Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I also want to wish everybody in this House every member all the best for this season this time of the year. And I want to acknowledge the first part of the Prime Minister's speech thanking so many in this place who make our life a little bit easier—including yourself Mr Speaker and your attendant officers. But that's about where it stops because there is no doubt that the speeches we've heard this afternoon from the Prime Minister the Deputy Prime Minister and the co-leader of the Green Party indicate that the fantasy that they are living that a Government is doing things that are extraordinary has led to some extraordinary delusions by those people.We saw that piece of paper the Prime Minister pulled out with a list of apparent milestones throughout the year. They are just things that Governments do—nothing extraordinary about that; just things that Governments do. Hon Member: Except your Government.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The member up there calls out What did your Government do?" Well we did raise spending in all the core services every year that we were in Government and every year by the way was record spending because that's what happens in a Budget. It's unbelievable isn't it that we've got a Government now quietly telling the public of New Zealand that the $7 billion surplus they were predicting for the year 2020 just one Budget ago—it's all gone all gone and it's going to be a billion-dollar deficit. That's $8 billion worth of spending that has just apparently gone into the ether. And what's the difference for anyone's lives? Well child poverty on all the measures set up by the Prime Minister has got worse on seven of those indicators. Housing is an absolute mess. The thing they don't say is that when they talk about "Oh it's a record build for any Government since the 1970s." more than half of that programme was approved and started and funded by the previous Government.Michael Wood shakes his head over there. Go and read the Budget sonny. It'll make it very clear. But of course anyone in the Labour Party would think that reading a Budget is an absolutely abhorrent thing to do because money apparently just grows on trees. And if you haven't got enough you just declare a deficit and say "Oh but later later we'll have a surplus." This is a trend and it's a bad one. It's not good for this country.Then we have the issue of health and the sudden sort of thing about "Oh look we're building a whole lot of health services." Well why have the delivery end of that in elective surgery and specialist appointments and a range of other things that are done in secondary care all gone backwards—all gone backwards? Apparently more money is going in but it's all gone backwards. And the Minister of Health stands over here today in the House proud of the fact that he's got no targets. And it's easy isn't it? If there are no targets then you can make any old story up. There's nothing to test it against. I think New Zealanders are not silly. They are starting to see this and they are seeing through it. Just go back to housing for a minute. Last year last year the first year of this arrangement that we've got governing the country at the moment 25000 first-home buyers—it could have been couples so more people—bought houses under HomeStart 25000. How many bought KiwiBuild? Well firstly the KiwiBuild houses weren't there and of those that were bought I think it's 179 now: 179 versus 25000; 25000 from our scheme a financial instrument and 179 from their big announcement of 100000 houses.Hon Member: Hopeless.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Hopeless. The really interesting thing is of course that the surplus KiwiBuild the ones they can't sell were offered to Housing New Zealand. And Housing New Zealand said "We don't want them. Their specification is too low." confirming as we've always said all along they're junk. And that's why there is no market for them. So I think it's amazing that the Government is insisting they're going to continue with this particular policy.And all the time that this is going on homelessness is up. Other colleagues have spoken about the Christchurch City Missioner who's talking about things and how bad things are there and how much better it was under a National Government. This is a failure of a Government. If this is delivery then it's on a dray with no wheels being pulled by dead horses and I think that will become apparent as next year starts to unfold and there will be a ready audience for a different Government."