Ross Jami-Lee: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ross Jami-Lee: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Sitting date: 31 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2748. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
2. 
JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: What steps is the Government taking to get the Crown accounts back into surplus? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance) 
 on behalf of the Minister of Finance: Budget 2012 shows that the Government remains clearly on track to achieve a surplus in 2014-15 with $4.4 billion of new operating spending over the next 4 years matched by a combination of savings and revenue initiatives. This is a situation many countries would be envious of. We will achieve this through discipline on new spending and running a zero Budget for the second consecutive year. We are encouraging economic growth to take place whether it is through changes to the tax system changes to the Resource Management Act changes to labour laws—the list goes on. Across the economy these policies will help drive the growth of competitive business. 
Jami-Lee Ross 
: Has he received any reports on alternative approaches to getting back into surplus? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: No but I have seen a lot of proposals to simply spend more money whether it is the increased cost of borrowing more higher tertiary student support ineffective research and development tax credits ever-increasing early childhood education subsidies or even in fact army brass bands. The approach advocated for resembles a fire hose of borrowed money being sprayed round—and not just borrowed money but money borrowed internationally. Somehow all of these policies of spending more money and making no savings would apparently still leave the Labour Party back in surplus by— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! The member was OK until that point. He must not attribute policies to other parties. That is not his responsibility. 
Jami-Lee Ross 
: Has the Minister received any reports on alternative options to save money? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: I have received one. It involves increasing the age of retirement to 67 but it does not kick in until past 2020 and it would save only a small amount initially and actually nothing between now and 2020. And that report is by a certain Mr David Shearer. However I have also seen another separate report which involves reducing the age of retirement to 60 for manual workers— 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: At the same time? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: —yeah apparently—which requires extra spending of maybe as much as— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! The Minister has no responsibility for reports of David Shearer. I think we have heard sufficient. 
Hon David Parker 
: Would his Government get back into surplus more easily if export growth was higher? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: A whole range of things could get us back into surplus more quickly. 
Hon David Parker 
: How about that one? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: Well it does not necessarily apply because if for example we then decide to spend a whole lot of money to try to achieve that then that would not get us back into surplus more quickly. That would just involve fire-hosing money in all directions.