Goldsmith Paul: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoldsmith Paul: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate[Sitting date: 24 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18797. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL GOLDSMITH (National):I find it a bit galling to have a lecture on being outward-looking from a member from the Green Party which is the well-renowned protectionist anti-trade party in the House that does not want to engage in globalisation with the rest of the world. It turns its mind inwards and yet Russel Norman gives us a lecture on being outward-looking.I stand for a genuinely open outward-looking dynamic economy that is able to foot it in an internationally competitive world can generate the sorts of living standards to which we all aspire and can provide the opportunities so that New Zealanders of all shapes and sizes and ages can gain the best for themselves and for their families. I stand for an economy that is able to give them great opportunities in the world so that they do not feel that they have to make a lifestyle choice or a second-hand choice to live in New Zealand but can really achieve their potential.It is only through having a strong economy that people can have access to the best health care. I have never met anybody in my travels around Epsom or anywhere else in New Zealand who is not interested in having access to the best cancer treatment that money can buy and the latest medicines that money can buy. All these things cost money and that can be obtained only through having a strong economy. A strong economy allows you to invest in quality education and to pay teachers properly it enables you to pay for pensions for elderly people and to take care of the vulnerable and that is why I am firmly of the view that this Government is taking this country in the right direction. After 6 years we are heading in the right direction but there is still a long long way to go. It is my hope that in the next 3 months New Zealanders will make the right decision to enable us to continue with this progress.New Zealanders also want a Government that they can trust a Government that keeps its promises and a Government that is working together with all New Zealanders to build that stronger economy. Under the strong and stable leadership of John Key who has the unanimous support of a united caucus behind him—and it has certainly been an eye-opener for me to come into a political party with 59 members. The natural state of affairs in any political environment would be infighting competition trouble and strife. That is the natural state of affairs in politics and yet I am part of a caucus of 59 that is united and has one vision behind a strong leader in John Key. That has led to a period where we have had an extended time of predictable consistent and stable Government and that is so essential for growing the economy.Before I came to Parliament I spent much of my time writing business history and the main thing that I learnt from looking at successful New Zealand companies was just how difficult it is. One of the last books I wrote was on Bill Gallagher and his company which exports electric fences all around the world. I caught up with him down at the Fieldays a couple of weeks ago. Although the company managed to produce the best electric fences in the world one year every year somebody from somewhere else—from Taiwan or Sweden or somewhere else—was coming up with something better and if it stayed still it would be left behind so there was the constant relentless business of staying one step ahead of the competition. The business would be hit from the side from one thing or another the exchange rate would go up or you would have earthquakes in Canterbury which meant that insurance costs in New Zealand went up. The consumers in Germany who buy the products do not care a hoot about insurance costs in New Zealand. They just want their things at the same price so companies are relentlessly encouraged to innovate in order to find better ways of doing things and maintaining their competitiveness.So to maintain a business—whether it is out in the country or is one of the countless services businesses in Epsom and Parnell that are exporting services all over the world—and to employ people businesses have to take risks. They are more inclined to take risks if they have confidence about what the Government is doing. If they have confidence that there is a basic stability in the environment in New Zealand then there is an element of predictability. Confidence leads to investment investment leads to jobs and wealth and that is what grows the economy. The latest data from Statistics New Zealand shows that economic growth is indeed picking up providing further evidence that our economic programme is making the country more productive and competitive.The main measure that we use GDP has increased by 3.8 percent in the year to March. That is a tremendous performance in the international context compared with only 3.5 percent in Australia 2 percent in the United States and 0.9 percent in the European area. Statistics New Zealand data also shows that the economy grew by 1 percent in the 3 months to 31 March—a very strong reasonably broad-based approach with positive contributions from construction mining agriculture retail trade and accommodation. So these are the latest in a run of encouraging economic indicators.The challenge for us as a country is to extend this period of growth that we have seen over the last couple of years and that indeed is fundamentally the object of the Business Growth Agenda which is a work in progress. So the six areas that we have been working on over the last 6 years—and we will continue to have a very substantial work programme if we have the opportunity over the next 3 years to continue in Government—are dealing with all the areas that enable New Zealand businesses to be more competitive internationally. So it is opening up access to export markets and I reiterate the concerns of Steven Joyce that we are now in a Parliament where free trade is very much a questionable thing. We think that Labour is still with us but it equivocates more and more. The Greens are implacably opposed. New Zealand First is implacably opposed.Then we look at the capital markets where we have made so much progress with the mixed-ownership model and the strength of capital markets in New Zealand. There is a lot more work to be done there. In terms of innovation this latest Budget led to a huge amount more investment in encouraging New Zealand firms to be more innovative and in providing them with the research capability through Callaghan Innovation and the many programmes that it offers. We hear constantly about the area of inequality notwithstanding the inaccuracy of so many claims and I do note that the OECD announced just today that New Zealand was one of only six developed countries in which both income inequality and disposable income inequality was flat or slightly better between 2007 and 2011 which really shows just what nonsense we have been hearing about the so-called growth of inequality. We have been very successful on that score.But what I would say is that the fundamental driver of inequality is the gap in skills that is emerging. You know 30 or 40 years ago in New Zealand if you had only your muscles to offer to the market you could still do quite well in many industries. That is not the case today and it certainly will not be the case in 20 years’ time. So fundamentally the most important thing we can do to reduce inequality is make sure that everybody gets access to a good education and that is what has been very much the focus of Hekia Parata’s work.If we look at infrastructure the thing that concerns Aucklanders most I think is that we live in a city that is growing dynamic and doing well and people want to come here and they do not want to leave. That is great and the city is growing but when you have a situation like that you do have to invest in infrastructure so that the city keeps moving. We are making a significant contribution around the public transport area but you cannot ignore roads and we do not. Certainly in my area the continuation or the completion of the Waterview tunnel will make a massive difference to congestion around the streets of Epsom and throughout the Auckland isthmus. That is the sort of investment we have to make to make the city grow.When you take the overall picture and see the progress that the country is making under the leadership of John Key and this National Government you have to ask yourself why on earth given all this progress we are making the country would want to lurch off in a strange direction under the leadership of David Cunliffe overturn monetary policy and introduce a whole lot of new taxes. I have never believed that all the problems of the world could be solved by the introduction of a capital gains tax but that seems to be David Parker’s view of the world. Then we hear Grant Robertson talking about new higher rates of taxation. Have they not learnt from France’s most recent example Hollande’s high 75 percent tax rate that high taxes redistribute people not income and wealth? People will just move to avoid taxes.So we are going to overturn the electricity market and become a world leader in carbon taxes—why on earth would we take such a risk when we are making good progress? And why would we risk contrasting a stable Government under John Key with an unstable Government with Hone Harawira Dotcom and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all with David Cunliffe? On that basis I commend this legislation to the House. Thank you.