Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. It was interesting to hear a speech from the Minister of Health who regards the amount of money that you spend purely on health as all that you need to worry about. You spend a lot more money and that's success and you get a big clap. Meantime they have no targets for increasing the amount of elective surgery that they're doing. I mean there's lots more money but actually fewer surgeries being taken out under this Government.This week we released in the National Party the economy discussion document which is a detailed document outlining the National Party's plan to grow the economy and provide opportunities for New Zealanders to get ahead look after their families and do what they want to do. It's timely because this is a moment when there's widespread concern around the state of the economy—a great deal of worry throughout the households and the businesses of New Zealand about the state of this economy where it's slowing down. It's slowing down. Confidence is through the floor back to global financial crisis periods. So instead of being an economy that was clipping along nicely in the 3 percents up almost to 4 percent we're now scratching around closer to 2 percent. That means fewer opportunities for New Zealanders to get good meaningful work to be able to provide for their families and to do a good job.So what's driving that? It's simple really. It's that this Government over here this group—people like Paul Eagle and that guy there David Clark—keep adding on costs to business every week making it more difficult for businesses to succeed. They create so much uncertainty with all the working groups where they've tossed everything up into the air and everybody's waiting to see what comes down. Thirdly they've demonstrated incompetence—incompetence on a colossal scale this Government—about how they've handled KiwiBuild: We're going to build 10000 houses a year but it might only be 73 or 24 or 128." I can't remember what the number is but it's not a good number.Then alongside KiwiBuild on the transport side what have they done? Well all they've done is cancelled a lot of projects that were ready to go and they've replaced them with a whole lot of projects that aren't ready to go and won't be ready to go for a long time. We were at an infrastructure conference last week in Rotorua; the air was filthy—filthy. They were angry because they've got no pipeline of work. They had a pipeline and it disappeared and they've got nothing to do.The third area of incompetence is that nobody can get workers anymore because it takes six months three months five months for Immigration New Zealand to handle any basic sort of indications about what's happening.We've come up with a coherent plan to build the economy which is partly about our tax policy which is as low as possible so that New Zealanders can keep as much money as they want. We've got sustainable views unlike the Prime Minister who said that the superannuation age was the great Zimmer frame in the room and she was going to do something about it. She's changed her mind entirely. She stuck her own head into the sand ignoring the Zimmer frame and doing nothing about that. We're going to be responsible about that. We've got a big focus on building a more productive and competitive economy that will provide the jobs and opportunities for New Zealanders. It's about investing in infrastructure; it's about having a decent skills pipeline; it's about actually using our natural resources as a country and making a living which is a useful thing to do. At the same time we're focused on reducing costs for New Zealand families.Every New Zealander right now who's going and filling up their car at the gas station and noticing how much it's costing to do that is reminded every time of this Government and the taxes that they've piled on to New Zealanders trying to get around—24c a litre. They've added 24c a litre in Auckland to the cost of petrol and the Prime Minister has the temerity to go around talking about being fleeced at the petrol pump. The "Fleecer in Chief" as we all know is the Prime Minister when it comes to transport.They also are aware that we need to reduce the cost of building new houses. This Government has talked about it for ages—what have they done? After 20 months they've figured out that they have to have a working group to decide what they're going to do about the Resource Management Act. That's rapid progress!We've got a different outlook. We are focused on reducing costs for New Zealand households. We are focused on building the productivity of this country so that we can earn more and have the opportunities to look after ourselves and our families and we are going to be careful with your money out there—to the people of New Zealand not you Mr Speaker—because we understand—SPEAKER: You can be careful of mine too if you want to.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —that the bottom line is you. So our focus is to restore confidence—SPEAKER: It might've been all right.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —in this great economy to revive our economy to make a living and to lift our aspirations as New Zealanders both in terms of what we can earn but also about the social challenges that we can overcome—and we will. Thank you Mr Speaker."