Foss Craig: Westpac New Zealand Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Foss Craig: Westpac New Zealand Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:633;Page:5227] 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 I rise to speak in the Committee stage of the Westpac New Zealand Bill. First of all I would like to note that the National Party is supporting this bill. It has supported the bill at its first reading through the Finance and Expenditure Committee and at its second reading. We are happy to help the progress of this bill through Parliament. The bill comes with a couple of small amendments that came from the select committee process and again we endorse those amendments. We are quite happy with the bill in its current form. I thank the honourable member Marian Hobbs for her work in steering this bill in its various stages through the Parliament and for the way in which she has been more than open to consideration and discussion around the bill. 
It is an interesting reflection to get up now and speak in the Committee stage of a bill like this given the behaviour we have seen in the Chamber over the last 3 or 4 hours. It is a nice change I think. I guess people listening out there can now turn down the volume on their radios. It is certainly a pleasure not to have to listen to some of the diatribes and the gutter politics that we have heard here today. Mud has been thrown around and believe me if people are worried about where politicians stand in various trust surveys I think they will find that today they just went down again. 
On 1 November 2006 the largest New Zealand transaction in history will take place. It is a transaction of about NZ$35 billion affecting 1.3 million – odd customers. Some are individuals and many are corporates. Interestingly and I will come to this point later Westpac in its current form is the Government’s banker and of course the incorporated Westpac New Zealand will also be the Government’s banker. That raises interesting questions over who wrote and signed various cheques and about the cash flows going through Government accounts particularly in relation to last September. 
This bill incorporates Westpac New Zealand Ltd. It is a coming of age for Westpac. This argument and discussion has been going on for a long time in financial circles in New Zealand and between the Reserve Bank and Westpac. Interestingly of what are known as the four pillars of Australian banks—the ANZ National Australia Bank the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Westpac—Westpac is the last one to be incorporated here. I congratulate members officials and Reserve Bank members on working their way through the ramifications of this. If we look at the share price of the two different companies we see that they have converged somewhat as the incorporation has come closer. 
I am a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee that considered this bill heard submissions on it and reported it back to Parliament. I must say that it is a very good committee to be on. There is a very strong standing of National Party members on that committee—myself Mr John Key Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith and Chris Tremain. We bring a lot of gravitas to that committee. Currently the Finance and Expenditure Committee is also considering the Taxation (Annual Rates Savings Investment and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. That bill will affect Westpac and the new Westpac New Zealand. It will hammer those who have provided for their retirement savings by putting a capital gains tax on their unrealised earnings in countries outside New Zealand and Australia and in what is under that other bill almost effectively a country the Guinness Peat Group. Some of the submissions that have been heard so far on the taxation bill—and many of those submitters are customers of Westpac and will be customers of the new Westpac New Zealand—are almost unanimous in their opposition to the bill in its current form which will create huge anomalies. Quite frankly I do not know how Westpac New Zealand will be able to address and manage those problems in its back office. 
The new Westpac New Zealand will be affected by the taxation bill because the bill affects migrants who are thinking about coming to New Zealand. Of those migrants who have already arrived in New Zealand many are thinking about leaving. Goodness gracious! We have a capital deficit in New Zealand. We have a higher taxpayer deficit although inflation has dealt to that. Twenty percent of people are on the 39c tax rate now. Many people are feeling sold out let down and deceived by the Labour Government. The Government has said to those people over the last 6 or 7 years: “Come to New Zealand invest your money here.” and once they have landed here suddenly they have been whacked with a capital gains tax that was not even on the horizon when they first talked about coming here. 
Westpac New Zealand is the Government banker. It is responsible for managing the cash flows in and out of various accounts. It will be interesting once various reports come out from the Auditor-General etc. to see who signed what authorisations and what prudential requirements were adhered to when the cheque for $446000 was signed by someone in the Beehive for the pledge card—or perhaps it was signed by the Parliamentary Service but with the authorisation of someone in the Beehive. We are yet to find that out but we look forward to that. It will come out in time. 
 This Westpac New Zealand Bill is one amongst a few other bills going through Parliament at the moment. We have recently seen the KiwiSaver Bill go through. That legislation made fundamental changes to the savings industry of New Zealand particularly in terms of the last-minute changes that were rammed through 4 hours before the second reading the scope of which even Labour members were totally oblivious to at the time. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand Amendment Bill and the taxation bill are also currently before the Finance and Expenditure Committee. All these bills contain quite fundamental changes and taken as a whole they are a giant lurch backwards for New Zealand and for investment in New Zealand. 
Coming back to the Westpac New Zealand Bill I say again that National supports it given the integrity of the Reserve Bank the submitters who came before the Finance and Expenditure Committee the Australian officials who were also involved in this bill and the officials from the various New Zealand Government departments. I thank those people very much. National looks forward to this legislation and we look forward to everything going very well and very smoothly from 1 November.