Robertson GrantHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Thank you Mr Chair and can I first thank all members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their hard work in assessing the Estimates and getting an interesting and timely report back to the House. I'll answer the member's question specifically and then just make one or two very brief remarks before taking further questions. The particular group of people who've been involved in finance-related committee stages in recent times are well versed in the to-ing and fro-ing.In terms of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund there is a formula for the contributions that are made—the Chair will forgive me for reading the formula out because it is somewhat technical—and it's based on funding the cost of aggregate net of tax New Zealand superannuation expenses relative to GDP over a 40-year horizon. So effectively what that does is it smooths out the contributions that need to be made. A policy decision was made in 2009 to suspend contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund in the wake of the global financial crisis. A number of decisions—there were some criteria set for when they would be restarted. There were two but one of those was when the books of the Government returned to surplus. Unfortunately that did not occur and so on coming into Government at the end of 2017 we took the decision to restart contributions immediately. We have since that time stayed ahead of the formula in order to try to make up the difference of some billions of dollars that were not put in and so in this current fiscal year we're putting in twice the contribution required by the legislated formula: $2.4 billion versus $1.2 billion. Over the forecast period contained within the Estimates we return to the contribution formula. We will continue to try to find opportunities to build this fund up so that we make up for the lost time that we saw in those nine long years. The other point that I wanted to just make by way of introduction was to do two things. The first of those is to pick up a point the deputy chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee made and that's the strength of New Zealand's position that has emerged out of the first wave of COVID-19 in New Zealand. That put us in a position where we have been able to support New Zealanders across a range of areas within these Estimates. It has meant not only that our levels of debt—starting at 19 percent—have stayed very low relative to the rest of the world but that we have seen GDP growth and that we have seen unemployment come down to levels that were in fact in the case of GDP above where we were coming in and in the case of unemployment below. That strength has allowed us within these Estimates to make very significant spending commitments that will help New Zealanders not only recover from COVID-19 but also build a future for New Zealanders that's sustainable and prosperous. Then the final point I'll just make in this contribution is to note that obviously these Estimates don't take into account the current outbreak that we're in. But they do take into account the fact that the Government had set some funding aside but also that within allocated funding that had been put aside we have room to be able to respond to this outbreak and support New Zealanders businesses and communities through this outbreak.