Williams Andrew: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 12 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8420. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First in this debate and again today we have witnessed another example of a clueless Government that basically has run out of ideas. The purler that we have had today is the latest imposition of fringe benefit tax on car-parks for companies in Auckland and Wellington to raise something like $18 million in revenue. You really have to be scraping the barrel when this Government which says it is going to try to help business try to help grow the economy and try to increase New Zealand’s business environment comes out with things like: “Let’s start charging them fringe benefit tax to park their cars as well.” It sort of follows on from other miserable taxes like the taxing last year of schoolboys and schoolgirls delivering their newspapers and all sorts of other miserable little taxes around the edges that really are showing that the Government has run out of ideas and run out of substantive ideas to get this economy really moving again. 
It is very interesting. I have been one of the members of Parliament sitting on the manufacturing inquiry over the last 6 weeks which has been held in Wellington Auckland Christchurch and on Monday Dunedin. It is very interesting to hear from some very significant manufacturers and exporters in this country—iconic names like HamitonJet; we all know HamiltonJet you know one of the greatest manufacturing companies that has come out of New Zealand—and for them to be saying how much they are really struggling and finding it difficult to compete in world markets with the New Zealand dollar where it is today up around US83c US84c or US85c. They are saying that it is so difficult and that this Government is really not coming up with any ideas. Not only is it not coming up with any ideas but also it is not prepared to listen to the ideas that are being suggested by some of these very reputable companies. Ideas— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Give us one. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: Yes I will. Thank you Gerry I will give you one. There are ideas such as in the United States where they were seeing a huge vacuum of companies disappearing off to China to manufacture in China. In the United States they have brought in a 40 percent write-down on new technology and equipment in the first year. As a result of bringing in that new policy in the United States they have seen a regeneration of productive US companies that actually are now finding that they are more competitive with their plants in the United States as a result of having those write-downs on new technology and equipment. They are actually gearing up and retooling in the United States and are moving their production back onshore. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Name one. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: So there is one. There is one. Is it not interesting? When you have a proper inquiry when you do not stay up on the ninth floor or the eighth floor or the seventh floor of the Beehive and ignore the country but you actually go out and listen to the companies and the manufacturers and you sit down and you listen to some of their suggestions it is quite amazing. You also hear that manufacturing provides stable long-term good employment with good wages—reliable wages that a family can take home and bank they can go to their bank manager and get a mortgage and they can have a house and work. Many of these jobs that are being lost in manufacturing are turning into precarious jobs such as part-time jobs—jobs that are not giving any reliability—and time and time again we have heard of downscaling and downsizing of companies in New Zealand retrenching and laying off staff. And those very staff who supposedly do not go on to a benefit—as we heard if they have already got one partner working they are not counted as going on to a benefit so they do not appear in the statistics—often then go to precarious part-time semi - part-time work which then does not bring into the family sufficient income which they have been used to. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: That’s not right. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: It is right. It is right. I am sorry Mr Brownlee but we have heard that from many many many sources. And when you hear it from some manufacturers in Auckland and you hear it from manufacturers in Dunedin who are 1500 kilometres apart and who have no connection between the two of them there is obviously something going on there. It is going to be interesting that when the results of this manufacturing inquiry come out they will point a direction for New Zealand that we can uphold. And if the Government is smart it would actually embrace the findings of that inquiry. It would say: “Yes we can learn from this and we should not be that arrogant”—