Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support enthusiastically this Venture Capital Fund Bill as we seek to broaden the New Zealand economy and transform it and address some of the long-term challenges. And of course one of those challenges has been productivity. We simply have been lagging in the comparators on productivity. One only has to look out—like I do—my office window on to the wharves and see those unprocessed logs sitting out there which is a completely lost opportunity.We know that one of the issues that we're dealing with is a historical long-term underinvestment in R & D and we know the correlation between R & D spending as a percentage of GDP and actual wealth and we are as a Government aiming to get that up to 2 percent up from less than 1.5 now. We know that countries like Denmark that we might like to compare ourselves with are up around 4. So we have a ways to go.To the member opposite who just resumed his seat David Carter I say I know he's a retiring member—that's coming up—and it seems to me that he must have checked out early because he's missed a plethora of announcements that the Government has made to address some of these long-term challenges. There is $1.25 billion in R & D tax credits; the massive infrastructure boost that was announced today by Minister Robertson; that $12 billion above what was already in the pipeline. The Provincial Growth Fund that $3 billion behemoth that's investing in our provinces up from—I think the previous Government's budget was $11 million a year for that sort of initiative; a massive ramping up a hundredfold ramping up of investments into our provinces. The extension of the brightline test to take the weighting away from property speculation. The restarting of payments into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund which actually gives us the capacity to bring this bill forward today and which was shamefully stopped. The opportunity cost to the New Zealand public of doing that was circa $20 billion I understand. And of course we've got a significant ramping up of the trade deals under Minister Parker and Foreign Minister Peters. We've got the EU trade deal under way the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership deal progressing we've got a significant upgrade to the China trade deal just announced we've got pending deals with the UK when it's able to get into negotiations with us and of course at a political level we've got an agreement with the US to start proceedings around a trade deal with the world's biggest economy. So there is an enormous amount that this Government has done to rebalance the New Zealand economy and put it on a more sustainable footing.In terms of this Venture Capital Fund it is designed to fill a gap. There is a gap. There does seem to be money available for start-ups and that ecosystem has developed but there is a gap between businesses that get to that sort of $2 million to $20 million turnover. This bill does seek to target specifically those businesses. There does seem to be some market failure there. There's been a complete dearth of listings on the NZX of late—I think only two for this calendar year—so the Government is putting its shoulder to the wheel there. What is happening is instead of developing in New Zealand and turning into significant businesses that are in the billions of dollars we are selling these opportunities off to overseas companies at an early stage because of this lack of capital. Of course we've seen banks tightening their criteria particularly into the farming sector and I think that's probably across the economy as they seek to pull back their exposure a little bit.So this Venture Capital Fund does seek to plug those gaps. It will leverage private sector equity coming in. It will lead to a more balanced New Zealand economy which has the ability to reach the potential that we all know that it has. So New Zealand First are very enthusiastic supporters of this bill. Thank you Mr Speaker.