Nash Stuart: General Debate 
Nash Stuart: General Debate 
[Volume:674;Page:20265] 
STUART NASH (Labour) 
: 
 I think Tim Macindoe spoke for 5 minutes. I did not hear one word he said. I certainly did not hear anything about a plan. Well no there was one thing he said. He talked about my being overseas in the next 3 years. I think he meant when I am overseas as Labour’s Minister of Trade and perhaps Minister of Foreign Affairs. The member pre-empts what will happen in the next Labour Cabinet. I thank him very much for the vote of confidence. 
I have seen the member Paul Quinn sit there and write out about 122 letters. Mr Speaker can you please advise the honourable member that he has to sign only one letter of resignation and it will be accepted. He does not have to hand a letter of resignation to every single member but I am sure that if he did it would be accepted by the other 121 members in this House. 
Tim Macindoe did say one thing that was very right. Mr Macindoe said that at this election the voters have a choice. To use Mr Key’s words this election will be a mandate around the sale of State assets. That is what Mr Macindoe’s leader said. The people of New Zealand have two very clear choices. The Government’s plan is to sell State assets our power companies Air New Zealand Kiwibank etc. The choice is to sell those State assets or keep our assets in New Zealand ownership and have much-needed tax reform. The choice is to sell State assets and retain an unfair tax system or have a fair tax reform and keep State assets. 
The sale of State assets to foreign owners is not a plan for our future. It shows no vision and it represents no plan. In fact it is in the same league as mining our national parks. The only two plans the Government has come up with in 3 years are to sell State assets and mine national parks. The plan to mine national parks was rejected outright and as the Prime Minister said the mandate around the sale of State assets will go the same way. 
Let us be very clear about this: it will not be ma and pa investors who will own our power companies; it will be Australian pension funds US investment partnerships and the Chinese Government. I will tell members why. It is because the vast majority of ma and pa investors around this country are struggling at this point in time to put food on the table petrol in the car clothes on the kids’ backs; to service a mortgage; and to pay their power account. It just shows how out of touch the Minister of Finance in the National Government is if he believes that ma and pa investors can also afford to buy shares. 
Let us be honest Contact Energy is not owned by ma and pa New Zealand investors. Eighty percent of Contact Energy which Mr English privatised in his previous stint as the Minister of Finance is owned by 0.1 percent of the investors. That is $100 million of money that could be coming into the Government coffers but which now goes across to Australia. 
Every single country in the OECD except Switzerland and Turkey has a capital gains tax. The OECD the IMF Treasury the Government’s Savings Working Group and Bill English have all said that New Zealand needs a capital gains tax. This is not rocket science. Fair and equitable tax policy and reform are necessary to ensure that all New Zealanders pay their fair share. The Government’s own Tax Working Group has said: “A capital gains tax is generally said to support the integrity of the tax system by reducing opportunities for tax planning and tax avoidance.” Robin Oliver the recently retired but long-serving Deputy Commissioner of Policy Advice of the Inland Revenue Department wrote: “The concept of a capital gain is not an economic concept; it is a concept from equity law.” 
The voters of New Zealand have two choices: to sell our State assets and retain an unfair tax system or have a fair tax system and retain our State assets. Thank you.