National Party leader Christopher Luxon has hit out at Chris Hipkins for not knowing how much his Government spent in the past year.
Prime Minister Hipkins, speaking to AM on Tuesday, took aim at Luxon and National's idea of delivering "taxpayer receipts" to New Zealanders.
During the interview, Hipkins was asked whether he knew how much his Government had spent in the past year.
"I haven't got the number memorised," he said. "It's not quite that simple. There are a number of different numbers I could quote, if I'd memorised them, in terms of what reflects overall levels of Government spending."
Luxon fired up about that on Wednesday, saying it was "outrageous, outrageous… absolutely outrageous".
"How does a Prime Minister not know what the Government is spending? He's been in the job for yonks… he's two days out from a Budget and he can't tell you it's $129 billion and it's up about $1 billion a week," Luxon told AM.
"I thought that was just a total disrespect for taxpayers and just says that he's treating them like a bottomless ATM."
ACT Party leader David Seymour, in support of his fellow right-bloc leader, asked Hipkins in Parliament what core Crown expenditure was last year.
"If it's core Crown expenditure, it's about $129 billion," Hipkins replied.
Seymour then asked: "Does he now appreciate that core Crown expenditure will be up 61 percent, or $49 billion in five years to this year, at $129 billion, and can he name one service that his Government provides that is, overall, 61 percent better and how he's measured it?"
"There are programmes that this Government has introduced such as the Food in Schools programme that's feeding 220,000 students every day," Hipkins responded. "There have, of course, been across-the-board pay increases for our public servants like our teachers, our nurses, our firefighters and our police that have happened under this Government," the Prime Minister told MPs.
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