Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): Budget 2019 is going to for ever go down in history as the botched Budget. It's not just botched in its delivery but botched in the sense of the lost opportunities the broken promises and the way in which it has failed to deliver for New Zealanders. Wasn't it fascinating listening to Megan Woods talk for 10 minutes in the Budget debate without mentioning the word KiwiBuild"? She couldn't speak for a minute prior to the 2017 election without reciting the KiwiBuild promise of 10000 homes a year. She didn't mention it because I'll tell you how bad it is: she promised 10000 houses a year along with her colleagues but 18 months into the programme they've delivered 81. If a building company pulled off that sort of a dirty trick they'd be in the courts for fraud; such was the failure of the delivery of that policy. Then of course a Budget is about financial management. You can put all the lovely piccies on the front cover but actually it matters as to how we're managing the country's finances. I nearly choked on my Kornies when I read the Budget speech and I read that we're going to borrow an extra $20 billion. Forget the rhetoric about the future—who do we think is going to have to pay back the $20 billion that we're borrowing at a time when New Zealand's terms of trade are at their best? I talked about broken promises. Does anybody remember Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson talking about the Budget responsibility rules? They said that they were set in concrete. This was a guarantee. Even after the coalition agreement was signed we were told that the five Budget responsibility rules were absolutely set in rock. Actually I think they used the term "concrete"—my phrase today would be "It must have been pretty wet concrete." because we're now told that the debt limit is not 20 percent any more; it's now 25 percent. That's another 20 billion bucks of debt that members opposite want to rake up on the future of New Zealanders.You want to talk about wellbeing? One of the most important things for the wellbeing of Kiwi families is a job. In the last two years of the National Government every month another 10000 jobs were created for Kiwis. You know what's happened this year? Over the first five months of this year the number of jobs in the New Zealand economy for the first time since 2011 and the global financial crisis (GFC) has gone backwards by 4000. Here's the bit that really worries me: Treasury projections around the level of job creation for the next four years are the slowest that they have been in two decades. Fewer jobs do not mean better wellbeing for New Zealanders.Then let's go further in to the broken promises. Do any members of the House remember that wonderful moment during the leaders' debate in 2017 when the Prime Minister said "There won't be any strikes on my watch." Well! The number of strikes in the last year is now at 20 times what they were. We've had the mega-strikes in the schools. We have patients turning up at our hospitals being turned down from operations. As a constituency MP I've seen more people this year in grief over getting access to operations than what I have seen since the Clark years in Government and they have the cheek to talk about social wellbeing.Then we go to an area like education. Megan Woods was so cute in talking about the policy of removing donations in schools. I have Labour's policy here. It's very explicit: all schools will have access to a $150 payment for each student in exchange for not requesting parental donations. I want the next Labour member to say why they have ratted on 200000 families who were promised $150 and didn't get it.Let me tell you what it means for my community. I've got four great colleges. My children go to Nelson College and Nelson College for Girls. They're getting it. They're decile 7. But Waimea College my country school is being deprived of $250000. They're creating a two-tier education system in my community of Nelson and that is wrong. It is not what they promised and it's grossly unfair on those 12 schools in my area that are not getting what they were promised.Then let's look at health. I remember when David Clark said that the bare minimum—the bare minimum—that was required in Vote Health for district health boards (DHBs) to be able to keep up with health services was $1.4 billion. And what do we see in this year's Budget? Less than half of that at the same time our DHBs are pouring out record deficits. Our health boards are in a financial crisis because of the incompetent management only 18 months into this Government.They want to talk about wellbeing. If you want to talk about wellbeing tell me about the patients that are being denied access to cancer drugs. Don't lecture me about wellbeing when you have not provided a single extra dollar for Pharmac to be able to provide those lifesaving drugs. It truly has nothing to do with wellbeing.Hon Julie Anne Genter: What did National do?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member asked: "What did National do?" National increased the Pharmac budget every single year including in the GFC because we recognised the importance of those drugs and I'd love to recite for that member the sort of commitment that we made to women that suffered from breast cancer and others during our period in Government.Finally I want to come to the issue of both the incompetence and the dishonesty around the presentation of this year's Budget. I have never witnessed the level of incompetence around the presentation. It is a very serious matter when you can openly google access of a Budget that is meant to be confidential. That was completely incompetent in Roger Douglas' case and in the case of Michael Cullen—there were rightly calls for the resignation of Ministers for not keeping the Budget confidential. And Treasury has hard questions to answer about that.But as always it's not the mistake it's the cover-up that actually gets people into more difficulty. The dishonesty that occurred in the week of the Budget speaks volumes about the moral character of the Government. Remember the Prime Minister said on the Tuesday that the numbers released on the Budget were false. That was not true. Those numbers we now know were absolutely accurate and accessed from Treasury.Remember the statement from Grant Robertson. We now know that after he was told that there had been no illegal access to the information he continued to run that line and even worse reported the Opposition of this Parliament to the police for investigation. Now I expect that sort of conduct to go on in ratbag fringe democracies but the exercise of this Government trying to take the Opposition to the police for investigation and the sorts of comments from the Deputy Prime Minister drag the New Zealand democracy down to a level where it does not belong.But the incompetence went even further than that. This is the first Budget ever in New Zealand history where rather than picking up detailed financial tables and information on the cover we have a pretty picture of a mum and her child. Now if you went to Public Relations 101 you might have checked that the person that you were symbolising your Budget and wellbeing with might have been able to speak a positive word about the Government.I have put out dozens of documents in my years and one of the 101 rules was to make sure that actually it was an authentic story. The story of the woman on the cover of Budget 2019 actually speaks volumes about the gap between the presentation of the Budget and the reality. That woman's choice to leave New Zealand last year—Hon Julie Anne Genter: Her problems were because of the nine years under National.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —and move to Australia actually speaks volumes about the failure of this Government and the failure of the member screaming over there who does nothing while over 80 people die from drug-drivers each year. The Budget is a botched Budget. It's a Budget of broken promises."