Little Andrew: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: General Debate[Sitting date: 11 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10978. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. All of New Zealand has now seen that we have been drawn into the grubby sordid world of international tax evasion and what is worse is that we have a Prime Minister and a Government that just do not care—they do not care about the damage it is doing to our reputation and they do not care about the fact that it is not going to help us stand on the world stage and ask the rest of the world to get the multinational corporates that are not paying their fair share of tax here to do so. John Key has lost touch with what New Zealanders expect of a responsible Prime Minister: a Government that actually stands with New Zealand and for New Zealanders. What we have got is a Prime Minister and a Government that are just about duck-shoving and butt-covering for the world’s mega-wealthy to get wealthier and wealthier and for inequality to grow and get worse.What New Zealanders want is a Government that is on the side of hard-working New Zealanders who have just a few simple ambitions and aspirations: the idea that they can get the health care that they need when they need it—not a Government that runs down the health service to the tune of $1.7 billion and sees the nation’s elderly getting sicker and worse and in greater pain before they can get their treatment. That is what this Government represents.What New Zealanders want is a Government to support New Zealanders to know that the schools they send their kids to or their grandkids to have got the support and the teachers and the facilities to do the job of helping their kids to be successful. That is not what we have got at the moment. We have a Government that is running down our education system putting more of the cost on to parents and families and running down the successful achievements of our schools. Now we are performing even worse in literacy and numeracy and in many other areas. That is what happens when you have a Government whose priority is standing up for the world’s mega-rich rather than looking after the aspirations of middle New Zealand.And what about New Zealand’s regions which are going through a tough time at the moment and which just expect a Government to understand that and to provide that extra little impetus through decent road funding and through good public services and social services? But the Government is just spending its time running them down. We do not have a Government that is interested in the aspirations of middle New Zealand any more and we should not be surprised that we have a Prime Minister who is not the least bit concerned about us now descending into that grubby world of tax-dodging foreign trusts that we are now in.The reality is that that is what he has wanted for 10 years or more. This is what he said in 2010 when he could not get the Government’s departments the Inland Revenue Department and the then Ministry of Economic Development to get on side with his ambition for this international financial services hub. He was reported as having slammed what he described as “bureaucratic pinpricking” over his proposed financial services hub. That “bureaucratic pinpricking” was actually trying to preserve the interests of New Zealand but he rode roughshod over it with the help of Bill English and with the help of Gerry Brownlee and Steven Joyce and the rest of that motley crew over there.What John Key complained about was as he described it advice coming from the Ministry of Economic Development which basically says that if you want to do this you have to deliver the Magna Carta of documents. You do not want accountability and responsibility when you just want to run your sham project of trying to get grubby money into New Zealand at any cost which is what he wants. He went on to criticise the Ministry of Economic Development for saying in his words: “You’ve got to do all these things and need bipartisan support.” Here is the thing: the Ministry of Economic Development did not say that he needed bipartisan support. What it said was that he needed to build the political support for that whole idea. Once again we see with this Prime Minister as we have seen for the last 8 years that he is not an intimate friend of the truth; he is a passing acquaintance of it.Here is the truth about it. In just the last few years under his and Bill English’s Government the number of foreign trusts used for dodging taxes in overseas countries has grown like Topsy from roughly 4000 in 2009 to nearly 11000 now—prolific growth over that time. We are marketed overseas by law firms and agents here as the great place to do business because we are stable and we have a good reputation—but put your dodgy money here. New Zealanders deserve better. They want a Government with honesty and integrity and that will look after their things—helping them to get their first home and helping their kids to succeed in a good education system.