Upston Louise: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeUpston Louise: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 10 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:8859. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Land Information): It is somewhat surprising to follow a Green member—well actually no it is not—when actually they think the worst thing a Government could do is focus on growing the economy. Well guess what? A growing economy is good for families it is good for communities and it is good for our country.It is always fascinating to follow the Greens when they focus on lifting children out of hardship which is absolutely what this side of the House is committed to and focused on and that is absolutely why we focus on growing the economy. Until we are focused on growing our incomes improving the quality of life for New Zealanders well guess what? We will still have children in hardship.It is why on this side of the House we have fed more than 6 million children breakfast in schools. But as the Prime Minister said today every single child in New Zealand has that opportunity. This is a Government that is absolutely clearly focused on growing the economy because of the benefits it delivers to hard-working New Zealanders. It is just staggering that the Opposition forget that actually you cannot have a growing income and you cannot have families who have more in their pockets every week and each week without having a growing economy.So we are focused on—yes—creating more jobs creating higher incomes providing greater opportunities for each and every New Zealander. So it is interesting—[Interruption] I do not know where those members have been over the Christmas break but I want to talk about some of the comments that have come from constituents in the Taupō electorate because the real kind of attitude out there is a really positive confident attitude. Whether you are a business owner whether you are a mum or whether you are an exporter that is the common thread. Whether it is Cambridge or whether it is Tūrangi the atmosphere is one of just quiet confidence.They like the stability. They like the fact that this Government has a clear plan and that we are delivering on it each and every day. And when the Prime Minister stood in the House yesterday gosh that list was long. Yes he had to rush through some of it because he would not have been able to get through all of it in the 20 minutes allocated so I want to cover a few of those that are particularly pertinent to my electorate and the people I represent and also to touch on some of the plans of work for the constituency.Of course I would start given that in my electorate the majority of the jobs are in farming forestry and tourism—well guess what? The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is a very good deal for the constituents in my electorate. It means they get to export more they get to create more jobs they get to employ more locals and they get to take on more apprentices from our community. And actually I think that is fantastic news for families in my electorate because that is what they want. They want to have a clear plan from the Government which is exactly what we have and they want to be able to have a plan for their young people in terms of education and training. They want to go into a career that has fantastic prospects and absolutely we do have a plan.But I am staggered that members on that side of the House have quite happily crowed about the benefits of the New Zealand - China free-trade agreement—and even in this very debate they have done that—and yet they are sitting there saying: “Oh we won’t support the TPP agreement.” Well if I look at businesses and families in my electorate what do they want? They know that we grow the economy by selling more to the world. So whether it is a tourism operator who is running a jetboat in Cambridge or whether it is a new geothermal forestry plant that is doing value-add for our wood processing in Taupō that is what counts because until we are growing our markets overseas we are not going to grow our jobs and our incomes at home.I want to touch on a couple of specific things in the electorate that I think are worthy because we have heard it here—this is the infrastructure Government. It was really interesting last year when I surveyed all of my constituents. The top issue that they talked about was infrastructure. So of course on 15 December it was fantastic to open the Cambridge section of the Waikato Expressway because that is about jobs for locals but more important than that it is about safe transport and it is about getting our goods to market faster and that is just one of the sections of the Waikato Expressway which is one of our roads of national significance. But you would not get that road if the Labour Party was in Government. I do not know about you but if you have not driven on it yet I would encourage you to. It is a beautiful stretch of road.In terms of infrastructure broadband is also incredibly important. If you look at the Waikato over 250 schools—whether it is new entrants intermediate or high school—are now connected. So as a mother of three teenagers I know how connected they are both from a social perspective and from a learning perspective. There is absolutely no way that we can have schools in our country that are not connected and providing that learning opportunity for our children. So it is fantastic to see the ongoing investment that is coming but also the anticipated 4000 jobs that come from that level of investment.I think one of the other things I want to touch on given the Waikato is also the unemployment rate. The national figures have just come out at 5.3 percent; Waikato is at 5.1 percent. But the particular aspect of it is that we have seen in the last year that women have the highest levels of participation ever. I think that is really fantastic because if you are talking about what makes a difference to families it is the income that comes in the door to support each individual family. So I think that is a fantastic result that we have had in the last year.We have talked about export. Another key part of growing our economy comes from attracting investment. So one of the pieces of work that I will be progressing this year as the Minister for Land Information is the Overseas Investment Office fees review. As I have said in the House before we have got to make sure that we are maintaining that balance of New Zealand being open for business but also protecting the rights for New Zealanders and making sure that those investors who are looking at the opportunity understand that it is a privilege to own land and assets in New Zealand.So an extension of that is the tax compliance work that we put into place last year to make sure that everyone—whether they are a foreigner or a New Zealander—who is investing in residential housing is paying their fair share of tax. I object to the comment from the Greens member before me Kevin Hague that suggested that this side of the House is not tightening up on property taxation. I would struggle to list fewer than 10 things that we have done to tighten up tax compliance for a whole range of areas but very definitely at the top of that list is property compliance. We think that if you are due to pay tax you should pay it. That is fair and square. So whether you are earning a lot or a little we want to make sure that you are paying your fair share of taxation.The other thing I want to touch on which is not something that gets aired a lot in this House is the Open Government Information and Data Work Programme.As the Minister for Land Information I am proud to lead this piece of work. And it is really important because as the Prime Minister said in his statement yesterday our focus is on social investment for public services which is getting better results through evidence-based data. So whether it is the Data Futures Partnership or whether it is the Statistics New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure programme it is about making more of the Government data available to others—public sector private sector and civil society—because it is actually the use of that data that we will use to grow our economy.The final point I want to touch on is the 1 April changes which I think are incredibly beneficial for New Zealand families. Yes we focus on a growing economy. Why do we do that? Because at the end of the day we want to provide more for those hard-working families. On 1 April we are increasing paid parental leave but more important than that we are actually making it far more flexible so that it will work for more New Zealand families and there will be more families who are entitled to get support in those first critical weeks and months of a baby’s life.National is focused on supporting families whether it is increasing paid parental leave whether it is extending free GP visits or whether it is helping more Kiwis to get into their first home. We are focused on increasing our exports and growing our economy but we do that so we can better support Kiwi families. We are still focused on what matters to New Zealanders.