Goldsmith Paul; Rurawhe AdrianHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) (remote): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm coming in from my house in Auckland having finally had the COVID catch up with me and having some time to recuperate. But we're here to debate Budget 2022—the backwards Budget" we've called it because it confirmed that New Zealand is going backwards under this Labour Government faster than ever. The Minister of Finance Grant Robertson needed to focus this Budget on helping the squeezed middle to overcome the escalating cost of living crisis and to stop Kiwis falling further and further behind but it is clear he has failed. Instead what we've seen is the "backwards Budget" of 2022.Kiwis the economy and outcomes are all going backwards under Labour and the Budget forecasts confirm the situation is getting worse. We're experiencing the worst cost of living crisis in a generation. Inflation is at a 30-year high it's expected to be rampant for many years to come and wages are simply not keeping up with the rising costs and prices that people are seeing everywhere on the supermarket shelves wherever they look. Mortgage costs are going up because of rising interest rates rent is up $140 per week since this Government took office food price inflation is the highest in a decade at 6.4 percent and petrol as we all know is well over $3 a litre. Kiwis are falling behind each week squeezed by growing costs and a Government that refused to offer anything meaningful in terms of income tax relief while it carries on with the biggest spend-up in New Zealand's history.I'd say Labour's temporary cost of living package will do little to support Kiwi households through the cost of living crisis. It's band-aid economics that we're seeing made up on the fly with even the Treasury warning the Government that the one-off cost of living payment is a poor mechanism for addressing the long-term problem. What's going to happen after three months when the fuel taxes go back on when the one-off payment ends—what's going to happen then? Grant Robertson and this Government have no plan.Just look at the BBC worldwide website—somebody drew my attention to it this afternoon—which tells the story of Chris who is a builder and his partner Harmony and their four daughters who have just left Wellington to start a new life in Brisbane. Despite owning their own home and earning reasonable salaries they were struggling in Wellington. They said—and this is the quote from Harmony—"[We] can't make a living in New Zealand. There is no living. You're just going backwards. You don't get a choice if you want to live you have to move or New Zealand has to change. I want a future for my children and there is none in New Zealand" she said.What a very sad thing to read on the BBC website for all the world to see. The disappointment that that shows on that family just trying to get ahead look after themselves look after their family provide for their family and provide hope and aspiration and they're weighed down by costs and a Government that has no particular sympathy for hard-working Kiwis who are trying to look after themselves. That's not what we want for this country and we know we can do so much better.The squeezed middle are paying the price for Labour's economic mismanagement. If you are on the average wage of $72000 or higher you get nothing from this Budget aside from cheap bus fares for three months—if you happen to use the bus—and slightly less expensive petrol for a few weeks. Meantime sneakily subtly the Government keeps taking more and more tax using inflation to push more of people's income into higher tax brackets. That's why this Budget shows the highest ever tax take in New Zealand history. Grant Robertson is raking it in. He is the most rapacious tax collector in New Zealand's history. There's never enough tax for him and he always wants more. Under National's tax plan to inflation-adjust tax brackets somebody on the average wage would get about $860 more of their own money back everywhere and that would actually make a difference year in year out. For us we see the way forward is in growing the economy by welcoming investment by welcoming new workers through immigration by being restrained with regulations and by being disciplined with Government spending so that we can therefore offer tax relief down the line. But of course this Government responsible for this Budget wants to keep the extra tax revenue because they are addicted to spending which means the Government's books are always going backwards.The Budget provides no plan to reduce benefit dependency by the way despite staff shortages across the country everywhere you go. We've been out and about in the recess week since the Budget. Every business you talk to—every business you talk to—is struggling to find workers and yet benefit dependency has soared under Labour. Nobody can figure that out but the obvious conclusion is that they're not doing enough to encourage people to get off benefits and back to work.Since 2017 60 percent more people are on the jobseeker support benefit longer than one year—60 percent more—at a time when people are desperate for workers. While billions of dollars are poured into job programmes like Flexi-wage Jobs for Nature and shovel-ready projects it's unbelievable that at a time when businesses can't find workers the Government is still spending hundreds of millions of dollars on job creation schemes like Jobs for Nature—sort of Depression-era job creation schemes to employ people when we can't find workers for the private sector. So the Government is borrowing money in order to hire people in job creation schemes and is taking those potential workers away from the businesses that are desperate to get people to pick fruit so that it doesn't rot on the ground for example and to be able to export it so that we can make a living.The lunacy of the economic strategy and mismanagement of this Government over the last couple of years I think when history settles will be quite astounding. Not only did Labour give themselves an extra $6 billion in this Budget—the biggest ever spend-up in New Zealand's history—but they've also raided future Budgets. They're spending $2 billion from Budget 2023 and $400 million from Budget 2024 and that's before you count the climate spending accounting and the cost of living band-aid which is taken from a separate pot. So overall the total new spending is more than $9 billion per year over the next three years.Grant Robertson goes on about being fiscally responsible but it's always in the distant future when he's going to be fiscally responsible not now. So this year he's just an old-fashioned 1970s-style tax and spend Labour finance Minister. Nothing special nothing unexpected par for the course—spend spend spend borrow borrow borrow and hope for the best. That's what the Budget's all about and all of his talk about being responsible is for another time. Because he's raided next year's Budget allowances he doesn't have enough left for next year to deal even with inflationary costs to stand still. I guarantee that next year he will not stick to the amount he is allowed for spending in the next Budget.Like St Augustine he says to the world "Let me be fiscally responsible but not just yet—please not just yet." So much spending and so little to show for it. With no clear plans or targets to deliver better outcomes we have longer waiting times for surgeries specialist assessments have blown out literacy and numeracy achievement rates have hit lows violent crime and gang membership has exploded they've added more than 10000 officials in the Public Service. A lot of PR consultants and communications assistants and people running around trying to design big pink zeroes for Michael Wood to prance around beside—a whole lot of people doing all sorts of things but not contributing very much. New Zealand needs a Government with some fiscal discipline and a culture where Government cares about how every dollar is spent and the outcome that it will achieve. Kiwis across the country are tightening their belts and looking after every dollar they're spending and they expect the Government to do the same.So where are we at? We've got a Budget that was supposed to be about climate change and health reforms. The first is an important issue and the second is a weird priority at a difficult time for the health sector but neither of them are really the issue of the day. The issue of the day is the cost of living crisis that Kiwi families are facing. That's why the Government has scrambled with its cost of living package. But what about the other issues? How are we going to make this country more competitive to succeed globally? We never hear anything about that in the Budget. Nothing from Grant Robertson about how we're going to make the country more competitive but when you look at what they're doing tomorrow we'll be in the select committee talking about the fair pay agreements—so-called—that this Government is now introducing which reintroduces inflexible sector-wide mandatory union deals across the sectors so that if 10 percent of workers in a particular sector whether it's aged care or something like that call for a fair pay agreement everybody is forced to go into it. Gone is the flexibility and—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired. This is a split call."