Woodhouse Michael; Rurawhe AdrianHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Here's what I see when I see gangs and hear about gangs. I see chaos and I see crime and I see drugs rife in our community and I now see a Government that isn't prepared to do anything about it. The Minister Willie Jackson who has just resumed his seat might crow about $12 million for a particular fund but what he won't say is that $90 million has been taken out of the Police budget in Budget 2021.I want to go back to something that Mr Parker said because I think for me it really summed up this Budget. I agree with the words he said; I just take a completely different meaning from it when he said that this Budget goes beyond working people. Well I agree: it goes so far beyond working people that working people don't have a single thing to benefit from it in here. Not only do working people not have anything to benefit from but neither do the people who employ them. This is a Budget completely bereft of aspiration bereft of ambition with absolutely no initiatives for the very people who create the jobs who create the wealth who create the ability for New Zealanders to live well and independent from unnecessary intervention from the State. There is nothing for them whatsoever. It is important that we support our most vulnerable and this Budget has done that. But the best and number one way to support Kiwis at risk of dependency on the State and on their fellow taxpayer is to get them a job and keep them in work and this Budget has nothing for that. A measly $44 million is all there is for small business support. That is about 0.04 of 1 percent of the entire Government spend going into the very businesses that support our working New Zealanders. So I agree with Mr Parker. I agree that this goes well beyond working people—so far beyond them that they can't see anything in it for themselves.I have got to say that crowing about job creation which both Mr Robertson and Mr Parker have done with in excess of 200000 jobs being created—not by them but by those small businesses—over the 5-year forecast period masks the fact that that is only about 40 percent of the job creation climate and momentum that they inherited 3½ short years ago when they came to office. Yes COVID has had an impact on job creation and jobs have been lost but that was happening before COVID and there are now 70000 fewer people in work than there were 3½ years ago. Only about two-thirds of that can be put down to COVID. This Government has failed to support business.Remember Mr Robertson in Opposition going on and on and on about GDP per capita? That was the big thing. It wasn't enough for Mr Robertson that GDP was growing even in real terms; it had to be on a GDP per capita basis. That's true. Well we had gone under the Key-English Government from 22 in the OECD on GDP per capita up modestly but in the right direction to rank No. 16 in the OECD. That was 3½ years ago and 3½ years later we are lower than that now. We're at 17 in the OECD and at great risk of sliding down the scale. Relative to those countries we are poorer not richer under this Government and not only are we poorer but our children and grandchildren are going to be super-poor and saddled with a millstone of debt that is a consequence of some necessary but in my view some profligate spending by this Government. Every single household is going to owe about $150000 more than they did before COVID started—$150000 per family worse off because of the spending that this Government has done.Hon Dr David Clark: Tell the full story.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I'm very happy to tell the full story Dr Clark which is why I said that some of that spending was necessary and I will give the Government this one thing: when it comes to supporting jobs the wage subsidy was very important and very necessary in 2020. But Reserve Bank monetary policy initiatives like the large-scale asset purchasing and the funding for lending frankly is the easy bit. Our economy is mainlining on cash right now that the Reserve Bank doesn't know how to switch off. Even in a growing economy they are still pumping significant amounts of money into the economy. That was the easy bit. Weaning off that cash and preventing the sort of climate that will create inflation is the hard bit. Why is that important? Because the significant increases in welfare support that were announced in this Budget and which were necessary have nothing to do with the mother of all Budgets" and some finger-pointing to 30 years ago. We don't have to look back 30 years. We only have to look back one two three years for the inflationary policies that this Government has put in place. It's no wonder when there are massive increases in the minimum wage massive increases in the wholesale electricity price and increases in other costs of doing business. Bringing in a container from Australia now has gone from about $600 to $3200 and the supply chain is basically broken. Prices are going up and we will hit inflation at I believe a much greater rate than Treasury is predicting in Budget 2021.Those welfare increases were necessary not to fix a 30-year-old Budget but to fix the here and now. Actually preventing people from getting into the situation where they rely on welfare is the No. 1 goal but nothing. Actually what's most depressing about this Budget is the lack of imagination the lack of innovation. I think it was Professor Paul Spoonley who talked about the fact that small businesses are going to rely either on automation or on immigration. Well this Government's delivering small businesses any businesses neither. They're turning the tap off on migrant workers at a time when we desperately need skilled workers and labour but they're not giving the opportunity and the support to innovate to increase productivity to automate their manufacturing processes and as a consequence jobs will be lost and businesses be lost. They will literally go to the wall with our primary industry's fruit rotting on the ground. Now that might sound like a doomsday scenario but those are the inevitable consequences of businesses that are not supported by a Government. I was the Minister of Immigration for five years and one thing we would never have done however sternly we expected businesses to step up and solve labour shortages domestically to the degree that they can and automate when they can is allow fruit to rot on the ground. That is hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars that are going to be put at risk at a time when we need our primary industries most—Hon Scott Simpson: Economic sabotage.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —to go forward strongly and confidently. It is economic sabotage Mr Simpson. You're absolutely right.I want to turn briefly to the transport part of this Budget. One of the biggest frankly subterfuges in election 2020 was the New Zealand Upgrade Programme a $12 billion programme of infrastructure packages of which $6.8 billion was for transport projects—transport projects frankly that the Government spent three years talking about saying how they weren't good value for money how the benefit-cost analysis hadn't been done and then they brought them back to inoculate the voters against any accusations that they weren't supporting Penlink Mill Road Papakura to Drury Ōtaki to north of Levin and a plethora of others. But what we now know is that there was zero contingency in that $6.8 billion that they appropriated and this Budget should have delivered more money to deliver those projects. There wasn't a brass razoo for them. So my question to Michael Wood—the Minister of Transport—and the Government is this: which of these projects are on the chopping block? Dr Clark grins like a Cheshire cat: "Oh no it's not going to happen." Well let's just point to one where it has happened and it's a nice segue Dr Clark into the other subterfuge: Dunedin Hospital. Where is the extra money for Dunedin Hospital? We now know that the $1.4 billion that was appropriated is not going to be enough if they were going to build a hospital of the scope and technology that is required. The initial application for consent under the fast-tracking consent—Hon Dr David Clark: Nine long years.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —had an 11-storey acute services building and—oh listen to that. "Nine long years."—that's kind of rich coming from the Minister of Health.Matt Doocey: Worst health Minister in 50 years.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: That's quite right Mr Doocey. Worst Minister of Health in 50 years—nobody is arguing that. But what they are arguing about is what they were promised and what they've been delivered. They're getting half a pyramid if anybody old enough to remember that old NZI ad can recall. This will not deliver what the people of the South require. Treasury told them that in order to deliver on that scope they would need to either increase the Budget or cut the number of floors in the hospital or the number of beds in the hospital. Well that's exactly what happened. It's—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired."