Cosgrove Clayton: Taxation (Annual Rates Business Taxation KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill — First Reading 
Cosgrove Clayton: Taxation (Annual Rates Business Taxation KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:9418] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Associate Minister of Finance) 
: 
 I rise to support the Taxation (Annual Rates Business Taxation KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill. Earlier this evening I made a statement that I want to reiterate in respect of the KiwiSaver provisions of this bill. As with the Taxation (KiwiSaver and Company Tax Rate Amendments) Bill this bill corrects what this evening I call 30 years of the biggest perpetration of economic and social vandalism inflicted on this country and this Parliament by the then National Government. I refer to what Robert Muldoon did in pulling the rug out from under every Kiwi who had signed up to the Norman Kirk Labour Party compulsory superannuation scheme. Tonight the provisions in this bill as with the first tax bill we debated tonight bed in and correct that wrong. 
I challenged members over the other side—Mr Foss Mr Tisch— 
Tim Groser 
: John Hayes. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: —no not “Sir Les Patterson”—and Mr Groser who does have a good memory of history to stand up justify and put forward a policy position. We heard Mr Key say we do not need savings schemes. He said that on television tonight. Mr Key thinks we do not need incentives to save. Mr Hide got up and said that we do not need any of this stuff because Kiwis will invest their money where they want and will invest it prudently. Well I say to Mr Hide—that great economic genius of our time who gave a lecture or two at Lincoln University somewhere along the way—that if we look at our economic history in the boom times the real boom times in this country of the 1950s and the 1960s we see that we as Kiwis do not save in the good times. 
Hon Annette King 
: We spend. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: We spend. And what Kiwis are looking for is some sort of incentive some sort of cultural shift to incentivise them to save. 
But of course Mr Key on television tonight said that Kiwis do not need incentives to save. Then we look at what Mr English said. He said that Kiwis do need incentives. But it is a bit like National’s position on tax. For 3 years or 6 years—nay since the 1990 election—National has claimed that we need tax cuts. Then on 24 April on  
Morning Report  
Bill English said: “And we would agree the last thing it”—it being the economy—“would need would be sweeping tax cuts.” Then he came into the House and announced with some sort of chest-pumping pride that he would vote against the cut in corporate tax and that he would vote against a KiwiSaver scheme that backs every Kiwi in New Zealand to make provision for his or her retirement. 
Labour says to all New Zealanders that if they put some money up and if their employers put some money up the Government will put some money up. By 2011 that will add up to around a hundred bucks a week around $5200 a year that people will get back to provide for their retirement. That of course is the great divide between the parties—we believe that Kiwis should be incentivised to save. We do not believe in the slash-and-burn mentality of cutting taxes right across the board. Kiwis will compare that policy of the National Party which would have given my constituents in Waimakariri—whom Mr Hide waxed so eloquent about—around 5 to 10 bucks a week with what the Government is proposing and will implement with KiwiSaver which will give them $5200 a year and I say to the National Party that Kiwis are not stupid. 
Dr Lockwood Smith can look on from over there with his childish delicate flowerlike grin but I will tell members what he cannot do. On Monday he has to front up to the businesses in his electorate and explain in his boyish charming cream-puff way why he fought an election saying that there should be a corporate tax cut and why his party tonight voted against a corporate tax cut. In his delicate naive boyish sort of way he will have to go to those businesses and give an explanation. 
I challenge him to get up tonight along with Tim Groser Lindsay Tisch and that genius when it comes to Inland Revenue Department matters—especially his own—Craig Foss and tell us what National members will say to the business community. What will they say to Phil O’Reilly of Business New Zealand? He has been at conferences where he has said in front me in my capacity as Associate Minister of Finance that Business New Zealand wants a tax cut and that the National Party will give a tax cut. That is OK; Phil is all right. 
The National Party campaigned for years on tax cuts yet tonight it voted against it. Tonight National members continue the 30-year perpetration of what I called in the last debate the biggest social and economic betrayal of Kiwis when the National Party—and Dr Lockwood Smith laughs— 
Hon Annette King 
: No he’s not laughing. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Yes he is in his boyish delicate flowerlike way. 
Hon Annette King 
: He’s agreeing with you. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: He laughs because he continues to perpetrate the economic vandalism of Rob Muldoon when in 1976 he pulled the rug out from under every Kiwi. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I laugh because I feel sorry for the poor prick. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I beg the member’s pardon? 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I said I laugh because I feel sorry for you. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: No the member did not. He said something silly but he will regret that because he has proved he is a small man with a small policy and a small brain. Every Kiwi who listens to that mob over there knows that he and every member of his party who has stood up tonight said for 3 years that National wants a corporate tax cut and tax cuts across the board and tonight they voted against it. Well there is a word for that. He used a word against me and I will not lower myself to that member’s level but I say to Dr Lockwood Smith—and I look him in the eye—that if he thinks the communities in New Zealand are stupid and can be conned and hoodwinked by him I would like to be at the businesses he talks to on Monday when he explains why he voted against a corporate tax cut. I will yield to the member right now if he will tell us. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Yeah because businesses want us in Government not you! 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: No. That member said that his policy was to cut corporate taxes. The problem for that member is tonight this Government has brought home the bacon. Sadly that member has flip-flopped on every policy. The only shallow mediocre tactic that those members have is to take every policy this Government has adopted that is popular and nail themselves to it and drop every policy they went to an election with that the public did not like and deep-six it somewhere dark and deep where only Lockwood would know where to go then try to “me too” themselves to the election. 
But the line has been drawn in the sand because tonight Kiwis can judge a Government of consistency a Government that put out a firm platform before the election a Government that then placed on top of it a solid Budget that enhances KiwiSaver a Government that laid out a tax reduction policy for corporates and then they can judge an Opposition member like Dr Lockwood Smith a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who got chased out of the room by students and who campaigned in the last election on a corporate tax cut yet tonight his leader and his deputy leader voted against it. There is a word for that. He will use it; I will not. But I challenge him again. I say to that member— 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Why is Mike Moore so embarrassed about this member? 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: That member challenges me about Mike Moore. I will say that Mike Moore did not flip-flop. Mike Moore did not promise a tax cut to every business in the country when he was Minister or Prime Minister then turn round and vote against a cut when members opposite proposed it. So I say to the member that he should put that in his pipe and smoke it because there is a word for him. He represents everything that is dark about his party. I challenge him. I will come with him on Monday I will go to the businesses he visits and I will see what explanation he gives to businesses because he will not be able to look them in the eye.