Key John: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — In Committee 
Key John: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:16497] 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 One has to get up early in the morning to get past the Hon David Cunliffe but even he could spot that the aim of the Opposition’s attack tonight would be this Government—a Government that just loves to tax ordinary New Zealanders. It loves to tax hard-working New Zealanders businesses and people up and down the country. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Gouge the tax out! 
JOHN KEY 
: It loves to gouge their eyes out. Dr Smith is absolutely correct. The Government loves to take money off hard-working New Zealanders and waste it on absolutely anything it can point a stick at. “How big is that spending?” one might sit back and ask. It is $34 billion worth of additional taxes brought in by this Government—$34 billion in the last 5 years and the Minister of Finance had the gall to come before the Finance and Expenditure Committee and tell it that there is no room for tax cuts going forward. He had the gall to tell the people of New Zealand that they have paid $34 billion—something like 18 additional taxes bringing in money from every part of the economy—and that there is no room for tax cuts. But he did even better than that. When he was before the Finance and Expenditure Committee and we asked him about the petrol tax the extra 5c a litre—yet another tax Labour is bringing in—and the amount of roading that will be built on the back of that $200 million he said code for: “I’m not going to bring in the tax before the election because I’m very unpopular with the amount of taxes I’m collecting. But what I will do is to put on hold all the additional new road construction that would have been done by this Government because fiscally we can’t afford it.” The Government has a $7.4 billion operating surplus and a $6.6 billion operating balance excluding revaluations and accounting charges. It is funding its entire capital programme out of cash and it still has available spending to repay debt—but it cannot afford it! 
The United Future party came up with a Supplementary Order Paper. Parts of it are not necessarily what we would do in tax policy but we support it. The Government will not support it. The Government will not support its own partner—a partner that it has a confidence and supply relationship with. There must have been great negotiations around the Cabinet table when United Future came in and said: “Well we didn’t get a place at the Cabinet table but we decided we’d support you through thick and thin on confidence and supply. But by the way we’re going to veto your tax bill because it will give $700 million to $900 million worth of relief to hard-working New Zealanders. But we’ll tell you what: we’ll go out and spend the money for you better.” How will they spend it? Well their track record frankly is abysmal. There are billions of dollars more for health in this country yet fewer operations are being done. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Oh rubbish! 
JOHN KEY 
: That is right. Fewer operations are happening throughout the country. Poor New Zealanders are not on waiting lists because Labour has got rid of waiting lists. It has redefined them with some other PC flaky term. Basically unless a person cannot see cannot hear cannot walk cannot talk or cannot do anything then he or she is not allowed to be on a waiting list—because that is embarrassing when a Government is spending billions of dollars more of taxpayers’ dollars. Then we had the debacle around Steve Maharey’s ministry where people at all sorts of polytechs around the country were charging the Government for courses they were supposedly undertaking but really were not doing at all or for courses that had not provided any value at all. That is the idea of this Government; it simply wants to raise taxes—$34 billion additional taxation. 
On Monday of this week we released some data that I think the Government would be well-advised to look at. It showed that the increase in real nominal after-tax wages in New Zealand has been about 3 percent over the last 5 years. So New Zealanders’ average after-tax wages have gone up by about 3 percent over the last 5 years which is less than 1 percent a year. Mr Cunliffe smiles with embarrassment like a Cheshire cat that has caught something and Dr Cullen is hiding somewhere within the precincts of the building I am sure because he is embarrassed that at exactly the same time the Government’s revenue has gone up by 25 percent in real terms. In nominal terms it has gone up 40 percent—$34 billion—but in real terms it has gone up 25 percent. To put it another way—and to put it simply so the Minister can understand it—for every $7 of value that this economy has produced $6 has stayed with the Government. Is that fair?