Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well here it is: this is the bottle of wine that I bet for anybody that we wouldn't be here today debating an imprest supply bill that is an extraordinary sum of money.Hon Grant Robertson: Every year since 1989.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: And this I'm going to keep Minister. I'm not only going to keep this; I'm not gaining another one. You know why? Because no one not a single person took that bet—Hon Grant Robertson: Because it's been every year since 1989.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —because they knew—they knew—we would be here. Here we go. Right-o so let's examine that: We've been here every year since 1989."Hon Grant Robertson: Two and sometimes three.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well I've had a look at the second imprest supply—SPEAKER: Order! Order! Can we just settle down a little bit. I know members are excited by having a bottle of wine in the House but I think we can just settle down.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I've examined the second imprest supply Acts for the last 10 years and the Minister is correct. We do have a process for ensuring that unexpected expenditure is able to be authorised by the Government and boy we've had some unexpected expenditure. But what the Minister didn't say was that that amount is usually between $7 billion and $9 billion in operating expenses (OPEX)—$7 billion $7.5 billion $8 billion $9 billion and then last year it went to $36 billion of OPEX and $18 billion of capital expenditure. This year it's going to $24 billion of OPEX—Hon Grant Robertson: It's coming down.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —and $15 billion—"It's coming down." he says. Well that is one way to gild the lily Minister certainly and I must stress—it is very important to stress—that we are in an environment where the Government does need the authority to respond quickly to COVID-related matters and I stress: COVID-related.Now yesterday the Minister—and I quote him—said this: "The system that we have for public accounting and scrutiny in New Zealand defined by the Public Finance Act is the very process we're going through right now—one part of it." he said. "What happens is committees assess through the Estimates process and the financial review process where we are—that is how it works." I was shaking my head not because that was not true or that I disagreed with the Minister's description of the process but with the implication that the so-called COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund had actually been through that process because the day we passed the Budget was actually the first day that we see the full extent of the spending out of that second imprest supply bill and out of the Supplementary Estimates of Appropriations. That was an authority remember that authorised the Government to spend $54 billion.Now I'm not sure exactly how much of that was spent. It's impossible to tell from the processes that the Minister lauds. But he just said that—I think he said last year it was 36 percent of the operating expenditure so that would equate to somewhere in the region of $8 billion or $9 billion in last year alone. Remember a lot of the things that they announced they announced for years forward. What's not clear to me is whether out of those announcements they were actually in this Budget or whether they're going to continue to be drawn down from the second imprest supply bill. So the idea that we've been able to scrutinise that spending because of the Supplementary Estimates that we don't see until it lands on the Table on Budget day a 1024-page document that doesn't get tabled until then—and without any transparency over what it was for or whether it was good value for money or whether it was COVID-related.So it's not the system that's the issue here as the Minister went on to say but it's the bypassing of the system to increase spending without that usual level of security. Yep we've got to be spending on wage subsidies. We've got to be spending on business resurgence payments on personal protective equipment on vaccines on testing on the extra healthcare costs. But actually I think we need a better articulation of how much was spent last year how much is going to be spent this year and frankly they should have potentially appropriated that so that it is subject to those scrutinies and not subject to imprest supply. But billions of dollars—billions of dollars—has been spent through imprest supply on non - COVID-related things bypassing those processes and landing up in Supplementary Estimates. That process effectively gives the Government carte blanche to spend a huge amount of taxpayer funds in the name of COVID. They're using COVID to spend it on all sorts of things that by any objective measure are not COVID-related and it's difficult to tell whether it's now as I say in the Estimates or will be next year when the Supplementary Estimates are tabled.So we lack the transparency needed to make a determination about whether the spending constitutes good value for money and it may well have been spent but it doesn't appear to have been spent on the plethora of infrastructure announcements that this Government has made. We've seen the Provincial Growth Fund we've seen shovel-ready we've seen the New Zealand Upgrade Programme; the only thing we haven't seen is shovels in the ground is roads being built is bridges being built is tunnels being built. About half of the announcements haven't had anything happen to them and so it's impossible—the Minister and I had a tête-à-tête yesterday about the so-called $57.3 billion infrastructure spend that the Government intends to do over five years. Again very little ability to be able to scrutinise those statements to say where they are when they'll be built and what progress has been made.Now I want to just turn to the issue of debt because we are dramatically increasing core Crown debt net debt as a percentage of GDP. The Minister quite rightly points out that we have plenty of wiggle room but we are on a spending trajectory that I don't believe this Government is prepared to turn off and neither does Treasury. Treasury indicated earlier this year in a report that while current spending trends can be coped with that trajectory is basically unsustainable and tough decisions will have to be made. In fact tough decisions should be made all the time. We dip our hands into the pockets of taxpayers and we expect them to come up with the money for these projects knowing that it will be future generations that have to pay it back. The Government talks about wellbeing. Well wellbeing isn't just about this generation; wellbeing is about the wellbeing of future generations our children and our grandchildren some of whom that will be required to repay this debt have not even been born yet. We need to think very carefully when we scrutinise spending about whether or not we are thinking about the wellbeing of future generations. I'm really disappointed that we haven't been able to do that.In this debate and in the Estimates debate that we've had since Budget day we have actually drilled into some very very interesting spending decisions. I think about Vote Health where it's been made very clear by this Government that nearly half a billion dollars to restructure the health sector in the middle of a pandemic is the number one priority. I think we've highlighted the fact that that is a folly but we've only been able to do it because we saw what the Government's intentions were. Far too much of the spending that we are being asked to scrutinise has not been included in the Estimates of Appropriations. That's wrong. Maybe it could be legally right but in these very very unusual times a higher level of transparency should be expected of a Government that is spending a huge amount of money—most of it appropriately. A really really big part of it does not appear to me to be COVID-related and they're using COVID as a cover a cover for spending on things that would not have passed muster had Treasury been able to look at those spending projections and give an assessment of value for money. That's what Treasury told the Finance and Expenditure Committee after the Budget that they are concerned about the value for money analysis because decisions are being made so fast. But as I was talking about to the Minister of Justice there are some appropriations out of that COVID fund that have been in the pipeline for seven years. It's hardly urgent. It's disappointing it lacks transparency and it leaves a legacy for our children and grandchildren that will be very very hard to bear. This is not a good Budget."