Hide Rodney: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hide Rodney: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17813. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 The mistake we are making in this debate is that we are concentrating a lot on the surplus and not enough on Government expenditure. It is not just the surplus that should be returned to New Zealanders but also a whole lot of Government spending that this Government has overseen which is a disgrace. Just last week we learnt that hard-working Kiwis are being squeezed so they are no better off that they are paying more in tax than they have ever done in their lives and that Jim Anderton is taking money so he can spray it around multinational companies and their multimillion-dollar chief executives. Then we discovered that when the Auditor-General went in there to have a squiz the officials did not even know whom they had been giving it to. 
John Key 
: Did they know who Jim Anderton was? 
RODNEY HIDE 
: They did not even know where Jim Anderton was. They could not find where that taxpayers’ money was going. They said it was spent last year and they did not have records on it because they had been “updating our systems ”. 
John Key 
: Was it a few thousand? 
RODNEY HIDE 
: It was a few million. Jim Anderton said that there had been some problems because the officials had not been dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” and they were not into very much red tape. 
Here is another thing that the Auditor-General found out about how this Government spends taxpayers’ money. He found that New Zealand Trade and Enterprise—which Helen Clark used to talk about once and which Jim Anderton used to want to get on TV and on radio to talk about at every opportunity and then suddenly he was nowhere to be seen—that great department was spending money without regard to Cabinet criteria. So the Government which Mr Copeland will vote to support in terms of this bill was taking taxpayers’ money and spending it contrary to the intent of Parliament and Cabinet. That is what it was doing. Does this Government care about that? No. 
What else did we find out from the Auditor-General’s report? We found that the money was being taken off hard-working taxpayers and spent and there was no monitoring or follow-up. I would like to know what Mr David Cunliffe thinks about that. 
John Key 
: He is happy with it. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Mr Cunliffe is over the moon about it. 
John Key 
: He’s ecstatic! 
RODNEY HIDE 
: He is ecstatic over it. 
John Key 
: Business as normal! 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Well it is not his money; why would he worry? Mr Cunliffe is sitting over an administration that first does not know where some of the money has been spent second spent money not according to the criteria that Cabinet has laid down and third spent it without any monitoring. Do members know what Jim Anderton’s response was? He said that the Auditor-General did not find that it was not effective spending. 
John Key 
: He did not know who Jim Anderton was. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Well actually there is a reason for that: the Auditor-General could not find the spending. He could not find where the money was being spent let alone determine whether it was effective spending. 
This Government has no comprehension of what it is to work hard pay one’s taxes have nothing left at the end of the week and watch a socialist greedy Government—headed up by Michael Cullen sitting in that chair by David Cunliffe—that is awash with taxpayers’ cash spend it like there is no tomorrow. The Government is piling up surpluses like some giant Scrooge McDuck swimming in cash and telling New Zealanders that they can go and eat cake. 
I just say this to the United Future party. The United Future party is right about the need for lower taxes. Its amendments to this bill are right. All that the United Future party members need to do is to vote according to their principles vote according to what they have said in this Committee they stand for and vote according to what they told the New Zealand people they were going to Parliament to do. They should stop criticising the Government and just vote against this dopey bill. That is all that United Future needs to do.