King Colin: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Colin: General Debate[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9655. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura): It is rather sad really because when one listens to the stories coming from the other side of the House we are not hearing the complete story. When we look at the Greens-Labour view of the world power prices are set to continue to rise. The truth of the matter is that household prices will be affected enormously under the raft of intended policies that have already been put on the table by the Opposition. If you consider that house power prices were meant to drop by $300 and yet the entry into the emissions trading scheme will raise house power prices by $500 simple mathematics tells you that house power prices will continue to rise. It is very similar to that petition for a referendum that the Greens-Labour Opposition attempted toput together. Again the figures do not add up. In actual fact it is representative of a lot of the policies that Labour members are speaking about. One has to cast one’s mind back only about 3 months and what they were talking about then is no longer included in their rhetoric.Effectively what we really want to do at this point in time is give New Zealanders a real shot of what the economy is looking like. During the most difficult times in 3 decades—or three generations—the living costs are at the lowest levels of increase since 1999. The interest rates are the lowest that they have been since 1965. The wages after tax have risen by 22 percent. That is what benefits all New Zealanders and we can assure New Zealand that by 2014-15 the Government will be back into surplus. That may be a signal to the Labour-Greens Opposition to spend up large with reckless gay abandon; we however have to maintain that situation to ensure that we make those gains lock them in and benefit New Zealanders entirely. So from that point of view it is important that we continue to look for growth. Unfortunately over on the other side of the House all we hear is about rewriting history and if that does not work they pretend that the 9 years that that Opposition was in Government never ever happened.Let us not forget New Zealand that the Opposition that we have today put New Zealand into recession before any OECD country. That is something that needs to be remembered. When the Labour members were on the Treasury benches power prices went up by 72 percent. It is not rocket science; we have to bear those things in mind. It is all right to talk about spending money with gay abandon—it may even be on the side of the angels when Labour talks about this limited competition—but let us stop and think about some of the stuff that Labour has talked about that is very anti-growth. It wishes to introduce a capital gains tax. It sees that as being a sort of silver bullet and yet the tax will not be on the family home and therefore will not address the issue that it is trying to deal to. But what it will do is morph into death duties through intergenerational assets being passed on and that will affect growth within the farming industry.I talked earlier about the introduction into the emissions trading scheme. The Opposition will bring agriculture into the emissions trading scheme. That in itself is an anti-growth agenda. There will be higher tax. There will be higher company tax. There will be charges on water because we have heard that from the Greens. We know that the way the policies are at the moment there is a dramatic shift by Labour towards the left. We are told that they will do away with the 90-day new employment test for employers and employees which we know has made 13000 jobs available. This Government here is a pro-active growth Government. It has got a great track record and what we are hearing from the other side of the House the Opposition is only half of the facts.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.