SpeechRt Hon DAVID CARTER (National): If I could just first of all comment on the contribution we've just heard from Mark Patterson. He said that he didn't believe that the Ruth Richardson Budget of 1991 would have been accepted by this House under the new rules associated with the wellbeing framework. I might point out to the member that even Grant Robertson in introducing the second reading of this bill pointed out that Budget 2020 did not meet the wellbeing framework that the Government's promoted either because there simply wasn't time in view of the COVID crisis to adhere to the rules that the Government's attempting to establish around a wellbeing framework. So I don't think there's much validity in the argument advanced by Mr Patterson. Can I start by saying I don't think there would ever have been a member of Parliament elected to this House that didn't come into this House caring for the wellbeing of all New Zealanders. To suddenly think that Budget after Budget's been presented in this House without a care at all for the wellbeing of New Zealand is frankly just nonsense. We had the first Wellbeing Budget presented with a lot of fanfare last year. Then within 12 months we had the next Budget the 2020 Budget delivered into this House and the framework being promoted by the Government—it didn't have time to meet its own framework. I say to the Government that at a time when this country's facing an economic crisis like we haven't seen for 160 years to start fiddling around changing the Public Finance Act with a little bit of fluffy nonsense shows just how out of touch this Government is with the suffering that most New Zealanders are facing today. We have massive and growing unemployment we have business under real stress and the Government's answer in the dying days of this Parliament is to bring forward a bill for its second reading which adjusts the Public Finance Act and incorporates the wellbeing framework. It just staggers me how out of touch Labour New Zealand First and the Green Party are with the situation—the economic crisis—that exists in this country today. Grant Robertson in his contribution noted the importance of the Public Finance Act enacted in 1989 coupled then with some very good work which the Hon Ruth Richardson did do: the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1994. Both those pieces of legislation combined are recognised right throughout the world as delivering a fiscal security to Budget preparation that's been adhered to by successive National-led Governments by successive Labour-led Governments—basically since the 1990s. But to come to a situation today whereby simply putting in a bit of fluff around wellbeing is going to suddenly change the nature and the delivery of wellbeing to New Zealanders frankly just does not stand the test. The Government should be facing the crisis that this country's in. There is real suffering out there. We all now know of businesses that were supported temporarily with a wage subsidy and now that the wage subsidy is coming to an end they are having to face laying off staff because businesses will not survive.Deborah Russell mentioned that everything was back to normal. She mentioned that retail in this country is good. Go and talk to the retailers Deborah Russell. Just walk down the main streets of Wellington or Christchurch or Auckland and see for yourself that retailers are struggling. Everything is not fine. What New Zealand wants at this stage is a Government of competence. We started this term with a lot of talk around building tens of thousands of houses and KiwiBuild. That's almost been taken out of the lexicon now because it was an absolute failure. I do accept we then moved to the challenge around COVID-19 and for a long time the people of New Zealand were prepared to go along with the border restrictions with the level 3 level 4 level 2 and now to level 1 in the belief we were getting COVID-19 under control in this country. But they expect—and in fact they demand—some competency around quarantining and some competency around our borders. Even today in the House we cannot find out how many people have left compulsory quarantine—assured of testing before they left—how many people have now been able to leave from there without any tests being done? To me it's simple. In fact I think the Prime Minister gave us a figure this afternoon in question time: 4300 people have now been quarantined and have left. The very simple question the country's asking is: how many of those people were tested?Now it just defies belief that the Ministry of Health has not got a record of every COVID test the person that was tested the date it was done the time it was done and subsequently add to that record whether it was a positive test or a negative test. It just defies belief that that figure can't be available. And in the meantime while we're asking for competency from this Government all they can do is rush forward with a piece of legislation that incidentally was introduced in the House last year in September reported back this year in March has sat on the Order Paper and suddenly in the last few weeks of sitting of the 51st Parliament Grant Robertson decides it's important enough to bring it into the House to progress a second reading today. It's that lack of competency shown by the Government that has every New Zealander worried. Can I just say in my final comments on this piece of legislation that the select committee received numerous submissions. We spent some hours working on this piece of this legislation and we made one momentous change one momentous change that Deborah Russell as the chair will be forever proud of. She has recommended out of the whole bill we remove the word appropriate". So new section 26NB in clause 8 "Wellbeing Report" as introduced said in subsection (2) "Using appropriate indicators the report must describe—(a) the state of wellbeing in New Zealand; and (b) how … [it's] changed over time; and (c) the sustainability of and any risk to the state of wellbeing in New Zealand." Fluff words and our contribution through hours and hours of select committee work was to suggest the removal of the word "appropriate". Give me a break!If this is the most important thing this Government can do at a time of absolute economic crisis God help us and hurry up and bring on an election—19 September 2020—and let the country wake up to the total incompetency of this Government. May we not see another three years of the incompetence of Labour New Zealand First and the Green Party."