Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you. I want to actually expand on some of the questions asked by Julie Anne Genter because I think they speak to the assumptions and fiscal risks as set out in the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) but I want to touch on—and I'd hate to harp on about it but I'll just conclude on this before we go into infrastructure fund. These are really really complex things right? We dive deeply into Budget documents and Supplementary Estimates and imprest supply bills and Treasury reports to try and provide a plain English summary of where we're at to even the business community the business commentariat much less the person on the street who's paying for all of this about whether or not we are spending it appropriately in the right way in the right time for the right benefit. I think there's some homework for the Minister to work with Treasury because bear in mind that the vast amount of this funding—well he may chuckle but I think it's really important and I'll come on to another example I've got of it. There is simply very little way for people to assess whether the spending is of an appropriate quality and on COVID-related issues and frankly—and I have said this—I think we've spent far too much out of the COVID tin on non-COVID things. I think that is coming back now to haunt the Minister and the Minister is by smoke and mirrors and through second imprest supply doing what he did last year. The same scrutiny—Hon Grant Robertson: I'm confused—I can't believe it. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Oh he can chuckle and say he's confused but actually I think it's the Minister that's confused. Now I want to talk about infrastructure because the Minister has made frequent reference in Budget 2021 to a $57.3 billion infrastructure investment over the next five years and that's in the Wellbeing Budget document itself. There is an important interest a public interest in the transparency around what that infrastructure is where it's going to be spent and whether it's been appropriated because it's just an investment. My colleague Andrew Bayly asked a written question about the $57.3 billion and the Minister's reply was simply to point to a graph in the document. That's not good enough because the questions were: where are they; what are those projects? A letter has actually I think gone in too and I'm not sure if that's been replied to yet but my questions are around that fund. Will he provide the requested details of the claimed $57.3 billion that is being spent on infrastructure and if not why not?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister for Infrastructure): A couple of things for the member here. The first of those is to note that the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund is being spent across many many different Votes in Government. The vast bulk of that is going into Vote Social Development because that's where we pay the wage subsidy scheme out of. There's also a significant portion of it that's gone to Vote Revenue for the various revenue-related schemes that we put in place and very much unsurprisingly a large amount of money going to Vote Health. The member can find a graph that divides it up on the Treasury's website and that's gone up there as a result of conversations that have been taken place between the Auditor-General the Treasury and myself. The member knows this because we've discussed this at the Finance and Expenditure Committee when the Estimates were going through.The system that we have for public accounting and scrutiny in New Zealand defined by the Public Finance Act is the very process we're going through right now—one part of it. What happens is committees assess through the Estimates process and the financial review process where we are—that is how it works. The member can shake his head but that is how it works. Now the Auditor-General who is in fact in some ways responsible in some senses for part of that scrutiny process has raised with the Government and said Well how do we know this amount of money has been spent on this particular Vote or this particular appropriation under the COVID fund?" Now our response is to say "Well we'll do our best to be able to show you exactly what that looks like but it's actually the responsibility of select committees to go through Estimates and to do financial reviews." That's how the system works. Now if the system's not sufficient for the member that's an interesting debate that we can have and it is what the Auditor-General has raised with us but actually that is the process of Government. It gets appropriated into a Vote the Finance and Expenditure Committee makes a decision on which committees look at which Votes and then these reports come back to us and we're having the debate about it. That is the system.Now the argument's been made that because this is such a large sum of money all at once that's going out—and it's not all at once but it's spread over a period of time—we should find ways to make sure that we report more on that. That is the response that has led to the work that the Treasury has currently done.The other matter is the member's got a concern about what the money has been spent on and whether it was non-COVID-related. I'd just refer the member to the period of time in the last election campaign where all parties were talking about where money would be spent and the party that he represents said that it wanted to spend what was left at that time in the fund which was around about $14 billion—that member and his party wanted to spend it on tax cuts and pet transport projects. Now the member can say to me that those transport projects were vital and essential and that's his right. Equally I can say that the spending that we've done in the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund we believe fulfils the "two Rs"—response and recovery—and I strongly do believe that that's happened. But the member is in somewhat of a glass house if he's claiming that all expenditure had to be in a very very narrow definition of what he seems to be claiming is a COVID response.In terms of the member's question around capital expenditure and expenditure in that space the member again is not fully understanding the way that that works. I'm looking at the table on page 33 of the budget document from which that is drawn. It includes the New Zealand Transport Agency district health boards expenditure by Kāinga Ora expenditure on the City Rail Link—it's there.SPEAKER: Can the member indicate which document he's referring to?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I'm looking at the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU)—yeah. So I'm looking at the BEFU yes.Hon Michael Woodhouse: And page?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I'm looking at—in this case it's page 33. The numbers differ slightly because of the different years because this is done over a five-year period rather than a four-year one which is why we normally talk about four years for Budgets. This is five years. But this is where that comes from and within each of those areas we then have the process for financial reviews for example of district health boards. So you'd be able to see there where capital expenditure has been spent. So I get what the member is saying. The member's calling it a fund; it's not a fund. It's a collection of all of the investments that are going to be made in capital expenditure and the process we have—to repeat myself—is that this Parliament then looks at each of those within the Votes and within the appropriations we have."