Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): There is no doubt in the minds of any sensible economic commentator—including the Reserve Bank including Treasury including the bank economists—that the New Zealand economy is getting weaker. Everybody knows that; everyone can see it. It is patently clear and yet both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance utterly failed today to accept and acknowledge the thing that is so clear to everyone which is that our economy is getting slower. Much as they try and say Oh everything's fine here but the international stuff is a problem." that simply doesn't bear scrutiny.You just look back at what Treasury themselves said in the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update in December. They said that our trading partners' growth rate is expected to stay between 3 and 4 percent a year for the next five years. Now we're a trading economy. We make our income selling to those countries and the countries we sell to are doing extraordinarily well. Our commodity prices are up. Our trading partners are buying what we've got to sell. So why have we lost a third of our economic growth rate in just a year—a third in one year—under the watch of Grant Robertson?I can tell you how it happens. It happens when Ministers in the Government ignore the views of business. They say businesses opinion is junk—they don't care. They say the advice of officials like the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and Treasury know nothing. They don't take the advice on things like the oil and gas exploration ban because apparently they know far better. They don't accept that minimum wage rates too far too fast put up prices and help hurt the very workers they're trying to help.Well I would just direct Ministers to have a look at what that New Zealand Institute of Economic Research said in their latest Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion just this week where businesses are overwhelmingly saying they will be putting up prices. Now that comes on the back of rents already having gone up $40 a week because of the policies of this Government. So those very workers they say they're all about are going to face higher prices higher rents higher taxes and a slowing economy.So when Megan—sorry not Megan. I apologise—you caught the corner of my eye. When Carmel Sepuloni stands here and says the economy doesn't matter that right there is the problem of this Government. They don't understand the economy pays for healthcare. The economy is jobs to New Zealanders. The economy is what determines whether we can have cancer treatment drugs how many nurses and doctors and midwives we can employ and whether we can build roads. It determines whether New Zealanders have incomes that let them get ahead. So when you hear Government Ministers say "We know more than all of the economists the Reserve Bank Treasury and MBIE—almost any source of advice. We know more." and the economy is going backwards as a result it is time for them to sit up and listen.When the economy has lost a third of its momentum in one year the answer is not put up taxes. That is the only response we're hearing from the other side of the House: "We need more of New Zealanders' money to spend. We don't care that things are getting tougher out there for New Zealanders." In fact per person we've gone nowhere for six months. None of that matters to the Government. All they want to know is how they can get more money out of New Zealanders' pockets for them to spend. That is outrageous it is poor management it is negligent and it is real New Zealanders who hurt because of it.So I say to the Government this: if you pretend to care at all about real New Zealanders their jobs their houses and their opportunities to get ahead don't put more taxes in a slowing economy. You cannot tax this country into prosperity. You cannot legislate New Zealanders to have better opportunities. It only comes when we have a private sector made up of people who would take a risk put their own money on the line and create those jobs and those opportunities. They do it despite the Government despite the taxes and despite the red tape and compliance. Yet on the other side of the House we've got a team of people who've never done it a day in their life don't know what it is to run a business and don't fundamentally get what drives the economy. That's why in one year this country has lost a third of its success rate at a time when the rest of the world that we sell to is doing well. That is a tragedy and it is why on this side of the House we are not going to sit quietly and let Grant Robertson waffle on about well-being while the economy is going to the dogs under his watch. It is not good enough."