Clark David: Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Covered Bonds) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clark David: Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Covered Bonds) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8140. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to follow that contribution from Mr Bennett which was more fulsome and thoughtful than his usual contributions in this House are. 
This particular piece of legislation the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Covered Bonds) Amendment Bill protects big business. What this piece of legislation does is protect big business. Labour will be supporting this bill for the very reason that it does also achieve something else. It preserves New Zealand’s trading environment it makes it more stable and it makes our country a little more secure in the tides of international change. So for that reason we will be supporting it but we do it with reservation because it does also advantage big business over small business. It advances the interests of large international players— 
David Bennett 
: Rubbish! What a load of rubbish! 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: —over local small-business interests. Mr Bennett says that is rubbish. With respect I suggest that he has not understood the issue if that is his view because there is a range of reasons why it advantages big business. The first is because they are the first in the queue to redeem their money when a business goes flop. That is plain and simple—clear. That is what the whole legislation is designed to achieve. It is designed to attract those big businesses so that we have investment in New Zealand but in return for that it advantages their interests when a business goes flop and says: “You get the first call on the money.” That means small businesses miss out. Inevitably that is what it means because the big business has gone flop and then there is a queue of people after that who might receive some payment if they are lucky if there is enough to go around. With respect I need to point out to Mr Bennett who sat on the Finance and Expenditure Committee that he clearly has not understood the legislation if that is what he thinks. 
I also want to speak more widely about how this particular legislation fits with a pattern because it does fit with a pattern of a National Party that hates small business it seems. National is constantly disadvantaging small business and I want to bring several examples to bear on this. The National Party in this term in Government has forwarded a series of legislative pieces that I have observed really do disadvantage small business such as the one we have just talked about with the way in which big business is advantaged through these covered bonds. It has stretched it out to 10 percent. I contend—and I think several of my colleagues would agree—that it could be less. It could be 8 percent of the total financial interest that is protected in this way and we would still get the same result. That is what they do in Australia. In Canada it is as low as 4 percent. So the Government has stretched that envelope to say that big business here is protected more than it is in Australia and over twice as much as it is in Canada. That is the road it has gone down with this covered bonds legislation. 
It is also true if we look at recent examples such as Mainzeal Property and Construction which we know has just gone belly up. Who are missing out here? It is the individual contractors the small-business folk who are missing out who cannot get their tools back who cannot get on to earn further money and who are further down the queue. Labour is proposing solutions to make sure that small businesses which are the lifeblood of our economy are looked after and that the interests of individuals who work hard—those Kiwis who work hard to help New Zealand to help us get ahead—are looked after. We see National sitting on its hands. We hear those members saying “Oh well. Oh well the big businesses are OK. They’ll get out. They’ll pass the contract on to another big business. Big business will be fine.” They seem unconcerned by the flow-on effects from the Mainzeal collapse and we think that is wrong. 
When it comes to the minimum wage I had a bill earlier this year that would have raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour. That bill would have actually advantaged small and medium businesses over larger enterprises. The chain stores that aim for the bottom price that give the lowest wages to their staff and that force wages down would have been forced to bring their wages up to the level that you get at the local fish and chip shop or the local retailer who say: “I know my one or two staff and I know how much it costs to raise their families and I value them as employees and therefore I am going to pay above the minimum wage.” So they are already paying a bit more. The playing field would have been levelled a little if all of those big less scrupulous players had been forced to raise their wages to match them. The small-business people would have been advantaged through that minimum wage legislation. Unfortunately again National sought to defeat it as soon as it could because it is interested in big business only. It is not really interested in those small contractors in the individuals in the workers and in those entrepreneurs in New Zealand who have not yet amassed a scale that is international. 
Another thing that we have observed from this Government is red tape. This Government has introduced red tape particularly in the taxation area. It has brought in extra costs for businesses for example and even for contractors. If people are employing paper boys for example now they must report and keep full records about how they pay them. It is the same with after-school cleaners. There is a whole lot of extra red tape. We will see it in the child support legislation as well. The Government will be expecting business owners to take on some extra reporting tasks. It is the kind of thing this Government does without compensating small-business owners because it says that they should just absorb the costs or they should move out of the way. 
We see it in the amalgamations in the rest home sector. We are seeing it in the district health boards at the moment. Things are being amalgamated in the interests of big business in the interests of international players. We have seen it in Dunedin. Presbyterian Support has lost an important contract. The biggest local provider with all the local experience has lost out to an Australian-owned provider that has no experience in delivering home support services and the Government’s fingerprints are all over it. The Government is interested in big business and it does not care about the small providers in New Zealand. 
We see it too with our high interest rate. This Government refuses to give the Reserve Bank extra tools to manage New Zealand’s interests in terms of economic growth and employment. It says: “We’re sticking with the 1980s economics. We’re sticking with inflation. That works for big business. There is no problem to see here.” But there is a problem. We see it in the manufacturing sector in a kind of advanced way—not in the primary sector; the primary sector keeps turning out milk products and that is a good thing. But in the secondary manufacturing sector 17000 jobs were lost last year—17000 jobs. Those are Kiwi jobs that have been lost because of this Government’s neglect. It refuses to admit that the model is not working. It refuses to acknowledge that unemployment is the highest since National was last in Government. It refuses to admit that real wages have not grown under this Government. It is interested only in protecting its corporate mates. 
We see in all of those examples that small-business folk in New Zealand are disadvantaged. Those members over there hate small business—they hate small business. [ 
Interruption 
] I hear them baying for small business’ blood across the House. They do not want to see small-business people get ahead. They do not want to see entrepreneurs succeed. They are interested only in protecting vested money. That is true because National is the party of capital. It is the party of protecting vested money. That is that party’s interest. Those members are not in the Labour Party. They are not interested in those who are working to make their way up through the system those hard-working Kiwis who put their own savings on the line to start small businesses. 
Another example is just yesterday in this House we were debating my member’s bill to Mondayise Waitangi Day and Anzac Day. We know that the only survey done of business on that topic saw 50 percent of small-business owners in favour of it and 37 percent neutral. The reason that small business is either neutral or in favour of my bill—87 percent support the bill or are neutral towards it—is that small-business owners know they want to have time out with their families and friends as much as anyone else does and they want to know that their partners and their families can get that time off in a reliable way every year not just 5 years out of 7. Small-business owners want those holidays but again National is not listening. It gets lobbied by the big-business groups and says: “No we don’t care about tourism. No we don’t care about what small-business owners think. We’re going to go our own way. We will listen to the 13 percent who oppose it maybe and we might listen to big business but we are certainly not listening to small business generally and their opinions because we don’t believe in small business.” 
That is what National says. That is what National says in the legislation it passes. That is what it says in the moves that it makes and the things that it is not fixing in our economy. The things in our economy that are disadvantaging small business are advantaging big business and that is whom it is trying to protect with this covered bonds legislation. That is whom it is trying to protect generally. This shows that the National Party is not interested in hard-working Kiwis who want to get ahead want to save and are saving and want to do the best for themselves and their families. This Government is determined to protect the interests of big capital and that is overall bad for New Zealand. It is affecting all of us in a negative way. I would encourage National members to rethink their position on this. They could move an amendment I am sure to lower the threshold for covered bonds to do one small thing for small business. 
There are many more things they could do for small business—I have outlined several in this speech—and I am hoping that this Government will prick up its ears because small business is the lifeblood of New Zealand and the longer National shows that it detests small business the worse things become in New Zealand. Our economic growth record which is the worst in 50 years under this Government will continue to be poor until this Government learns that small business is important.