Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Speaker and thank you for the opportunity to speak on the first reading of this the Venture Capital Fund Bill. National will support this bill to first reading. I don't like to be unkind but it was perhaps arguably the only real thing in Budget 2019 which could be described as a growth policy—Kieran McAnulty: Don't be so negative.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: No. That's why we are supporting this bill to select committee. In a perfect world we wouldn't be needing such a fund. I mean ideally the most likely way to get good judgment about whether to invest in a particular venture or a particular company or start-up is somebody putting their own money into it in the private sector. Putting their money at risk they're much more likely to be careful about where that money goes and very focused on the returns. A Government fund which is using other people's money taxpayers' money doesn't tend to have such a good track record. But having said that the New Zealand super fund does have an excellent track record. So their oversight of this $300 million fund gives some reassurance. My understanding is they're not very thrilled about having $300 million or $240 million taken from them and sent somewhere else. They'll be interested to see the letters around all that. I don't think they're very thrilled at all. Having said that it always struck me as an interesting thing for the short period that I was the Minister responsible for science and innovation that as a country we invest very large sums in the development of new technologies and new ideas—I'm talking about $1.6 billion I think in total in R & D spending through universities and all sorts of funds—creating more and more ideas but as a country I suppose our greatest challenge has been converting those ideas into successful companies. Our public investment in that part of the process has been very limited. So I can certainly see the argument for providing a fund that will help deepen the market in this phase of the development of new particularly technology companies.We're always concerned about the way in which it's developed and drawn together. Part of the real benefit that comes from private sector investment and particularly overseas investment in such companies and why it shouldn't be seen as a negative generally is that with the money comes the ideas and the management experience and the world view and the real technical input into the development of these companies. That's why we should never be afraid of international investment coming into new companies that have been started up or new ventures in such a way and I don't think the Minister is quite suggesting this but if you were to say that we should be able to do it all on our own and if we have the Government sort of funding these things then that would be a better outcome because it's a much more complex iterative process than that.But having said that I do think overall we can understand the idea of the fund. I suppose our broader sort of critique though would be that none of all this makes up for private sector investment. The more important task of any Government is to create an environment where businesses and investors feel confident to invest. Our primary critique of the Government so far in the past 20 months has been that a lot of what they have done has driven down the business confidence that lies behind that investment. I know we've had a long-running debate about the merits of business confidence surveys and I hope the Minister is now starting to take them more seriously as indeed the Governor of the Reserve Bank and many other people refer to business sentiment as being important. You know there are different ways in which it's measured but the reality is that the increase in costs on business the massive uncertainty caused by so much policy uncertainty in this country with all the working groups the 18 months of uncertainty around the capital gains tax that I know the Minister did want to introduce and wasn't able to—all that uncertainty has made it less likely that investors feel confident to invest in companies such as what we're talking about here but also in a whole range of investments. So while we are willing to support this particular project that's put forward and this investment of taxpayers' money in such a fund and the legislation that's required to support that—and we'll want to go through it in detail in the select committee—we do make that broader point that good Government and an environment that is supportive of innovation is much broader and any good Government needs to be consistent around that.My main concern at this stage of course is I don't understand why the Government is insisting that we report this back on 2 December which is less than four months away. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to go through a normal select committee process with a proper amount of time so that we can get full consideration of how this is done. You know there is always the risk of getting the arrangements wrong and we don't claim to be experts on every element of that and we do want to hear from not just the fund managers that will benefit from this but a wide range of people who will have an interest in how this is put together. So I do not support rushing this process and I think we'll have a debate about that a bit later. But overall we'll see this work its way through the process and we support this bill to the select committee. Thank you.