Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Madam Deputy Speaker thank you very much. The tragedy for me of this Budget is that it is a Budget of wasted opportunities. This is a Government that has inherited some of the strongest economic conditions that any incoming Government in more than a generation has had at their disposal and yet they have wasted those strong economic conditions that yes this Government was a part of but actually it was the hard work of New Zealanders and New Zealand businesses.The Government spent weeks and weeks talking down the Budget didn't they—talking down expectations and lowering expectations. The incredible thing is they didn't go low enough. We were all expecting that they were going to lower expectations and then over-deliver. In fact they lowered them and then failed to deliver on those lowered expectations. For all the promises they made for all the expectations they built and for all the money that they had available this is a biggest loser Budget" really isn't it? I mean it is a trail of broken promises one after the other. Today in the House we had Chris Hipkins telling us that there's a difference between a broken promise and a promise we just haven't delivered. Well that is now how this Government is explaining their broken promises: "They're not broken promises; they're just promises we haven't delivered." Well Mr Hipkins I wish you well taking that line out to New Zealand.But let's look at some of the actual numbers. Teachers who are pretty grumpy; we're hearing a lot from that sector—the average operations grant increase to schools in this Budget is 1.6 percent. But do you know what the average increase to the ops grant was per year under the National Government? It was 1.9 percent. So Labour have done less for operations grants for schools than we did.The midwives we know are desperately unhappy that the expectations weren't met. Health: $390 million of new money into health under National's last Budget; just $320 million under this Budget. District health boards (DHBs)—let's look at the part where it actually goes to the DHBs who deliver the services. Under our Government the average increase in the last Budget across DHBs was an average of 4.2 percent. Under this Budget where there was a crisis—remember the crisis in underfunding?—it was 4.1 percent; less again than we did.Tertiary education—tertiary institutes—Hon Paula Bennett: Oh not good.Hon AMY ADAMS: —no new funding. And they are not happy are they Ms Bennett. They are not happy.Police—what a mess of a police policy: 1800 additional police were promised in the Speech from the Throne. Now it's going to be "Well we're going to actually count the new ones National was already doing and by the way a lot of them won't be on the front lines. Oh and by the way it's probably going to be five years now not three."Biosecurity—a critical issue for this country. We're dealing with M. bovis right now; we've got the brown marmorated stink bugs coming to us. Mr Damien O'Connor told us that this was the most important priority he had—half the increase that National gave to biosecurity.And of course we've got the good-looking horses who do quite well but no money Jacqui Dean for the Roxburgh health camps. No money for children in Roxburgh who are traumatised but there's money for good-looking horses.We can debate—of course we can—the merits of each of these promises. You know we will have an argument with Labour about whether it was a good promise and whether it was the right promise. The point is that Labour made these promises to New Zealand. They went out and said "If we get elected this is what we will do." and they've failed to do it. It's a matter of trust and they have let this country down already in their first Budget.I have to say though it really is what we're coming to expect. We get a lot of rhetoric we get a lot of sound bites we get the bumper stickers and we get all of the slogans but actually very little delivery and very little substance. In fact the unabashed spin the unadulterated obfuscation is quite astounding and it just doesn't stand up to any scrutiny. The last speech we just heard was a classic example of that.So let's just have a quick look at the numbers. In this Budget—I've talked about the strong economic conditions—Labour have already put up their operating allowances over the next four years by $5 billion more than they said they were going to do back in December—right? So just bear that in your mind: $5 billion more they've given themselves in spending. Then in addition to that they've put up borrowing in Crown entities—which doesn't feed the allowances—by another $6 billion. So what that means is that they have had to find $11 billion more money than they thought they were going to need to meet their promises. Does that number ring a bell at all? Anybody remember where that number might come to—$11 billion they've quietly slipped into the numbers to try and even begin to meet their promises.Now let's be really clear about this. This is not because of some sort of underfunding of core services and do you know how New Zealand can be really confident of that? Because if it was about underfunding with all of the money available to this Government—$20 billion extra in tax revenue all this extra debt the growing surpluses and the like—we would have seen Labour put considerably more into health education and housing than the National Government did when we were in office and they didn't. They put in often the same and in many cases less than National did. How can that be a crisis of underfunding? It is patently not correct.I'll tell you what it's actually about. There are two very good reasons why the numbers are not adding up for Labour. The first is Winston Peters. This is the cost of the marriage of convenience. This is the "dowry Budget". This shows us what the bride price was for Winston Peters and it was big and it was hairy and it was untargeted. That is where the funding has gone. But even more than that it is because very simply Labour got their numbers wrong. The much-touted fiscal plan that was bill-certified and that Grant Robertson staked his reputation on—the numbers never added up they were never going to be defendable they were never going to be adequate to run the costs of the business-as-usual Budget processes. We knew that; we warned them of that. They insisted they were right and yet already six months in they've had to squeak in $11 billion of extra funding to even get anywhere close to meeting their promises.I want to talk a little bit more about that fiscal plan because I had a look at it over the weekend. Seventeen line items that were going to be delivered in this first Budget—and you can see year by year. I know they're all trying to rewrite history now and it's all a trilogy and "It will come to you." They were very clear in the first Budget of 17 line items that were going to be delivered; 16 of them are not there or are scaled back. Of 17 commitments in the first Budget 16 of them were scaled back or not delivered at all. This is a Government who is now realising that their fiscal plan was a shemozzle. It was never going to get them through and they have had to rewrite all of their funding plans all of their debt plans and they are trying to do a smoke-and-mirrors "somehow it's all the previous Government's fault" because they don't want to take responsibility for what they did.Let's have a look at the police numbers. Quite apart from the 1800 which we know is now a pipedream and quite apart from the fact that they're not delivering it over three years as they promised in the fiscal plan Labour said to us "We're going to do 1800 brand new extra police and do you know what it will cost over three years—$160 million." they said. Forty million dollars a year—$160 million. Do you know what it's costing now? Well in this Budget they've already put aside $300 million so they're only out by 100 percent or so and today in question time the Prime Minister told us that's only the first instalment of the costs. So even their $160 million fully costed fiscal plan was out by orders of magnitude. That's how fiscally competent and responsible this Government is.Economic growth is the most critical thing to the prosperity of New Zealand. The ability for our economy to earn for the economy to keep those tax revenues up is what will deliver better lives for New Zealanders. That is the reality. That's what pays for everything in a Budget and those GDP numbers in this Budget have absolutely already been effectively spent by Grant Robertson in his spending allocations his forward projections and his debt track.Now unlike Mr Twyford on this side of the House we don't think that Treasury forecasters are a bunch of kids disconnected from reality. Of course people will disagree and there'll be a range of forecasts but actually these are a bunch of very qualified people who take their job seriously and shouldn't actually get shouted down when they give advice that the Government doesn't like. But even on Treasury's numbers in the last six months we're already seeing GDP per capita slowing. Now it's no surprise because business confidence has been falling off a ledge over the last six months. That's what tells you where the future prosperity of this country is going and that can be landed squarely at the feet of this fiscally incompetent broken-promises poor-priorities Government. This will be the first of three and then I hope we see the back of them."