Bennett PaulaHon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National): I'll take a call because the point I'd like to make is I'm delighted to be back here for the Budget debate. My leaving today was for question time and it's great to come back to actually have an opportunity to discuss this appalling Budget and to actually go through some of the things that are actually terribly wrong with it.It's quite interesting because I note Mr Speaker that there might be concerns about things that have and haven't been said from different people as they're leaving or as they're in this House. I of course would make no comments and we have had incidences where you've misheard. So I think we better be careful with that.I must say the Prime Minister's lost her smile—yeah? A lot of people are saying that. They're sort of saying they can't quite see that same smile that she promised us we were going to be seeing. But there is someone smiling colleagues there is someone smiling and the person that's smiling is Winston Peters. You can see that smile. This is a man that of course no longer puts New Zealand first but puts the Pacific first. So he'll fight for nearly a billion dollars for the Pacific but hasn't fought for a billion dollars for New Zealanders which I'd like to see absolutely. He of course fought for good-looking horses. So I mean that's important. And of course we've got Winston's winter payment. So the man has a lot to smile about you've got to say and you have to see that the Prime Minister's really on the defensive about this Budget and having to defend it as much as she possibly can instead of actually being proud of it which if they'd done a decent job I'm sure she would have been.I can't help but reflect back to a time when we came into Government and the global financial crisis was hitting. It wasn't that long afterwards—a couple of years later—that we saw the Christchurch earthquakes. As someone who certainly at that point was with social development the acuteness of and the devastation of something that big kind of grabs you. I am proud that as a Government we at that time made sure that we were supporting New Zealand supporting Christchurch. It's quite interesting that we get history already trying to be rewritten by the current Government but what we did was we borrowed money so that we could actually put that into Christchurch we could put it into the areas that desperately needed to be done.We made sure that we didn't cut welfare. We made sure that we were actually investing back in big building projects transport projects and infrastructure through the global financial crisis. Most households would understand that. When times are tough and when you really need to those are times when you might borrow money. Those are times when you might make sure that you're able to keep up with the household budget do the necessities that you need to do and if the car breaks down like we sort of saw in Christchurch you might borrow a bit more to get it up and running and do what you need to do.Households in New Zealand are completely flabbergasted at this Budget. They are flabbergasted because here we are in some of the best economic times here we are in a time when most households would turn around and say This is when we don't borrow but instead we put a bit aside." This is the time when we don't need to take more taxes off people and hard-earning—we keep hearing about the "squeezed middle" from the Prime Minister. The "squeezed middle" is currently being squeezed by such high fuel prices and this is a Government that's going to put more taxes on them and make them pay more to fill up their tanks. How do they explain that to the people of South Auckland that they purport to care so much about? This is why they've come in to actually help those people and yet they are the people that most need the use of their vehicles to get to their jobs and who often work outside of normal work hours.These are the very people that right now when they pull up to that pump are wondering how they can afford to put petrol in it. They know that they are going to be charged around $700 more from this Government as those extra taxes are put on. As one family said to me as I knocked on a door in Northcote on the weekend "That means my family going without a meal each week." because that's the real effect of the extra taxes that this Government is putting on some of the poorest New Zealanders who can least afford it. I just think that that is absolutely terrible.So they borrow more but they aren't even spending in the areas where they have been talking up a crisis. So we are not seeing the billions upon billions of dollars that they promised to our health sector. Where is the money I shout out for mental health and drug and alcohol awareness? Where is the money for those places you promised our communities would be put there from the Government for those very people depending on them that voted for you?Where is the promise of a winter payment that was coming in in May? Where is that promise in this Budget? The excuse that we couldn't implement it and yet we can implement a payment to nearly 300000 students all with their different ways of needing it and everything else but we can't give a winter payment to some of the people that need it most. I say "some" on purpose because actually it's not targeted. It goes to all of those people that need it. Millionaires get it. We're going to see some members of this House get it which seems incredible to me.Which does make me go—shall we move to KiwiBuild? It does move me to KiwiBuild because there are members in this House that could possibly qualify for a KiwiBuild house. There are seriously members who do not own a home and because there's no income limit on it they seriously could qualify for a KiwiBuild home. Now that is not KiwiBuild; that is "KiwiFraud" and that is completely utterly crazy.I can't help but touch on the tertiary. The member who spoke before me has made grand statements that we are going to see a 15 percent increase in those that are studying in tertiary—"Hey just to be clear we'll take it in apprentices. If it comes to it we'd like to see more apprentices." We keep hearing from them that we need more builders we need more of those in construction we need more teachers and we need more nurses—"We'll take it in a whole lot of areas; it doesn't just have to be in the tertiary academic field." Here we go: Treasury are projecting 900 fewer. So for all of that over $2 billion spend on the fees-free we are not seeing any increase in the number of students or apprentices—or apprentices.I think New Zealanders are sitting at home and they are saying "So we are actually being squeezed in the middle. We have increased costs coming because of the Government that we have. We have the more bizarre spending on more diplomats and carpet in Sweden than we have on actual New Zealanders that are genuinely struggling. We have over $2 billion going to tertiary that is making no impact or difference whatsoever on student numbers; in fact we're seeing a projection that those numbers will drop."—and they feel robbed. They feel completely robbed of what they were promised repeatedly from this Government while they were on the campaign trail and while they've been in Government and actually making those sorts of statements.I can't help but go through some of them because there are so many broken promises that we have seen. So we absolutely heard "No new taxes" and what have we got? We've got taxes. We've absolutely got over $2 billion in additional revenue from fuel tax increases. Health—of course we repeatedly heard that health is in crisis and this is the worst and yet they're spending less than we did. So then we get the big shout out "Well that's because you're counting the payment to carers." Well yeah that counts. Actually that is a payment to health workers and that counts just as the Government is counting midwives and the payments to them—actually it's entirely appropriate. So we're seeing less spending in health.Now we were promised universally that nearly 4 million New Zealanders would see a reduction in their GP visits. What have we got instead? Maybe 600000 a bit targeted not happening now—and as we heard Chris Hipkins say in the House yesterday "it's not a broken promise; it's just something we haven't delivered." Just to be really clear: "it's not a broken promise; it's just something we haven't delivered."Let's get to police. I see the shadow spokesman for police in the House and that's an interesting one. So we're what—we're at 1800; we're at 1100; we've got 700 special police; it's going to be in three years; it's going to be in five years; we've budgeted for all 1800 but they're not going to be coming now until 2023 even though he said they'd come in three even though he's told them repeatedly that they wouldn't be able to do that. It's absolutely terrible.They were going to cut immigration. Well you know they're pretty quiet on that one now and we don't see too much of that happening in this Budget.I'll tell you what the one that gets me the most—in my last 15 seconds—is the donations to schools. So schools have not been fund-raising they have not been asking teachers for their donations because they were promised something from this Government that simply has not been delivered. They should be ashamed of it if this is the best they can do."