Groser Tim: General Debate 
Groser Tim: General Debate 
[Volume:639;Page:9056] 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 Last weekend John Key the leader of the National Party laid out 10 priorities for the next National-led Government of New Zealand. These are forward-looking priorities designed to take New Zealand as a country forward again. Today I want to focus on four of those priorities. 
The first priority is National’s ongoing commitment to tax reform. This is not a one-off gain. This is a competitive issue in the global economy and we are committed to ongoing and comprehensive tax reform—not opening up the chequebook when enough pressure builds up for electoral reasons to focus on some politically selected target group. 
The second priority of Mr Key’s 10 priority points was a commitment to a sustained long-term programme of reinvestment in this country’s infrastructure. Following the highly successful fiscal consolidation of the early 1990s which has been sustained in New Zealand now for some time we have the basis to do that. We are like a company that has invested too little in its future possibly because of an intense cash-flow problem at some point. We have got beyond that point. Now is the time for sustained commitment to investment in our future and in the infrastructure that this country needs to give it a decent future. 
 The third key point that I wish to focus on is National’s sustained commitment to rolling back regulatory creep in this country. John Key has outlined a number of issues including of course the headline matter of the Resource Management Act but we are looking at something much more profound than that. The basic point that people quote about New Zealand being an easy country to do business in is usually based on World Bank studies or similar studies that are designed for developing countries where it is incredibly difficult sometimes to get the approvals necessary to start businesses. In New Zealand thank goodness thanks to earlier regulatory reforms it is actually very straightforward to establish a business—as all the members of this House know. The problem as one of my business friends put it is that it may be very easy to start a business but it is very difficult sometimes to do anything with that business when it has been started. We are going to attack that; that is the third key priority point. 
The fourth priority point that I wish to focus on is National’s commitment to a sensible spending track going forward. The core public services that New Zealand wants and values will be sustained but we will cut down on some of the obvious absurdities and massive waste that we have seen in the public service in the last 8 years. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Tell us about it! 
TIM GROSER 
: The member wants me to tell her about it—OK. Let us start with some of the more spectacularly silly examples. Let us start with the 145 State houses that are worth in excess of $1 million. Or let us start if members want to look at housing with the fact that 9 percent more houses have been taken on by the State in the last 6 years but there has been a 42 percent increase in Housing New Zealand Corporation’s staff numbers. That is completely inexplicable. 
But let us not muck around with small numbers like $150 million. If Labour members really want me to give them examples of massive waste I will remind them about the $1.1 billion in failed maintenance payments that the taxpayers of this country have to front up with because of a completely inadequate attempt to recover this money. In each of the last 3 years the Labour Government has acquired $55 million of this $1.1 billion back through weak recovery attempts. A massive amount of money is owed to the people who are supporting this Government. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: And you would do what? 
TIM GROSER 
: If the member sits and listens he will hear that I am going through a variety of examples. They keep asking me for examples. I keep coming up with them and they keep asking me for more so I will give them some more. 
There is the $250 million overexpenditure on the NH90 helicopters. The original estimates given by the Government were between $400 million and $500 million and the final figure coming in is a quarter of a billion dollars above that—enough to build the last Auckland hospital—due to the completely inadequate attention on the part of the Government to a crucial element of cost control. When we come to further examples of waste and gross political mismanagement we see the incredible attempt to convert a $500 million profit into a $1.1 billion carbon debit.