White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour): It's a privilege to rise and speak about the Budget Policy Statement and I thought I might actually do it—we might actually talk about that right now. So the first thing that I want to talk about is the fact that I want to acknowledge that it's been a really really hard year for New Zealanders. It's been very hard in Auckland Central and it's been very hard in my area of work prior to politics which is that I represented both employers and employees. It's been a tough year and we are still weathering a crisis. It is not over. I was very proud of the statement that we had because this is a statement that has a vision attached to it something that I have not seen in almost anything from the Opposition today. We have a Budget Policy Statement that contains a vision that is the vision that I want for my children. Just transition is about economic transformation. So is the future of work which is another commitment that has been made. This is a Budget that will look at things like innovation and decent work. It will raise wages. It is a Budget that looks at wellbeing. It looks at children's wellbeing and the physical and mental wellbeing of our citizens. It looks at Māori and Pasifika and children who have been left behind. It is a vision for a decent future and I'm proud of it. The Living Standards Framework is not fluffy in the slightest. It is the kind of framework I want. It's one that's richer and deeper than a simple cost-benefit analysis but it doesn't shy away from that either. It looks at the four kinds of capital: human capital—skills and knowledge; natural capital—the environment; social capital being communities and wellbeing; and the physical landscape we live in which is also our capital. It builds these things back better. The crisis we have faced has been one that the Labour Party has faced with its values and that has led to success. We have unemployment that is at 4.9 percent and the peak of it was 5.3 percent. That is way lower than was projected by Treasury which optimistically predicted an 8.5 percent unemployment rate and the OECD world which peaked at 8.8. What went right was our values and our leadership. We have had the best health response and that has been the best economic response. I hate to think what would have happened if in fact there had been a different Government leading this country during this time. We have had a situation where we have built our Public Service. We have built our tracking and tracing. We have done that. I was reading recently a book by Mariana Mazzucato where she talks about the mission economy and she talks about how that opportunity has been lost in her own country of the UK whereas here we have built those things and we have a richer stronger bureaucracy and support structure in our Public Service as a consequence. We have been putting working people first and I was very very proud to see that happen with regard to the wage subsidy. It was my experience in that time that I was advising employers and employees and actually that subsidy and the way it rolled out so quickly and so responsively reassured so many people and I am absolutely confident it is the reason why our unemployment rates were so low. Work is so important to people. It is so important to their wealth. It is so important to their mental health wellbeing. It is an incredibly important thing and I'm very proud of our Minister of Finance for having achieved that. We have had resurgence payments which have now targeted those who still need support and I'm just proud of that as well. It's a very interesting contrast when you look at what happened in Australia over payments like the wage subsidy which were held back. We had a much better response because we got them out the door. Do you know why that happened? It's not an accident that that came from the Labour Party. It's because the Labour Party knows about working people it knows what working people need and it is grounded and so it actually produces those things that people need in a timely fashion. There was a bounce. We had a credit rating adjustment recently that was an AA+ rating. It's an incredibly good sign when we get that kind of bounce. It is a bounce that is about results that we have had in our economy. We have had an operating balance before gains and losses—the deficit has been $5 billion less than was forecast. We have a $3 billion higher than forecast core Crown revenue and we have net core Crown debt of 27 percent instead of what was predicted in the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update of 30 percent. That's really just as important as paying back money fast because we just don't have to pay it back at all. It's a good start but it's going to be a rocky road and nobody is being complacent here. The secretary of Treasury said that they only predicted moderate growth and we'll return to surplus in 2027. I want to talk a little bit about the future of work because that's something that I have a really keen and practical interest in. There were a thousand places given in trade academies. There's support for taking on apprentices—20 percent more in October 2020 from the year before. That's actually a huge thing because apprenticeships were just lost for so long—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! If members want to have conversations can they please step out. Thank you.HELEN WHITE: In that time we lost so much opportunity to train our own people and give them good jobs. Actually what I've heard from the Opposition today is that what they would like to do is return to the old style where we actually just bring people into the country where we bring in low-paid workers where we return to low-paid industries. This is not the future of New Zealand. The future of New Zealand is high-wage work it's training our own people and it's making a difference which is sustainable. I want to make a comment about Michael Woodhouse's comment recently. He was just talking about how the money that had been set aside in mental health basically got frittered away in pay equity claims. The suggestion was that that was not a good use of money. I want to talk about that for just a minute and think about it because there's been that criticism and the criticism of sick pay and the criticism of the minimum wage. All these things are about paying people what they're worth. This is about putting money absolutely into the right place into our poorest people into people who will then spend it in the economy. They will not invest it in other things or go overseas; they will put it right back here. These are the people that I want to work hard to make sure they have better lives. So this is absolutely what we should be doing. These are our most exploited workers and these are the people that we need to focus on in the Labour Party. I want to talk about housing. Housing has been a hugely difficult issue—nobody is suggesting otherwise—but it is being attended to. Rather than being naysaying it would be good to see the National Party see the situation with some degree of lack of interest in investors because what actually has happened here is that investors have been tipped into the new build market and that's a very good thing because that means that we're going to increase stock. Otherwise the behaviour that was going on where they were simply buying houses is actually simply rent-seeking. It produces nothing and we need that money that is available from investors to go into something real to something productive that gives New Zealanders something back. So I am very very proud of those recent announcements and I look forward to some much more significant ones. Nicola Willis: 4000 kids in motels.HELEN WHITE: The children in motels and the children that are actually housed I am proud of because it is a whole lot better than it was Nicola Willis when they lived in cars. I have been in Auckland Central and I have seen children living in cars and I am much prouder that actually homeless people during the crisis and people who have been in those situations are actually now looked after. I am particularly proud of the humane response there has been to get people into housing and we will work at it. We will continue to work at it. I'd just like to finish by saying I am extremely proud of this statement and I am proud of the values that underpin it. I'm proud of Grant Robertson's work in this area. I'm proud of the committee's work. I'm proud of the submitters who came to us and talked to us about wellbeing. They did that because the door was opened by the vision that was shared with them and so we heard from all sorts of people who may not necessarily have agreed or disagreed with everything we had to say but contributed at that level. We've changed the conversation in New Zealand and I'm proud of that.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is a split call.