Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Chair thank you. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I just wanted to raise a couple of issues. I thank the Minister for his speech and presentation and acknowledge the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee.I'm interested in a couple of issues that were brought up in the reviews and which no doubt have already slightly been canvassed by other members of the House and will no doubt be further canvassed. One is around levels of Government debt and the approach to investment. So obviously there's been a strong focus on keeping levels of debt low or prudent" although prudent is variable depending on your perspective. What I wanted to call to the attention of the House is that there's been quite a change in the mainstream economic orthodoxy between the 1980s and 90s—when was perhaps when some of these people last studied economics—and now where we have the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the president of the European Central Bank and the chief Treasurer of the United States Janet Yellen all of them showing particular leadership calling for more progressive taxation more Government spending on health education climate change and public infrastructure. So that's the new US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen who was former governor of the Reserve Bank; the IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva; and European Central Bank President and former head of the OECD Christine Lagarde. So there's clearly been a very different perspective on what is good for economies and it is no longer the perspective that corporate tax cuts low taxes for the wealthy low levels of Government spending on core public services is a good thing—it's actually a bad thing. I invite members of the National Party to come into the 21st century when it comes to the economy. The challenges of climate change a global pandemic increasing inequality all require us to rethink some of that economic orthodoxy.My question for the Minister is firstly: is he concerned that there is a risk that we're overly focused on reducing debt in Government spending at a time when we actually should be borrowing and investing in critical infrastructure and services? My second question—and this comes a bit to the Public Finance Act and some of the international standards of accounting—is: does he see there to be any potential risk with some of the conventions around standards of accounting where in an economic sense there's really no difference between capital expenditure and operating expenditure but in an accounting sense they are treated differently? However international accounting standards were really designed and developed for private organisations and the way that they account for their fiscal position which is quite different to a national Government and a national economy. One of my concerns is that we have a separate approach where we have a capital allowance and an operating allowance and it doesn't allow us necessarily to invest in the services which are operating expenses which would actually create more jobs and more value for the economy and for the benefit of the New Zealand public. Yet we can quite easily justify concrete tarmac or a building which has its own depreciation and does create jobs but not in such a direct sense as say employing early childhood educators would. We can do the economic analysis that says that the return on investment for early childhood education is far higher than return on investment for a road but somehow—are the Government's hands tied is there something that the Government is looking at that would allow us to better invest in people? Because that does bring real economic value to New Zealand."