Cosgrove Clayton: Taxation (Business Tax Measures) Bill — Second Reading 
Cosgrove Clayton: Taxation (Business Tax Measures) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1934] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 The previous speaker Craig Foss made an interesting point. He tried to illustrate the difference between the National Party in Government and the Labour Party when it was in Government but the truth about that is simply this: there was a huge difference. The difference is that when we were in Government we had a plan as my colleague David Cunliffe has said. 
For instance unlike the National crew we had announced had costed and—had the election had a different result—would have provided New Zealanders who were made redundant with 12 months’ funding. That was to have been given regardless of their collective household income circumstances or those of their spouse to enable them to retrain and therefore redeploy into the workforce perhaps in a different sector within 12 months. The biggest idea that has come from the National crew over there is that those people might get what is it $62 a fortnight— 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: $4.27 an hour. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: —$4.27 an hour which might go towards some form of training. That is a nice sneaky way of gutting 10 percent of the pay of workers in New Zealand. 
We had a plan you see and we had budgeted for it despite what members opposite might say. We had a plan to invest $1 billion in respect of home insulation. We had a plan and we would not have gone to lie on the beach for 3 months. We would have had a mini-Budget before Christmas last year and it would have identified a whole series of projects. Those would not have been the infrastructure projects that have been brought forward by 3 months—one has been brought forward I think by a year. No; we would have had a proper mini-Budget— 
Hon John Carter 
: Was it popular? 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: The Minister John Carter asks whether it would have been popular. Here is the deal with leadership: some of the things one has to do in Government are not very popular but that is the essence of real leadership. One has to make some tough decisions in order to look after and protect people and often those decisions are not popular. Often they are not popular I say for Mr Carter’s edification but that is the essence of real political leadership. It is very nice and easy for a leader to go around as John Key does like a sort of smiling assassin grinning and laughing. Maybe he is being accepted as a nice bloke but he does not actually have a plan and is not effectively protecting people’s jobs. 
We were told in this House by Mr Joyce that the entire infrastructure package—putting aside the political argument over whether it is new money; we know that it is not—would generate and save in the order of 2000 jobs. Before Ms Bennett says that Labour members do not care about saving jobs I will note that 2000 jobs would be saved. That is a good thing; I am sure all colleagues would agree with that. But it is a pebble on the beach or a drop in the ocean when we know from Treasury advice that we have already lost over 10000 jobs and we are losing a thousand jobs a week— 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: At least. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: —at least for the next 15 months. The political tactic from National is to adopt a bill that we authored such as this Taxation (Business Tax Measures) Bill which we will support—as my colleague said nine of the key 13 elements were authored by the previous Government as there was no plan from members opposite—or to abolish programmes that the previous Government put in place then to reinvent them and say there is a great victory in for instance housing. 
The Government abolished our housing programme with the many hundreds of houses that we were either to refurbish or build and then announced that it will build 69 houses. What a ripper that is! I talk to people in the construction industry who ask how 69 houses will save their jobs as painters joiners carpenters or the other jobs in all the ancillary services that go along with that industry. And Mr Heatley announced that as a great political victory! 
Then of course a key element of our plan was the research and development tax credit was it not? We constructed it we put it in place and the National Government butchered it. I ask whether any member on the other side of the House such as that genius Mr Foss a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and our resident expert on tax returns and other extraneous matters can get up and give us a rationale as to why this Government would not support businesses that elaborately transform our economy such as manufacturers and others that do research and development. If ever there was a time when we needed our manufacturing sector and others to be doing research and development in order to create new products and services and new jobs hey presto it is now. So Mr Foss should tell us why those members got rid of that tax credit and destroyed it before businesses had even put their first returns in. 
Australia has had such a measure for many years. National members see Australia as a nirvana; that is what they said when in Opposition. They saw it as a land of milk and honey and thought that everything was better if it was in Australia. Let me tell Mr Foss and other members opposite that the Australians have had a research and development tax credit system for many years. We introduced one and those members abolished it. That was our plan. It would have saved—not saved actually; it would have created—many many jobs. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Yeah thousands. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Thousands of jobs would have been created. It is not only that but new industries would have been created. There are manufacturers in my patch and I suspect in all members’ electorates around the country that are full of innovative entrepreneurial Kiwis. Manufacturers will now say that if they can get a tax credit in Australia they will do the research and development there and that if they do the research and development there then it would make logical sense to take the whole operation there. 
But oh no! Oh no! The National Government’s plan was to simply get rid of the research and development tax credit. Its plan was simply to get rid of insulation money. Its plan was simply to ditch all the housing and construction work. Its plan was to re-announce and repackage it—dressed up like an old Christmas present that has been wrapped up again and given to two or three people—and to hoodwink people with it. And the plan is to build 69 houses—69 houses. Would any member care to get up and tell the House how many jobs that will create and save when we are losing a thousand jobs a week? Would any member care to get up and tell the House whether there will be a major impact on our economy by spending a couple of hundred million dollars on infrastructure dusting off the projects that we had already identified and bringing them forward by 3 or 4 months knowing that only 2000 jobs will be saved when a thousand jobs are being lost weekly? Would any member like to crawl up from behind his or her desk and tell the New Zealand people how one can justify that? 
I will tell members the danger with National’s approach. The danger as my colleague David Cunliffe pointed out is that every other robust economy in the world is hitting this economic tsunami head-on. New Zealand now has an outlier economy. Whether we are talking about the economy of Australia the United Kingdom or the United States we find the relevant Government knows the tsunami is coming towards it. Those Governments have had warning of that and they have launched their plan. We have a Government a Minister of Finance and a Prime Minister who have put politics before the interests of the country. The rolling maul of a drip-fed announcement here there and everywhere is not an economic strategy; it is a political strategy. It allows the Government to make an announcement a little press release every week where it says: “Aren’t we good little boys and girls in Government because we are announcing another little drop in the ocean a pebble on the beach as a project?”. 
Kevin Rudd launched his economic package hit it head-on and said it was not good enough. He launched another package and executed it. This crew over here see the economic tsunami coming towards them. They do not have a plan. They have had a warning though. Mr Key and Mr English will stand on the beach and wait to see how high the water level will get and whether it will be over the heads of the Kiwi people or whether it will be just below that. But we know that economic tragedy and impact is on its way soon. I do not celebrate that. I think it is terrible because every day one sees people in one’s electorate losing their jobs. This crew over here was elected and they told everybody they had a plan. Now we know from their Job Summit—and I saw Miss Bennett get up and speak—that their plan was to get a lot of people most of them were a captive audience into a room and ask to be told what to do. It was not to go to that audience and say: “We were elected we have a plan and we want the business sector and the commercial sector to sign up to it.” It was a case of asking to be given an idea please. That was only 3 to 4 months after National was elected and it stands in comparison with what Obama did when he jawboned his package through even when he had no constitutional levers to pull. 
The Government went to the Job Summit and asked for a plan. It came out of the Job Summit and what is the plan? The plan is to build a cycleway. I can see Gerry Brownlee on a penny farthing—well I may not be able to see the penny farthing. The Job Summit’s plan is to build a cycleway. Can members imagine what the media would have done to us if we had announced that the biggest economic hit we were to have in order to solve the biggest economic crisis in our history was a cycleway? What a cracker! The next plan was to have a 9-day working fortnight. That might work if the Government would back Kiwis but it has proved that it does not.