Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): Thank you Mr Speaker. One hundred days have been completed the second hundred days are on their way and this Government is determined to rebuild the economy restore law and order and actually deliver the public services in health and education that this country needs and deserves. So look what have we got? If we look back over the past six years debt went from $5 billion to $100 billion under the previous Government. We had inflation the economy ground to a halt so that we were in a recession and all New Zealanders—all New Zealanders—have faced higher taxes and so they're seeing greater opportunities offshore.When you think about that you think about Jacinda Ardern and her legacy and Chris Hipkins. I often thought if they were to come up with a billboard that they should have run in the election it would have been It's the thought that counts" and that sums up Jacinda Arden's whole approach—it's the thought that counts. Well actually it doesn't. It's actually what you achieve and what you do that counts and what the Government did is they managed to spend 80 percent more—nearly doubled Government spending over six years—and actually had worse outcomes just about everywhere you looked: longer waiting times higher crime fewer houses and a real mess everywhere. How they managed to do it was they turbocharged spending during COVID and then when COVID ended and people got back to their lives they didn't stop. They just kept on spending as if we were in the middle of COVID and that's how the damage was created.So how do we get back on track? Well you need a Government that's careful about its spending. You've got to restore some discipline to Government spending and over time that will enable us to get back to surplus and to reduce debt. If the Government is more disciplined with its spending and it's not stoking the fires of inflation that will help New Zealanders with the cost of living.Then you've got to have a growth agenda. You've got to have a strong set of policies such as investing in infrastructure and skills and attracting investment to grow the economy and then some modest tax relief as part of this thing to give New Zealand households more money in their pockets and boy do those members hate it—they hate it. Never will they release another cent. They will not give New Zealanders back another cent and this Government is determined to return some of the extra money that has been taken out of their pockets by the Government over the past few years so that they can help with their weekly bills. The second area—Hon Member: That's kindness—that's kindness. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well that is kindness. We don't actually believe that the Government can spend every cent better than households can or than people can and the people who have earned the money should be able to spend the money. It's their money and we want to give a little bit more of it back to them. So over the next month we'll hear a lot of wailing from the Labour Party about how terrible it is to allow people to keep more of their own income and that'll be the message of the day. Well we reject that and we want to give some modest tax relief.The second thing is we want to restore law and order. We've all seen in our communities the trauma that's caused by violent crime by the massive increase in retail crime that we've seen in our communities and particularly by that small group of serious young offenders. That's why Christopher Luxon announced amongst the nine focused targets for this Government a couple in the justice space reducing the number of victims of crime by 20000. Remember the previous Government had a goal of reducing the prison numbers irrespective of what was going on. If crime was going up they still wanted to reduce prison numbers. Well that is not actually how you keep the community safe. We want to reduce the number of victims of crime and to do that part of it is about restoring real consequences for crime and that's in the justice space. But there is a much broader agenda around ensuring that there's better rehabilitation in prisons for people who are in prison and that we make progress on some of those long-term drivers such as the inability to deal with drugs and addiction and all those broader social contexts.The other area is around youth crime. We want to reduce the number of serious repeat youth offenders and that partly is about giving judges extra tools with which to deal with that small cohort. Having military academies are part of the mix and also having a new category of young serious offenders. So we do need to have some consequences for that small cohort of young people who are causing mayhem in our communities doing the ram raids and terrorising neighbourhoods. But again it's part of a much broader discussion that's around ensuring that those kids are at school. That's the best thing we can do around youth crime and that's why we're focused on that. It's about ensuring that we deal with not having 3000 or 4000 waking up every morning in emergency accommodation in hotels in places like Rotorua. That was the most horrendous public policy failure that we've seen in recent times and so that's why we're really focused on addressing that. So there are a lot of things that we've got to do but the good news is that this is a Government that's determined focused and excited about the task. We know that this country's best days are ahead of it. We want to take New Zealand forward and that's what our goal is. Thank you."