Goldsmith Paul: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoldsmith Paul: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 20 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18074. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]1.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to theMinister of Finance: How will Budget 2014 continue to support a growing economy including jobs higher wages and delivery of better public services?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): The 2014 Budget struck a good balance by returning the Government’s books to surplus next year—the first of a number of surpluses—and making important investments in families and public assets. The Budget signals that the Government has moved from managing recession and recovery to managing in a growing economy. This is reflected in the significant progress the economy has made with businesses investing wages rising faster than inflation 84000 new jobs in the last year and our exporters posting record results despite a high exchange rate and frequent disruptions in international markets. As the Prime Minister has said Budget 2014 was a confident Budget for a confident country.Paul Goldsmith: What specific measures did the Budget include to support children and families?Hon Ruth Dyson: Were you away on Thursday?Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. When I raised the point of order earlier it was to speak to the point of order that I took offence at the Hon Winston Peters’ comments.Mr SPEAKER: Order! We have moved well past that at this stage.Hon BILL ENGLISH: Some people just want to hear it all over again including that member I am sure. A $500 million package over 4 years supports children and families. It has five parts: a boost to the paid parental leave scheme a $42 million increase to the parental tax credit to provide free general practitioner visits and free prescriptions for children under 13 an extra $150 million to help early childhood education centres remain accessible and affordable and $33 million to help vulnerable children. The Government is able to provide this support in this Budget because of the hard work in previous Budgets to get spending under control and the better tools the Government now has for deciding where to spend now for a long-term pay-off.Paul Goldsmith: According to Budget forecasts what progress is the Government making in meeting its two key fiscal targets over the next few years?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The two important targets for the Government’s books were to achieve surplus in 2014-15 and to return Crown debt back to 20 percent of GDP by 2020. The Budget shows that we are on track to achieve both of these targets. It is important having run up debt over the last 5 or 6 years to fill the gap between our expenditure and revenue and to pay for the earthquake that now that times are better we take the opportunity to repay that debt so future Governments have the same tools available to them as this Government did.Paul Goldsmith: What steps does the Budget take to help ensure that interest rates remain lower for longer and do not reach the historically higher levels seen in 2008?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Interest rates reached over 10 percent in 2008 partly because of runaway Government expenditure and a drastically overheated housing market. The Government has confirmed that it will stick to its $1 billion operating allowance in this Budget and increase it to just $1.5 billion in Budget 2014 because we do not want to see a rapid rise in Government expenditure put pressure on interest ratesfor households which on average have relatively high levels of debt. These allowances are very modest by historical standards—in fact a bit more than half of what the new allowances used to be in the 5 years up to 2008. This represents significant support for homebuyers and people who have mortgages where the Government is tightening its own belt to assist them with lower interest rates where possible.