Tisch Lindsay: General Debate 
Tisch Lindsay: General Debate 
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LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 Well that comment is better than being called “Stubby” which is what the member called me last night in this House. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Can I just ask members to rein in themselves. They should relax and breathe through their noses. Too many personal reflections are occurring in this general debate. 
LINDSAY TISCH 
: I want to place on record that it has been a great year for John Key. It has been a superb year for the National Party and for this team and I place on notice that that member over there will be gone on whatever day the election occurs. He will be gone and that member over there Jill Pettis will have disappeared anyway. Those members will be gone. 
I want to bring to the House’s attention the very serious nature of what is happening in the business environment. This Government prides itself on having done so much for business but all the surveys that have come out show that the compliance cost regimes for business are actually getting extremely difficult and challenging for businesses to abide by. In the last 12 months the average New Zealand company spent 13½ weeks—13½ weeks out of 52 weeks—having to deal with compliance. If we look at the average working week of 40 hours and multiply it by 52 the number of weeks in a year then we see that 2080 hours in the year are available in the workplace. If we take 13½ weeks of that that is 540 hours. A quarter of a year’s productivity is actually wasted on compliance. 
You see we do not have any productivity in New Zealand because we are having to deal with all the compliance issues that have been mounting under this Labour Government over the last 7 years. The cost for small business—that is a business employing fewer than 10 people—is $2400 per employee. For a business that employs 50-plus people it is $780 per year. So I ask Labour members to tell us what happened to their policy to regulate only when necessary and ensure that regulations were fair and effective. If we look at the Quality Regulation Review which was 15 months in the making—15 months—we see that it achieved absolutely nothing. Yet the Minister of Commerce the Hon Lianne Dalziel said: “Nothing of this magnitude has been attempted before but this is a government that has an appetite for working with business to address its concerns.” What a laugh that is. Those are bold statements but it did not happen. 
What happened to KiwiSaver for example? It was only in the Budget that we heard that employers would have to make a compulsory contribution. Where is the consultation in that process? 
John Carter 
: There was none. 
LINDSAY TISCH 
: There was absolutely none. So here we have a statement in which the Minister said that the Government has an appetite for working with business to address its concerns and out of left field comes the KiwiSaver scheme. What about the Electoral Finance Bill? That was meant to have cross-party consultation. There has been absolutely none. There has been no consultation at all. Then those members opposite say they are listening to the concerns that are so important to this Government. 
What did the South Island business leaders have to say? They said that the New Zealand regulatory environment is a chief source of frustration and is the biggest impediment to future profitability. The Business New Zealand - KPMG compliance cost survey echoed those same sentiments. It talked about tax about KiwiSaver about the heavy toll on employment in the Holidays Act and about the negative trends that are happening within business. 
Why are so many of our talented and enterprising New Zealanders deciding that the pastures are greener in Australia? They are better off in Australia. Their prospects are better. They are better off whether they are employed or in business. As we have heard this afternoon many of our talented folk are deciding to go to Australia. If in Australia they are better off by at least $5000 a family we cannot blame them doing that. No doubt there are members in this House who have family members overseas. I have two children who are overseas at the moment. They are living in the UK. 
Because of compliance costs we are not getting the productivity we were expecting to see from a growing economy. I have run out some figures here about the indirect taxes that have been imposed on business. There are four pages of these indirect taxes. 
Jacqui Dean 
: Shameful! 
LINDSAY TISCH 
: It is absolutely shameful. They are taxes that business has no control over. I will list a couple of them. One is road-user charges. Road-user charges came out of left field. The New Zealand Road Transport Association did not even know what was going on. There was no consultation. Here it is—road-user charges: increase in petrol excise duties. I will not go through them all but in the last 3 years they have gone up every year. Accident Compensation Corporation levies are listed here. They are continuing to rise. We have the export education levy—$185 charged to institutions per foreign fee-paying student. This is the sort of nonsense with indirect taxes that is going on with this Government.