Foss CraigHon CRAIG FOSS (Minister for Small Business): You really do have to hand it to the Labour Party do you not? It is 100 years old and it can still think up new taxes. It is 100 years old and it still comes up with new levies new ways to attack business and new ways to attack jobs. It is 100 years old and it is still coming up with new ways to tax people. The announcement that Labour made on the weekend has turned into a shambles—an absolute shambles. A battle with the media is now going on. I now understand what post-truth politics is. It is the days after a Labour conference when it is trying to explain whatever it was trying to explain on the weekend—whatever announcement it might have been. No one really knows I do not think what Labour announced on the weekend. No one really knows whether the costings are for 4 months 6 months $15 million per annum $60 million for 4 years or $19 million for 6 months. No one really knows. Its new tax its new levies its tax on training—its levies on migrants are very interesting particularly with what is going on around the world. Essentially they are being viewed as an attack on migrants an attack on small business and an attack on jobs—and jobs will pay. Commentary from those who actually know what it is like to run a business has not been at all flattering for the Labour Party. Business New Zealand said that smaller businesses would suffer if they were charged to hire employees. Tourism New Zealand Aotearoa said that putting a levy on small business would fall flat on its face. Mr Nash even when he was asked about it said: Hmm I would need to read about that a little bit more. I would need to think that through work that through." It is hardly a ringing endorsement of the policies that the Labour Party announced or tried to announce and re-explain on the weekend. The timing is amazing. There were 140000 new jobs across New Zealand over the past year growth is as good as it has been and New Zealand for many many years has been the envy of the OECD and the developed nations. Seventy percent are engaged in employment—or under 5 percent are unemployed. All the numbers are very very positive in job participation and the normal unemployment numbers and that is when Labour decides what a good time it is to talk about unemployment etc. etc. Everything is going in the right direction. Labour has no idea what its policies would mean for small business. Labour has no idea about the cost and the burden of the stuff it waxes lyrical about at its various conferences. Perhaps that is why 57 percent of small businesses in recent surveys believe they will succeed under National with only 10 percent believing they would succeed under Labour—only under 10 percent. Labour always forgets that someone somewhere has to pay for the stuff that it announces—someone has to pay. They might pay in cash they might pay in taxes they might pay in fewer jobs less job growth fewer hours—they just have to pay. Someone pays somewhere. Interestingly let us use—I do not know—Mt Roskill for example. There are 5000 business units in Mt Roskill. Which one of them would pay Labour's tax? All of them? Some of them? Which of the 5000 businesses in Mt Roskill would be paying Labour's new training tax? Which of the 28000 workers in Mt Roskill would not have a job not have as good a job opportunity under Labour's proposals with the added costs that would be a burden on businesses across the economy for example on the 5000 business units in Mt Roskill? Which of the migrants who choose to come or want to come to say Mt Roskill would suffer under the levy or let us say the bias against them under Labour's proposals? Which of the 50 percent of the people in Mt Roskill who are born overseas would suffer if Labour's policy was to be implemented—be it in respect of jobs job growth levies new taxes new training taxes? I am quite sure that the people of Mt Roskill will be thinking through what it means to them if Labour's policy was ever to be implemented: the cost of a tax the cost of a levy the cost of jobs and the cost and prospects to the good hard-working people of Mt Roskill particularly to those who have chosen to come to live in work hard in and contribute to New Zealand. Thank you."