Willis Nicola; Robertson GrantNICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): Does the finance Minister think his so-called drive for savings and efficiencies—two words that when used by former finance Minister Bill English or Steven Joyce he would refer to in Opposition as cuts". But does he think that that latter drive for savings and for efficiencies has been sufficient given—according to the Treasury's own analysis in this document—every operating allowance that is Budget he has ever set for himself he has broken on average by $600 million? Which is to say he says the year before "I'll only spend this much; I promise I will I will." and then he goes on to spend $600 million more. Given those facts does he really think it's plausible to say he's been good at driving savings and efficiency?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): As I have said it is a part of what we do when we put Budgets together. The other parts of that includes making sure that we adequately fund public services. The member in her earlier contribution referenced the Budget allowance for the previous set of Budgets not the Estimates we're debating here. The member well knows that includes multi-year funding—for example for the health sector but also for the justice sector and natural resources—as we attempt to make sure that we do drive efficiencies by making sure we give people the ability to plan for the long term. That's just one example of the way in which we have done that.The measurement of whether a Government is succeeding or not is in the macro indicators. We have managed over a long period of time to ensure that net debt remains one of the lowest in the developed world. We have been able to see that the economy has grown. We have set ourselves fiscal rules and we are aiming to make sure that we achieve those.We have faced significant challenges as I hope the member would recognise when it comes to for example COVID. Pre-COVID we were able to be in a position where we had surpluses and we were going to move forward from there. Post-COVID just as the previous Government discovered when it was dealing with a large shock through the global financial crisis it takes some time to get back to a level of fiscal surplus. Clicking one's fingers and saying "We're just going to do that." does mean significant cuts to public services.I've acknowledged it in the House before our colleagues from the ACT Party: I might think that their fiscal plan is completely barmy but at least it's out there; at least they've said how they're going to do it. It means enormous cuts to public services and provisions of programmes but at least it's there.So it is a balance when one is putting a Budget together. Events do occur in between different parts of the Budget process—that is the reality of being in Government. But from my perspective putting a Budget like this together—the one that's being debated in the Estimates here right now—requires a careful balance. There are savings in here they are offsetting some of the cost pressures we've got which have been caused by inflation. While inflation does add somewhat to the Government's income it also adds to the costs that the Government faces. Those kinds of costs have to be met and then along comes a cyclone that requires billions of dollars from the Government to actually help communities rebuild and recover.Again I haven't heard much from the Opposition about what they would do there. It would seem they don't think that there's any costs there and that they just simply wouldn't be helping those communities. Well that'll be an interesting debate to have over the next few weeks."