Foster-Bell PaulPAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): I certainly will not be agreeing with that motion. This Our Work Our Future Bill should be called the No Work No Future Bill". I can only assume that Mr Little has been set up by people in the Opposition research unit given that he has just cited the example of Boeing which is a notorious company that has accepted bribes and has recently breached World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. That is perhaps the worst possible example of Government procurement that Mr Little could have come up with. I really do wonder whether he is being set up internally by his own party there.I will be speaking against this bill because I care very deeply about jobs. I care very deeply about good quality well-paying jobs in Wellington Central the electorate that I live in and am working very hard in. Over the 8 years of this National Government we have been focused on creating jobs. That is one of the reasons that the unemployment rate here in Wellington Central where we are currently standing fell 1.6 percent last year down to 4.6 percent.Jobs are not going to be created by trying to sell more things to ourselves which is effectively what Mr Little's bill does. We are a trading nation and we have to look beyond the confines of our own shores. Looking at good companies that are based here in Wellington—such as Xero a world-leading cloud-accounting-system provider I think—they should have loftier goals than selling an accounting system just to the New Zealand public although I would note that if you go into the school system over 600 New Zealand schools do use their system because over the last few years we have made it easier for the Government to procure locally. But I think companies should have much higher objects in sight such as selling to the United States of America.This is an ironic piece of legislation given that only this year we have had the Labour Party vote against the Trans-Pacific Partnership which would have done exactly that. It would have allowed our competitive IT companies here in New Zealand to play on the world stage not to have their sights set just on what is here in New Zealand.This is a Government that takes some pride in having reduced the overall proportion of our national wealth the GDP that goes into the State sector. There has not been a wholesale reduction in public servants to achieve this. In fact there has been an expansion of provision in a number of areas. But because we have managed to grow the economy at an OECD-leading rate—we are actually near the very top of the OECD whereas back in the days of the previous Labour Government it was an aspiration to get out of the bottom half. We are now near the very very top. By growing the economy we have actually managed to shrink the size of the State as a proportion of the overall economy.This is a positive thing. It gives our businesses room to operate. It stops sucking the life out of those innovators who were under the previous Government massively overtaxed and under-supported except for the make-work schemes and the preferential treatment that certain businesses got with grants. This piece of legislation does nothing to advance the interests of our IT companies of those innovators or of the creative people here in Wellington and citing Weta Workshop as an example—again I cannot think of a scenario where the Government might be out commissioning films to be produced with Government production values. Andrew Little: I've got a bunch of them.PAUL FOSTER-BELL: In history there have been a few examples Mr Little—Stalin was a great one for producing films through the State film production company. I think there are a number of Third World dictators we could look at who believed in producing propaganda pieces to peddle their ideology. I think Fidel Castro was a good example of a person who liked to produce pictures to promote his own views to promote his own interests and to promote his own political ideology. So I do not know why Mr Little cited Weta Workshop as an example of somewhere where we would go and do Government procurement because to my knowledge they are operating in a place that is very different from that.I am grateful to have attracted such a good audience here in the House and such a wide level of support for this speech from members opposite but to come back to the bill in question this is an unnecessary piece of legislation. As I said the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment has now got world-leading Government procurement processes in place. Over 8 years we have done much to streamline and improve the Government procurement system. This includes creating clusters of excellence within the Public Service. When it comes to for instance procuring vehicles for Government departments when it comes to procuring technology for Government departments and when it comes to looking for office space and accommodation which is a highly topical issue at the moment following the Kaikōura earthquakes this Government has done much to make that as efficient for the tax-paying public as possible. This is so that we can be sure that when we are spending that precious taxpayers' money—which we all work very hard for—to contribute to that pool we are getting the best possible value for the taxpayer unlike the case in the previous Government where we had huge wastage huge overspends huge cost overruns and a disgraceful waste of taxpayers' money.This bill is also contrary to a number of our free-trade agreements those commitments we have signed up to internationally—not only the WTO Government procurement agreement which we signed up to last year and which would enable Kiwi businesses guaranteed access to a $2.3 trillion international overseas Government contract market. Let us just put that into perspective. A NZ$2.3 trillion international market that we would have access to when we are talking about figures at home of a much more modest nature because of the size of our economy and of our Government—I think they have got their priorities completely wrong on the other side of this House. Let us give our companies access to a $2.3 trillion market. Think of the jobs and the economic opportunities that would create in New Zealand rather than focusing once again on closing ourselves off to the rest of the world and selling things only to ourselves rather than to those who have the money to pay for them and the need for our excellent services.There is another area I want to touch on. I had the benefit in my career with foreign affairs and trade of seeing a number of companies that were operating in partnership with Government to sell New Zealand Government intellectual property (IP) offshore. For instance take an example in the Middle East where there was an education system that did not have a good qualifications framework and did not have a good curriculum in place. There was a partnership between the Ministry of Education the New Zealand Qualifications Authority Auckland University and a number of private sector consultancies to package up that IP that we have developed over time to gain a benefit not only for the students who wanted to study in that country but also for the New Zealand taxpayer who has invested much in that intellectual property.We must set our sights far higher than the dark days of protectionism. We must look at the opportunities that are available in the rest of the world and I am proud to be in a Government that has made it so much easier for small businesses especially. I look at for instance the difference we have made to small businesses in the tax year and I want to congratulate the Minister for Small Business Craig Foss and the Minister of Revenue who have actually really made a difference for the small businesses of the sort that maybe Mr Little in his heart of hearts wants to help. For instance we have the local stationery company that might be looking to provide stationery to a Government department. It now has a provisional tax regime coming into place very soon which is so much better for it. It is going to be paying tax as it goes and it is going to have the doubt and its potential penalties—as long as it acts in good faith and complies with the rules—taken away. Labour sat in office for 9 years and did nothing for that. It is happy for small businesses to be punished by a punitive provisional tax system. This is a Government that has actually done something about it and it is one that I am very proud to be a part of.The new user-friendly framework that we have put in place for companies is actually transparent and in line with our international trade deals and best practice internationally and the new guidelines replaced 44 different pieces of legislation so it seems to me that Mr Little is simply aiming to muddy the waters with this bill. This is a political ploy and it is a rather cheap political ploy because it will do nothing to create jobs it will do nothing to create economic growth it will do nothing to help people in the regions of New Zealand and I believe it will do nothing to help the hard-working Wellingtonians who are in both those small businesses and those large enterprises like Xero like our airport and like the Weta Workshop which for some reason Mr Little thinks will be getting his taxpayer-funded propaganda films when he gets in.I think this is an extraordinarily bad but perhaps well-intentioned piece of legislation and for all of those reasons I have cited I oppose it and I do not commend it to the House."