Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker and let me congratulate you and your other presiding officers on your appointments. It is particularly good to see two new Assistant Speakers and also the Hon Anne Tolley as Deputy Speaker. I'd particularly like to congratulate the Rt Hon Trevor Mallard for his work as Speaker today. I think members on both sides can see that he is going to play this with a very fair and even hand with his new approach to question time.I'd like to start by thanking the people of Ōhāriu. Once again the voters in Ōhāriu have shown confidence in the National Party and the National Party plan as being the right plan for them and for all of New Zealand. In 2014 when I had the good fortune to enter this Parliament for the first time just a little under 19000 people in Ōhāriu put their faith in National and then just a few weeks ago again over 18000 of our voters in Ōhāriu kept their faith in the National Party. It was a very interesting election in Ōhāriu in 2017. It was a campaign of two halves. The two halves shared one thing in common and that was a party and a National candidate that understand that it's the party vote that delivers the seats in the House and gives a party the best opportunity to form a Government.But the second half of that campaign also gave the opportunity for the first time in 21 years for a National Party candidate to contest this seat and I thank every voter—both National Party voters but as the split votes show us also voters from other parties—that put their confidence in me. Four and a half weeks is not an optimal length of time for a campaign but I look forward to the next three years to win the confidence of those National Party voters and the other constituents of Ōhāriu. I think as all members—electorate MPs and list MPs across the House—know the best way of achieving that is by working hard in our communities and working hard for the members of our communities irrespective of where their political affiliations may or may not lie.But it is easy to see why the people in Ōhāriu have such a strong affinity to the National plan. The demographics in Ōhāriu show a very strong proportion of families with mortgages and high homeownership in work and with children—the sorts of people that need an economy to be performing well and continuing to grow; an economy that offers them their future prospects and the choices for the careers they need to make the choices that will help them and their families get ahead. They could see that in the National Party plan there was something that could deliver the future that they wanted. So I am sure along with all of us they watched or listened to the Speech from the Throne with some hope for that future. What they got was a whole lot of intentions and a great lack of any real plan. It was a speech that was rich in rhetoric and light in detail. No more was that evident than in the area of information and communications technology. This is an incredibly important industry part of an even more important sector of our economy for the hopes and prospects of New Zealanders and it rated nary a mention in that entire speech. All it got was that apparently productivity is reliant on the use of technology. Well there are no points awarded for saying that. It is one of the most obvious statements that anyone could make but there was no detail and no plan as to what the Government thinks it might do to deliver that.So let's give some context as to how important this is. The technology sector which includes ICT is 8 percent of our economy—8 percent of our economy—and therefore a roughly proportionate percentage of our jobs and prospects are reliant on what a Government will do to support the sustainability and growth of that sector. And we heard nothing. Now if we look at ICT as a component of that most recently—in only the last few weeks—the Technology Investment Network released their TIN200 report on technology exporters. It was actually fantastic news. For the first time ever our technology sector businesses have reported total global annual revenues of $10 billion—$10 billion.Chris Bishop: How much?BRETT HUDSON: Ten billion dollars. That's a huge number of jobs and prospects for Kiwis because that is fundamentally what those revenues mean. They're not some abstract figure of dollars to be counted up by an accountant; they are jobs and incomes—$10 billion. And ICT delivered over 58 percent of the annual growth in that export business sector—58 percent. It is hugely important to the jobs and incomes of New Zealanders and what did the Government have to say about it? Nothing—nothing. But apparently productivity is addressed through technology. Well you know how? What are you going to do? New Zealanders want to know. They actually want to know that the Government has a plan to support the growth in opportunity for them in that most important industry. There was nothing at all—nothing at all.Well there was not quite nothing—not quite nothing. There was something that was vaguely related. There was something vaguely related although it wasn't addressed specifically: the plan for the reinstatement of R & D tax credits will apparently also help ICT. There's one small problem with that and that is that under the last Labour Government the R & D tax credits were an abject failure and they will be the same again. They were a failure and will continue to be because they crowd out investment. The Government should know—certainly the last Labour Government knew because they had reports that showed them—that what would happen under the tax credits is simply that people would report work they were already undertaking as part of R & D. There was nothing really new to be created out of that. What was worse was that firms used the definition of research and development that the then Labour-led Government took from the Australian Taxation Office or the Australian deployment and that simply allowed businesses particularly businesses using ICT to redefine or repurpose upgrade activity as R & D. They were able to classify expenditure on upgrading systems and applications as R & D and claim a tax credit from the taxpayer. It was purely and simply a rort and the closest that this Government has come to saying what they're going to do that will help or affect the ICT industry is that they're going to reinstate the regime that allows rorting of the taxpayer. The taxpayer can simply look forward to the same outcome.Well New Zealanders deserve better. They certainly deserve better in an industry that is so pervasive across the economy of New Zealand and the public sector. There should be a focus on how they are going to grow business optimisation; how they are going to grow the ability for businesses to act more effectively and more efficiently; how they are going to improve customer services back-office business processes and the way businesses connect with their suppliers and customers; how they are actually going to help use technology to create more opportunities more jobs more incomes; and how they are going to help the public sector deliver better public services to New Zealanders and change the machinery of government through technology. There was none of that at all—not a skerrick of it. It was an enormous disappointment.What they did show us though was the difference between what the two main parties see as the role of Government. See the Labour Government very clearly sees that the answer to every problem is more Government and it shows in the way they take choices away from people retain that financial resource in Government and then dole it back out again expecting people to be grateful for getting a little bit of their own money back. A good example is that when the Leader of the Opposition used an example about checkout operators and truck drivers paying for lawyers' and accountants' university training the Prime Minister said Well maybe those checkout operators have got children that they would like to go to university." Well if they weren't going to cancel their tax relief they'd be able to afford to do that. But instead what they do is they'll take the money from them dish a little bit back and then demand that the recipients are grateful for that. Well it's no way to run a Government. It's certainly no way to run a country. It's going to lead simply to a dependency on the State which is actually what their ethos of government is all about. I think New Zealanders are going to wake up to this really quickly."