Heatley Phil: General Debate 
Heatley Phil: General Debate 
[Volume:665;Page:12757] 
Hon PHIL HEATLEY (Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture) 
: 
 Labour members have a plan. Their plan is about what they will not do. Will they roll back the GST increases? No. Will they roll back the tax cuts? No. Will they roll back the changes to the Resource Management Act? No. Will they roll back the changes to the Building Act? No. Will they roll back all the roads that Steven Joyce has funded? No. Will they take out the insulation and clean heating that we are going to put into about 180000 houses across the country including 20000 State houses so far? No. Will they take back the couple of hundred million dollars we have invested in schools in the last 18 months? No. In other words Labour members will not reverse a single thing that National has done in the last 15 to 18 months. That is a wonderful test of what they really think about the policies that John Key has led forward so far. 
John Key has put forward a growth enhancing tax system that rewards work rewards effort and rewards saving. He has put forward a depreciation regime whereby property investors can no longer claim depreciation to the extent that they could. I will tell the House what Labour members said when that depreciation regime came in for property investors. They said that it would put up rents and that people on lower incomes would suffer. Do members know what Labour’s answer to that was? It was a capital gains tax. Phil Goff will be campaigning on that at the next election and I am looking forward to it. He believes that a capital gains tax will be the answer and apparently that it will not put up the cost of rents for people on lower incomes. We look forward to that policy being rolled out next year for the next general election. 
Our policies include better smarter public services lifting education and skills and boosting infrastructure. As I have mentioned we have increased funding for roads State housing housing generally with the Warm Up New Zealand package in terms of insulation and clean heating and infrastructure investment into schools. These measures all stimulate the economy during a recession. 
We are cutting red tape and regulation. As I say we have made changes to the Resource Management Act. No one can experience that that change is necessary more than a marine farmer and I will spend some time on that. The previous Government decided to choose marine farming as the horse it was going to flog. The first decision Labour made when it came into Government was to have a moratorium on new marine farms while it thought about solving the problem. The second thing it did with marine farming was pass a second bill to extend the moratorium. It was flogging a dead horse. First Labour shot the horse and it fell down. Then Labour put another bullet in the horse to make sure it was dead. Then Labour passed the marine farming reforms which essentially prohibited marine farming in every area except for areas where the council designated marine farming could occur and no council in the last 5 years has found any new marine farming space for aquaculturalists. In other words Labour resurrected the horse—Phar Lap—and put it on sleeping pills. Labour shot the horse dead resurrected the horse and now it is on sleeping pills. 
This Government when it came into office began the push of aquaculture reforms that will see the industry grow to be worth a billion dollars by 2025. I do not know why Labour members say that they have policy when their only policy is not to reverse everything that National has done and simply to introduce a capital gains tax at the next election.