 houses to be built.David Seymour: So can the Prime Minister explain which of her statements she stands by: do we have record homebuilding pushing down rents or are oversees factors such as building supplies pushing up rents and that's why we have high non-tradeable inflation—which one is it?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: My answer was that building houses is non-tradeable but 90 percent of construction products used in New Zealand are imported.David Seymour: In that case is the Reserve Bank wrong when it says in its official policy on tradeables and non-tradeables that the non-tradeables component shows how domestic demand and supply conditions are affecting consumer prices" and if so does her Government have any policy to tell Statistics New Zealand to stop mixing up tradeables and non-tradeables?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again two points that I would make here—again in the residential housing market we see that for building when we're relying of course on predominantly imported products we are going to see those global factors having an impact. At the same time we have been concerned about the cost of building supplies in New Zealand. It's a reason why we saw an intervention from the Minister and it's also why the Commerce Commission is looking into this issue. Ultimately though we need to keep residential building and construction going and that's why we continue to invest in apprentices to make sure we have the ability to keep that construction going; in infrastructure to make sure that we've got the pipes in place so that they can be built and you're seeing that coming to fruition with consents at record numbers."