Seymour DavidHon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Finance): Well I've heard so many wonderful and powerful thoughtful speeches in this House; I'm sad to say the last two haven't been either of them. In fact I listened to Megan Woods talk and it was actually the marshalling of the thundering cliché again and again—no phrase was used until it had been so thoroughly road-tested to have lost all traction. Then we heard from Chlöe Swarbrick who says If I just talk about enough detail people will decide that I must be really smart." This is the person who uses modern technology to campaign against mining and talks about this Government having contradictions. She said that we shouldn't be giving money to people to pay for their early childhood education we shouldn't have a $75 tax credit because maybe some of that money will be absorbed by the early childhood centres providing the service. Well if that was the argument then we should never put money into social services because the money might be absorbed by the people that provide the social service.Actually there's some truth in this—there's some truth in this; it was shown by the previous Government. The previous Government was able to show that if you increase spending by 80 percent in six years if you increase the amount of money spent per person by 30 percent ahead of inflation—so 80 percent in general but 30 percent ahead of inflation per person; you know it's the real figures—they can actually make social outcomes worse. That is the context that you cannot forget when you talk about this Government's Budget. Six years of spending more and more every year racking up $100 billion of debt on top of an ever-growing tax bill—Camilla Belich: Aren't you spending more in your Budget?Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —and actually the social indicators got worse. Camilla Belich is over there and she's trying to dispute this. I wonder which statistics she'd like to dispute. Would she like to dispute the victimisation of New Zealanders by violent crime because according to the Ministry of Justice after six years of Labour trying this enormous ideological experiment—if only we try being kinder to criminals maybe one day they'll be kind back. And what happened? Well according to the Ministry of Justice's victimisation survey violent crime towards New Zealanders went up 30 percent in six years. That was the result of a Labour Government that spent so much money.This is the Labour Party—this is the party of Peter Fraser and Clarence Beeby the party that believes every single New Zealander should have the opportunity to be extended to the full range of their powers whether they're boy or girl town or country rich or poor; they should all get an education so that they can access the world. That's what the Labour Party used to stand for. They pumped the cash into the Ministry of Education they went from 2600 public servants in the ministry to 4600 public servants—2000 extra bureaucrats and you know what happened? New Zealand students did worse. Worse in attendance—Hon Peeni Henare: Talk about COVID.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Seventy-three percent attendance 73—oh I heard Peeni Henare saying "Talk about COVID." Sir you are coming up—let me just finish talking about education. They put so much more money into education and yet fewer students attended and fewer students passed and New Zealand students in the international league tables—in the Programme for International Student Assessment in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study—the results got worse.So if Chlöe Swarbrick believes that spending more money is the answer to everything then why didn't it work when they increased expenditure from $86 billion to $140 billion in just six short years?And then Peeni Henare my old mate from Ngāpuhi up north he said "Talk about COVID." Well let's talk about COVID—let's talk about COVID. COVID-19 was a real catastrophe but it was nothing like the catastrophe that the previous Government visited on New Zealanders through its overreaction. You know I remember when Donald Trump was elected and Jacinda Ardern said "No one marched when I was elected." Jacinda Ardern claims that she didn't create any social unrest. Who would have thought that Jacinda Ardern could divide a society so badly that we had fires on the front lawn of our Parliament?DEPUTY SPEAKER: And can we go back to the appropriation.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: We are talking about the appropriation Madam Speaker. We're talking specifically about the fact that this is a fiscal clean-up job for enormous amounts of expenditure which has not delivered results. It delivered social division; it delivered half a billion dollars' worth of rapid antigen tests being stored in a warehouse at enormous expense after they expired and were unable to be used. So if the member wants to talk about COVID—wasted money social division $100 billion of debt; nothing to show for it—happy to talk about COVID.Does anyone on the Labour benches have any area where they think their Government succeeded that they would still like to talk about?Hon Peeni Henare: Māori housing champ.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: So—oh oh Peeni Henare wants to talk about Māori housing. Well first of all what on earth is a Māori house? You know what? I think that New Zealanders—human beings—actually living in a house it doesn't make a huge difference what race the house is. I find that houses are just houses. You know we actually believe that a house is just a house.But let's talk a little bit about houses for Māori and for Pākehā—actually for New Zealanders of all creeds and races from all corners of the earth that make their home in this beautiful land. You see the problem is if they want to talk about housing well I'm sorry but I'm going to go there: I'm going to talk about KiwiBuild. You see the reason that we've got to cancel so much stupid spending is that the Labour Party brought in so much stupid spending and somehow they managed to have rents—rents went up $200 in just three years after they started poking around with the taxes on rental housing. KiwiBuild became a byword for failure and Kāinga Ora took over $2 billion of money borrowed on the taxpayers' credit and started actually—Hon Dr Megan Woods: Build some houses.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Megan Woods said "To build houses." You know what they did? They went out into the housing market and they bid above the odds to buy land. They bid above the odds for materials and builders and project managers. They actually managed to raise the price of housing even as they tried to build affordable housing. So Peeni Henare you want to talk about Māori housing? You want to talk about black white Cuban or Asian housing? We're very happy to talk about housing but I don't think the Labour Party should want to talk about their performance in the housing market: the massive inflation the massive rent increases and the massive failures in Government expenditure for people of all backgrounds.Is there anything else the Labour Party candidates would like to talk about?Camilla Belich: Why don't you talk about your own Budget?Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Here we go. Why don't we talk about our own Budget? Well our Budget is busy cutting back the waste. This is the Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and as has been pointed out it is largely about the changes we made when we came into power to reduce wasteful expenditure right across the board. But thank you very much Camilla Belich for telling us that nobody in Labour wants to talk about their performance anymore. They'd rather we switch to talking about this Government and actually more and more New Zealanders feel exactly that way.So what is this Government doing? Well this Government is reducing expenditure each and every year. And why are we doing that? Because people out there are feeling it tough. You know I heard one of the people in the Opposition say that this Government's making bad choices with its Budget. Well I disagree with that but even if it was true it would be better than the previous Government who made no choices—no choices at all. They just thought "Never mind we can borrow a few billion more." That's how we got $100 billion into debt. What this Government is doing is tightening its belt just the way that people up and down this country around the kitchen table people in firms and farms and families have had to actually save money so that they can get through the fortnight to the next payday surrounded by rising prices caused by the reckless fiscal irresponsibility of the previous Government and the inflation that it caused.We are now managing our books to take pressure off inflation so that people can breathe again at the end of the financial week and we're doing that by cutting wasteful expenditure by around $13 billion by around—Hon Peeni Henare: And it's not working.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Oh and Peeni Henare says it's not working. Well in fairness it took them six years of fiscal irresponsibility to get us here; we've had six months of fiscal responsibility and actually inflation is coming down. People can see it being back in the target band. People can see those interest rates finally dropping because we've got a Government that's being responsible.Here's what else we're doing: we're using some of the savings to let people keep more of their own money with lower taxes so they can keep more of their own hard-earned money to get to the end of that fortnight to get to the next payday without slipping further and further into overdraft. That's the kind of responsibility that this Government is bringing to financial management. Thank you Labour for playing but by the end of it you didn't want to talk about any of your policies and if I was you neither would I."