Little Andrew: Taxation (Annual Rates Foreign Superannuation and Remedial Matters) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Taxation (Annual Rates Foreign Superannuation and Remedial Matters) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 20 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16207. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): It is a great pleasure to speak to the Taxation (Annual Rates Foreign Superannuation and Remedial Matters) Bill. It is not a bill that I followed through the House in great detail nor did I participate in the Finance and Expenditure Committee deliberations on it and I really had only one minor contribution to make in the Committee of the whole House but it is a bill that I feel a great deal of affection for because I think it illustrates one of the distinguishing features between this National Government and the Opposition.It is the fact that this bill once again represents a lost opportunity for this Government. Our colleague Mr Hayes who has just resumed his seat said that this is a bill that will assist with economic growth and that great bounteous virtue will flow from it but it will do nothing of the sort. We know that it confirms existing personal income tax rates. Well that is another lost opportunity because what this country is desperate for is a more progressive scale of taxation. That opportunity has been lost. The National Party’s biggest donors and the biggest income earners in the country have had their benefit. They had their benefit within weeks of this Government being elected in 2008 and the rest of the country has been paying for it ever since and it will continue to pay for it because we are now wallowing in an additional $60 billion of debt racked up by this Government. This bill is a lost opportunity.The bill also deals with a new regime for taxes for the mining industry. There is nothing particularly controversial about that but the mining industry is not the industry of the future. It is not the industry that in 20 30 40 or 50 years’ time is going to be generating the value that this country needs to sustain its citizens to provide for health education support and a coherent society that we have come to expect in this country. It does not. It misses a great opportunity to provide for a capital gains tax. That is agood form of taxation because it is about directing investment incentivising investment away from our preoccupation with property into productive investment—Hon Maryan Street: And R and D.ANDREW LITTLE: —and in research and development and all those other things. How disappointing it is that we do not have an accelerated depreciation regime in this tax bill. That could have been put in there too. That would have assisted the wealth creators and the real value creators in this economy. The truth is that this Government is not a Government that is about long-term wealth creation value addition and lifting the general wealth and harmony of this country. This is a Government obsessed with mucking around in the same puddle of water we have been in frankly for far too long—more primary production more mining more commodity goods to be sold at commodity prices. The challenge for this country is to make the shift in our economy into totally new productive enterprises and into the new economy—the economy that is going to generate real wealth. It is the economy that is going to enable incomes to be lifted and the economy that is actually going to see an improvement in productivity whether it is labour productivity or capital productivity or multifactor productivity.This bill represents everything wrong in this country and it represents everything that this Government stands for and that is do nothing do the barest minimum do a bit of window dressing to make it look like you are doing something but do nothing meaningful that is going to make a long-term difference to New Zealand. Do nothing that is going to inspire some hope and give a bit of inspiration to the young people who are looking around now—teenagers who are looking around—and asking where their place is in the future where their place is in this country and how they are going to generate incomes make their mark and make their way so that they can provide for themselves and their next generation. This bill represents a frustration of ambition and of aspiration. Those are the very things that this Government claims to have been elected on. This bill represents nothing important or big for New Zealand.It is very telling that at the heart of this bill—and one of the other key elements of this bill—is superannuation and the tax regime for repatriating superannuation funds from Kiwis or residents who have worked and saved overseas got superannuation funds overseas settled back here and want to use those funds. What that illustrates is one of the real problems of New Zealand and that is our shallow capital. We are dependent on funds raised overseas to fund our lifestyle and do things over here. That is what this illustrates. This Government—because of its inaction lack of vision and because it does not have a view about where our future wealth is going to be generated from—is presiding over some of the worst inequality in this country. Paul Goldsmith stands up in this House and asks where the evidence is. He does not see it because he is not interested in it. When you live in Parnell you do not see a great deal of inequality because all the $2 million to $5 million houses all look the same.The reality is that there is growing income and asset inequality. There is a generation of young New Zealanders who cannot get into their first house because of the mismanagement of this Government. They know it is going to get worse. They know it is going to get worse when those interest rates start going up next month. They know it is going to get worse. The Government is desperate to spin distract divert attention and make sure nobody notices. The one thing that the Government has been claiming credit for—for the last nearly 6 years—is that interest rates are low which has nothing to do with the Government. It happens to be the result of a worldwide financial crisis which we are still crawling our way out of. Actually interest rates are going to go up because this is a Government that has borrowed nearly $60 billion in its time in Government because it has slashed taxes for the wealthiest and it has done nothing toencourage or promote greater wealth generation. That is the crying shame of this Government.The people of New Zealand are waking up to it. They know it they see it and they are looking around now for alternatives. They have gone off this crowd. They have gone off this crowd because they want better. Working New Zealanders want better for themselves and they want better for their kids and the next generation. Their kids want better for themselves as well. They want a future in New Zealand. They want to do good stuff. They want a Government that is interested in managing an economy in a balanced way asking those who are doing extraordinarily well to contribute a little more asking those who want to work and invest in themselves to make their contribution and asking those who have a clue about value and wealth generation to come forward and be assisted and add to the great things that this great country can do and can do for its people.This bill is a lost opportunity. This bill could have done a lot more. It could have put in place a more progressive personal income tax regime. It could have put in place a capital gains tax. It could have ensured that the once gradual but now rapidly dividing income and asset inequality was actually rectified and addressed. But it does none of that. We are bound to support this bill because it provides the income tax rates that provide the revenue that the Crown needs to carry on doing the bare minimum that it is doing. But the bill offers no vision. It offers no hope. That will be left for the next Government to do which will be a Government focused on the next generation of wealth generation. It will be focused on what this country is going to look like in 20 or 30 years’ time—a great country—and will be a Government focused on the sunlit uplands of a great future with a good economic base a balanced economic base and a happy and prosperous people who do well earn well make their contribution to each other well and who live to enjoy the benefits.