Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): Talk about avoid the elephant in the room. Here we are going into the third year of a cost of living crisis and did that Minister think that she might consider talking about what her Budget actually does for the back pockets and bank accounts of everyday working people? No they didn't rate a mention because what that Government is obsessed with and focused on is how many press releases they can issue congratulating themselves for spending New Zealanders' money better—they think—than they could themselves. And what was the latest example of that from the very Minister that just sit down? She decided that the best way to use New Zealanders' hard-earned taxpayer cash was to launch an all guns blazing campaign—ads on TV ads on social media a full-colour printed booklet out to hundreds of thousands of letterboxes—advising people on what they should be doing to save money. And what were the tips? The tips were of course they should unplug their appliances they should keep their showers to less than five minutes and perhaps invest in a slow cooker. That's what that Minister's advice is to everyday New Zealanders struggling through a cost of living crisis made unbearably worse by the decision making and economic management of her Government. It's a disgrace and actually what we needed in this Budget was not Ministers congratulating themselves on yet more press releases; we needed three simple things: (1) a plan to grow this economy and make it more prosperous so this can be a country that can afford the cancer drugs the high-quality schools the hospitals that New Zealanders deserve. Was there a plan for growth? No there wasn't. What this Budget needed to do was to demonstrate that Ministers have finally got the message that people don't just want spending for spending's sake; they want value delivered from every Government dollar. They want to see Ministers tightening their belts on wasteful spending just as New Zealanders have had to do in their own households. Did they get it in this Budget? No they did not.The third thing that this Budget needed to do was it needed to redress the balance that has become so out of kilter these past five years where the Government is taking more and more cash from New Zealanders while they get hit by inflation hit by the cost of living and are being required to pay more and more tax. This Budget should have delivered tax relief to working people and it failed to do it. So on all three counts we have in front of us a failing Budget that doesn't respond to the challenges New Zealand is facing. Actually the New Zealand economy is in a really fragile place and you can see that with the struggles that everyday New Zealanders are having in their homes. Inflation has been out of control for more than two years and according to these official forecasts it won't come back into target not later this year not next year but not until 2025. If these people are still in charge prices are going to keep increasing at a clip and inflation will remain out of control. That is what New Zealanders talk to me about. They say I worry that every time I go to the supermarket my groceries cost me more." You know I spoke to someone at the supermarket the other day. She works at the supermarket and she talked to me about this thing called checkout anxiety where she has growing numbers of people who when they see that number flick up on the screen they look away and then they look back and she said that more and more often what they do when they look back at that number is they go to the groceries and they take things away. They take the cheese away they take the biscuits away. They can't afford them. But what Megan Woods thinks their money should be used for is not tax relief—no they don't deserve that; they don't deserve to keep more of their own wages; she should have it so she can send colour brochures out to people telling them to unplug their appliances. What we see in our economy is that with the roaring inflation that Grant Robertson has done everything he can to fuel we are left with one big heavy lever and it's Adrian Orr's interest rate crank-up. Interest rates have gone up faster than they ever have in New Zealand's history. They have gone up so fast that a family with a $500000 mortgage who fixed it two years ago and who are re-fixing it this week will find themselves having to find hundreds of dollars more every fortnight—more than $700 more just to service their mortgage. And what happened? The week after Grant Robertson laid down this big-spending Budget interest rates cranked up once again. But the people opposite don't seem to care about mortgage holders in this country. They are not focused on them at all. Then we look at what's happening with the economy in terms of our ability to pay our way in the world. We now have the biggest current account deficit—the difference between what we're earning and spending—than we've had in the history of records of that number: the biggest deficit since 1988 the biggest deficit in the developed world. Do you know what that means? It means simply this: we are not earning our way in the world and yet the Budget does nothing to address it. Borrowing is up massively in this Budget. I think New Zealanders deserve to know that while debt pre-COVID was around $5.4 billion next year it will hit $91 billion. This is quite literally a Government that is borrowing more every day and is set to let debt keep climbing and climbing and climbing. By 2026 the costs of the interest on that debt alone will be the fourth-biggest item of spending in New Zealand after social security health and education. What New Zealanders say to me is "What do we have to show for it?" Because the spending has gone up at such a clip that when you break it down to a household basis it's up $28000 a year per New Zealand household compared to when Labour came to office. And so every New Zealand household every New Zealand family should be asking "Have I got $28000 worth of value out of Labour? Am I seeing less violent crime? Am I seeing surgery waiting lists being cut? Am I seeing shorter waits for the emergency room? Am I seeing more children attending school regularly? Am I seeing more achievement in our schools?" The answer to all of those questions is no because we have members opposite who have a remarkable extraordinary ability to spend and spend and not deliver results for the people whose money they're using to pay the cheques. The result is this: New Zealanders are being taxed more than ever at a time when New Zealanders are making extremely tough decisions to balance their household budgets to pay their bills when we have increasingly people turning up at food banks because they cannot pay the mortgage pay the rates pay for the swimming lessons and pay for the food when we have New Zealanders under so much financial pressure that a lawyer I spoke to last week who works in the area of marriage break-ups said "Nicola I've never been so busy. It's really sad. But when mortgages get this big it puts a lot of pressure on relationships a lot of pressure on families and we are seeing those cracks in our community." So what does this Government do? It says not only do you have to face record inflation not only do you have to face really high interest rates but we are going to tax you more too. New Zealanders have been pushed into higher tax brackets. They're paying a far higher proportion of their income in tax. The tax take for the Government is up so much that Treasury warns in these documents that the tax taken from wages alone will grow on average around $4 billion a year over the next four years and a billion of that is just inflation taking money from New Zealanders' pockets. It's not right it's not fair and a Government with an ounce of sense with an ounce of care for the people who are struggling would say "You know what we're going to stop some of this silly wasteful spending. We're going to stop Michael Wood spending $51 million consulting on a cycle bridge over Auckland Harbour. We're going to stop giving $2.5 million to the Mongrel Mob to do a little bit of drug counselling. We're going to stop sending colour brochures out telling people to have shorter showers because all of that stuff can't be justified when New Zealanders are doing it extremely tough and we're going to offer tax relief." But they refused to do that. And so what we have opposite is a Government that is running out of other people's money. It has completely run out of new ideas for fixing this economy and this is a Government that is running out of time."