Wood Michael; Rurawhe AdrianMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm very pleased to take a call in this debate. It's an important bill and it's an important bill from both a parliamentary and constitutional point of view because one of the precepts of the way that we work in a parliamentary democracy is that money that's appropriated from citizens through taxes has to be authorised through this Parliament which represents the people from which we appropriate the money. And the reason that this bill is important—and I want to really emphasise this point because it hasn't been reflected at all in any of the reflections from members opposite—is that this bill serves the purpose of appropriating money that will be used in the 2019-20 fiscal year that was not appropriated in the Budget that was set for the 2019-20 fiscal year. So the debate over this bill actually has quite an important constitutional and parliamentary function.It is not actually usually a time for polemics and histrionics in this House. I've been in this House for about four of these Budget cycles on both sides of the House and generally speaking the Opposition engages in this debate in a reasonably sensible way actually examines the Supplementary Estimates looks at what has been appropriated that was not appropriated at the time of the original Estimates in the prior calendar year and examines those. It's also the case that usually the Opposition prior to that has done their work in the select committee because what happens in this process is that the Finance and Expenditure Committee has Treasury in front of them they examine the Supplementary Estimates and they get to ask Treasury to give good information about why the Supplementary Estimates are different. We haven't heard a dicky-bird about that from the Opposition. They haven't actually done their fundamental job in the examination of the Supplementary Estimates.In the time that I have I want to touch on some of the things that are included in these Supplementary Estimates that I think are actually incredibly important. The reason I'm a little bit disappointed in the performance of the Opposition as well is that there's probably been no more important set of Supplementary Estimates presented to this House in generations because we know that these Supplementary Estimates—which came in two parts first on 14 May the second on 16 June—were delivered in extraordinary times that these Supplementary Estimates appropriate a significant sum in order to deal with the unprecedented crisis of COVID-19 and its impact on the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders and on our economy.I'm actually really proud of some of the additional appropriations that are made through the Supplementary Estimates. I'm actually really pleased that the Hon Dr Nick Smith raised before the experience of New Zealand in the early 1990s recession when yes as he said we had 10 percent unemployment. If the House wants to know one of the reasons why we had 10 in fact 11 percent unemployment in that time it's because the party that sits on the other side of the House delivered Budgets at a time of economic crisis and recession. Instead of investing in New Zealanders and communities they chose to retrench. They chose to cut people's benefits. They chose to cut investment in communities and infrastructure. That exacerbated the situation put more New Zealanders out of work and created more social misery. So I'm incredibly proud that through these Supplementary Estimates our Government hasn't retrenched. It hasn't withdrawn investment.In fact it has put in greater investment into New Zealanders and their communities. We've done it through things like doubling the winter energy payment so that our senior citizens this winter our beneficiaries this winter don't have to sit in the cold through winter don't have to put up with the risk of getting sick because of that. They've actually got some extra money in their back pockets to ensure that they can get through this challenging period. We've done it through the additional $25 per week for people on main benefits because we believe that if New Zealand's going to get through this economic and social crisis of COVID-19 we need to bring everyone with it including those people who find it the toughest. So I'm really proud of that additional investment. We did it of course through the wage subsidy a decision that was taken quickly a policy that was developed for which there was no playbook at all. I want to acknowledge the Minister of Finance here Grant Robertson the Minister of Social Development Carmel Sepuloni who were absolutely essential to the development of that programme. We hear every single day about the difference it has made about the jobs it has saved about the businesses that it has given time to help get through the impact of COVID-19. It's about the tax loss carry-back scheme which has helped to pump cash flow into businesses to help them get through the interest-free small business loan scheme administered by IRD which has given over $1 billion to help small businesses get through. These are the investments that our Government has made.We haven't retrenched. We haven't de-invested we haven't given up on people as we've been told to at times in this debate by members opposite. I'm proud of this Supplementary Estimates bill because it speaks to the values of this Government—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The time for this debate has ended.