SpeechJAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): It is pleasing to speak on this Budget Policy Statement. We miss Julie Anne Genter on the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I am sorry that she got bumped off for James Shaw. She was pretty good on that committee.She talked a lot about leadership. I want to say I am proud of the National Government and the leadership that we have been showing—the leadership that we have been showing to see more kids being educated in this country to see more New Zealanders are healthy and to see more elective surgeries in this country to see 1100 more police officers going on to the streets of New Zealand to see literally—listen to this Julie Anne Genter—hundreds of millions of dollars committed to cleaning up waterways in New Zealand. We are showing leadership and the Budget Policy Statement that Bill English as finance Minister put together and now Steven Joyce is presenting as finance Minister shows the leadership that we are showing.We are also showing leadership on responsibly managing the economy and not spending up large trying to buy elections like we have seen in the past. I love this graph. I love this graph in the Budget Policy Statement. It shows red lines which was Labour's additional spending and it shows blue lines showing National's additional spending. We have committed to another $1.5 billion in operating expenditure over and above the previous year through this Budget Policy Statement.There is a huge line in 2008 showing Labour's $7 billion spend-up to throw at the 2008 election. Labour can never stand in this House and say it was responsible with the Budget when it threw literally billions of dollars trying to win an election. We are responsible we are doing things properly and we are delivering for New Zealand as well.Leadership Julie Anne Genter is seeing 130000 people gaining jobs in the past year. Leadership is seeing the average wage going up at a much faster rate than the rate of inflation. Leadership is seeing more children succeeding and fewer children living in benefit-dependent homes. Leadership is showing that there is an opportunity for people out there and that welfare dependency is not the future. Lowering the long-term welfare costs to the Crown by $10 billion because we are getting people off welfare getting them into work—that is leadership.When the Minister of Finance appeared before the Finance and Expenditure Committee we focused quite a bit on migration during the interaction with the Minister as we examined the Budget Policy Statement. One of the brilliant things about the past 8 years is we are seeing New Zealanders returning home. We are seeing New Zealanders vote with their feet decide that they want to back New Zealand again and come home to live here. They have decided that the golden days that they saw in Australia and other parts of the world are no longer golden days compared with New Zealand and they are deciding to vote with their feet. We are seeing literally tens of thousands of people who previously were leaving our country every year now deciding to come home.If the Labour Party and the Green Party want to ask themselves Do New Zealanders decide that the National-led Government is showing leadership?" the answer is "Yes." because tens of thousands of them are returning home. That has its challenges on infrastructure it has its challenges on housing and it has its challenges on Government services but the bottom line is that we are doing better for New Zealanders and we are showing people there is a brighter future here in New Zealand.Housing is of course a challenging area that we must maintain. I was pleased to see that the Minister of Finance has not ruled out debt-to-income ratios but he has also not said yes to the Reserve Bank on that. I highlight that in my speech here in the House today because it was an area I took a lot of interest in when the Finance and Expenditure Committee was examining the Budget Policy Statement.We need to ensure that there is more supply of housing for New Zealanders so we can buy houses. We need to ensure that there is assistance for first-home buyers and we are doing that as well. Allowing the Reserve Bank too much rope which it may use in a way that may be detrimental to New Zealanders' ability to buy houses we need to be cautious on. I was pleased that the Minister of Finance did not jump at the debt-to-income ratio scenario that the Reserve Bank was putting in front of him.The bottom line is that New Zealand is achieving more and more every single year under Budgets put together firstly by Bill English—now he is Prime Minister—and that will continue under Steven Joyce. I am proud to be part of a Government that is showing leadership. I am proud to be part of a Government that is investing appropriately in New Zealand. We will continue to see tens of thousands of New Zealanders voting with their feet into the future as well coming home to their home country."