Seymour David; Robertson GrantDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Does the Minister accept what the Reserve Bank Governor has said: Monetary policy needs friends."? So yes there might be collateral damage if he was to reduce expenditure but the Reserve Bank having to put up people's mortgages because he keeps spending is doing exactly the same thing. Does he accept the complementarity between the monetary policy of the Reserve Bank and the policy that he has in place?On a technical note the Minister is trying to claim the long-run average of New Zealand's Government expenditure is 30 percent. That may be true if he counts the bad times—if he counts the global financial crisis if he counts the Canterbury earthquakes if he counts the COVID period. However what is the long-run average in good times and when do we get back to that? I don't think it's 30 percent. He's being cute with an average. We don't want to get back to the average; we want to get back to the level of Government spending that we have when there's not a crisis on and that is closer to 27 or 28 percent not 30 percent and certainly not 31 32 or 35. This Government is spending too much and he can't say what we're getting back in return. He said we're getting more mental health sessions—is he for real? He said teachers are happy they're being paid more. Really? Nurses? I mean if I was in Government I don't think I'd bring up those things right now.But I want to bring up something the Minister said about COVID. He said it was the cost of COVID and everybody is happy that they got given money by the Government—of course they are. Does the Minister know anyone who's not happy to be given money for free? The question is: was it necessary to spend that money? Yes it was. Why? Because the Government shut them down. My question is: does he believe as the Minister of Finance that New Zealand made the right choices? For example there was a long period through the end of 2021 the start of 2022 when the borders were shut people had to go on the misery of human lottery and try and get a managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) space and yet if a person actually had COVID they were allowed to isolate at home. So if you had a negative test overseas and flew to New Zealand you had to go into MIQ—if you could get a space—but people that were testing positive and actually had it they could isolate at home; just not people returning home. There was a period where people could use rapid antigen tests but the Government actively banned them and then it confiscated them off the people that had imported them. All of this is in the period that the select committee is reporting on from the 2021-22 financial statements.I just wonder if the Minister doesn't think if only we had ordered the vaccines a little earlier and got the roll-out done if we'd asked GPs and pharmacies to be part of it earlier if we'd been able to not lock Auckland down for three months at the end of 2021 then perhaps not so much expenditure would've been necessary.So we accept what the Minister says given the Government shut the country down shut the border made Aucklanders stay home banned us from going to Whangārei—at one point the Prime Minister of New Zealand even said "You can go round to your neighbour's house and sit in the garden but you're not allowed to use their toilet." I mean it's difficult to take yourself back there but that's where we were. Does the Minister think that perhaps maybe if it wasn't for the Government's overly stringent and ineffective management of COVID which had very little health benefit then maybe he wouldn't have had to borrow and spend so much money and maybe there wouldn't be so much inflation there wouldn't be so much debt—Chlöe Swarbrick: Maybe more people would be dead.DAVID SEYMOUR: —and maybe New Zealanders would be in a much better space. Chlöe Swarbrick says "Maybe more people would be dead." Well Chlöe Swarbrick answer this—Hon Julie Anne Genter: It's not "maybe"; it's a fact.DAVID SEYMOUR: Oh I'm very sorry I don't have eyes in the back of my head. So Julie Anne Genter is heckling here—Julie Anne Genter tell me: how would it have helped to make people stay out—CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Mr Seymour could you direct your questions towards the Minister please.DAVID SEYMOUR: Yeah no fair enough—fair enough.CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): It's good to have a conversation down the back but we'd like to be part of it.DAVID SEYMOUR: Yeah no that's OK Mr Chair. I was bluffing—she doesn't know the answer anyway.But I leave the question to the Minister: does he believe that the Government's COVID response—its lockdowns its slow vaccine roll-out its ban on rapid antigen tests its insistence on MIQ when people with COVID could isolate at home its Auckland lockdown. Does he really think that all of those things were justified as the reason why he's had to borrow so much money and people now face so much inflation? Because all those people seeing their interest rates going up because he's spending so much all those people seeing their prices go up all those people watching job losses starting to mount they might be forgiven for asking themselves "Maybe the Minister's right that he had to borrow so much money because the Government policies locked down businesses but was it right that the Government policy locked down those businesses or are there possibly ways that we could've kept safe in a much smarter way and not be so indebted and inflated now?"Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): In answer to the first of the questions that the member put to me around the question of monetary and fiscal policy needing to be friends absolutely agree with that. I point the member to statements both within the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update and statements made in Monetary Policy Statements by the Reserve Bank that they see the Government's stance as supportive of them. We have a contractionary fiscal stance outlined in the financial statements that are the subject of this debate; that has been recognised. I can't recall verbatim but bits of the Reserve Bank Governor's evidence that he gave in front of the Finance and Expenditure Committee where he was asked this direct question—he said that fiscal and monetary policy were working together as they did during COVID I might say but also as they are doing now. So I do believe by actions that we have taken the results that are in front of us and statements that others have made that we continue to understand both the differences between monetary and fiscal policy and the fact that they are and should be friends.In answer to the second set of comments questions that the member put to me around COVID can I say once again I am extremely proud of the record of this Government through the COVID-19 pandemic. Around the world we saw countries where thousands and thousands of people were dying where they were needing to put up emergency morgues all around. I can recall talking to friends and relatives in the United States one of whom was staring out their window at the temporary morgue set up in the car park where thousands of people were going because they were dying. Mr Seymour what we did saved tens of thousands of lives. You might not think that's important Mr Seymour; I do.Alongside that we know that the actions that we took also saved thousands of businesses Mr Seymour and I'm interested to see now that the National Party has joined with the ACT Party in deciding that it's all in hindsight wrong that we shouldn't have put the money and the resources. Mr Bayly used to ask me to put more money in to make sure that we did more for businesses in the COVID period. I am proud of what we did. It saved lives; it saved livelihoods.It was also a pandemic where every Government in the world was operating without a playbook where we went into this not knowing what was going to happen. So was every single decision that we took at every moment perfect? No it wasn't Mr Seymour but in total did it save thousands of lives? Yes it did. And did it save businesses? Yes it did Mr Seymour.Mr Seymour I think it's interesting today that you've taken the stance that you have here and I'm going to offer you something Mr Seymour because it was extremely hard governing through COVID. I think if you talk to any leader in the world the kinds of life and death decisions that needed to be made the kind of support that needed to be provided the kind of understanding to predict the future when we didn't have the modelling all of that was extremely challenging work. I wonder whether Mr Seymour might want to reflect on the comments that he has made today or have been reported today where he described Jacinda Ardern as being too dumb to be the Prime Minister. That's the kind of man you are Mr Seymour and I don't want to give you any more airtime."