Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Listening to that speech from the finance spokesperson from the National Party you'd think that spending is out of control in this country. This year's forecast according to the Treasury of Government expenditure as a percentage of GDP is 31.6 percent of GDP core Government expenditure. What was it in 2013? It was 32 percent of GDP. Under the National Party after they had been in Government for five years spending as a percentage of GDP was 32 percent of GDP. This year it is 31.6 percent of GDP.We've weathered the COVID storm. We've come out the other side. Vaccine mandates outside of the health workforce are on the way out. Mask mandates are already gone. The trees are blooming. It's looking like it's going to be a good spring and a good summer. There's so much good news around; I can't believe the negativity of the other side.We've not just had one of the best outcomes from COVID in the world we've probably had the best in terms of the number of lives that have been saved and the state of the economy. We heard today from the Minister of Finance as the acting Prime Minister at the moment about how New Zealand's economy is already quite significantly larger than it was pre-COVID and so much better than most other countries are relative to how their performance is compared with before COVID.Even last week we had great statistics out. Growth is up. Unemployment is very very low at 3.3 percent. Inflation has peaked. Yes inflation has been hard—it has been hard; it continues to be hard for people. People aren't fooled by the rhetoric from the National Party. They see these terrible inflationary peaks overseas: Europe and their problems with their energy sector—spiralling cost of living there which makes inflation here look low relative and it is. Unemployment is low at 3.3 percent.The galling misrepresentation of earnings by the finance spokesperson and deputy leader of the National Party—she quotes some information that she said she got from the Parliamentary Library. I have the official statistics dated 17 August 2022 at 10.45 a.m. if you're interested from Statistics New Zealand. It's titled: Weekly earnings rise as more in full-time employment" and it records that median weekly earnings from wages and salaries rose 8.8 percent in the year to June 2022—8.8 percent increase in median weekly earnings from wages and salary ahead of inflation. Even though it's true inflation has been high it has peaked.Debt is low. New Zealand's net debt is lower than in Australia in the US in Japan in the UK and in just about any European country you care to name. New Zealand's Government debt is lower and peaks on a net debt basis at less than 20 percent of GDP.A stunning result for our country that shows prudent fiscal management of this country since the last irresponsible fiscal leader of this country who was decades ago the Rt Hon Robert Muldoon under National. Every Government since then in New Zealand—Labour and National—has been fiscally responsible. It was the Douglas-Lange Government that got it under control the Bolger Government continued the Clark-Cullen Government continued the Key-English Government continued and this Government is too. There has not been a fiscally irresponsible Government in this country for decades and it does not behove the Opposition well to pretend that we are when Standard & Poor's and other ratings agencies say exactly the opposite and record that in the face of this incredible challenge brought on by COVID we have good outcomes in our health result our fiscal result—that's the Government's borrowings—and in the economic outcome for the country.On delivery I don't know what planet Nicola Willis has been living on but house building has doubled under this Government. The number of houses being built every year has literally doubled under this Government after the woeful housing crisis left behind by the last Government. They never managed to reform the Resource Management Act (RMA). They didn't pull any of the levers that we have in the RMA. No fast track. They did help us with upzoning legislation recently. After the global financial crisis (GFC) they cut the number of apprentices being trained.Chris Bishop: No we didn't. Hon DAVID PARKER: You did. The number of apprentices trained after the GFC the funding for that was cut by the austerity Budgets—Chris Bishop: Absolute rubbish.Hon DAVID PARKER: That is exactly true and it's why when we've taken the opposite approach—I was here when Phil Goff was criticising the National Government post-GFC for cutting apprenticeship funding which was one of the reasons why there was such a reliance on overseas labour to rebuild Christchurch because not enough apprentices had been trained in New Zealand.So in contrast we have had 200000 extra people through trade training; 50000 of whom have been apprentices many of those apprentices in the building trades. That's why not only has the number of houses being built in New Zealand doubled and we're overcoming this housing crisis and rents in Auckland are lower than the rate of inflation because supplies at long last are starting to catch up; that's also why we've been able to have a record public house build which we're building more public houses after the last Government sold them off and left a lower stock of public housing when they left—Hon Michael Woodhouse: Who to? Tell the whole story.Hon DAVID PARKER: Now Michael Woodhouse says "Tell the whole story." The whole story is that you do sometimes demolish a house to build more but we haven't sold them off and ended up with a lower housing stock than we started with. We on this side are building more public houses than have been built since the 1970s and public housing stock is going up.The Budget deficit is already under control. You can see that from the Budget documents. Of course there was a large deficit as we supported businesses and households through the COVID crisis. But that is behind us. We return to surplus five years after COVID; compared with National taking six years after the GFC to return to surplus.I want to say a little bit about exports. We had lots of difficult decisions to make during COVID. We had to effectively ration the amount of moving around during lockdowns and we decided that we needed to prioritise our export sectors and we did. As a consequence notwithstanding COVID our merchandise exports are up—and our primary sector exports for the first time have passed $50 billion.Now there's a lot of reasons behind that but one has been the enormous and stunningly successful trade agenda that this Government has had to reduce tariffs to secure access to new markets. We've landed huge trade deals. We finished off the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and there was some good work put into that by National. We've done the China free-trade agreement (FTA) update. We've done the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. We've started and finished the EU FTA we've started and finished the UK FTA and they have helped us diversify our export sales channels. For the first time in a long long time sales of our exports to CPTPP countries are now higher than they are to China. This is a trade-diversification strategy that is working. We have improved secure access to G20 economies: Japan Canada Mexico Germany the UK and Italy—none of whom we had secured trade relationships with until this Government got on the road and pursued trade agreements so successfully.Our exporters have come to the party. They worked through COVID. We helped them with the air connectivity system to keep exports growing. We have supported 12300 flights; 235000 tonnes of high-value exports that would not have been carried to market otherwise.So we've opened the door. We've kicked those trade doors open. We've enabled connectivity and supply lines to be maintained. Our clever exports have taken the gap and they have earned money for the economy. That's one of the reasons why this economy is so strong under Labour."