Joyce StevenHon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): Mr Chair I thank you for that assistance and direction as we look at the annual review and I think it is probably going to be very helpful for the Opposition in particular because it appears from that last 5-minute offering from Mr Nash that its only economic policy seems to be the R & D tax credits that it has had for the last three elections.Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I think it is completely inappropriate for the Minister in his first contribution to do exactly the opposite of what you just admonished the Opposition and the prior National Party speaker for doing. I would suggest that you call the Minister to order.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I thank the member for his support. I am not required to call him to order because he has already had that. Thank you very much.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Thank you Mr Chair. I will now address my comments in particular to the annual review of Treasury and the financial statements of the Government. I will focus on that as against the previous speaker Mr Nash because that is a very good context for this Committee's discussion over the next 10 hours.The Finance and Expenditure Committee's report made it clear that the New Zealand economy is going very well at the moment—one of the strongest-performing economies in the world since the global financial crisis. It was noted that we have had positive growth now for some years and in fact I can tell the Committee that we have had positive growth in every quarter but one over those last 6 years. It is a very good performance. When you line this country up against countries like the US like Japan like Canada like the EU and like Australia we were in fact the fifth fastest growing economy in the developed world last year and that is actually coming in to higher incomes and more jobs for Kiwis.I would like to report to the Committee given some inaccurate data reported recently that the New Zealand employment rate—the rate of employment of adult New Zealanders; everybody over the age of 15—is now at 66.9 percent. That is just under 70 percent which is our highest rate ever and actually one of the highest in the developed world. We also have a very big margin of employment over Australia currently and a big margin of full-time employment for New Zealand over Australia. That shows how a strong economy flows through for Kiwis around the country.The good news is that the forecasts are that this will continue. The Secretary to the Treasury was talking to the select committee about the prognosis for the New Zealand economy and I too had my opportunity to speak to the committee and lay out the Reserve Bank predictions for quite solid economic growth—an average of 3 percent over the next 4 years. Why is that happening? Well we did traverse that at the committee and the committee itself traversed it and New Zealand's economic growth story is driven by a number of things: firstly the strong fiscal performance and fiscal policy of this Government; the orthodox monetary policy that this Government adopts—and I think New Zealand has shown that it is important that monetary fiscal and microeconomic policy work well together if you are going to get a good result for Kiwis; and a number of things that this Government is particularly focused on.Firstly there is trade. We have made a particular emphasis on taking advantage of the opportunities of the big growth in middle-income consumers through Asia. We have a trade-friendly Government that is encouraging companies to export with organisations like New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and Callaghan Innovation and despite the dairy decline over the last few years New Zealand's exports have in fact grown.Secondly we have seen an increase in growth in our working-age population. That is actually really important because we have got a lot of companies that want to grow currently and in order to grow they need to keep hiring skilled people. We have the opportunity because not only is our education system delivering more graduates but our immigration system is encouraging skilled migrants to come to New Zealand to work for our companies.Thirdly New Zealand firms are becoming more innovative. I am not sure again why the member of the Opposition picked on this because actually the story of New Zealand's R & D is one of growing research and development. In fact the example that Mr Nash raised is of a company called Rocket Lab which is indeed the beneficiary of this Government's R & D investment policies alongside Callaghan Innovation. So it is slightly ironic for the Opposition to raise that in criticism.Also we have seen active encouragement of private sector investment in this country which is important and finally the public infrastructure that we need for growth—and we talked about that in the House earlier this afternoon. This Government is delivering strong economic growth.