Jones Shane: Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Jones Shane: Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13507] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Kia ora no tatou. Naturally we support the third reading of the Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill. I would like to acknowledge the new Minister in the House Mr Boscawen. I have not had the chance to personally or professionally acknowledge his elevation. Although there is an adversarial spirit in our politics in the context of our overall parliamentary mission I wish him good luck and I look forward to many a partisan bout. Very few of us make the status of being Ministers and I acknowledge his new status. 
Paul Quinn 
: Did you make him one? 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: Rest assured I say to Mr Quinn those words will not be wasted on him. I mean no personal disrespect but as befits this House the truth must emerge. In that way I say that Mr Quinn may achieve one of three things but the dizzy height that Mr Boscawen’s current status represents and occasionally his— 
Paul Quinn 
: That assumes I want to. 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: The more the member talks the more I am reminded of  
The Muppets 
. An episode of  
The Muppets  
was based on  
The Wizard of Oz 
 and there were three characters: one was looking for his brain one was looking for his heart and the other was looking for his courage. All of those three issues are combined and embodied in one figure—that member. 
I will come back to the bill. Other members have spoken about deeper themes and they are legitimate themes. Although they may stray slightly from the provisions in this bill the themes about savings and KiwiSaver and the refinements made to that scheme are an attempt as a nation to provide an avenue and some products that New Zealand families can put their money into. It was never going to be easy. Dr Cullen in our time created the architecture for this scheme and provided different incentives and the refinements in this bill actually make the scheme work a wee bit better. But the scheme is only as good as the money trickling into it and therein lies the major deficiency in the thinking represented by the Government around this theme and this area of Government. 
Despite having a goal and the rhetoric to deepen the reservoirs of capital—we all know that one of New Zealand’s great economic challenges is the absence of adequate capital and our reliance on overseas sources of capital—it is disappointing that this bill although it scratches at the surface does not signal what we as a nation under the stewardship of this current Government short though its reign may be are doing to deal with this deep structural problem. It may be said that the Government is largely of the view that it is not really a problem provided that the costs of the State can be melted further and further down. Obviously with more and more indiscriminate cuts of the sort that we have seen and heard about the overall position of the nation is not as parlous as some of us think it is in respect of capital accumulation. But that is a very impoverished view to have about future generations of New Zealanders who have joined the many wakas leaving Aotearoa on the bright flight going to Aussie and to other places. Perversely enough this bill is an incentive for some of those people to come back along with their valuable savings. I do not know whether the return of that capital and the return of those people will reverse the fortunes of our nation but anyone who has his or her roots here is obviously welcome to come back home. 
The difficulty with the current thinking reflected by speakers on that side of the House is that they genuinely doubt whether a lot of their nervous energy political capital and intellectual capital in the form of the member sitting at the very rear of the House ought to be exhausted on that issue. But they will find moving forward into election mode that savings will be one of the very critical issues. It goes to the heart of our sense of destiny and our sense of having a claim on the future for our children and our grandchildren in our lives here in New Zealand. I ask whether we can address the issue of savings through these very modest refinements or at a deeper level through supporting the architecture that was established to attract people to make a sacrifice now so that the quality of their lives will be improved in the future and more important so that the quality of our national economic infrastructure can be upgraded. 
On our side of the House it is beyond cavil; there is no quibbling. We are firmly of the view that saving needs to be advanced significantly. We think that these refinements need to be augmented substantially. It has been said that we cannot afford the refinements. But the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister without any apparent strategy or logic are quickly getting rid of options as to how we can build on the very key vehicles referred to in this legislation—that is the vehicles that are up and running managing Kiwi funds and delivering presumably quite good outcomes on those funds. 
The area that is outstanding and that has not been referred to in any of the speeches from members on the other side of the House is how such funds are to be deployed to meet the development challenges of our own country. How are those funds to be rewarded if they are deployed in our own country to grow the infrastructure? If we want jobs if we want expanded incomes and if we want a reason to keep our graduates and our families from feeling the need to go away from New Zealand then we have to provide the fiscal succour for firms to grow and create jobs and expand their income frontiers and their horizons. That will not happen by lamely scratching around the sides. 
To date beyond this bill but still connected to it there has been a paucity or an absence of any ideas that animate people in our community or even animate us across the House. It is sad that an issue as critical as the future of savings and the availability of capital cannot receive bipartisan support. Our leader on earlier occasions has made those kinds of gestures only to see them repudiated for short-term petty political gain. That is a very sad and disappointing way to advance this agenda but such is life. We will debate those things as we get closer to the election date next year. 
GST is referred to in this legislation. Indeed other legislation that deals with GST is wending its way through the organs of the House. We support the changes here but let it never be forgotten that GST is a consumption tax. Although there are some economic reasons as to why a society may want to move to a consumption tax the difficulty with the decision that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have made is that the shift towards a consumption tax was essentially funded by additional borrowings that have then been rechannelled and are benefiting largely disproportionately those who already have the ability to pay. That is why towards the end of this year there will be not only a wind change—and it will not be a mild zephyr—but a sea change. People will not be able to enjoy the quality of life that they thought they were purchasing when they yielded their votes to the personalities on that side of the House. They will realise not only that they are poorer that their quality of life is diminishing and that the services they took for granted are being cut but that they will face a deep and dare I say it for a number of New Zealanders almost existential problem as they watch more members of each generation move away and leave our country. Those issues we were promised would be arrested. Those issues we were promised would be dealt to effectively and we would see a reverse. The only thing we have seen in reverse is the connection between what National promised and what it has delivered. 
Although Labour members support this bill we will not support as we move forward the very partisan short-term shallow but quite nasty ideas that continue to come on the economic policy front from members on that side of the House. Kia ora tatou.