Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. Well aren't we so lucky to have the Green Party tell us about economics? These are the peak oil people from 20 years ago that are now banging on about other issues.But there was one line in that speech that I think we need to really delve into. He said that it was preferential treatment that was being talked about and I want him to just think of a scenario of company A. Now company A is a business and it has two or three rental properties. It owns those properties and company A is also a retailer. So it is a retailer that uses those properties for its business and it may have a structure in there with a number of companies between but essentially it is in the retail business and the rental business. Are they able to net off the income losses on that rental against the profits they make on the retail? Of course they are. That's how they do it. That's what businesses do. The pie is put together and they pay tax on the profit at the end. Now the member over there James Shaw was saying that no this is unfair that the losses on rental properties shouldn't be able to be used against other income. That is simply not true. It is fair that people are able to do that because they are providing an investment in our economy. They are providing a service to our people. They are putting capital at risk and they should be able to net that off against the other investments that they make as part of their business which is their salary and income and their investments.We can go overseas and see how that has worked in the Australian example for example. The Labor Party over there has campaigned on negative gearing for many many years and we can see how well that worked in the last election. The public react to an attack on negative gearing. When you have rental properties like this and the ability then to be able to claim or ring-fence those losses against other income—as in the case that you can do now but this legislation will stop that and will ring-fence it—that means that there isn't that incentive for someone to go out there and invest in property.The Green member said the 1987 crash—well there have been many crashes in the New Zealand stock market since 1987. Only going back six or seven years ago we had the global financial crisis which was a major impact on New Zealand's sharemarket. New Zealanders are burnt as the Hon Judith Collins says because we don't have a massive sharemarket compared with some other countries and a lot of people do invest in property as their security mechanism. So when that member was saying that this is something that—he was trying to portray that it was many many years ago and New Zealanders should've moved on. Well that's not the case in the practicality of how people work.Dr Duncan Webb: Balanced portfolio—balanced portfolio. That's all you need.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Balanced portfolios—well that'd be interesting coming from the Labour Party a balanced portfolio. Have we seen a balanced portfolio out of the Labour Party?Dr Duncan Webb: Like our superannuation. Like the Cullen fund we set up.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Oh the Cullen fund. That was a balanced portfolio—the borrowing money to invest in shares. Did the Cullen fund have land assets? No it didn't because the Cullen fund was all about shares. That was a very balanced portfolio wasn't it? It was all about shares on the international market and they were buying shares in New York and other places like that. But that's the other economic brilliance we're getting from the Labour Party. Their idea of a balanced portfolio was to borrow money and put it in the sharemarket. That's what that member was just saying.This actually will hurt ordinary New Zealanders the ordinary people out there that work hard go out there and make some money and want to invest it in a little bit of property. Why should they be at risk now? Why should they be attacked by this Government? They are providing a very valuable service for this country and if the Government thinks that it can provide all the housing in New Zealand other than people that own their own homes and if the Government doesn't believe there should be a rental market out there then fine say that but then I'd love to see them actually do it because we have seen how KiwiBuild has been a failure. We've seen that their Housing New Zealand growth is only to a limited amount. They just can't do it. There's no physical way if Labour and the Greens actually wanted to for the Government to deliver all the houses in the New Zealand market. We need people to go out there and take a risk and invest and to do this we're penalising people that want to take a risk.Greg O'Connor: No to build—no to build.Hon DAVID BENNETT: To build—so the only exemption is to build according to Mr O'Connor. Now Mr O'Connor is another economic genius from the left. He'll be coming up and he'll be doing hand signals as he does his speech and the waves will move as he speaks. We're looking forward to that Mr O'Connor the economic genius that you are in the Labour Party as well—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Thank you very much; I am an economic genius. I just remind you not to bring the Speaker into the debate.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Oh no I would never bring the Speaker into the debate.Greg O'Connor: At least I'm some sort of genius.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Oh he's some sort of genius is he? That's going to be interesting.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Can we get back to the bill please Mr Bennett.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well I just wish that the Labour Party would actually look at this and in a practical sense actually support hard-working Kiwis that actually want to go out there and invest in property.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. I call Kiritapu Allan.