Robertson GrantHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Oh to live in David Seymour's fantasy land! The member wants to talk about counterfactuals. Well here's a pretty obvious one. The member clearly doesn't care about people losing their jobs. The member clearly doesn't care about small-business people who woke up and said—you know I'll give the member an example. I met a gentleman when I was in Featherston during the 2020 election campaign. He was driving a filthy ute—it wasn't Kieran McAnulty but it was another member of the Wairarapa community!—and this person turned around did a U-turn came and parked beside me got out of his truck walked over shook my hand and said Your Government's policy saved my business". He told me this story about the fact that he was driving to work to tell the four or five people who worked with him that they didn't have jobs anymore because people were cancelling their forward orders as they were worried about what COVID would mean. He said "That wage subsidy meant that I could go in and say to those people 'I'm not sure what's going to happen but you've all got a job' " and 10 weeks—12 weeks—later when that wage subsidy expired that person was able to carry their business on. That person was able to employ some more people. So if Mr Seymour wants to know what the counterfactual is the counterfactual is people who live in the real world Mr Seymour people who actually have to employ other people people who have jobs now who may not have had them had we not done this.Now am I saying that every aspect of the Government's response is perfect? Of course not. No Government in the world had a playbook for how to deal with this. But isn't it interesting that Governments around the world made the decision to look after their people and to look after their citizens? I remember standing in this House in both March 2020 and then again in May 2020 where I stood up and said "Yes there are different ways of approaching a crisis like this". We've seen that in New Zealand's history and we saw it when those who prefer austerity in these situations which is essentially what Mr Seymour is saying; he doesn't care whether people lose their jobs he doesn't think we need to fund public services properly. That is the counterfactual that's the approach—the austerity approach. Now sure Mr Seymour can propose that. But what I said that day in March 2020 when we did the first package to respond to COVID and again when we did the Budget in May 2020 was I was not prepared to run the risk of New Zealanders losing their jobs losing their homes people not being able to continue to run their businesses. Time and time again in this House I was asked by members in the National Party albeit not as often by members in the ACT Party to put more money in to put more money into the small—you Mr Seymour stood in this House and asked me to give more support to businesses in the Auckland area than we had given. The National Party constantly asked us to do that. They put up a package in 2020 that had even more money going in. We got the balance right in my opinion on this side of the House because we did support New Zealanders through this. So yes it was an expensive undertaking but it was an undertaking that fulfilled the values I think of New Zealanders and certainly of the Labour Party that we will look after people that we will use the balance sheet to make sure people make it through a crisis. Mr Seymour's entitled to his view about a different way of doing this but it's a different way that I believe would have had an enormous social human and financial cost in this country. The other matter that the member raised again was this question of finance costs. I'm not sure if the member was in the House when I ran through this before. Yes we are paying more for that. Interest rates have risen significantly. When I look at the advice that's been released under the Official Information Act at the point of time that we were signing off on this the worst-case scenario had interest rates the official cash rate at 1 percent in 2023. No one was predicting where we are now then. David Seymour: Yeah we were—yeah we were.Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well maybe Mr Seymour was perfect and his crystal ball was perfect. But the point I'm making is yes we did have advice about what the downside scenario was and we did consider that. But we weighed that advice against the impact on people's actual lives. Not a theoretical exercise not an ideological exercise; a practical response to making sure that we helped New Zealanders through what was and is the most challenging thing that has been to the New Zealand economy and society in my lifetime and I'm proud of our response."