Mitchell Mark: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Mark: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 17 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18530. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]9.MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney)to the Minister for Economic Development: What announcements has he made about the future direction of the Government’s Business Growth Agenda?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development):Last week the Minister of Finance and I released the Business Growth Agenda Future Direction 2014 report. This report outlines the significant progress the Government has made in creating the conditions for business to invest for jobs and growth. More than half of the 350 Business Growth Agenda actions across the six key areas are either complete or in the implementation phase. The results so far have contributed to New Zealand’s business confidence strong growth increasing employment and improved trade balance stronger productivity growth and real wages rising faster than the cost of living. The challenge for the Business Growth Agenda now is to help reduce further the capacity constraints for the New Zealand economy and help convert a couple of years of good growth into sustained longer-term growth and a lift in incomes for Kiwi families.Mark Mitchell: What will the Government’s Business Growth Agenda now focus on?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: We intend to focus the Business Growth Agenda on around 60 key initiatives that we see as essential to further fostering business confidence and growth. For example in the area of innovation we have an ambitious work programme that will continue to help the business sector double its expenditure on research and development to around 1 percent of GDP. Amongst other things we will implement changes to the tax treatment of research and development to further increase investment. We will support Callaghan Innovation to develop the suite of research and development grant programmes further and establish our new technology-focused incubators all those things that are—Hon David Cunliffe: Labour policy.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —not Labour Party policy. Mr Cunliffe wishes it was Labour Party policy but he wishes for lots of things. Likewise in the skills space we have a series of initiatives to lift our longer-run productivity growth rate like investing in apprenticeships and vocational skills; encouraging sole parents into higher education; investing more in engineering and sciences; and setting up new information and communications technology graduate schools in Auckland Wellington and Christchurch. We will lift high-quality information and communications technology graduate numbers an area of critical importance to our economic future.Mark Mitchell: What initiatives will the Government focus on in the areas of building export markets and developing our natural resources?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: In the exports area we are working to increase our ratio of exports to GDP to 40 percent by 2025 and we are making good progress there with the big lift in goods exports in the year to March and our areas of focus towards that goal. That means we will keep negotiating of course comprehensive high-quality free trade agreements which the Opposition is pretty ambivalent about these days. We will boost our representation in China ASEAN and other emerging markets and capitalise on the 2013 growth package for tourism and education. We have a large range of initiatives to help manage and develop our natural resource endowment. In the next few years we will focus on increasing value from and improving the quality of water; improving environmental reporting; accelerating petroleum exploration; combatting kauri dieback; and improving the productivity of Māori land.