Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): Mr Chair if I may bring this debate back to the annual reviews. So we of course are looking at matters of monetary and fiscal policy here. For those who are following along at home what we are talking about when we talk about monetary policy is of course of the refrain of the Reserve Bank our central bank which primarily has the ability to use the leverage of the official cash rate (OCR). But as we saw and as has been discussed plentifully throughout this debate this afternoon there has also been substantive utilisation of what is called unconventional monetary policy particularly large-scale asset purchases and funding for lending. As the Minister himself was just outlining he believes that this worked kind of hand in glove or at the very least collaboratively with what is called fiscal policy—that is what the Government does: that is taxing and spending something that Governments of all stripes by the way undertake.So as we've heard from members of the Opposition obviously what we're facing at present is inflation—quite high inflation. And we're hearing from members of the Opposition that that inflation is apparently hitting everybody equally. They are characterising this as a cost of living crisis. However if we dig in to these annual reviews—and members of the public if they would like to can go on to Parliament's website and look it up themselves—what we see is that inflation is not in fact hitting everybody equally. And that's because of course the baseline fact Mr Bayly is that those who are on lower incomes have to spend more of that income on essentials and therefore are paying those higher costs disproportionately. We also see as reflected here that in fact throughout the 2021 to 2022 period the corporate tax revenue increased by 26.2 percent—that is to a tune of $4.1 billion. That means that economic activity as benefiting those companies was of course in a fortuitous direction. However as we also see reflected in that same annual review household debt levels are trending upwards.And here I would like to reflect on the sentiments that the Minister himself stated at committee but also as reflected in the annual review that of course there is an inherent relationship here with Government spending and Government debt levels. To that effect he himself drew attention to the fact that there are three groups who are facing particular financial pressure at the moment. Those firstly who purchased homes in 2021 2022; secondly those who are refixing their mortgages at higher interest rates; and thirdly those on low incomes.I just really want to go to that point of those on low incomes in that third group because as also is reflected in this annual review we can see that debt levels for beneficiaries are in excess of $2 billion—at historic levels. The Minister said at that review hearing that he would need to do more analysis on the matter by examining beneficiary debt within the 2021-2022 financial year. That's at page 6 of these annual reviews. So a question for the Minister in a minute when he responds to this call—because the Greens only have five minutes in this debate—is whether he has done that analysis on beneficiary debt and the impact of Government fiscal policy decisions particularly and not potentially supporting lower-income New Zealanders as much as they perhaps should have been.The second part that I'd really like to highlight here is that while not necessarily inherently contained within the annual reviews debate it was of course raised at the Monetary Policy Statement hearing with the Reserve Bank where the Governor said in response to my questions that the Reserve Bank was undertaking or in fact seeking to engineer a recession. Now while we've been talking about how the impacts of particularly the disproportionate overreliance on unconventional monetary policy has resulted in deepening inequality in this country—which is not a natural phenomena; it is a political decision because of the way that it works hand-in-glove with fiscal policy—what we are also seeing here is the Reserve Bank in utilising monetary policy particularly the OCR go about manufacturing this recession. We know that recessions disproportionately also impact lowest-income New Zealanders. So to that question I really would like the Minister to answer how he seeks to support lowest-income New Zealanders who are hit hardest and worst by that COVID economic response which notably we tried for over a year to try and get a Finance and Expenditure Committee inquiry into—it was blocked by Labour majority. But now none the less the Government is progressing with it.But also secondly how is it that he will go about supporting and preventing lowest-income New Zealanders from disproportionately bearing the brunt of the harm that comes with those recessionary headwinds?