Genter Julie Anne: Public Finance (Fiscal Responsibility) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Genter Julie Anne: Public Finance (Fiscal Responsibility) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7063. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe. I rise to speak on the Public Finance (Fiscal Responsibility) Amendment Bill on behalf of the Green Party. As my colleague Dr Russel Norman said earlier the Green Party will be supporting this bill. He has outlined a number of measures in the bill that the Green Party strongly agrees with—namely the requirements for greater transparency of Government. These measures should broaden Government fiscal accountability to the public and require it to explicitly lay out a long-term plan and what the impact of that long-term plan will be on future generations. 
We received a briefing from Treasury on this bill some months ago. It is interesting to note that in the graph given at the briefing you could see quite clearly that during the last Labour Government from 1999 till 2008 core Crown net debt was steadily decreasing. Although we had our differences with the last Labour Government—of course we were not a part of that Government and it could have done some smarter things like introducing a capital gains tax or spending money more intelligently on transport infrastructure—one thing it did well was reduce core Crown net debt. 
Although previous National speakers have said that this bill as it is about fiscal responsibility is directly in line with their philosophy I have to say that what is becoming increasingly clear is that although their rhetoric and slogans are about fiscal responsibility their actual policies are the exact opposite and you could see that in the briefing from Treasury. Core Crown net debt is increasing even as essential social services are being cut and that is fiscally irresponsible. I mean one can blame the global financial crisis but the reality is that there are more responsible ways to respond to it that would both have a softer impact on the economy and protect the most vulnerable in our society. When the National Government came to power for example it spent billions on tax cuts to high-income earners and now it is looking to do things like cut financial support for tertiary students. So even though cutting that tertiary support for fourth and fifth year students does not make much of a big difference to Crown debt it does make a huge difference to New Zealanders who are out there trying to get educated and who are going to be massive contributors to our economy in the future. 
That is an example of a transfer of wealth where this Government has been extremely irresponsible. It is giving money to top income earners even though as my colleague the Hon David Cunliffe was explaining there is really no evidence to support the ideology that for example cutting tax rates increases economic productivity. In fact if you look around across the world the most comprehensive research shows quite clearly that there is no correlation between top tax rates and economic productivity. In fact by cutting top tax rates although you will not increase economic productivity you will increase economic inequality and that does have a definite impact on economic sustainability in the long term. 
There is one thing that I do not think is clear in this bill and that is how public-private partnerships will be accounted for. I think that is an interesting question because although the Government says that it is for increasing—and this bill will purportedly increase—the transparency around the Government’s spending in fact what we can see right now is that the Government is looking for ways to keep debt off the books. One of the ways it is doing this is by getting us into long-term contracts or public-private partnerships for some big infrastructure projects—infrastructure projects like Transmission Gully which does not have a good business case and will not increase economic productivity even though the Government says that it would like to increase economic productivity. You would have to be extremely naive or ignorant to believe that duplicating or replacing an existing road link was going to have any impact on economic productivity. So the Government is getting us into long-term financial commitments that will potentially not be recorded as debt but will in actuality require repayments from future generations of New Zealanders for projects that are white elephants. 
So we support this bill but we hope that it will bring greater transparency to some of the Government’s extremely irresponsible infrastructure investments.