Goldsmith Paul; Salesa JennyHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well thank you Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. We've had the dinner break. We've all watched the news and reporting of this Budget which has flocked across the country. The previous speaker referred to Audrey Young's glowing reference to the Goldilocks Budget". I'm afraid being the true Goldilocks around here that Audrey was a bit off beam there and what we've seen actually throughout the rest of the country is an incredulity that this Government could take so much money off the hands of New Zealanders with extra taxation with proposals for a new jobs tax coming around the corner and then expect everybody to be happy with $350—to some people. Some people have been unkind enough to suggest that's about almost an economy flight to Sydney to start a new life in a place where hard work and enterprise gets better shrift than it does under this Government. And so we're absolutely focused on the cost of living crisis. There's been no debate in this House this evening around the issue facing all New Zealanders and that is this cost of living crisis that New Zealand families are facing the difficulty of funding their way through to pay for the food on their table the gas in their tanks and to make ends meet. The only difficulty and I suppose the only complication is that the members of this Government the Ministers in this Government and the backbenchers who are sitting over there hanging their heads wondering about what their future is going to be—the only surprising thing was that those people those 50-odd New Zealanders were the last people to wake up to the fact that there was a cost of living crisis in this country and that's what people were focused on. And so their plans for this Budget all along were to focus on climate change and the biggest health restructuring in the middle of a COVID crisis. And that was the plan for the Budget and it was all sweet. Then about three or four weeks maybe a couple of months ago perhaps related to the publishing of some polls—I don't know—the Government suddenly woke up and thought "Heck we haven't done anything about that that in any remote way addresses the issue of the day which is the issue that is most in front of mind of all New Zealanders: how do we actually make ends meet? How do we deal with the fact that prices are going up everywhere and it's harder to make a living and it's harder to keep food on the table?" There was nothing really planned and so they threw together this last-minute piece of legislation that we're dealing with today which along with a couple of cheaper bus fares for a couple of months and another couple of months trying to deal with the issue of petrol prices and diesel prices which will all be welcomed—but all they're doing is applying a band-aid on to a much deeper long-term situation which is the fact that inflation has got out of control in this country and that New Zealanders are going backwards under this Government and inflation the costs of goods are going up faster than wages. Therefore as everybody can see everybody can understand—it's as obvious as the nose in front of your face—New Zealanders have been going backwards under this Government. As I said in the previous speech the only thing going forwards is the stolen cars driven by 11-year-olds into ram raids. That is not what New Zealanders are hoping for or looking for and they're looking for a Government that understands the importance of having a strong economy fighting inflation and ensuring that wages are going faster than inflation. So this legislation comes in and brings in a $350 payment. That's their plan. That's their belated plan to deal with the cost of living crisis and we are voting against it quite simply because we think our plan is better. Our plan is to leave more money out of the pockets of New Zealanders not take like this Government is doing sneakily. Every week every month this Government is stealthily putting up taxes. They're increasing taxes because they are not adjusting the tax thresholds for inflation. And over the course of a year it adds up significantly to the extent that the average household on an average income have had $1600 dollars a year of extra taxes taken off them by this Government to fill Grant Robertson's insatiable hunger for more tax revenue. This Minister this Government Grant Robertson has been the most rapacious tax collector in this country's history. I thought nobody would ever beat Michael Cullen but he has. There is never enough tax for this Government because they will always spend more and we're always going to be left with larger deficits and they're going to be wanting to spend more. Now New Zealanders can quite rightly look at this situation and say "Well there are some things that we could usually spend more money on but it's just a pity that there is no connection between the spending and the delivery in this Government and that's the slight problem." And so when they see the billions of dollars that are going to be thrown at the health system there is no confidence that it will lead to better outcomes because we all looked two years ago to $1.9 billion promised on mental health and there has been no actual improvement in the services available to people who need the mental health work in so many areas. So people are rightly sceptical of the potential for actual progress from all the money that has been spent. Everybody agrees that New Zealanders are doing it tough right now. Everybody agrees that we need to put more money into the pockets of New Zealanders so that they can deal with the rising prices and cost of living crisis. The difference is that on our side we believe that actually a very simple way to start is to stop taking quite so much money in the first place and not use inflation to stealthily and sneakily take more taxes from New Zealanders as this Government has. That's our proposal. This Government instead—"No no. We're going to keep on putting taxes up. Every month every year we'll just sneak a little bit more. We'll use inflation." That's why tax revenues are flooding into this Government. "We're going to use it all and spend it"—on a very poor quality spend most of the time. "And in the meantime because we're a little bit worried about the broader issue we'll extend the cheap bus rides for an extra couple of months and we'll extend the winter payments for $350. And if you're earning the average wage in this country tough luck. You're too rich. We're not interested in you."That is not the message that New Zealanders want to hear. It's not the messages that we need to be hearing in this country. That's why we won't be voting for this band-aid economics that the Labour Government seems to have picked up. Throw a little bit of sugar around for a few months hope for something to turn up and kick the can down the road. I don't know how Mr Robertson and his team are going to wind up all the extra help on the diesel and the petrol. It's going to be interesting. When it comes to an end in a couple of months what are they going to do? That's going to be quite difficult for them. The point is what they're not prepared to do is to give back some of the taxes that they keep on taking from the pockets of New Zealanders. So he's clearly thrown this together at the last moment just before the Budget to deal with the issue of the day which hadn't really been on their radar up until then. They've been focused as I said on a massive health restructuring that continues to leave the whole health sector in a state of complete chaos in the middle of winter when we're dealing with COVID. If we think of even the Upper Hutt Hospital situation the people that are supposed to be dealing with it are about to lose their jobs—they're about to lose their jobs and they're supposed to be dealing with a health crisis. They're going to be replaced in six months and there'll be a whole lot of emails in the inbox of this new organisation for some manager that will appear from somewhere and they'll have to figure out what's going on while everybody else has left the room. So it's a bizarre situation there and that's where most of the new money in this Budget has gone: into feeding this great beast; the most ill-timed restructuring that you could possibly imagine. And in the meantime the Kiwis who are doing it tough in Kaitāia in Whangārei in Huntly in places all around the country looking at the price rises going up looking at all the pressure that they're under in their households particularly the hard-working families who are both working hard getting an average income in New Zealand getting 70000 80000 bucks a year working hard trying to provide for their family feeling like they're not getting ahead because of the increased rents that they are having to face. Rents have gone up substantially under this Government.Chlöe Swarbrick: Shall we do rent controls Paul?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: They've—pardon me?Chlöe Swarbrick: Shall we do some rent controls then?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well that's a typical response from the Greens. Rather than deal with the driving causes of the housing going up all the costs that they've added on the idea that they're suddenly had that if you pile costs on to those who provide the housing there is perhaps the slight possibility that some of those costs will be passed on to the renters! That seems to be beyond their logic to understand that that is a possibility: if you add a whole lot of costs on to landlords there is a slight possibility that some of those costs will be passed on to the renters. That indeed is what's happened. They spend their whole time advocating for more costs and then they complain about the fact that the price goes up and then the solution to it is to put some rent controls on. I mean there goes the Greens. It's a funny thing for this Government that their coalition partner the Greens couldn't even bring themselves to vote for this legislation. So we've just had the Budget and they've stood there and they've said "Oh how wonderful we are. We're a Government with the Labour and the Greens." but the Greens aren't voting for the first piece of legislation that they've brought through. That's how muddled this Government is.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! The member's time is up. Before I call the next speaker may I ask the member of the ACT Party to take his pink box off the desktop please.Chris Bishop: He's not the leader.Damien Smith: Sorry Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I said the "member" not the "leader"."