Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I remember in this chair about a year ago standing and asking the economic development spokesperson for this Government Mr Parker what he thought about the falling business confidence levels in this country. It was plunging in the middle of last year down to levels not seen since the global financial crisis which everybody thought was a bit strange given the fact that the New Zealand economy had great momentum was still growing strong and yet business confidence was falling through the floor. And what did Mr Parker say? He said Oh business confidence surveys are junk—they're junk and they don't mean anything." Well funnily enough since that point—since that point when business confidence surveys were showing that confidence was falling through the floor—the New Zealand economy has slowed down and we've seen clear evidence of that today and in the last few months. So we've seen in the last half of last year New Zealand's real GDP per person has gone zero—has not grown at all. So as a result of the falling level of business confidence a result of people keeping their hands in their pockets and not investing in new businesses not taking new chances not starting new businesses and buying new plant and investing in growth the New Zealand economy is slowing. Now people are taking a while to feel the effects of that because we've had such a long period of great growth and the economy continues to have momentum. If you walk down through Auckland where I live there are cranes everywhere and so people see activity. But make no mistake about it. At the last time of the election it was predicted that the growth in 2018 would be 3.7 percent and it turned out that it's been 2.3 percent. Now this Government does not want to take responsibility for that but they should because the 200 working groups that they've established on all sorts of topics most of all on tax have led to an incredible amount of uncertainty out there in the community. Again where do we get our jobs our opportunities from here in the public—where do we get our opportunities to get a good income get a good job and provide for our families? Well we get it from somebody somewhere making an investment and starting a business. Well they're less likely to do that when they're not sure whether they have to pay a capital gains tax on that investment. We had the previous speaker saying you know "We've reduced the ACC levies." Well that's great but it doesn't make up for proposing that you're going to put a 33 percent capital gains tax on every one of the 500000 small businesses in this country. You spend your whole life building up a business reinvesting your tax-paid profits in order to grow the business and at the end of it you'll get taxed again for any gain that you've made so why would people do that? So this Government needs to take responsibility for that—for the uncertainty around tax all the costs that they've piled on to business. We've heard about the minimum wage. Yes of course everybody wants to have higher wages but they have to be based on productivity have to be based on producing something more. Otherwise if you're an exporter from New Zealand and your cost is going up 27 percent in terms of labour over three years—well there's no magic about it. The people over in Germany or China or whatever who are buying the products can go somewhere else if our costs have gone up 27 percent. We'll just go out of business. So it has to be related to productivity. If you're running a cafe or a shop and you're selling people coffee and your costs are going up 27 percent—well that's discretionary spending. People can just stop buying their coffee. If the coffee costs $6 well they won't buy it and so those businesses will go out of business. So it has to be based on reality. Finally I want to talk about Shane Jones. People are obviously worried about the $3 billion that's been spent by that particular Minister who has shown himself to not understand the basic rules around how Ministers should act. He's been very loose around declaring perceived conflicts of interest in the past and now just today we've seen him interfering in an independent decision-making process that the NZTA—the New Zealand Transport Agency—is responsible for over local—SPEAKER: Order!Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well he's made some public statements saying that this shouldn't happen. So most people would normally assume well why would you say a public thing about something that the NZTA has got a clear regulatory responsibility for? So I think he needs to be much much more careful and disciplined in the way that he goes about making public statements as a Minister. He doesn't seem to have learnt that basic requirement to stick to his knitting. The ministry and the Government make the rules—in the case of the transport agency they are responsible for prosecutions and actually implementing the regulations—and Ministers shouldn't be putting pressure on those organisations. So he has to learn that and he has to take responsibility for it. We've heard today that he has a connection with the person that he's lobbying on behalf of. Again he needs to think very very carefully about how he acts in his—SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has concluded."