Ngaro Alfred: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNgaro Alfred: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 07 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11735. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take a call in this Budget debate probably a little bit more hopeful and little bit lighter and brighter than that previous speech which just seemed to be a whole lot of doom and gloom. This is a great Budget. Eight years on and this Budget has delivered. I would call it in my title “delivered on the things that matter most to New Zealanders”. We know that it is having better results for Kiwi families.Su’a William Sio: Oh come on.ALFRED NGARO: Su’a William Sio knows this because he has experienced it even over in Māngere. He knows that we are taking the books back into the black. It is all the things that we know matter most.You can hear it from us but how about we hear it from the people out in our communities who serve our people. So let us go to Moody’s which is the credit rating agency. This is what it said: “we view the upwardly revised projections as credit positive for the government.” Business New Zealand was widely supportive of the Budget with chief executive Kirk Hope calling it “prudent economic management … positive GDP and employment growth figures and projected growth in exports investment and other indicators give confidence about New Zealand’s economic path.” Employers and Manufacturers Association Chief Executive Kim Campbell said that the Budget “sent a strong signal that the New Zealand economy is in good health … We know the books are in capable hands and today’s $700m surplus is proof of that.” These are from the people in our communities—yes they are the businesses they are the people out there in the manufacturing associations and they are also the people who care.Maybe something a little bit different—even out here in west Auckland there is a man named Mathew Tauia who talks about the importance of the funding that has been invested into at-risk children and young people and even into schools. He is a board of trustees member at his children’s decile 1 Royal Road School in Massey. I think that is in Upper Harbour. He said his school has “more than its fair share of such children so it should be a net winner out of the Budget decision to freeze school operations grants but give an extra $43 million to schools with the 150000 children deemed most at risk … It’s also good that they are looking at special needs [in our schools as well].” That is something we cannot argue with. That is actually people in our communities in businesses in schools who are out there actually saying that this Budget is a great Budget.In my contribution I want to talk about the social investment package because that becomes critically important. We hear on the other side—they are talking about all the things that could go wrong. They will talk about homelessness and they will talk about issues around poverty but never once will you hear about a solution. You can bang the drum. They keep saying that nothing goes well everything is going wrong and they use—this is what I suppose irks me—the aspects of these issues as a badge of pride to say that this is what they could do to make a difference. Yet in the 9 years they saw issues of housing they saw issues in which families were struggling which you would call poverty—the Salvation Army said it in its report.So what is it that we are doing that makes a difference? In 2014 the Productivity Commission was commissioned to actually look at how we could make a difference. This is changing the whole rhetoric. This is not just about numbers and I will talk about those numbers in a moment. This is about saying this: in our systems of care we have probably spent about $34 billion on health education and social services. That is what is actually spent over that period of time per year.The Productivity Commission said this: “What could we do to make a difference?”. You see previously under a Labour Government you just kept on pouring money into those services without asking the real question: “How can we transform and change these lives?”. That is what this Government is doing. It is taking a different approach. The thing that it is doing is that it is taking a targeted approach. The social investment package sees that $200 million is for new services and support for vulnerable children. Under a Labour Government there were 14 reviews of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act. No more reviews—this time it is an overhaul. It is an investment of $348 million to ensure that we overhaul the system that works and makes a difference.I want to talk about warmer healthier homes. The previous speaker Jan Logie talked about the fact that we have been cutting those fundings. There is $36 million for warmer healthier homes. There is $80 million into Warm Up New Zealand to go alongside the 300000 homes that we have already invested in to make them warmer and drier. With the 180000 properties to come under the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill that will take it up to almost 500000.This is a good Budget; a good bill. I commend the Budget to the House.