Brownlee Gerry: Address in Reply 
Brownlee Gerry: Address in Reply 
[Volume:652;Page:1063] 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Economic Development) 
: 
 I am very pleased to make a few comments today in support of the Speech from the Throne. I start off by calling the House’s attention to the amendment to the Address in Reply. The amendment is in the name of the Hon Phil Goff the current Leader of the Opposition. If people were to read the amendment they would see that it does not state that the Opposition has no confidence in the Government. That is what Opposition parties normally do; they move an amendment to express no confidence in the Government. But Mr Goff has moved an amendment to add some words to the Address. I will not go through the words of the entire amendment but I encourage people to read them and see whether my interpretation is correct. The amendment mentions many things that should be done but in effect Mr Goff is asking the Government to fix up the mess left by the Labour Government when it left office. I ask subsequent Labour speakers whether they intend to support the confidence motion when it is voted on later in the week. Clearly Labour members know they made an absolute pig’s ear of their last few years in Government and this nice piece of prose on the front page of today’s Order Paper shows that it would like to see the National Government kindly fix that up. Indeed that is our intention. 
It is about 84 days since the National Government came to office and those 84 days have seen a record of achievement very much focused on the prosperity and well-being of New Zealanders. We have come into Government at a very difficult economic time. The whole world is experiencing difficulty and everybody knows a great deal about those difficulties. But we have decided not to sit behind a cloud of doom. We have been very very proactive in getting out there and making sure we do what is necessary and what is possible to ensure that New Zealanders are able to weather this difficult time as well as possible. I want to talk about a number of the things we have done. We have introduced a stimulus package for the economy worth more than $9 billion over the next 3 years. That is one of the biggest packages provided by any Government anywhere in the world. It is designed to ensure that New Zealanders are as much as possible insulated from the worst effects of these economic downturns. 
The first aspect that will be most notable to New Zealanders who are fortunate enough to still be in work is the assurance of a support package for those who might be out of work on a temporary basis. From April this year there will be a tax cut. There will be another one in 2010 and another one in 2011. That will see more of the dollars that New Zealanders earn in their jobs every day stay in their pockets and it will give them a great deal more choice. It is notable too that even though the Government has introduced this big fiscal stimulus package interest rates have fallen and that will be making things a little easier for some households. It will also make things a little easier for some of our businesses. In this environment we have also seen a slight drop in our exchange rate and although we do not want to see an unnecessary reduction in the purchasing power that New Zealanders have with their hard-earned dollars it does help our exporters and we encourage that. The export receipts that we have seen so far are looking very very good considering the circumstances. We know that fluctuations in the dollar are not good but this is a time of tough trading and we are encouraged that our exporters are doing what they can to get out into markets and are adapting very very quickly to those difficult circumstances. 
Last Wednesday the Prime Minister unveiled a package of measures for small to medium enterprises in New Zealand and it was interesting to note that although on the one hand it was very much welcomed by people who understand what it is like to be in business—to worry about paying the wages about staying inside the overdraft about paying their suppliers—on the other hand those commentators who largely have never had anything to do with a small to medium enterprise were typically critical. This is a package of measures designed to assist the cash flow of small to medium enterprises and anyone knows that cash flow is the arterial blood of those businesses and needs to be protected. That package focuses on cash flow. It has 11 different tax changes in it and the cost of those will be some $480 million over the next 3 years. The interesting thing is that most of that cost was met by compliance. There was an unproductive amount of money being sucked out of businesses and we have said it is better placed back in the tills of those in business and back in their bank accounts where they can use it for the betterment of their business. The package sees a reduction in the amount of form-filling that is necessary: the easing of provisional tax returns and the calculations that go around those. That is the bread and butter that we need to put on the table to help small business and this Government has done that. 
What is more we note that a lot of those small-business operators are pretty much out there on their own. They might employ five six seven eight nine 10 or even 12 people but by and large they carry the can themselves. They cannot always go to their bank manager to talk about their difficulties. They cannot always go to their accountant to talk about their difficulties. They cannot always talk to their workforce about what they might want to do inside the business. So we have expanded the mentoring service and we have expanded the business health check service. Those people are able to ring up and get hold of someone who will understand what their position is and who will want to help them get through the worst of these times. 
We are not only doing things to help small business we are not only doing things to ensure that New Zealanders adversely affected by job loss are supported but we are also embarking on a very large infrastructure plan for New Zealand. The Prime Minister will be announcing the key elements of that plan in a speech tomorrow. But what should be remembered is that this country has a significant deficit of infrastructure. There has been a poor spend in that area for quite some time and it is infrastructure that is the enabling aspect of business in this country. Not only does it help our quality of life but it also oils the wheels of the economy. The important thing is that this programme will see jobs created it will see jobs stay in place and it will see wages at least stabilise if not grow over the next few years. Most important it will leave New Zealand in a position where once the recovery comes—and it will come and it will come for us much more quickly than for many other jurisdictions—we can take advantage of that and see our economy grow once again at the sorts of levels that we would like levels that will see the incomes of New Zealanders significantly rise. 
Not only have we taken care of those economic matters that are very early on and very embryonic in the stage of life of this Government but we have also dealt with some of the social excesses that the last Government became so unpopular for. It was known for telling New Zealanders what they could do when they could do it and how they could do it. So we have in fact said to New Zealanders that they can choose the sort of light bulbs they want to put into their lights. We have said to New Zealanders that we are getting rid of the so-called food police out of school canteens. We have also said that many of those people who decide to go down to the gym and want to leave their kids in a little bit of care will be able to after we have dealt with those regulations very very shortly. This has been 84 days of activity entirely focused on the betterment of New Zealanders—84 days focused on doing what a Government needs to do to ensure that New Zealanders survive and prosper in difficult times. It is a privilege to be part of this. All of us who are in Government recognise and respect the fact that New Zealanders have great expectations of us; the first 84 days most certainly indicate that we are up to that challenge.