Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): With regard to ministerial decisions that I am responsible for, in terms of the major spending programmes announced in the previous two Budgets, I took steps to ensure the integrity of them in line with the regular Budget decision-making process, similar to the previous Ministers of Finance, like Bill English or Steven Joyce. That process—and I hope not to make the answer too long, but I'll go through it—is that Budget initiatives are submitted by Ministers, in most cases, prior to Christmas. Individual initiatives are assessed by the Treasury in some instances and by secretariats of officials from other agencies in other instances. Budget initiatives are assessed according to a range of factors, including their alignment with Budget priorities, their wellbeing impacts, the robustness of their costings, their implementation readiness, and their value for money. These assessments are pulled together to give advice to Ministers on a package of initiatives that could be funded through the Budget. Ministers meet and take decisions on a package to be considered by Cabinet. Cabinet then considers it and makes final decisions on a final Budget package, and Parliament passes the Budget. After that point, there are parliamentary and other processes in place to further ensure the integrity of any spending.