Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well that was a very interesting speech from Fletcher Tabuteau a man who in the normal course of events might have expected to be a Minister by now given that in any normal Government Shane Jones would have had to resign over his outrageous interference in the New Zealand Transport Agency incident. But such as it is in this Government he might have to wait a little bit longer.The point he was making about going to the Hawke's Bay and finding out how everybody was happy about the Provincial Growth Fund money and how it is being spent is an interesting one because it's not actually very difficult to take $3 billion if you're a Government and then wander around the countryside and hand it out. I mean it doesn't take particular genius to just take $3 billion and say you're going to spend it. It's actually a bit trickier to actually get something useful for the money and actually go about it in a proper function. As we've seen his boss Shane Jones has announced $1.7 billion of funding but he's only actually managed to get $62 million out the door because of the incompetence of the way that it has been managed.But the point I'd make in relation to this bill is that this is another tax increase—well two tax increases. Obviously there's the tax increases for renters which will flow through from the ring-fencing but also another year when there's no inflation adjustment in the tax regime. Lots of people in New Zealand get some reflection of the impact of inflation on the way that they are looked after. So we've just recently had legislation around inflation adjusting benefits in this country to help those people but workers and taxpayers don't get any inflation adjustment. So every year a little piece is snuck out of their income as inflation pushes the tax thresholds further down into people's incomes and savings. Over time that accumulates in an enormous amount of extra tax for the Government. That's what this Government loves because they love nothing better than spending more than borrowing more but they have no economic plan and they haven't shown any ability to deliver on their promises. So in this regard that's why we're not very impressed with this further tax increase. The other point around the ring-fencing of losses is—look there is a widespread concern about the affordability of housing so people want to make a difference on that. But the point I'd make and that they have to be careful about and consider is that it's not compulsory for people to rent out their houses. If you make it too difficult and expensive—and there's been a wide range of things added on to the burden of landlords recently around requirements around all sorts of things putting in heat pumps and you name it and various things that have been taken away from them. That's fine. They all individually might seem like a good idea but collectively the consequence may be that a number of people say Well this is all too hard. It doesn't work for me. I'm getting out." In the long term that will all sort itself out but in the short term I predict we'll have a real shortage of rental houses in this country in the next year or so. We're already seeing that because of the massive increase in requests for State housing and emergency housing and homelessness. A considerable amount of that has been driven by this Government's housing policies which have reduced the supply of rental properties. You have to think about the consequences of what you're doing in the short term and this is another example of that. On that basis we are not at all convinced. Thank you."