2. Economy—Crown Debt and ForecastsHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of FinanceEconomy—Crown Debt and Forecasts2. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Has he seen NZIER's forecast indicating the Government will miss its self-imposed" 2021-22 debt target by $2 billion and how does that reconcile with the Prime Minister's statement last week that these rules will not be relaxed?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I have seen a report of that forecast and I respectfully disagree with it.Hon Amy Adams: How does he reconcile the Prime Minister's unequivocal statement that the debt rules would not be relaxed with his own comments on Q+A over the weekend that even if the debt target was missed he would still consider he'd done "a good job".Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: There's absolutely no contradiction between those two positions. We will meet our debt targets. If we missed it to the extent that the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) believes it would be 20.6 percent instead of 20 percent. That would still be a very low debt target and I might say lower than what the National Party reached in the last six years they were in office.Hon Amy Adams: Is he aware that the 0.6 percent of GDP that NZIER are forecasting the Government to miss the debt target by equates to $2 billion too much debt and if so does he really think that being out by $2 billion is him doing a good job?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As with the last Government this Government measures our debt targets as a percentage of GDP. When we look at that percentage of GDP 20 percent will be very low by international terms. If we were to be talking in dollar terms then the last Government might want to explain the $40 billion or $50 billion extra debt they racked up.Hon Amy Adams: Why did he ignore Treasury advice that substantial borrowing by Crown entities would be seen as an attempt to circumvent his net debt target and could in fact undermine his own Budget responsibility rules?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: For the same reasons that the National Government ignored the same advice from Treasury when they established the facility for Housing New Zealand to borrow at the time of which a Minister in that Government said "we believe that external financing will deliver additional commercial discipline for Housing New Zealand." Once again I agree with Amy Adams about that.Hon Amy Adams: Well given that he's so keen to draw parallels with the last Government is he aware that he actually inherited Crown entity debt of just half a percent of GDP but Budget 2018 blew this out more than four times to 2.2 percent or $6 billion?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What we have done is provide the facility for Housing New Zealand and the New Zealand Transport Agency to be able to get on with making up for the under-investment from the previous Government because the actual reason we need the money is to build some houses.Hon Amy Adams: So why did he ignore Treasury advice again that borrowing through Crown entities would have the same effect on fiscal resilience the same effect on credit ratings as borrowing through core Crown mechanisms but would cost the taxpayer tens of millions of dollars more in interest costs than borrowing through core Crown facilities?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well I do wonder whether the member asking the question could reflect on the following statement: "Given Housing New Zealand's strong credit rating a domestic wholesale bond programme is expected to cater for the full … financing requirement and represents the lowest cost option in terms of facility set up costs and interest costs."Hon Member: Who said that?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Amy Adams—former finance Minister.SPEAKER: I'm contemplating whether that actually addressed the question but we'll go on to the next one."