Lees-Galloway Iain: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate[Sitting date: 26 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11312. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Supplementary EstimatesIAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North):The Labour Party is always keen to grab an extra call when we get the opportunity and to talk about the Budget and the Government’s appropriations and frankly about what this Government is not prepared to do. What it is not prepared to do is follow the good advice from the OECD that says that New Zealand has the greatest level of inequality than at any point in its history that it has greater levels of inequality than most OECD nations and that it is failing to implement the policies that would not only grow our economy—get our economy out of the two-speed situation that it is in at the moment—but also reduce the inequalities between the very rich and the very poor that we are seeing growing day by day under this National Government.The kinds of things that this Government is refusing to do are exactly the things that the OECD thinks we should do. We should have a capital gains tax to achieve two different things—firstly to ensure that investment in New Zealand is placed into the productive economy and that we do not have incentives in our tax system for investors to chase the speculative dollar in the rental property market. At the moment we have far too much money invested in the rental property market which drives up prices keeps young New Zealanders out of the housing market and is making houses more and more unaffordable across the country but particularly in Auckland. It means that theinvestment money that is going into those rental properties is not going into the productive job-creating sector.That is what we should be encouraging investments in in New Zealand. But the Government refuses to because it knows that its vested interests already have their money tied up in rental properties and they want to make their tax-free profits off the New Zealanders who have to rent their properties who cannot afford to buy a home of their own and who are stuck in the rental trap. Who is making money off that? It is the National Party’s mates who are getting away with it tax-free and scot-free.We in the Labour Party agree with the OECD when it says that we should be implementing a capital gains tax. But we should be doing more and that Government should be doing more to grow jobs in New Zealand. This is where Labour has a plan and the National Party clearly does not have a plan. What Labour would do is it would reduce structural costs in the economy like the cost of electricity. We want to bring down the cost of electricity redistribute those super-profits that the electricity companies have been making for years and give those profits back not only to New Zealand households—because it is important that New Zealand households get a break and get a bit more money in their back pockets—but to New Zealand businesses as well particularly New Zealand’s small businesses and start-up businesses that need to reduce their costs as much as possible so that they can get on their feet and become viable profitable and long-lasting and so that they can become job creators as well.Labour wants to return about $450 million a year back into the New Zealand economy. It is money that is being taken out of the economy by unjustified profits for the electricity generators. That has been independently assessed to be able to create about 5000 jobs in the economy. National talks a lot about creating jobs but it never delivers—it never delivers. The Labour Party has policies that will deliver jobs for New Zealand. We want to get the price of houses down by implementing a housebuilding programme in Auckland and in other parts of the country that not only makes things easier for New Zealand households for hard-working Kiwis who are trying to get on the property ladder but also it creates a demand for skilled tradespeople by creating jobs for them.That is what we need in this country and that is what this Budget should have delivered—a hands-on approach to real job creation not magic numbers that the Government cannot deliver on. The Government keeps telling us that it can deliver 170000 jobs but we have never seen them. Every year it keeps predicting that these jobs are going to come but it never shows us a policy that is actually going to deliver them. We think that a Labour-led New Zealand Government should follow the orthodox practices that are being implemented by countries around the world including a capital gains tax and a greater emphasis on the exchange rate so that we can again make business costs more predictable for our small businesses and start-up businesses. That is what the Government should be doing and that is what Labour will deliver when it is elected at the next election.