3. Economy—Crown DebtHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of FinanceEconomy—Crown Debt3. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Can he confirm that the Half year Economic and Fiscal Update shows the Government borrowing an extra $10 billion of net core Crown debt?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Without the benefit of knowing what time period the member is referring to it's difficult to give a definitive answer. I can however confirm that the Government will using the debt measure that the previous Government did reduce net core Crown debt to 20 percent of GDP by 2021-22. I can also confirm that the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) shows that given that the economy is growing during this period the amount of cash borrowed will rise while that percentage reduces.Hon Amy Adams: What will be the annual debt servicing and finance costs—to the nearest $100 million is fine—of the extra $10 billion this country will now have in core Crown borrowing in 2022? Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I said in my primary answer the member will just have to wait to see the final cash amounts of the debt track when it comes to the actual accounts of the Government. But what I can say is that this Government has said from day one that we will slow down our debt repayment track because we actually need to invest in infrastructure like housing and make sure we restart things like contributions to the Superannuation Fund. Hon Amy Adams: Is the Minister saying 10 days out from the Budget that when he announced in the HYEFU in December his commitment to borrowing an extra $10 billion he did so without knowing what the debt servicing cost of that extra borrowing will be? Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that this Government has never made any secret of the fact that in order to clean up the mess left by the previous Government we need to slow down our debt repayment track. Next Thursday the member will be able to see all of the detailed costings that she's after. Hon Amy Adams: So over and above the $10 billion of extra debt he has already announced how much additional debt will Crown entities incur in 2022? Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I've just said in my previous answer the member will get all of the numbers that she's looking for when the accounts come out next week. But what I can say very clearly is that this Government has a plan which is fully costed. There are no ghost cheques written out—like the previous Government did—for houses or anything like that. This is a Government with a fully costed plan. Hon Amy Adams: So at the same time that he's touting large Government surpluses and a growing economy thanks to the previous Government why is he racking up billions of dollars in extra borrowing—Rt Hon Winston Peters: Too long. Hon Amy Adams: —and committing hundreds of millions of dollars in financing costs to New Zealanders? Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well all of that—SPEAKER: Order! The right honourable gentleman knows that the only judge of the length of a question is me. He also knows that we have a practice now of not interjecting during question time. So because it's a double problem I will give the Opposition an extra two supplementaries.Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: All that list emphasises is the scale of the challenge that the previous Government left us. When you've got $2.4 billion worth of underfunding in health when you've got early childhood centres who've had a real-terms funding reduction and when you've got police stations closing and leaks all through our hospitals it's going to take quite some time to recover from that. But we've got the plan to do it.Hon Amy Adams: So do the larger Government surpluses he has today touted mean that the Government now won't be cancelling its commitment to lower GP costs for all New Zealanders?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member will have to wait to the Budget to see what happened there but I can understand her concern. Given that GP costs went up by 44 percent under her watch this Government's actually going to do something about that.