3. Question No. 3—FinanceDANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast) to the Minister of FinanceQuestion No. 3—Finance3. DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast) to the Minister of Finance: What challenges has she faced in putting together this year's Budget?Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): Well aside from the state of the economy that was left to us—SPEAKER: Hang on; I think just tone it down just a little bit. Actually quite a bit—quite a bit. And similarly over here. That's right the person in front of you. Hon NICOLA WILLIS: As I pointed out in the Budget Policy Statement one of the biggest challenges for this year's Budget is that the previous Government left behind multiple initiatives with time-limited funding that was about to expire. At the half-year update in December Treasury identified nine instances of these fiscal cliffs where in each case the costs of continuing funding were $100 million more over the forecast period. Fiscal cliffs made the future fiscal track look superficially better but this practice was misleading and left any incoming Government facing very difficult funding decisions. Dana Kirkpatrick: What is the biggest fiscal cliff the Government has faced?Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The biggest fiscal cliff in Budget 2024 was time-limited funding for Pharmac. The previous Government gave Pharmac additional funding of $350 million for the 2023-24 fiscal year to purchase new medicines and widen access to some that were already funded but this expires on 30 June and there was no funding set aside for future years. My colleague David Seymour announced on Monday that Budget 2024 will extend this additional funding and critically make it permanent. That will be welcome news to people who rely on these medicines but we have had to find the $1.77 billion cost of this from within our operating allowance because the previous Government did not put one cent towards it. Hon David Seymour: Can the Minister confirm that official advice to Ministers from Pharmac is that had the pre-existing budgeting been applied Pharmac would have needed to de-list medicines that New Zealanders had every expectation of receiving but had no money put aside for under the previous Government?Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well yes I can confirm that and I will recall vividly—Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order Mr Speaker. I've just been contemplating the member's question. He's actually asking a hypothetical question about what would have happened under a re-elected Government; what a re-elected Government may have done. The current Minister has no responsibility for what an alternative Government may have done. SPEAKER: A very good point. I was actually listening to the question and starting to think along those lines. But I think the question could be asked in a different way and as long as it's relatively brief how about giving that a go?Hon David Seymour: May I speak to the point of order.SPEAKER: I've just ruled on it.Hon David Seymour: Well I may be able to clarify the intention behind the question. SPEAKER: No no have another go at the question please.Hon David Seymour: With pleasure. Can she confirm that under the fiscal track that was set for this Government after it assumed office it received advice from Pharmac that if it didn't fill in the fiscal cliff for medicine funding it would have to de-list medicines that New Zealanders relied upon because the fiscal track the budgeting that this Government inherited had not put money aside to pay for—SPEAKER: Hang on. The question was good up to advice". Hon NICOLA WILLIS: One of the meetings I will recall vividly for the rest of my political career is one that I attended with Minister Seymour where we asked health officials and Pharmac officials how New Zealand could possibly be in a position where they were saying to us that unless we found $1.77 billion they would be forced to start de-listing essential medicines upon which New Zealand relied. I remember that meeting vividly because what I saw in the eyes of their officials was what I felt which was abject horror at the situation the previous Government was prepared to leave Pharmac in.Dana Kirkpatrick: What reaction has the Minister seen to this announcement?Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well I have seen one commentator—who should know better—describe this $1.77 billion commitment to continue funding much-needed medicines as "fiscal jiggery-pokery". Personally I would reserve the term "fiscal jiggery-pokery" to describe the practice of funding medicines for one year only and then taking it away again. I think that is being highly misleading to New Zealand and I would expect much better from the Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall.Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order Mr Speaker. I wonder whether you could indicate to us where the ministerial responsibility for that last answer lies.SPEAKER: Well you have to go to the question itself which was—sorry it just slips my mind for a minute. But the response—I'll tell you what I'm going to have to look at it afterwards. Sorry about that.Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Speaking to the point of order Mr Speaker the question was absolutely in order. Ministers aren't responsible for the questions that they are asked; they are absolutely responsible for the answers that they give. Nicola Willis has a repeated history of giving answers that fly directly in the face of rulings that you have given repeatedly since you took up your tenure as Speaker—but she's also very clever because she puts the dig in right in the last few words. I think there should be some ability for the member who's the subject of the answer to ask questions in response to that.SPEAKER: It's a novel idea and actually is interestingly the whole purpose of question time. So the Opposition will organise their supplementaries to obviously give effect to that! But what I can say is that I do look at question time. It's not an easy thing to day after day watch question time twice. But I do so where there are particularly questions that are under question from the Opposition—largely to see just where the lines are of straying beyond being able to refer to something that related to the previous Government that was inherited as opposed to a straight out political attack. I'll continue to do that and I'll look at this particular question in that regard. But because we're all going to play nice Ayesha Verrall can have one extra supplementary.Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Me?SPEAKER: Yeah—that's how we roll here.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order Mr Speaker. If you're going to go away and consider this matter could I just suggest that one of the marvellous things about a democracy is robust debate. If people aren't prepared to put other sides of the story or hear other people out—they just want to shout in the way that's happening now—then this Parliament will deteriorate very rapidly. It's got a long tradition of people being able to put their points at question time or in their speech time and they've got a whole lot of sensitive people over there that need to just harden up.SPEAKER: Thank you for that advice I'm sure the whole House will take it on.Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Can she assure the House given her outrage over what she describes as "fiscal cliffs" that all items in her Budget will be baselined?Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well thank you for the question. In addition to filling in the vast fiscal cliffs left to us by the previous Government in our Budget there will be very few cases where funding will be time limited. The difference—and they could learn from the answer—is that in those cases a review is being undertaken before Cabinet makes a permanent decision. We will be upfront and transparent about these decisions. There will be no hidden fiscal cliffs established for a future Government to deal with and there will never be under this Government's watch a fiscal cliff left for essential medicines—shame on you.Hon Member: Are you going to pull her up on that? She said "shame on you."SPEAKER: Yeah but you forget I'm Catholic so I'm very guilty all the time.Dana Kirkpatrick: Will Budget 2024 establish any fiscal cliffs?Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well I thank the member for her question. It seems that her and Ayesha Verrall are great minds thinking alike today. As I said we are going to be upfront and transparent in our Budget. There will be important cases where we will ensure that a review is undertaken before we commit to baseline funding—for the very good reason that as I've said to this House many times we are a Government that is committed to fiscal discipline on value for money and ensuring that where we commit New Zealand taxpayer money permanently into the future we can first assure New Zealanders that we know that dollar is going to its best purpose."