Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. We started off with a hiss and a roar from the speaker Mr Parker about the Budget and then it started to lose its way. Then he was flambling around trying to find commentators that had supported it and he started reading Audrey Young. But of course Audrey Young yesterday just after the Budget said it was a Goldilocks Budget" but on reflection she's written another article a little bit later where her conclusion at the front is "Grant Robertson's latest Budget may end up pleasing very few." No longer is it Goldilocks; she's actually had to pull back and recognise that it's been a flop and everybody else in the country recognises that it's been a flop. It's a backwards Budget because the country is going backwards.Just think back in 2017 when National left this Government thanks to Winston Peters this country was positive and was going places. People were flooding into the country. We were aspirational. New Zealand was reaching ahead. Everybody felt good about this country. Five years later we're losing a net-outflow of people. Australia is getting the best and brightest from New Zealand—not all of them of course; some of them here on this side of the Chamber. So we're losing a net-outflow of people the country is going slowly and the growth forecasts in this Budget from the Treasury are being pulled back. Instead of growing 12 percent by 2024 we're only going to grow 9 percent if we're lucky. For some of the years ahead we're going to be growing less than 1 percent.So the country as a whole under this Government is going backwards. But it's worse than that; it's New Zealand households that are going backwards under this Government. Costs are going up faster the cost of everything—whether it's cheese whether it's petrol whether it's food for the table; that's going up faster than wages are going up. And everybody knows it everybody understands it everybody sees it everybody feels it and they are frustrated by it. The Government will stand up and say "Oh it isn't us." and they'll point to Shamubeel Eaqub and all that sort of stuff. Shamubeel Eaqub by the way when we were in Government had nothing to say other than the New Zealand Government had their head in the sand over superannuation and we needed to put the age of superannuation up. That was the only thing he used to say and then suddenly this Government comes in and Jacinda Ardern refuses to put the age of superannuation up and he stops talking about it—has never talked about it since. So now he's talking about inflation and about that. So anyway good on you Shamubeel you do that.But the point about inflation is that yes of course there's an international component but you can't control that but what you can control as a Government is what the Government does to contribute to it. And there are two things that have contributed to it significantly: (1) they took the focus of the Reserve Bank off inflation and added a dual mandate and we've run incredibly low interest rates and that has helped fuel the inflation—like it has in many other parts of the world—and that's why inflation was ripping before Ukraine and it's why New Zealand households were going backwards last year; and (2) they have massively increased Government spending—what's called the fiscal impulse—and this Budget was the biggest splurge of new spending ever and New Zealanders look at it and they see it for what it is. They look at the $11 billion in health and they ask the obvious question "Will this lead to any better outcomes?" And when they consider what happened to the $1.9 billion extra money in mental health two years ago for no better outcomes in so many areas they are rightly concerned about it and they can see it just disappearing like water into the sand—billions and billions of dollars going out and no better result. Overall Government spending's increased by 68 percent by this Government and nobody can point to a 68 percent increase in actual outcomes. We're all waiting longer for courts we're waiting for surgeries and everybody's waiting for everything. All the money goes out and where it all seems to go is into extra public servants and lots of consultants. It's been great for the consultants a really wonderful time for the consultants but not good for the average New Zealander—and particularly not good for the squeezed middle. Then we look here at what is being proposed in this bill: this temporary assistance to deal with the cost of living and the $27 a week that people will get for a few weeks. And we've seen overnight people working out how that fits. We've seen people say "Well if you look at an average couple in the Budget they'll get $54 between them for a few weeks but the cost of rent has been about $50 as well." Well OK that might just cover the rent increase for a few weeks but it doesn't cover all the food and everything else that they're having to deal with and all the other issues. Then what happens after three months? Oops we're back where we were; we've gone backwards. And what about the homeowner? Average costs have gone up a $134 a week so they're going backwards at a rate of knots and they'll be going back faster because interest rates will be going up even higher to deal with inflation. And then of course well they might get a cheap bus ride for a few weeks but that's going to stop as well. So the big question that everybody has is: what on earth is going to happen in three months when these little temporary fixes are going to disappear? They won't probably disappear and that's going to be a real problem for this Government. They've got themselves entirely trapped and there's no way out for them because they've raised this kind of hope that they'll throw some money at people in order to deal with this situation. But they're going to have to keep on doing it because the inflation's not going to go away any time soon. And that's why we're not voting for this bill and it's why the National Party's plan is so much better. And it's an obvious one which is to say "Let's stop taking more tax out of the hands of New Zealanders every day using the sneaky approach of inflation—as incomes rise hold the tax thresholds down and more people pay higher rates of tax. And that's been the dirty secret of this Government's tax policy for the last five years. It's why Grant Robertson has had so much money to throw around—ineffectively sadly—and it's why New Zealanders are feeling the pinch. We've just suggested the obvious and simple and right thing to do which is to say "OK let's adjust those thresholds for inflation and put $1600 back into the hands of the average New Zealand worker. That will make a real difference to them. It's a contribution it's a start and it doesn't go away after three months like this short-term band-aid fix from the Government will do. And of course the other element of this is the hurried and ill-considered nature of it. When we look at this Government's approach to this Budget they were quite confident about the whole situation. They said that the focus of the Budget was going to be climate change and it was going to be health restructuring. That was going to be the big thing about the Budget until about five weeks ago when they thought "Hang on a moment. Hang on a moment. Maybe we have miscued somewhat. There seems to be another issue out there—something called the cost of living. Maybe we should be doing something about that." Just like they thought about law and order suddenly very late in the piece they claimed everything was fine and then the only thing going forward that New Zealanders have seen is those stolen cars being rammed into dairies. So they came up with a quick fix there which won't really work and then they came up with this cost-of-living package right at the very end. We see all the notes from Treasury laid out on the table saying "Oh yes well we haven't really had time to consider this at all. It's just been flung at us just beforehand. And by the way we think it's pretty bad." I mean look. This is what the Treasury has to say on it: "Inflation has risen over the past year and is expected to be widespread and to persist into the future. This makes a one-off payment a poor mechanism for supporting households with a longer-term problem." This is from the Government's own advisers. Let me just repeat this: "Inflation has risen over the past year and is expected to be widespread and to persist into the future. This makes a one-off payment a poor mechanism for supporting households with a longer-term problem." So the Government's own advisers say it was a bad idea. They say a one-off payment of this magnitude also would add inflationary pressures in the short term. Then there are other priorities that could be pursued with this money. Then they also point out that they have to go and hire another 750 people down at IRD to figure out how to pay this money. I mean what a shambles. I'm pretty confident notwithstanding if this bill passes—which it will because this Government has the numbers—that they'll turn around and find out there'll be all sorts of problems. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we're not back in this House with another piece of urgent legislation to fix up some kink that they've forgotten and that has meant the money's gone to people in Australia or something like that. I don't know; there'll be something that they won't have figured out in their mad rush to deal with it. That is the tragedy of this Government. They're always always reacting on the back foot to issues because they're not thinking ahead and they're not providing a clear plan for New Zealand. So the backward Budget continues. New Zealanders are going backwards but our message for you today is: help is on the way and that's in the form of Chris Luxon Nicola Willis and the National Party that stand ready to lead this country back to success."