Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Three hundred and fifty dollars is an interesting amount of money for three months. I'll tell you what 350 bucks buys: a one-way plane ticket to Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane—and that is what young Kiwis in fact middle-aged New Zealanders will be thinking about as they stare at this Budget and this paltry pitiful amount of money that the Government has deigned in its wisdom to give back to New Zealanders.This bill and the Government's Budget summarises the difference in approach between National and Labour. Labour wants to rapaciously take as much of your money as it's possible to take churn it round the giant bureaucracy in Wellington—which has had 10000 more bureaucrats added to it in the last four year—take all the dead weight loss that is involved in the tax system and all the bureaucracy in the tax system and all the bureaucracy of the tax system and all of the reduction in economic activity—take all of that and then if Grant's generous enough he'll give a little bit of that back to you for three months.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I just want to make a comment. There's been quite a bit of using incorrect names and shortened names. Please use full names it will reflect in the Hansard and people will know who members are talking about.CHRIS BISHOP: Grant Robertson the Minister of Finance for the next 18 months—after which hopefully New Zealand will never be subjected to his rapacious tax-hungry ways ever again—is a man who believes that the Government can just take as much money as it's possible to take and then if he's generous enough he'll give some of it back to you: the poor long-suffering taxpayer. So there'll be a big group of New Zealanders who will stare at this Budget and stare at this bill and say Yeah 350 bucks OK well look I'm not going to turn down 350 bucks; it's better than nothing because I'm staring at inflation of 7 percent and my wages are only going up 3 percent and I'm staring at inflation above the 3 percent threshold over to 2025." but they will also look ashore and say "You know what? Actually I'd be better off in Australia or further afield." So $350 is an interesting sum of money because it's about a one-way flight to Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane. It probably won't get you to Perth but it would definitely get you to the east coast of Australia.Let's be extremely clear about the numbers in this Budget: 6.9 percent inflation now a wage growth of around 3 percent. What does the Budget say? It says that for the next three years inflation isn't going away. This is not a one-time thing. This is not a temporary thing. Deborah Russell said "You know oh well it's forecast to come down." Yeah it's forecast to come down; it's forecast to come down from 7 percent to 3.6 percent to 3 percent. That is still massive inflation. Kiwis—Hon David Parker: No it's not.CHRIS BISHOP: Yes it—David Parker says "No it's not." David Parker remembers—I'm not having a go at his age but it is just literally true that David Parker remembers inflation of 7 percent 8 percent 9 percent 10 percent; I don't because I'm 38 and people my age and below don't remember inflation of serious levels of sustained inflation above 5 percent or 6 percent. They don't remember it because they've never experienced it and what they're about to experience is what that is. It's the robber in your back pocket. It's the thief that you can't do anything about. It's happening here in New Zealand and it's going to continue and it's going to be bad. It's the thief in your back pocket.There are things the Government could do to make it better; not this—not this band-aid approach which the Government is proposing in this bill—but have some fiscal disciple. Grant Robertson has spent since 2017 an extra $51 billion. He said that for this Budget he was going to be fiscally prudent and it was going to be all balanced and all of the rest of it and everyone went "Well OK well whatever.; $6 billion is actually the single biggest increase in the new operating allowance in New Zealand history but OK $6 billion." What they have tried to submerge within the paraphernalia sent out alongside the Budget what the Government has neatly tucked under the covers is that it is not just $6 billion of new spending this year; it's much much more than that. You take your $6 billion—it was actually $5.9 billion to be fair—but they've also pre-spent $2 billion from Budget 2023 so that's money that's been allocated in the 2023 out-year that has been brought forward to 2022 and to make matters worse they've taken $400 million from Budget 2024 and brought that forward. So that brings us up to $8.4 billion. Then on top of that the Cost of Living Payment package which we're legislating to allow the IRD to do is separate. Grant Robertson has just decided that that's separate to the operating allowance that's outside it. So that's another big chunk of money: $800 million or so. This is not prudency; this is profligacy. This is an attempt to submerge within the Budget papers a massive Budget blowout. It's a huge increase in spending. Does anyone seriously think that in Budget 2023 which we hope will be Grant Robertson's last one he'll turn up and say "Well look I'm just going to have to rein in the fiscal spending; I've just spent too much."? Does anyone seriously think that? No because for five years now—Budget 2018 Budget 2019 Budget 2020 Budget 2021 and Budget 2022—there's always a reason; there's always another excuse. There's always a reason. He just turns up and there's another reason to spend more money and now we find ourselves if we spend an extra $50 billion—spending's up by 70 percent in the last five years. Does anyone seriously think that we're going to turn up to Budget 2023—which by the way is an election year which is not normally a year in which Governments fiscally constrain themselves; normally they turn on the spending spigots—and Grant Robertson's going to say "Well I'm very concerned about the fiscal discipline; I'm going to have to wind it back."? No. Of course he's not going to do that; we're going to have another spend-up.The best indication of a future with Grant Robertson and Labour is what happened in the past. They just spend spend spend. They're addicted to it—absolutely addicted to it and it's not good quality spending. What is the outcome of 10000 new bureaucrats? Are we getting a 68 percent increase in effectiveness off that spending? Absolutely not. I'll tell you what it's going on: have a look through the emissions reduction—I hesitate to call it a plan; it's more a propaganda paraphernalia produced by the Ministry for the Environment. I have no doubt that a lot of people have spent an awful lot of time doing a lot of website design work and coming up with strategies and developments and every synonym for "strategy" and "plan" you can think of under the sun. But all that is within that is just more plans. Climate change is what is happening while you're making other plans. Like it's just literally a series of plans and strategies and development.New Zealand Transport Agency spin doctors—they spend more money on consultants more money on plans and strategies and propaganda from the transport agency than we actually do building roads or any public transport projects. We know that all too well here in Wellington where we've spent five years stuck in gridlock because the absurdly named Let's Get Wellington Moving project is doing the exact opposite while a lot of people make a lot of money doing consultancy reports for something that is just not going anywhere. They spent $2.5 million on the Mongrel Mob $51 million on a cycleway that's never been built—a cycleway across the Auckland Harbour Bridge—more money on health restructures. Poor quality spending.The point is that this poor quality expenditure is driving up inflation. If you don't believe me look at page 44 of the B.3 in the Budget: "Inflation is being driven by strong domestic demand pushing up against constrained supply." Strong domestic demand of which Government spending—extremely high Government spending—is a massive component of it.So the question is: is this enough or is there a better way? Our argument is that there is because if you're someone on the average wage you get nothing from this and anyone on 50000 bucks a year or more gets more from National's plan. There's no doubt about it. Our view is that we need permanent spending restraint and fiscal disciple and permanent adjustments to the tax thresholds which would deliver more money in New Zealanders' back pocket. What is the Government seriously saying? "We're going to have a three-month increase in people's take-home pay and we're going to get to November and December and then it's going to go back up again running into Christmas."? Yeah right! This will just be continued. Why don't you just legislate for what we should do in the first place: legislate for National's plan which delivers more money in New Zealanders' back pockets and actually reflects the cost of living crisis that we are experiencing?"