Scott AlastairALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker and as we know this side of the House will be supporting this bill but with some strong reservations. I guess the first question is why we need to have research and development tax credits or even grants when as Mr Tabuteau himself said the IT sector is spending a lot of money and doing very well all by themselves without tax credits in research and development. And so you have to ask the question why—why are we supporting this bill and why are we supporting tax credits? From the Government's point of view they say it is to increase productivity—increase productivity—and it might. But there are lots of other things that should be done first and as a higher priority if we want to increase productivity. We could do all sorts of things around industrial relations. We could talk about immigration we could talk about cutting the tax on fuel we could talk about investing more in teachers. There's a whole lot of stuff that we could talk about if we are to talk about increasing productivity but we're here and we're arguing—and agreeing at this point—that research and development tax credits will increase productivity. But then I'd like to quote Professor Göran Roos an Australian academic who says that none of the top-performing countries in the world have R & D tax credits. So in select committee that is the first question we should be asking ourselves: do we really need R & D tax credits to increase productivity? At the end of the day it's taxpayers' money that we're dealing with. It's a subsidy from the taxpayer to the business. But having said that and we're going to discuss that and we're accepting that that is the case for now I'd like to point out a couple of other issues that I have with the bill and that is the restrictive nature of the terminology that it uses. It's only good for scientific or technological research and development so it excludes market research. It excludes research on social services for example. So let's say that one of the main things we want to do is reduce poverty in this country. Wouldn't it make sense to allow research into the way we deliver social services in this country from the private sector if you like—or any entity—to allow them to get a deduction for research? I'm thinking of the Salvation Army and I know it's a charity in any case but why is that not allowed as legitimate research and development? Why is research and development into markets not allowed?We're an export nation; we need to develop customers and satisfy customer needs. We have no idea of the specific cliques small groups target markets in India China Mongolia and Europe for our markets. Why are we not allowing market research or product research in those markets? We're restricting ourselves. We're missing an opportunity to subsidise if you want to call it that really essential channels to market for our primary produce. And we might be able to develop the leanest meanest sheep carcass with the finest cuts but if we have no customers and we don't understand who's going to buy that product then we're wasting our time.So I submit that research and development should not be restricted to just scientific and technological solutions. We should be discussing the ability to use this research and development pool of funds to do other things that benefit society as a whole in the social services sector and in the market place specifically around market research and product development because those things at the moment are not included in this deductibility regime. So in the meantime we will support this bill. We want it to be debated in select committee. We'll be asking those questions about whether we widen it whether we narrow it whether we have nothing to do with it but in any case I look forward to that process.