Jones Shane: General Debate 
Jones Shane: General Debate 
[Volume:674;Page:20267] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 For the small number of Kiwis listening to the debate I say that that was the member for Auckland Central who is soon to be extinct as a consequence of poorly understanding the challenges in her very small geographically located area. It is an area full of people who want to see genuine solutions to Auckland’s congestion and transport problems. Every time Nikki Kaye speaks what she says is inversely related to what they want which is why they are all flying to our side of the House. 
Let me come back to the theme of this debate. I do not know why that member is so negative about the “noughties”. I quite enjoyed that time myself. That was the time when the Helen Clark Government maintained an inordinate amount of expenditure in key areas to do with social assets revived the prospects of the roading system and introduced the hypothecation and put it into law which is something that National was incapable of doing during those bleak times of Bill English and Jim Bolger who now earns his living perversely enough working with my own tribe Ngapuhi. He can pull a rabbit out of the hat unlike Hone Harawira who seems to be sending Ngapuhi further and further into the wilderness and quite apart from the Maori Party which is killing off kohanga reo but that is another matter. 
What I want to talk about which is what Kiwis are interested in is growth and jobs. It is a very educational experience to move into the part of Tamaki Makaurau otherwise known as Manurewa and Otara and see that there is a search party for the current member Dr Pita Sharples whose address can be found in the lost and found of the local community papers because he is never there. He has along with his senior colleagues in National no remedy for growth and jobs. That is why the policies introduced and being promoted on a regular basis by my senior colleagues—that is the tax switch—would enable us to reduce the impost of tax on the first $5000 a Kiwi earns through Labour. We would reduce it so it is a tax-free threshold. Why is that good? That is good because it reduces the administrative burden for students part-time workers and people in small-time businesses. They know that there will be less drama in giving a job to people in that category. 
How will we do that? We will introduce an element of fairness or dare I say equity so that those Kiwis who have done very well and who have amassed assets make a modest contribution as a consequence of the capital rise in their assets. That rise has little to do with the obligations of the investment they put in to run the operation of their enterprise. A host of other countries have this tax and they are doing a hell of a lot better than Kiwis are. It is not unreasonable that those of us who have the pleasure of owning an asset or three should make a contribution of this nature so that those who are at the level where the more vulnerable members of the community are found can be assisted. 
I come back to the very barren view offered by the Minister of Finance today about what National will do. As I have said before I accept that there is a case for investment portals and investment opportunities but we do not accept that the only way we can enjoy investment opportunities in New Zealand is by serving them up through the privatisation of our publicly owned energy companies. They will be surrendered not to mums and dads not to the Kiwis who are enjoying the opportunity of a bit of investment but to foreign investors. That is a very good public policy issue and an item of intense public interest. 
At what point will we stop worsening the tide of discontent associated with our current account deficit? At what point will we say: “Let’s use these assets and harness the development capacity to transform our own economy.”? Let us not surrender the direction the strategic overview of those assets to people who do not have a long-term invested commitment to the underlying structure of our economy. We want to effect a change through the retention of the ownership of those assets harnessing their potential and ensuring that they play a transformational role in our economy not watch them wither away whilst they serve the dictates and the imperatives of overseas investors who as we learnt with Telecom are interested only in gouging stripping and taking away the largesse to meet the expectations of shareholders who will not live here and who will not have a vested interest in the overarching national interest. 
We on this side of the House believe in a Government committed to a more patriotic approach and more focused on domestic strength ensuring that the structure of our economy continues to support exports.