Edmonds BarbaraBARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Mālō e lelei Mr Speaker. It's good to be at the third reading of what is an important bill. For those at home this bill despite its fairly benign name is the main bill that people will be talking about when we refer to the Budget. This bill seeks Parliament's authority of individual appropriations—for example Vote Police Vote Health Vote Education. For myself this is the first Budget that I will be helping to contribute to as an MP and for a long time over a decade I had been working in a different role actually putting together budgets or helping interpret Budget appropriations for Government departments. So at this time I want to thank officials from the various Government departments from Treasury right through to Police right through to Inland Revenue right through to Justice for all the work that they've done putting together this appropriations bill. But this bill isn't the only bill in the system of public finance. We've had a number of debates today and some questions yesterday from the Opposition around the second imprest supply bill of which we're currently having its second reading. But this imprest supply bill was also introduced simultaneously with the third reading of this Appropriation Bill and that is not unusual. To have more than one imprest supply bill is also quite normal. As the Minister of Finance said every year since 1989 there have been two imprest supply bills and in some years three such as was seen in 2001 when the Government had to rescue our national carrier Air New Zealand and we have to thank for that capital injection for that third imprest supply bill the late Sir Michael Cullen who was also really pivotal in the KiwiSaver policy Working for Families and interest-free student loans. So I just want to take this moment given this is quite appropriate as an Appropriation Bill that the late Sir Michael Cullen had put that through to acknowledge him and his family at this time—and alofa to you all.It's also going back to the point around the imprest supply second reading. It's important to stress like the Minister of Finance has said this is a cap not a target. Expenditure actually charged against imprest supply in recent years has been well below what was provided—so for example in 2021 $20 billion was actually charged of the $56.5 billion that was authorised and in 2019-20 $45 billion of the $69 billion was charged. This is consistent with the inclusion of a contingency buffer and as the Minister of Finance has stressed this was because of COVID. Again we can debate back and forth in this Chamber about the scrutiny around the transparency which the Minister of Finance has numerous times said is available publicly but it comes down to a policy decision and this side of the House decided that the wage subsidy and that pumping money into apprenticeships was incredibly important.So now I go back to the third reading of this appropriations Estimates bill which is now in its final stages here in Parliament. Budget 2021 is about securing our recovery from COVID-19. It lays out the foundations for coming out of COVID stronger by addressing some of those long-term challenges like housing like climate change while we continue to grow the economy. One of the areas that I'd like to touch upon around the Budget that actually had some impact within my electorate was Vote Education. So the decision was made to invest $266 million over four years for funding in the next phase of the National Education Growth Plan for school property. After having been in lockdown with a number of children across different years of schooling I have a much much greater appreciation of what it's like for our teachers and in particular it's so important the environment that the children are learning in. So I know the struggle is real and I'd like to echo the comments of my colleague earlier today who said that effectively the struggle is real.Cannons Creek School was one of the really great recipients of this additional money so in July this year I was really fortunate to go with Minister Hipkins and announce $1.5 million to enable a new block to be built replacing five classrooms in that school. Cannons Creek School is in the heart of Porirua East and it's also a decile 1 school. It is a school which has despite the complexities of being in a low-decile area a huge heart. So to be able to go there with the Minister of Education the Hon Chris Hipkins and to see the joy on those kids' faces as the new classrooms were being craned in was a really good joy and one of those memories that I'll hold on to as a new MP. Other classrooms across the country are being built as well. We've got four schools in Northland who are getting upgrades and 10 schools across the Wellington region which includes also Raumati School which is another school within my particular area.Another key part of this appropriations bill was the increases to benefits. The Minister for Social Development and Employment Carmel Sepuloni has a number of times talked about raising main benefits to lift more children out of poverty and to tackle the inequality which also provided much-needed stimulus for our economy. When you raise benefit rates the money comes back into the economy. It comes back into the areas where the particular beneficiaries are living. When we came into Government we noticed a significant decline had occurred in front-line work within these Ministry of Social Development (MSD) offices. So part of this Budget also includes funding for 263 new front-line staff back in Budget 2019 and then $150 million in Budget 2020 and now an additional $99 million in Budget 2021 to improve the employment services and products and also a further $86 million in this Budget to sustain the MSD staff to deliver the income and case management services for their clients.The last particular for me—which as a new MP was probably my Budget highlight—is the launching of the Housing Acceleration Fund. This was to tip the balance in favour of first-home buyers and speed up the pace and scale of house building. One of the biggest issues we have in Porirua is our infrastructure under the ground. In order to build more housing we have to absolutely strengthen the infrastructure underneath. So we were really fortunate that in July this year Eastern Porirua was the first to reap the benefit of that Government Housing Acceleration Fund. I'm really grateful to the Minister Megan Woods for $136 million to unlock capacity for an additional 2000 homes. This funding goes to the replacement of water infrastructure to service existing and future homes and address long-term degradation to our harbour Te Awarua-o-Porirua. It also goes to addressing land remediation and development work around Cannons Creek—again a low-decile area—and together with the water infrastructure will help the capacity for the additional 2000 homes but also some of the work around Bothamley Park which is one of our parks towards Porirua East. So that particular housing acceleration fund wouldn't have gone ahead without the working together of both our local council Porirua City Council our local iwi Ngāti Toa iwi and central government and so I thank our mayor Anita Baker. I also thank the CEO of Ngāti Toa iwi who is Helmut Modlik and the Minister again for working together to come together with a package in order to help the 2000 homes being built.I just want to be able to reiterate my points around the beginning of this speech. I've been involved with a number of Budgets over a decade of public service. Imprest supply bills are not unusual. Sometimes there are three and we've seen why we've needed to have three. We can debate in the House around the amount that is in the second imprest supply bill—we can debate that right through to the next term. However this Government has made the call that to support our small businesses to support our businesses to support our employers and to be able to support the over 12000 food packages that have gone out just in this lockdown alone through Pasifika Futures that money in the imprest supply bill is incredibly important. So I'd like to thank the Minister again for being able to make those calls. Yes we can debate the amount but the actual fact around the imprest supply bill No 2 being unusual is just wrong. It's not unusual; we have had second imprest supply bills. So I'd like to thank the Minister and I thank the Speaker for the call.