Barry Maggie: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Barry Maggie: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Sitting date: 18 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5265. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
1. 
MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: What measures is the Government taking to encourage businesses to invest grow and create jobs? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 A number of measures to support business confidence because it is businesses that make the decisions to invest and employ. These include reforming the tax system to shift incentives towards working saving and investing and away from borrowing consumption and over-investment in housing. We are also focusing on a faster path back to surplus to enable lower interest rates for longer and to improve productivity and more important quality of public services and we are also continuing to review regulation and legislation where we have evidence that it is imposing unnecessary costs or inhibiting investment decisions. 
Maggie Barry 
: As part of the Government building a more productive and competitive economy which legislation is being reviewed? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: We have for instance reviewed and amended the Securities Act and the Employment Relations Act and also quite extensively the building and construction legislation. We have removed 170 excessive regulations. We are undertaking phase two of reviewing the Resource Management Act to ensure that it reflects broader community expectations about job growth as well as the environment. Job growth is as important to the sustainability of our communities as the environment and the two are certainly not mutually exclusive. 
Maggie Barry 
: How does the Resource Management Act impact on investment? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The Government has over the last few years made a number of changes to the Resource Management Act since it is the principal regulator of environmental impacts. A consistent theme of discussions with homeowners particularly those who want to get into their first home and investors is that they can be frustrated by the costs of delay and also by the uncertainty created by that delay. Our experience is that investors are willing to trade off limits on development and economic opportunity in return for certainty around Resource Management Act decision-making and that will be part of the Government’s consideration in the second phase of reviewing the Resource Management Act. 
Maggie Barry 
: What effect have the changes the Government has already made to the Resource Management Act had on investment? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Probably the change that has had the most impact is to set a 9-month limit for consenting projects of national significance through the Environmental Protection Authority. This has given the proponents of large-scale projects including the Government with its transport projects much more certainty about the time frame for getting agreement on those projects and is reducing the costs of what would otherwise have been very long delays. This of course encourages those who do have larger-scale projects to look more favourably on those investments because they will lead to more jobs.