Goldsmith Paul: Financial Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoldsmith Paul: Financial Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 04 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16258. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): The proposition put forward by the potential Greens-Labour administration to get more food into the bellies of the poor seems to be yet more redistribution on top of what we do already. I heard Mr Norman say we leave the poor to rot. What nonsense. We have a tax system and a Working for Families system that through cash payments to lower income families for a family of twoearning around $50000 means they get more back in Working for Families than they pay in tax as well as largely free education health care and superannuation. That is an incredible amount of redistribution. We do it because we value the vulnerable in society and that is what this National Government has been committed to. The National Government’s approach to getting food into the bellies of young children is to create the conditions where their parents are more likely to have a job and to grow the economy so that we can afford good health care and education so that we can afford the welfare to support those who are most vulnerable in difficult times.It is ironic when you get members of the Greens standing up to oppose everything that we do in order to create more wealth in this country. They oppose every free-trade agreement that we try to do notwithstanding the immense wealth that is being created through the New Zealand — China free trade agreement to take one example. They oppose the dairy industry at every turn. They oppose oil and gas exploration. They always call for more regulation and over on the Labour side those members are always wanting more taxes such as capital gains taxes.That is the nub of it. If you want to get food into the bellies of young children we need to create conditions where the economy is strong and people have jobs and so one important thing that this Government is doing is getting more people off benefits and into paid work. In the past 12 months this Government has helped 80000 people off welfare and into work. Paid work is the best route out of hardship for families that are finding it difficult to make ends meet. That is what this Government has been committed to over these past 5 years and if given the chance over the next 5 or 6 years in Government.Let us just go back over the claims and counter-claims about who left what in terms of deficits. Just remember that when we inherited this economy back in 2008 the current account deficit was almost 9 percent of GDP. It is now about 4.3 percent of GDP. The net external debt had blown out to 84 percent of GDP. That is now down to 71 percent of GDP. Inflation—that thing that robs the savings of the thrifty—was running at 5.1 percent. It is now only 1.6 percent. People can know the value of their money. Mortgage interest rates were averaging nearly 11 percent and now they are at 5.9 percent. Yes they will probably be going up some time this year but they are a lot lower than they would be otherwise if we had had a profligate Government still in power. Government spending had gone up by 50 percent in the 5 years to 2008. Yes we should commend the Labour Government early on for being reasonably disciplined but it was that third term in particular where spending really got out of control and where commitments that were made for new spending were not funded properly which this Government had to deal with as well as all the pressures of the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes. We inherited an economy that had been going backwards for four quarters before the global financial crisis in 2008 and now the economy has grown by 3.5 percent in the past year—one of the highest rates in the OECD.We are all aware of just how fragile the global situation is. Who knows what is going to come out of Europe over the next few months. It is not a time to be running off recklessly on a big new spending drive. It is about continuing and maintaining this disciplined stable Government that we have had over the past 5 years and that is the sort of thing that this country needs. I also remind the Committee that Treasury was forecasting never-ending deficits and debt that was likely to get to 60 percent of GDP and never come down. We are forecast to be back in surplus in 2014-15 and debt is expected to peak at 26.5 percent of GDP. Those are figures that we on this side of the Chamber are incredibly proud of and on that basis I commend this bill.