Smith Lockwood: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Smith Lockwood: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:606;Page:3335] 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (NZ National—Rodney) 
: 
 Marian Hobbs speaking on the issue of growth has certainly brightened up the evening somewhat. I think she said to us just a moment ago that it is not a matter just of growth but of how we grow. Did I get that right? Let me give the honourable Minister a little bit of advice. If the Cabinet she is a member of carries on implementing the policies that it is currently implementing she will not have to worry about how we grow because we will not be growing. I will come back to that in a moment.  
This afternoon I could not help but wonder as I listened to the Prime Minister’s rather sad dirge what a visitor to this Parliament might think. We had the Prime Minister of our nation making her annual statement to the Parliament. Where were the vision the policy framework and the leadership? Why is it so wrong in Helen Clark’s view to actually dream of something? 
I must be a tiger for punishment because I reread her speech. After listening to it this afternoon I went away and reread it. I want to quote a couple of bits from the Prime Minister’s speech. I ask members to forgive me because I probably cannot quite match her voice but I will try. “The Government however will continue to work alongside stakeholders in the economy on policies and initiatives to lift growth to a sustainably higher plane.” She went on to say: “Growth and innovation was the focus of the economic policy framework released at the time of my Prime Minister’s statement last year. Since then many initiatives have been taken in line with the framework to strengthen the economy’s capacity to grow and we will continue to build on them this year.”  
I recognise that Helen Clark has never been involved in business; that fact is obvious. But she is not an unintelligent person. I think she needs to understand a few things. First Jim Anderton’s little handouts to favoured businesses will not create growth. Setting up the four task forces in chosen sectors that Helen Clark referred to on page 5 of her speech was the one time that she became a little excited. She said: “The information and communications technology task force has already produced a draft report”. So she was excited about that. One of the four task forces to improve and enhance growth has produced a draft report! Merging Industry New Zealand and Trade New Zealand will not enhance growth. Those things are all just tinkering around the edges of it.  
Growth is enhanced where there is maximum freedom—economic freedom—for people to invest in areas of high market return and to work with their employees in increasingly productive ways. That is how one gets real growth. While the Government claims it wants to lift growth to a sustainably higher plane most economic commentators including the OECD say that the economic programme this Government has outlined is negative for growth. It is not just Lockwood Smith and the National Party who are saying that; the whole OECD membership says that. I will go through just a few of the issues. One does not get increased growth by raising the tax burden because there is then less money to invest and one chases away one’s most skilled people who do not like paying half their income in tax. One does not get increased growth when one renationalises workplace accident insurance and the monopoly resulting from that puts costs up.  
One does not get increased growth when one increases regulation across the economy right from the workplace through to telecommunications. Just before Christmas the Government passed the new local government laws which will delay procedures and inevitably increase rates. That will not enhance growth. The Government has passed new occupational health and safety laws to make employers liable for stress in the workplace. Unlike most members of the Government I am an employer. I run a company and I cannot comply with that law. There is no way as a member of Parliament that I can comply with that dopey law. That law will not enhance growth. Also just before Christmas the Government foisted the Kyoto Protocol on to New Zealand business—more bureaucratic costs.  
But let us look to the year ahead. As if what has happened in the last couple of years is not enough we have the Government’s proposed amendments to the Resource Management Act. They will not fix up the compliance costs that are such an imposition on business. Sure the Government will lower taxes for Maori businesses but not for anyone else. That is pretty divisive. The holidays legislation will increase the costs for business. The Prime Minister did not mention continuity of employment and pay equity moves. Those nasty little ones were hidden I suspect in the Prime Minister’s statement that the Employment Relations Act will be reviewed. There are huge compliance costs for business around the continuity of employment stuff that will apply on the sale or contracting out of a business and around the pay equity moves. That will all impose more costs on business.  
 In fact Business New Zealand—that is the organisation of most of the businesses in this country which I guess the Prime Minister has not worked out do actually create the growth—has estimated that the policy moves of this Government will impose $43000 more costs on a small to medium sized business next year. 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: How much? 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH 
: Forty-three thousand dollars more in the costs of doing business in just 1 year. The Prime Minister has the gall to stand in this Parliament and say that her Government and its policies seek to lift New Zealand’s sustainable growth rate. That would be laughable if it were not so serious.  
I would be in breach of privilege if I were to refer to the detail of the submissions I have been reading this evening for the Finance and Expenditure Committee meeting tomorrow. They have not been tabled yet so I cannot refer to them in detail. However they are submissions on the Government’s Budget Policy Statement from the business sector in New Zealand. Without revealing any detail I can say they all point out that the policies of this Government are negative for growth.  
I reread the Prime Minister’s speech and tried to find something that might be positive for growth. I looked at the section on international trade policy. Sure the Government says that it will support the Doha round. However one would expect the Government to do that so it is no big deal. She also said it would support APEC. She mentioned that we have a free-trade agreement with Australia which a previous National Government negotiated. We have a free-trade agreement with Singapore that in fact I initiated. She said the Government was about to initiate a three-way trade agreement involving Chile New Zealand and Singapore. Whoop-de-doo I initiated that concept way back in 1999. In the last 3 years the Government has not done a damn thing on it. Helen Clark comes to Parliament and tries to claim that that is her big trade initiative.  
Where was the inspiration this afternoon from our Prime Minister? It is little wonder that the  
New Zealand Herald 
 survey of 120 business leaders found only 5 percent of them believe that this Government has a coherent strategy for growth. Like my leader Bill English I have no confidence in this Government at all. It is time for a little honesty. When Helen Clark stands in this House and says that the path we have rejected is the discredited direction of the 1990s—on page 7 of her speech—it is time that she became a tiny wee bit honest and admitted that a lot of the recent growth performance of New Zealand is a direct consequence of the policy reforms of the late eighties and the early nineties. It is time that Helen Clark spoke the truth on that.