Willis Nicola; Robertson GrantNICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): None the less the reality is that in the period under review Government spending had increased significantly up from $108 billion in the 2020-21 year to $126 billion in the 2021-22 year. Now this comes also in the context of increasing Government expenditure for every year this administration has been in power such that New Zealand will be spending $1 billion more every week compared to when the Government came to office. So against that backdrop I want to turn now to the concerns of the Controller and Auditor-General and the Minister of Finance will recall that in this same debate a year ago I put to you the serious concerns that the Auditor-General had raised about the quality of information and reporting about the sheer volume of Government expenditure. He noted for example that with the cost of living payment the significant impact of prioritising speed and expediency over accuracy and quality." The Minister will recall that payment ended up seeing that millions of dollars went to well-paid New Zealanders overseas and again millions of dollars went to households with very high incomes. But the Auditor-General has again stated—and I think that these concerns have become more and more elevated—that he is simply "not getting the information that allows us to understand the performance of the Government at multiple levels or that enables Parliament and the public to hold Government to account for that performance." My concern is simple; it is when we have such a huge increase in Government spending such that New Zealanders are being taxed at a higher rate than ever fuelling very elevated levels of spending relative to the size of our economy what has the Minister of Finance done to ensure that New Zealanders are getting performance and good outcomes from that spending? We need a little bit more than the wellbeing framework. As a relatively senior public servant raised with me the other day the wellbeing framework—yes it relates to which Budget bids might come through the Treasury process but there is almost nothing done to then report on which of those initiatives actually had medium to long term impact that measured up with what was promised in the first place. It has been a theme of this Government that there are big promises made—whether it's about mental health or KiwiBuild—and the spending fires out the door but we don't see the delivery at the other end. So two points there for the Minister of Finance to address. First have you done anything about the Auditor-General's increasing alarm—and I note in particular the letter written to the Finance and Expenditure Committee in November last year raising and escalating these concerns yet again. What's the Government doing about it? And second how can New Zealanders be confident that we are getting value for every dollar the Government takes from their back pocket?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member for raising this matter and as the committee is aware and the Auditor-General and Treasury are very well aware there are ongoing conversations about this. I share many of both the member's concerns and the Auditor-General's concerns about the way in which parliamentarians and the general public get the information that they need about programme- and project-level spending within the Government system. I'm conscious of the time so I won't go too far back into history but the reforms that were made that created the Public Finance Act did create the appropriation structure which is in fact what's guiding the very debate that we're having. That appropriation structure by design aggregates up and the Treasury in particular operates at that aggregated level. It is clear that over recent times all of us are frustrated that perhaps we don't get as much information as we should beneath that aggregated level. The actual exercise of annual reviews and estimates is the opportunity for Parliament—through the select committees supported by the Auditor-General—to actually go through at a much more granular level what's happening and undertake that deeper examination. So that would be my first response and I continue to believe that is an important role for select committees and one that I know the Auditor-General supports—and one where there could be changes and enhancements where in fact select committees decide rather than looking across the Vote to actually look very specifically at programmes or projects within the Vote as their focus for a particular annual review or estimates process. I think that would be important. It would require—and I'm not having a go at the Opposition because we certainly did this when we were in Opposition as well—quite a different approach to the actual hearings because they tend to be a bit more political theatre than they do substantive examination. But there could be a way that you know both could be created within it. So on that point I think there is some work to do.To specifically answer the member's question about what's happened the Treasury's been working closely with the Office of the Auditor-General around the concerns about transparency and traceability of performance reporting provided to Parliament. A number of initiatives have been undertaken. Firstly we do produce a wellbeing report; this is to partly answer the second part of the member's question about how the wellbeing budgeting process can support better examination of the success of our work. Obviously during this period of time we had the COVID Response and Recovery Fund and specifically in response to that we have now much more regular and more detailed reporting of expenditure within that fund below the broad appropriation level. That is a big change; it's required and it's highlighted the system changes that are required to be able to draw that information out from agencies and put it up so that it can be understood. Also with respect to COVID I highlighted another issue which we have to resolve—and I believe is resolvable—but for example some of what we funded in COVID for example providing devices to schoolchildren when schools were closed during COVID actually added to an existing appropriation. So disaggregating out the COVID bit of that funding from the rest of that funding was quite challenging. So that's the kind of thing that we have been continuing to work on. We are now working with the Office of the Auditor-General on developing options for improving the content of Estimates to make sure that within the structures that we've got we are getting better information. As I say that could lead to I think far better discussions at select committee. We are looking through key initiatives for Budget 2023 to provide better performance indicators alongside those. That is something of course that's driven by agencies so we have to get alongside the agencies but we are looking to do that particularly for key initiatives in Budget 2023. We have started to scope options for approving reporting below appropriation level including benefits costs and implementation requirements of such options. As I said we've already made the changes around the COVID Response and Recovery Fund and we're looking to see how we can take that and use that in other similar types of funds. As I say we've already published that reporting on the COVID fund.I have continued to reinforce with my colleagues the importance of their work in alongside their agencies being transparent—providing information about implementation monitoring evaluation and performance reporting and they are well aware of that. I continue to work on things like the cluster approach and so on which focuses much more on outcomes than it does on the individual agencies and the work that they've done. We will continue to work with the Office of Auditor-General. I also would note at this point the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the work that he has been doing in this space. I would say the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has been doing some excellent work in this space around environmental reporting and understanding the extent to which we know what we're getting in that space. That very specifically relates to the member's second question around how we know more about what wellbeing does. Again I agree with her it's a new thing. We've brought it in; we are obliged to be able to report on it. We report on that through the wellbeing report but what the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has highlighted is that we can drill down into what were called the Four Capitals to be able to say a lot more about what we're investing in there and what we're getting for that. He's provided some very constructive suggestions in that regard which we're working on. Then finally in answer to the second of the member's questions I would refer her to the detail of the wellbeing report that Treasury have published. It actually does give some really interesting information and links up across the indicators that we use within the Living Standards Framework for whether the things that we're doing are contributing to overall wellbeing. We can continue to refine that report—I think we should—but we have made a start on all of the matters that the member's raised."