Goldsmith Paul; Tolley AnneHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well I must say it's nice to see Mr Hipkins so invigorated. I haven't seen him as excited as that all the time that he's been a Minister certainly when he's been dealing with the issues that he's actually Minister for such as the tertiary sector where he's spent billions of dollars in order to get exactly what we were getting before. He's spent billions of dollars which was in free student fees—the same number of students going to the universities. So I can understand why he's a bit dour most of the time but he gets excited when it comes to political point-scoring.He asked: what does the National Party stand for? Well we stand for New Zealanders getting ahead looking after themselves and their families first and foremost and having the opportunity to do that through good hard work and good jobs in a prosperous economy. We stand for people being able to have sustainable and satisfying jobs in an environment and an economy that's growing and then once they've looked after their family once they've done a good day's work and made a real contribution to the country that they live in they may also have a little bit of energy left over to be involved in their community whether it's at their local school board or their church or at their local sports club. That to me is what being a New Zealander is all about: looking after your family having a job and making a contribution so that we've got a strong economy that can look after those who are in real need and also having a contribution into the wider community. The National Party supports New Zealanders who do that and wants to make life easier for them in order to get ahead for themselves and for their families. That's what we stand for.What we worry about is when we look around the New Zealand economy at the moment in the New Zealand society—there's no question that we have been doing well as a country for the last decade. We've clawed ourselves out of the morass that we were in during the global financial crisis and the real struggles that we had in Canterbury after the earthquakes and we picked ourselves up through partly the leadership from people like Gerry Brownlee John Key Bill English and the team. We have created a strong and productive and competitive economy that has generated thousands and thousands of jobs. We thought about the 200000 jobs new jobs created in the New Zealand economy in the last two years of the National Government—10000 jobs a month. So the economy continues to have some of that momentum that we built up over those years but what worries us on this side of the House is that this Government is great at bathing in the sunshine of that inheritance and enjoying the money that it's got to spend from the Budget surpluses that have been created and basking in that glory but they're not doing anything to build on that and to continue that strength and to contribute to an economy that will provide the opportunities for New Zealanders.In fact what we're seeing is a systematic attempt to undermine the foundations of that success that we had enjoyed. What we're seeing is a slowing of the economy from something that was over 3 percent to something that is now going closer to 2½ percent each year. Instead of seeing 10000 jobs created every month in the last three months we've seen about 600—so from 10000 to 600 and that's going to flow through to the rest of the economy.We also see a lot of waffle and hot air and I think our finance spokesman Amy Adams put her finger on some of the issues that we're going to be talking about in the next little while around the well-being Budget that this Government talks about. I've never met anybody in the world—certainly nobody here in New Zealand or in New Zealand politics—who isn't keen on well-being. We all want New Zealanders to enjoy well-being. Shane Jones likes well-being—he certainly likes well-being with a bit of seafood attached to it—and many of the other people around this House enjoy a bit of well-being. I'm as much into well-being as anybody but when it comes to an organising principle for a Government it becomes a bit loose. So what we're seeing here is Treasury talks about valuing avoiding diabetes at $3900 but it also values improving contact with your neighbours at $8500. So we end up with this Budget put together with all sorts of weird and wonderful calculations based on gaining a friend or joining a club and measuring all these sorts of things in a great sort of goulash or steamed pudding that emerges with the final conclusion that although the economy is actually only dribbling along very slowly we're all enjoying a wonderful amount of well-being and that is some kind of googly-glash" in order to confuse us all.So what is this Government's economic development strategy? I've asked this question a few times of David Parker the economic development Minister and you don't get very much. When you really press him there are three things that he'll refer to. One is that they're going to introduce an R & D tax cut. Well you can argue about that whether it's better to have grants or R & D tax credits. If you go out and talk to people in the start-up community they're all at their wits' end at the prospect of not having any support for start-ups but only for large profitable companies such as would be achieved through an R & D tax credit. But you can argue about that comment so that's one thing. The second thing is the Provincial Growth Fund and I'll come back to that in a moment.The third thing is the capital gains tax—changing the tax system—which they're all very excited about and we'll wait and see. I think there's a big argument going on now between Labour and the Greens who are slavering for a capital gains tax. They want more taxes; they want to put more taxes on New Zealanders. They say it'll improve the housing affordability but anybody who's been to Sydney or Melbourne or Vancouver or London or any other city in the world which has got capital gains taxes and massive house prices like Auckland and Wellington will know that that is not a solution on its own to housing affordability—building more houses is a solution to housing affordability. They say it'll improve equity but that kind of makes no sense if you exclude the family home which you should do. So why should somebody with a $4 million mansion in Remuera pay no capital gains tax but somebody on the West Coast with two houses worth $300000 each has to pay capital gains tax on the second one because they're a filthy capitalist? Where's the equity or common sense in that argument? I'd be very interested to see the answer to that.And then the third argument is that it's going to increase investment in productive things moving it away from speculative activities. Well how is it that increasing the taxation on every small business every business in the country is going to improve investment and entrepreneurship? It's not at all. How's increasing the taxes on every KiwiSaver account going to lead to further saving and investment? It's not.So we're very much looking forward to that discussion but it's of course driven by the fact that they want to spend more and more so they have to tax more and more. So we're seeing a lot of waste that's driving that desire for more taxes. We've seen that waste through Mr Hipkins in the tertiary spending which hasn't led to any more students. We also see that waste on the colossal scale potentially in the Provincial Growth Fund where you have Mr Jones trumpeting around that we're going to create 12000 jobs but when you look into it and you actually look at what has actually happened so far more than a year into the programme after tens of millions of dollars and after endless press releases and high-vis jackets how many jobs have we got? Fifty-four—54. But don't worry there's 118 bureaucrats. So 54 new jobs; 118 new bureaucrats. Now Shane Jones would probably quibble about that. It might be up to 56 jobs now—I'm not sure—or maybe 57. But that is the kind of gap between what they talk about and what they're actually delivering and we're seeing that replicated right across this Government in every sphere. They talk the big game—they're going to solve the world's problems they're going to solve poverty they're going to solve every issue under the sun—yet when you actually ask "What have you done so far? What have you achieved so far?" it's not very much at all and then they get very irritated when we ask that question. The waffle over Shane Jones' numbers in the Provincial Growth Fund are unbelievable. He says he's going to create a thousand jobs in forestry. Well hang on a moment: they're talking about shifting land use from sheep and beef farms which are creating jobs right now to native forestry. Well I don't know about you but I would have thought that would destroy jobs not create jobs and yet he says it's going to create a thousand jobs. Well I think he's got a bit of explaining to do on that one. Then we heard Jacinda Ardern the new Prime Minister come in and say that this will be the most open and transparent Government in history. Yet we hear time and time again Shane Jones doling out millions of dollars in soft loans to private businesses—three or four of them out of the half a million private businesses in this country; there are three or four of them that have been lucky enough to get a private loan—and yet he refuses to tell us what the terms of the loan are. Well if it's a commercial loan that's one thing but if it's zero percent for 20 years that's a massive gift to that private company and he refuses to tell us which it is. So so much for the most open and transparent Government in New Zealand's history. We're watching that fund closely. We want the regions to continue to succeed like they have over the last few years with the incredible job creation that we've had and we've seen but to do that you need to have genuine investment. So having Shane Jones handing out a bit of money to a few people does not make up for closing off foreign investment frightening domestic investors because they don't know whether they're paying a capital gains tax and last of all withdrawing $5 billion out of regional roading such as we were going to spend on real quality roads for the regions. So all in all it's a bit disappointing. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before I call the next speaker can I just apologise to the House. My darling father who's 92 years old has had a bad fall and I'm just getting texts from the hospital as to his updates. So I'm not not paying attention but pardon me if I answer my texts."