Robertson GrantHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Fa'afetai tele lava. I want to thank all colleagues for their contribution to the Budget debate. It is an important part of the parliamentary process to be able to give those first reactions that people have when they see the Budget and the reactions as predicted within the Parliament have been varied. The naturally positive and optimistic Government has gone through the Budget and said this is a great Budget for the times that New Zealand is in. Others in the House reflective of their more pessimistic nature have found things to pick holes in or irrelevancies that they mentioned or things that aren't even in the Budget but such is the nature of a Budget debate in Parliament.I do want to reflect too that the next step in this is the parliamentary process also doing its job with select committees and that is an important part of the way our democracy works: that we go through the Budget and we have the exercise of everybody scrutinising it. But this debate has been an important one and I want to acknowledge all of my colleagues across the Chamber who have been a part of that debate.It is a tradition for Ministers of Finance to hit the road after the Budget and do the roadshow and sell the Budget to the people. Tomorrow morning—hoping Terisa Ngobi is with me—I will be with the people of Kāpiti doing that. But last week I was in a number of other places around New Zealand and you occasionally as Minister of Finance feel a little bit like a stadium rock band when you say Hello Dunedin" really hoping that you are in Dunedin when you say that in case things go wrong.Hon Dr David Clark: You were—you were!Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: But—I was; that's right. Dr Clark was with me and I was in Dunedin. One of the things I wanted to reflect on was the way in which New Zealanders have received this Budget because New Zealanders know the times we're living in: that these are tough times for many people and many families. We know that the cost of living spike—the inflation pandemic as Chris Hipkins likes to call it—is affecting not only New Zealand but countries around the world and that is hitting home in people's lives. So this Budget recognised that that was the time we were in and it needed to have that focus on the cost of living. We reflected on what we had done over the past few years things like the wage subsidy scheme the cost of living payment the 1 April changes that made significant differences to the lives of more than a million New Zealanders the fact that we've been able to lift main benefits by 7.2 percent to lift the family tax credit to be able to lift the minimum wage—all of those things have helped people with the cost of living that they have been facing.But in this Budget we knew we had two jobs to do at once in that regard and that was making sure we found ways to support people but we didn't exacerbate inflation and we have struck that balance in this Budget. We have found those cost of living measures and we wanted to add to that as well. We wanted those cost of living measures to be things that had co-benefits: that did other things for society and the economy.So for example the $5 prescription co-payment being got rid of: not only does that relieve a particular cost pressure on people; it also relieves pressure within our health system. It means that people who pick up those prescriptions won't end up at the emergency department; they won't end up inside our hospital system. That particular policy has resonated right across New Zealand. When I was in Dunedin there was a gentleman who came up to me who told me that his elderly mother cried when she realised that her prescriptions were going to be free because that five or that 10 or that 15 or that 20 bucks that comes along makes a difference in that person's life. So we're doing our best by the health system and our best by people with those cost of living measures.Another example is the free public transport for children and the half-price public transport for under-25s. We know that if we can make it easier for families and for young people especially to use public transport not only are we relieving a cost of living pressure but we are doing the right thing by our climate change goals and our climate change policies.So we sought out those policies. They were thought about by the Government as ways of relieving that cost of living pressure but also knowing at the same time we wanted to see inflation come down and that's what the Budget shows: that inflation tracks down. It's down to 4 percent by next year. It's then down inside the Reserve Bank's band at the end of 2024 and about 2.5 percent in 2025. That's the trajectory that New Zealanders want us to be on because we know inflation affects the lives of so many New Zealanders when it's up at the levels that it is at the moment.But the way of getting there the way of making sure we do bring inflation down the way we get ourselves back to a level of spending that is more fiscally sustainable has to take into account the world we all live in today and we had this exchange in question time earlier today. It is theoretically possible for the Government in this Budget to have snapped our fingers and said we're back down to 30 percent of GDP as Government spending. We could've done that. The consequence of doing that in one go in one Budget would've been cuts to our health system cuts to our education system and cuts to our housing programme. We know that New Zealanders rely on those public services that we provide and the cost of providing those public services has also risen significantly as inflation has risen.So I stand by the balance we've struck in this Budget of saying we must keep investing in the public services that New Zealanders rely on. We need to do that in ways that make sure that we're looking to the long term—and I'll return in a moment to talking about the wellbeing aspects of this Budget—but that focus on the cost of living whilst also having those other benefits I believe has meant that we've struck the balance and we do see inflation coming down inside this Budget.Another element and one other big focus for us in this Budget was around recovery and resilience and I did catch the end of Mr Penk's speech there. We have put aside around $1.8 billion over the course of the last few months to help with the recovery and the rebuild. We've tried to make this a locally led response. That's what was asked of us by the regions. We've learnt some lessons from what happened in Canterbury and we want to make sure that's what we do. But this is a long-term recovery and rebuild and I do think it behoves everyone in this Parliament to explain how they will fund this long-term recovery and rebuild because we're in this for the long haul. The likes of our MPs like Anna Lorck who are here today know that on the ground we need to be there as a partner for the long haul.So within the Budget we had the National Resilience Plan. For me this is something that hasn't had as much publicity—it wouldn't as much as a cost of living measure—but actually I think long term it's going to have a huge impact because this is finally a chance for us to get ahead of the infrastructure deficit that has grown in New Zealand over decades; no individual Government to blame for it but it has grown over decades. We have as we've got in this Budget $71 billion worth of capital spending over the next five years all of it important—on the schools and the hospitals and the rail and the roads—but much of that is just keeping things going as they are now and what we've got to do is get ahead. We've got to make sure we're more resilient to the next weather event. We've got to make sure when we rebuild the rail and the roads in Hawke's Bay in Tairāwhiti in Northland that we're rebuilding them in a resilient way so that the next time a weather event comes along we're ahead of it.So that's what the National Resilience Plan is about. It is the first and the initial payment in a plan that I hope will make sure that we take adaptation as seriously as this Government has taken emissions reduction over the last few Budgets because both of them matter—you can't just do one. We've got to be there. So that focus on resilience and on making sure that New Zealanders are looked after when we have these cyclones is incredibly important.I want to mention a couple of other areas in the couple of minutes I've got remaining. The first of those is that this is a Budget that is excellent for women and it is something for one of the first times in New Zealand's budgeting history where we put a gender budgeting lens on the Budget. What that did was guide our decisions. So things like the early childhood extension for two-year-olds Ngā Tini Whetū the extension of school lunches—we looked at those through a gender lens and this Budget is particularly good for women. There's one area that I want to mention and I mentioned it on Budget day: I am extremely proud of the fact that this Budget says to working women "If you go on paid parental leave the Government will support you to keep your KiwiSaver contributions going." because we know that the lifetime incomes of women go down when they are out of the workforce. That is a way that we through this Budget using that gender budgeting lens have made sure that we are supporting women and I think that outcome is an excellent one.Finally this is a wellbeing Budget and I stand proudly behind the changes we have made over the years to the way we put our Budgets together. It matters that we are fiscally disciplined. It matters for future generations that we make sustainable fiscal decisions about debt and about the surplus. But alongside that we also have to measure other things. We have to measure the health of our environment the wellbeing of our people the strength of our communities and that's what we've changed so that when we put this Budget together I hope New Zealanders can see themselves in it—they can see their future their children's future their grandchildren's future being looked after that balance of making sure we are fiscally sustainable we help with the cost of living we look after the public services that we need to deliver and we focus on the resilience of our economy and society. That's wellbeing. That's why I'm proud of this Budget because this Budget enhances New Zealanders' wellbeing and looks after future generations."