Henare PeeniHon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. Thank you. First I want to acknowledge all of our tamariki mokopuna who have descended upon Nelson—beautiful part of the country—who are performing in their national secondary school kapa haka competitions that started today. My nephew performed today. We wish them all the best and we want them to know that they are champions to all of us already. I also want to acknowledge the other champion team—the Blues—much to the disgust of a lot of Wellington members. I am very proud of the Blues team. But I want to come back to the kapa haka. The reason why I want to come back to the kapa haka is that if the members on the other side of the House simply listened to what our young people are saying—and they're performing it on the national stage that took place today and will take place over the next couple of days—they are clearly sending a message to this Government that the cuts that the direction that this Government is taking this country in isn't the right one for future generations. It is one that looks towards the now and doesn't look towards the future.When we look towards the Budget what became abundantly clear to members on this side of the House is that there are two ways to make an impact on the Budget if you're in the Government. The first one is to be a Minister and bungle a decision and then all of a sudden the Minister of Finance has to scramble to find money and do a pre-Budget announcement because of a bungle by a Minister. That's one way to do it.The other way to do it is to simply break a promise during the election campaign realise that people's lives depended on that particular promise realise the mistake and then all of a sudden start scrambling for next year's Budget money and make an announcement around the treatment of cancer patients.This has been a shambolic Budget process from this Government. We heard repackaged Labour announcements introduced again in this Budget. I want to talk about defence. One of the pre-Budget announcements was Oh we're going to invest in remuneration." which is fantastic. We support that. We started a lengthy process to increase remuneration for our New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel. However the next announcement was "And we are replacing the Pinzgauer and Unimogs." That was already well under way under the Labour Government. In fact we received the first tranche of those replacement vehicles while still in power. Yet we've had this repackaged old announcement put into this Budget.The next announcement that came out was: "Oh we're going to continue an investment into the Linton logistics hub." That was already started well under way; in fact the Rt Hon Dame Jacinda Ardern broke ground on that particular project and it was under way in my tenure as a defence Minister. Now we've seen it repackaged again in the appropriations in the most recent Budget.So that tells me that the defence spending from this Government has decreased. It's simple mathematics. It will decrease to below 1 percent of GDP. Now on that side of the House we've heard numerous statements from the Prime Minister and members the Minister's saying that "We've got to replace the 757s. We value the NZDF; they do this amazing work." They're just not prepared to invest in them. If we found the way that decision making happens in this Government what we can do is continue to keep the pressure up to make sure that this Government puts their money where their mouth is when it comes to the replacement of the 757s.I heard today from the Prime Minister saying that we've got to try something new and we've got to try something different. In order to pay for the matters that they've announced in the Budget they've taken away. One of those things they took away was something new something different something innovative and it was Te Aka Whai Ora. It was made very clear that unless you want different results you had to actually do something different and that's what Te Aka Whai Ora was. It was the ambulance at the top of the cliff—or the fence at the top of the cliff in this case—and not the ambulance at the bottom. I'm really saddened by the decision from this Government to cut that and to put the money elsewhere when I know that that was going to make a significant difference.Some of the words I heard through Scrutiny Week—cute language by the way. For example when questioned on why they were cutting allowances for NZDF personnel to be able to go on and do further study which is a huge incentive for our NZDF personnel these were the words that were offered back to me: "We aren't making cuts; we are simply limiting the allowance." Hm cute language to me. That tells our NZDF personnel that this Government doesn't care about them they will not invest in them they will not invest in their future and that can only mean that the NZDF is going backwards. Tēnā koe Madam Speaker."