Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Well today I had the privilege of sitting in my office between appointments and I heard some speeches from the opposite side of the House and I couldn't believe how pessimistic and gloomy they were and how backward-looking they were. The part of those speeches that impressed me the most was how much they tried to bag the National Party policies. So clearly they have no appetite for simply sticking to the job of promoting their own plans and their own Budget. I had to wonder whether that was because there was so little in it that for them to fill up a 10-minute speech the only way they could do that was to resort to criticising their Opposition.So what that tells me is they have no plan. They are failing to deliver on their pre-election promises. They sat around for nine years with their feet on the desk never expecting to be in Government and hadn't done the preparation work necessary to run this country. Now they're caught like a possum in the headlights and they're scrambling to deliver on the narrative they expressed in the campaign. The only thing they have been successful at doing is breaking promises.So I did a bit of navel-gazing myself today and I looked back on the 2017-18 Budget delivered by the then National-led Government. It focused on improving public services not just in terms of the funding but also in terms of the performance. We wanted to be sure that the investment that was going into the Public Service actually delivered measurable results. This Government has removed the Better Public Services targets. We focused on lifting incomes with our $2 billion-a-year families' income package. That was leaving more money in the pockets of hard-working Kiwis to spend how they chose to spend it: that got cancelled. There was $32.5 billion in new infrastructure over the next four years the biggest investments in decades in new roads schools and hospitals.I'm extremely grateful to the National Government for the investments they have made into regional New Zealand. I'm especially grateful for the ones that we are seeing on the West Coast right now. The new Grey Base Hospital's certainly taking shape and it's nearing completion. The new Taramakau bridge is just about ready for the first car to drive over. One of the biggest improvements that has been made in the future economic development of the coast is the investment that was made in the cycle trails. We are seeing more and more visitors coming to the region bringing with them the benefits and the challenges that we get with added visitors and—recognising that—the further investment that went into tourism infrastructure funding.The last Budget in 2017 was focused on reducing debt not increasing debt. We were investing in other infrastructure that was needed for a growing country and a growing economy like fibre to the regions like cellphone black spots being infilled. That provides the same opportunities for Kiwis no matter where they live. But this Government thinks that New Zealanders are not up to the challenge of growing. They believe we should shut down growth and from what I can see the only thing they're consistent in is their negativity. No to growth no to supporting low-income families no to no new taxes" no to 1800 front-line police no to the funding for the Rural Health Alliance Aotearoa New Zealand no to the funding of the Roxburgh health camp for traumatised children no to the midwives no to Māori no to Whānau Ora no to Radio New Zealand and what does Phil Twyford say to his advisers on housing? No.So what we do know is that the main source of income for Governments is employees via businesses through their wages and taxes. And we also know that that business confidence is falling. What we've seen from the New Zealand business confidence report: in April it fell 3.4 points from March all sectors in the red services the least pessimistic and agriculture the most. Construction plummeted to its lowest level since 2008. "Let's do this." they said; they just didn't say when."