Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Well thank you Mr Speaker. I'm very pleased to take a call on this Budget Policy Statement (BPS) debate—well actually technically the debate on the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I do want to acknowledge Michael Wood the chairman of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who introduced the debate. I do think it's a shame I must say that Labour have never managed to have a female chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. You know for all their grand talk about supporting women and equality never once have they managed to have a women in that position. Of course National have had two but there you go. That's just because we actually walk the talk. We just heard a very—well I was going to say very interesting" but it was actually a kind of boring speech from the Minister of Health. But the one thing that I took from it other than the fact that he can't give a speech without reading it is that this is a Labour Government that has learnt nothing from their previous terms in Government—they still believe that their success will be measured by how much money they can spend. Dr Clark—sorry I was about to call him "Mr Clark"—stood there and told us or read through a laundry list of all of the spending they were going to do as if somehow that meant that they would be a good Government. Well actually Dr Clark the Budget Policy Statement is about holding the Government to account on how it is blending fiscal constraint with its policy objectives. Of course when the BPS was presented to the House last year and we had the urgent debate on it it was presented alongside the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU). Mr Joyce has already made a number of very strong points in his contribution about the lack of any detail in the HYEFU about the very policies and promises that were being made in this document and I want to reflect on that in the context of core Crown debt because actually core Crown debt is something that is incredibly important to New Zealanders and their fiscal long-term stability and security. Now what we know from these documents that we're debating today is that this is a Labour Government that already is projecting to take core Crown debt from $56 billion to $70 billion. So for all the big talk what we're actually seeing is a Government that knows how to do nothing but spend and throw money around and they're quite happy to put it on the plastic. So while National had a strong trajectory of debt falling Labour already have got core Crown debt increasing from $56 billion to $70 billion. But—just like the infomercials—wait there's more because that increase to $70 billion is before they count the cost of any of those large spending promises that Mr Joyce ran through and they are not included in the HYEFU numbers at all. So as soon as you start looking at the reality of this we're already moving it up to $70 billion and now of course we know we're going to have to add in the $15 billion that Mr Twyford wants to spend on a light rail set in Auckland. The $1 billion or however much of that is new money because they can't seem to actually figure that out and tell us—none of that from the regional growth fund is included in these numbers. Now all of this will go straight to debt because it is quite clear that any money that they had available has all been blown through in the 100-day plan with the fees-free policy for tertiary which we know is not increasing university enrolments by a single student it appears and we know is widely likely to be rorted. All the money has been spent already so every single extra spending commitment that we know they have made—that they have committed to making; that they've talked about in this House—goes straight into debt. It goes straight on to the future stability of all of our children and grandchildren and it just adds to that $70 billion they're already planning to increase it to. So this shows us that it's a Government that once more has gone straight back to the "just keeping spending and let future generations worry about the impact of that debt" approach. Well actually any family and any business knows that if you just keep running up debt eventually the bough breaks—you cannot keep doing it. So I talked about those two commitments. What about the impact of wage rounds? None of that has been included in this and we know that the policies that Mr Lees-Galloway wants to bring in where we move to centralised industry-level union-controlled wage bargaining—we know that is going to lead to significant additional fiscal costs on the Government. None of that has been included in these documents none of it has been costed and it is just another example of the Government firing from the hip without a clue what the fiscal cost of that is. That is just not prudent responsible governing. Dr Clark has talked often—and voluminously and not that interestingly or intelligibly—about the $8 billion extra he wants to put into health. Well where is that in these numbers? Where is it? How does that get paid for? I would like the Government Ministers to stand up and not spout off about how much money they're going to spend because spending is easy. I've been a Minister in very hard challenging portfolios and I can tell this House that spending is the easiest part of being a Minister. It is the easiest thing to do. What is hard is balancing careful control of the money that taxpayers send here with our objectives and our desire to make New Zealand better. That's what National focused on when we were in Government and this Government already has shown us they have no idea what their policies will cost them they have no idea how they're going to pay for it and they're not being up front when they put out these documents about what's coming down the pipeline and what it's going to cost. That's why we've got those 34 pages in the BPS—34 pages of uncosted fiscal risks. Treasury said "Well we can't say nothing about them so we'll just go on through 34 pages of areas where we know that there's extra pressure." and all of that goes straight to debt. Look for a moment at the issue of the 1800 extra police. Now the various members of the Government talked about this as what "Forty million dollars maybe or $50 million. You know it could be $80 million." Well last week in select committee the Commissioner of Police made it quite clear we're looking at more than $300 million of cost for that and yet none of that is included in these numbers. Is it because the Government didn't know—they just made the policy commitment without any idea of the cost on New Zealand—or is it because they just didn't want to tell us? Either one of those is a completely unacceptable outcome. Another example. A few weeks ago we had Dr Clark again announcing the extension of the pay equity deal to mental health workers and addiction workers—a decision that had clearly been in the pipeline for some time—and yet nowhere was it included in these documents. I find it quite extraordinary that a Government that stood up and told us—and in this House repeated—that their intention was to be the most transparent Government ever have started in the most critical of accountability documents to the public and to this House by failing to cost their policies. They have failed to understand the impact of those policies and have failed to be open with New Zealand about what that's going to mean. I will tell this House what it's going to mean: it is going to mean that debt level goes even higher. It's not going to be just going from $56 billion to $70 billion; it is going to be going considerably north of that and that is a real concern for the future prospects of New Zealand. I want to touch on one final comment and that is looking at the impact of the industrial relations changes that the Government is proposing—which I've talked about in question time—on the economic trajectory of this country. When you harm the economy and job creation and the businesses that actually create jobs you harm tax revenues and you make this imbalance between spending and income even worse. So even with everything I've already said you have to allow even more debt to come through because we're going to see fewer jobs and we're going to see fewer businesses wanting to invest and to grow and that not only hurts the workers who miss out but it hurts the tax revenues and the ability of the Government to make their numbers add up. There is no doubt that the Government has been talking ad nauseam about higher wages. Higher wages help no one if they can't get a job. We've already seen Treasury saying that just one of the Government's changes is going to mean 28000 fewer jobs and actually—even worse than that—for the jobs that are there it is the young and the vulnerable workers who will miss out on the chance of getting them. The BPS alone tells us very clearly that we're going to go from employment growth in this country that was in excess of 5 percent a year under National to almost zero. That is what Treasury has said in this BPS. Because of the actions of this Government employment growth which is the chance for New Zealanders to get a job will go from 5 percent—or actually more than 5 percent under National where we were creating 10000 new jobs a month—to almost zero. This is a Government that in their first 100 days have managed to completely destroy the creation of new jobs in this country. They are running up debt in a way that is unsustainable and that will hurt future generations and it is not a good start for New Zealand."