Willis Nicola; Robertson GrantNICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): My question for the finance Minister is: does he actually understand what public spending restraint is? Because he has claimed that is something he has required on an ongoing basis and the figures in this Budget shouldn't lie. What they show us is that Crown expenses as a proportion of the economy have exploded under that finance Minister's watch from 27.7 percent in 2017 to 33 percent next year. So my first question is: how is that explosion in Government spending consistent with his road to Damascus description of a culture of restraint? My second question is: has he taken pause to reflect that maybe the decision to as a first gesture remove the Better Public Service targets which ensured a focus on delivery against patient waiting times NCEA achievement and the like might have been quite a good device given—despite spending literally a billion dollars more every week—last night there were 12 ambulances ramping at Waikato Hospital because it can't deliver the services needed. My next question is this: is it actually the case that he has asked for a culture of restraint and it exists or is it in fact the case that as I stand here today the IRD is merrily going on its programme to spend more than $30 million refurbishing and redecorating its offices even while superannuitants go hungry? Isn't it the case that he's allowing his Ministers to collectively spend $1.8 billion on consultancy reports just to help prop up all of the information they already get from the additional 14000 public servants? And isn't it in fact the case that the Minister has quite happily overseen an explosion in Government spending with the smallest results to show for it of any Government in recent history? And could he please as I say come back to that first question: what exactly does he understand restraint" to be?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I just want to note for the member that in the forecasts—and she was reading off the same page I am in the Budget documents—it would see core Crown expenses peak at around 34.6 percent of GDP. If we took the table just back a little bit further that's in here we would see the impact of both the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes on the previous Government. And it is what a responsible Government does when something happens: we use the balance sheet to look after New Zealanders; we invest we make sure that we're putting the money in where it's needed. I stood in this House and responded to members of the Opposition throughout the COVID period saying "Spend more." Do you know what? As we started to get ourselves in a position where the Reserve Bank was getting a bit nervous and wanted to start increasing rates the Leader of the Opposition—the current Leader of the Opposition—put out a programme to spend vastly more in the face of that. So it is what a responsible Government does to invest. We have been careful with the way we've done that. We've been balanced with the way we have done that and we have a plan to bring that back down. The kinds of things that the member's approach would require would be mass cuts in the spending of education and of health and of housing. So the member has to herself front up with what it is that gets cut because it's not just the expenses that are here; it's the extra things that the member is proposing—the tax cuts that the member is proposing that have to be paid for somehow. So I stand by the decisions we've made yes but it's there in black and white—it's led to an increase in the percentage just as it did when the previous Government was doing what it did. The member asked me to comment on things that haven't got much to do with what's in here but her party's previous Better Public Service targets—I vividly remember one of them around NCEA achievement when they set it and they suddenly realised after they set it that it was actually below where people were currently achieving. So they had to quickly rush back and change it.The danger with those targets which we saw and I remember raising questions about it in the House was that it's the classic kind of "teach to the test" thing that actually you set those targets you set them in such a way in some cases that you can just achieve them without—as I say in fact you already were there or you end up with a situation where people end up chasing those targets. We are investing significantly in the resources and the services that we need. Then finally on the question of consultants you know it is true that pre-COVID we'd managed to get expenditure on consultants and contractors down to I think it was 10 percent of Government personnel spending and it's crept back up. A big chunk of that is to do with the response to COVID. But I do think the member needs to be a little bit careful about who it is who's going to be planning the roading and who it is that's going to be delivering the IT changes that might be needed by a Government because they're sectors which are dominated by consultants. Unless the member is proposing to recreate the Ministry of Works—which some members in the House might appreciate to do—that would be one way to do it but in the absence of that consultancy expenditure is required. We all agree in this House we want to limit that to the greatest extent possible but it sounds like what the member's telling us is that she isn't going to have any of that and that will be another cost that the member will need to fund from somewhere."