Cosgrove Clayton: Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and Remedial Matters) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCosgrove Clayton: Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and Remedial Matters) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2684. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): I like the last speaker Alastair Scott. He is like a salmon that just jumps on your hook this guy. He is very good. You know salmon; you are out there—he just jumps on the hook every time. I was very complimentary to him yesterday. In the spirit of bipartisanship I am going to illustrate how honest this guy is. Yesterday he stood up in the House—I mean he made the best fist of it he could today. Maurice you have got to give him some happy pills. He was so enthusiastic about this! It was like watching paint dry listening to the speech. The propaganda from the National Party research unit almost had to be winched out of him like razor wire.Yesterday of course he said a couple of very honest things and his constituents should be proud of him. He confirmed yesterday that this policy this so-called big-hit housing policy will be the equivalent to—I will quote him because I wrote it down—“$10 per week”. It is $10 per week that people will be allowed to use as they withdraw a huge amount of their own money $521 of their own superannuation and they should be grateful to this Government for it. Ten dollars a week is what they will be able to use when Auckland house inflation is going up by $1700 per week. He used the words “10 bucks a week”. I commend him for his honesty but I say again he is like the political salmon that just impales himself on the hook.Then of course he used those infamous words. I am sure you will be interested in this: he used words that Gerry Brownlee would not use as Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery that Nick Smith as housing Minister would not use that none of Cabinet—the Prime Minister the finance Minister would ever use. They would never use the words he did. He said that this policy would go some way to resolving the “housing crisis”. He admitted—and I commend him for it; he has probably been beaten within an inch of his life metaphorically by the whips last night for making that speech and being so honest—there is a housing crisis.Yet today he comes out and says that “it is not yet a housing bubble in Auckland”. Well I do not know what sort of jungle juice he brought up from the vineyard in the Wairarapa and laid out on the caucus room bar of the National Party last night and imbibed but there is either a housing crisis and a housing bubble or not—you cannot have it one way or another. Then he said last night that the other plank to the National Party’s great housing policy that would help—Alastair Scott: Try something original. Don’t quote me all the time.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Oh no no no—plagiarism is the best compliment you can pay somebody mate. I want to repeat it and we want the Hansard printed off of your speech last night because we want to distribute it right around the country with you being the only honest man or woman in this debate around this mean-spirited bill.He went on to say that loan-to-value ratios would help first-home buyers. I do not know—I did as I said last night get through standard 4 economics and last time I checked when you are required to have a larger deposit in a loan-to-value ratio situation and your income stays roughly the same then that makes it tougher to get into a new home. But I suppose if you are out there in amongst the vines treading the grapes walking through the vines and pathways of that wonderful place Wairarapa you could maybe get a wee bit out of touch.I want to make a couple of other comments in respect of this bill. What is shocking in this bill is the way our veterans have been treated. Mr Goff made a very interesting point throughout this debate.Hon Members: Ha ha!Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: They can laugh in the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli—they can laugh—yet this Government had the arrogance to not even ring up the RSA and say: “By the way we’ve made a mess. We had your pensions taxed gross. We’re going to have to retrospectively pull it back.” The chief executive officer of the RSA the national body did not know this bill was going through. I would have thought that out of respect the National Party would ring. Say take Chris Finlayson—a man who has done much for veterans in terms of the cultural and heritage portfolio a man who has respect for veterans—Hon Christopher Finlayson: My great park.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Indeed his great park. It may be called in years to come the Finlayson Park—maybe. There may be a small plaque in the corner of the park honouring the Minister and I would support that. But at least he has shown those veterans respect. Throughout this debate no Minister has got up and even given an explanation as to why they did not even contact the RSA. No person in the department was instructed to ring the RSA and say: “Look we’ve made a mess-up.”—“we” being the Government—“We apologise for this and here are the statistics and the amount that we are going to have to claw back from our veterans.” That may indeed smack of arrogance.So what we have here is a pretty mean-spirited bill. It is Alastair Scott’s $10-a-week bill: $10 a week as house prices in Auckland go up by $1700 a week in terms of house price inflation which ironically equates to $90000. They talk about 90000 people who will be helped by this. I am sure those 90000 will be down on their bended knees thanking the Government for allowing them to use their own $10 a week that they were putting into their superannuation looking at it and going: “This isn’t a drop in the bucket. This isn’t even a bit of mist or steam over the bucket. This is basically nothing.”I say to all those other members including Mr Bennett and others—apart from Mr Scott who at least has treated the constituency with respect and been honest—that they should be honest take Mr Scott’s example with their constituencies and tell them how it is. Because people can add up—maybe not everybody on that side—but people in the communities can add up and they will work this out very quickly. They will work out that they are up against it and that $10 a week up against $1700 of price inflation in Auckland is going to do nothing for them except allow them to chew up a little bit of their own money in their own superannuation.There has been a bit of talk about our policies and all this sort of Polish shipyard nonsense that comes out from a couple of those newbies over there as if a Government is going to stand up and build have all the officials come out reconstruct the Ministry of Works and have them out there with—Hon David Parker: We certainly wouldn’t employ John Key on a hammer.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Indeed. They would have them all out on the hammers building houses. No no; what the Government can do though is partner—Hon Maurice Williamson: You’re getting the Greens all excited now.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Oh Maurice would be all right on a hammer; or a hacksaw I suspect is more Maurice’s weapon of choice.Hon Maurice Williamson: A hatchet. I’m better with a hatchet.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: A hatchet indeed. Yes well there is a bit of history there Mr Williamson as you know. But I would say that the simple equation is this. Governments can borrow money cheaper than anybody else. These guys have made an art form of it over the last 7 years. But you partner with the private sector you back the private sector and you get it to do what it does best—not the Government—to build those houses. But the actual Government has a part to play in assisting and backing the private sector. I am a free marketer but I do believe that where appropriate there needs to be some surgical interventions.Mr Scott got up and said the market must be allowed to do its thing and in general terms that is right. But you do not do it to an extreme where Mr Scott and his ilk are just quite happy to see tens of thousands of young—and not so young—Kiwis languish without any hope of getting on the first-home buyer ladder that he and I and others have had the privilege of getting on. His view is: “To hell with you.” His view is that the Government has no place even surgically intervening even partnering with the private sector as we have proposed to get it to de-risk some of these large housing projects so the private sector will do the work for us.Hon David Parker: And sell them.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: And sell them of course. And sell them and return the money back to the taxpayer as Mr Parker reminds me. What is wrong with that? But these geniuses over here as they try to bluff their way through this bill and try to hoodwink the public by saying how generous they are as a Government also bluff the public. As if a Government is going to go out and build 10000 Coronation Streets. I mean guys look give us a break. I will give you some advice. Lift your game. Come up with a better bit of propaganda than that because no one believes you. Sam Lotu-Iiga is grinning there. He is a sophisticated guy. You will not get him standing up with this piffle. He will be buried under the desk. He does not want to be associated with this.So I will give some advice to the new people there: lift your game. Maurice tell the National Party research unit to come up with a little bit better propaganda that is even just slightly believable. The numbers do not add up the propaganda is unworthy the research notes are pathetic and the speeches from that side show they are not even proud of their own legislation. There are a few bright guys over there but I think they have worked out that it is a mean-spirited bill that puts the boot into our veterans that has arrogantly—arrogantly—trod on our veterans and not even given them the courtesy of explaining why this happened. Ten bucks a week—it is pathetic it is piffle and no one believes it. I look forward to cyclostyling off Mr Scott’s speech and whipping around the odd vineyard and the odd house in Wairarapa and having a wee chat to the locals.