Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): I predict that in some years from now when New Zealanders look back on a declining economy they will look at these two bills as emblems of this Labour Government's failed approach to economic management because what these two bills do essentially is give Grant Robertson permission to go on the biggest spend-up in New Zealand's history. And it gives him permission to do that notwithstanding this Government's complete failure to deliver better outcomes for their spending—their record of not providing results for the tax they take from New Zealanders. So National will be opposing these bills.This is a Government that has overseen spending blowouts and has a lack of targets for its expenditure and what they will achieve. It has shown an inability to deliver and get results and poor prioritisation of the public purse. It has been reactive and panicked when it comes to dealing with substantive issues and it has put in place short-term thinking where long-term responses are required. The context in which these enormous amounts of money are being spent is a cost of living crisis. Prices in New Zealand today are running laps around wages. Inflation is at a 30-year high. Groceries petrol rents childcare fees are all climbing by the week and New Zealanders' wages are simply not keeping up. Every week New Zealanders are working harder to go backwards. That is the economic context we are in and yet you would not know it from the speech we just heard from the Minister of Finance who essentially said All is rosy. All is fine. Let's go on a big spend-up and can I also have $30 billion in my back pocket in imprest supply in case I need a slush fund later?"We have interest rates climbing faster than they ever have in the history of the official cash rate in New Zealand with New Zealanders having to re-fix their mortgages and watch hundreds more dollars walk out of their bank accounts. We have widespread workforce shortages such that businesses are having to close their doors and say no to offshore orders because they simply don't have the workers to do the job. We have an economy that shrank in the first quarter of this year and that declined in size. And with all of this going on we have thousands of New Zealanders voting with their feet departing our shores for Australia. So this was an opportunity for the Minister of Finance to illustrate and set out a plan for New Zealand's economic recovery and to demonstrate he understands how tough things are and that he is setting a course to make them better. But instead what we have seen in these bills set out very clearly is a continuation of a pattern of spending more than he said he would. And this is something that this Minister of Finance has done in every single Budget he has set down. He spends more than he said he would the year before. Now for this Budget what he said last year he would be spending this year was $2.4 billion and what we find in the pages of the documents that the Treasury has put together is that instead he is spending $9.5 billion more each year—a considerable increase in expenditure at a time when the economy has already overheated a time when every piece of fiscal pressure puts more pressure on inflation and more pressure on interest rates. And such was his desire to spend more that he raided next year's Budget—and the year after that—to ensure that he had more funds to allocate.And I want to note for the House that what the Minister of Finance has taken up the habit of doing is saying "Oh no I'm doing a great job on the economy."—I think he likes to describe himself as characteristically humble—"Just ask the IMF." Now let's be really clear about what the IMF have said because the IMF report to which the Minister refers was actually published the week before the Budget and at that time what the Minister had said he would do was reduce spending from $128 billion to $120 billion this year. And the IMF noted that and said that they thought that that scheduled tightening was appropriate. Now what in fact the Minister did was the very opposite of that. He did not commit to the scheduled tightening when he published the Budget documents; instead of spending $120 billion this year as he led the IMF to believe he would what these documents show is he will be spending $127 billion. Now these numbers are so big and eye-watering that I think people lose sight of them but what needs to be understood is he is spending more than he said he would and he is spending more than the IMF thought he would. He also likes to say "Well look as a percentage of GDP it's similar to what New Zealand had to spend following the global financial crisis." And I think that this is perhaps the piece of analysis that best portrays his lack of understanding about what's going on in the economy right now because following the global financial crisis (GFC) what New Zealand had was a significant demand issue. We had not enough demand in the economy and we had high unemployment. Unemployment got over 6 percent. And what that meant was rightly and properly the Government of the day used its expenditure to provide income support to people and to prop up what was an ailing economy. Today we are in the very opposite situation where people cannot find workers and where there is record-low unemployment. So the rationale for increased expenditure in this overheated environment just isn't there. And so for the Minister of Finance to say "Oh look it's just like after the GFC." I think is to betray his ignorance.What we have in these Budget documents is a series of band-aids of announcements of more spending where what is required is more delivery. And a case in point is the band-aid cost of living payment. Now I've spoken to many New Zealanders since the Minister set out this Budget and so many of them have said to me—and these are New Zealanders from all walks of life and from all incomes—"What an insult that $350 payment is. What an insult to say that you can as Minister of Finance buy me off and say it's all sorted by giving me $350. Well actually what I want to see from the Government is a plan for strengthening the economy in the long run." What New Zealanders want to see is a plan to grow productivity and drive better wages such that wages are growing faster than incomes. What they want to see is low and stable interest rates. What they want to be able to do is be businesses that can find workers to invest and grow. They don't simply want band-aids; band-aids by the way that as of last week when we spoke to the IRD 170000 are going to miss out on because the IRD still doesn't have their bank accounts and millions will be spent on hiring 300 staff for the IRD to administer the payment when what was needed—Anna Lorck: Jobs. Jobs.NICOLA WILLIS: Oh the member Anna Lorck who is a very nice woman and whose company I enjoy has said that that's about creating jobs. Can I just remind her that in the Hawke's Bay there are employers crying out for workers and what they don't want Anna Lorck is the IRD paying them more and taking them down to Wellington to do unproductive work. What those employers want is to be able to get a worker and grow a business and send more production offshore. They don't want the Government paying them more to run a big bureaucracy and it would do the members opposite well to understand that pressure that exists in our economy. And what we see in this appropriations bill—and it is appropriate that the member Anna Lorck is commenting here—are many examples of poor prioritisation. How many people Anna Lorck in your electorate have said they want billions spent on a restructuring of three waters? Because my view is that there aren't New Zealanders saying that they want four mega-entities and council assets being taken and restructured with billions spent on it. My view is that there aren't New Zealanders saying "Yeah look let inflation tax me more. You know merge RNZ and TVNZ; that should be priority number one." There aren't New Zealanders saying "What you should do Government in the midst of a global pandemic with dire workforce shortages and a 4000-nurse deficit is you should then spend billions on restructuring the back office of the health system." These are not New Zealanders' priorities. This Budget does not reflect effective prioritisation. I say to you this: what New Zealanders judge a Budget by is not how much you say you're going to spend; they judge it by what you deliver. And this is a Government that has a consistent track record of promising big and delivering little. New Zealanders are going backwards. This Budget sets out a path to more debt a growing tax burden faster rising prices poorly targeted spending and more New Zealanders moving to Australia."