7. Question No. 7—FinanceANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Minister of FinanceQuestion No. 7—Finance7. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Minister of Finance: Will he adopt any of the measures proposed today by National in our Back in Business plan to quickly help the economy?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member for the opportunity to comment on his proposals. I am by nature an optimistic and positive person and so of course I will look at the specific proposals he has put forward. But sadly his overall plan fails a basic economic equation. He thinks that it is possible to reduce revenue increase spending and slash debt levels all at the same time. Simply put the plan does not add up. It would require an austerity approach that would see the slashing of critical public services. It would undermine all the hard work that New Zealanders have done in fighting COVID-19 in return for an untargeted tax cut of $4 a week. Beyond that the plan has some basic facts wrong including writing women out of employment statistics completely by only giving the unemployment number for men and giving the wrong unemployment number for Māori unemployment. COVID-19 has been and is tough going for many businesses and people within the community and the Government will continue to support them and look for practical and achievable ways of enhancing this including through the enhanced business support package we will release on Friday.Andrew Bayly: Will he take up National's plan to reduce the corporate tax rate for small businesses to 17.5 percent to reward them for sticking it through these tough times and to enable them to retain more cash?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well to begin with obviously there's one issue the member might want to think about with that particular element of his plan which is obviously that if businesses are going to be paying corporate tax they're going to be making a profit and therefore he may be missing quite a few of the businesses that he actually thinks he wants to target. Secondly it's a bit hard to deal with individual parts of the plan when for example in order to reach the levels of debt that are proposed in the plan $80 billion would have to come off the Government's Budget over the forecast period. That would require significant cuts to core public services.Andrew Bayly: Will he extend the loss carry-back scheme for the next two years so that the businesses that are currently struggling through 64 days of lockdown can keep more of their cash through this difficult period?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As the member is aware the loss carry-back scheme was brought in by the Government last year and it was not continued with because the uptake of it was significantly lower than expected.Andrew Bayly: Will he allow businesses to instantly write off up to $150000 on new plant and equipment to encourage investment and to ensure New Zealand lifts its productivity?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We continue to look for ways to support businesses to invest particularly in the technology that will support them to be more productive. But taking any individual part of the member's plan cannot get away from the fact that it simply does not add up.Andrew Bayly: Will he commit to increasing the wage subsidy to cover at least the minimum wage now that businesses have been trapped in a lockdown for 64 days?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: This proposal from the National Party highlights the problem with the overall plan. On one hand we have Mr Woodhouse standing up in the House saying that we must cut back on expenditure and on the other hand we have Mr Bayly saying No spend more. Spend billions of dollars more." And then Mr Woodhouse pipes up again and says "You know what? We need net debt to go down to 25 percent." They haven't got it right. It's inconsistent. It doesn't add up. It's not a plan. And sadly it's a reminder of the 2020 election. Bring back Paul Goldsmith!"