Smith DamienDAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Ah we heard the magic words today of Baycorp—Baycorp. Let me tell you what Baycorp did to our great hero of the United Kingdom Nigel Farage. The last CEO on the board signed off on Some people won't fit our environmental social and corporate governance (ESG) principles."—and this is the UK NatWest via Coutts bank—and they closed down Nigel's private business account and his personal accounts and then went through all their customer base saying "Do you have political views? Are you green enough? Listen to Baycorp." Anyway three days later the new CEO of NatWest and Coutts bank apologised for the application of these bad ESG principles to one of the greatest democratic heroes in the United Kingdom. This is what happens when woke stakeholder capitalism is allowed to penetrate the use of companies and business accounts.If you look at Rabobank and its partnership with Silver Fern Farms well sustainability loans ESG the road to Paris—there's not actually anything in here about banking any more; it's just about "Have we got our green agenda sorted out so we can send this to Government and maybe extract more money for boilers or for other activities like electric arc furnaces which we'll give to Australian shareholders?" And you can see the Government's getting suckered in that area by companies coming in who have this money in their CAPEX and say "Oh if you want us to move faster on the ESG principles we need $750 million; we need $150 million." and the Government just rocks up and gives it to them. And that is taxpayer money.How dare you people insult the directors and businesses of this country. They pay your wages they pay taxes they take risks every day to go and make a profit which is not a bad word to go and help run this country. And while they're out there worrying about their bills every night and paying GST and meeting and paying bills on a Thursday you're all sitting having chardonnay across the road. So chardonnay socialism stakeholder socialism this is going to stop. I'm telling you right now; we're going to stop it and we're going to make sure that every law firm in the country understands what you've done today because this bill has been rejected by every law firm and by the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. It's a rubbish bill and Duncan Webb should be ashamed of himself and I don't know why Camilla Belich took this on.Now I'm a bit concerned about the ex-Minister of Revenue the Hon David Parker today. He's got his mask on. Maybe he's worried about being infected with these ESG principles because it is a virus that's taken hold around the world and it shouldn't be allowed. Directors are not stupid. They're already doing this in their boardrooms. They're already allowing their customers to experience green benefits. And if a customer doesn't like it they can just go and not buy the product. If you want to buy a share in a company—and being a capitalist you can go and buy a share in a company and you accept the responsibilities. Read the prospectus. If somebody's promoting environmental policy and you're happy with it good stuff. Let the free market take its place in these principles and not shoehorn them into some sort of stupid bill that actually doesn't make any sense isn't mandatory and will lead to big corporations in this country dictating how business runs their day-to-day life. And it's not fair and it's not proper.This bill was supposed to give more weight to environmental social and governance factors around directors' duties and it failed to achieve select committee endorsement at its first run. Now what does that say about this bill? What does it say about this bill?Dr James McDowall: It's a shocker.DAMIEN SMITH: It's a shocker and it's unnecessary and it's a shame on the Labour Party for bringing this in. It's just purely ideological and we need to recognise that fact in the House today. You can't run a country based on your political ideology and your whims of social environmental standards which are already set out there. The road to Paris is a long road but it's actually distorting and making New Zealand uncompetitive. It's not going to work and we need to line up with our trading nations and be competitive on a like-for-like basis and none of these other countries are adopting these principles. In fact they're going backwards so why should we take on this leadership position where we will actually now not reap the benefits of this type of legislation?Whether it's Rabobank or whether it's the New Zealand Bankers' Association telling me "Oh there's no ESG loans but we have sustainability loans." Well it's the same bloody thing.Hon Member: Yeah I know.DAMIEN SMITH: Yeah same thing. This actually says if you want to be a farmer you get differential rates so you take on our Paris Accord principles. Well what that means is that a mid-range farmer is disadvantaged because they have to pay higher interest rates. If you're a corporation you get cheaper money. Now that's a distortion in the market and that's behaviourally driven by something which is intangible and doesn't make sense for the New Zealand economy.Now I'm not an anti-environmentalist. I actually am a pretty sensible person when it comes to those principles. But I don't want people being cancelled who don't have the same political views in business and getting their accounts closed like Nigel Farage. I don't want corporations and banks dictating to me when I run my business "What is the interest rate?" That's the free market that sets that.To finally conclude I remember the first time I started my first company. It was a joyous moment. I had my accountant explain to me what my directors' duties were. I suppose nobody over there has ever started a company. Maybe they have; I don't know. But you're actually trained in what you have to do and be responsible for and that includes environmental factors as well. When you meet payroll on a Thursday you pay your GST you pay your taxes you deserve some respect from this Government you deserve to get legislation which makes sense and this should never have come to Parliament and it should never be passed into law. We at the ACT Party believe that woke capitalism—or whatever you want to call it on your side of the fence—or business that is driven by ideological agendas are not going to work longer term and you need to take that under consideration when you're promoting this to directors and when you're promoting this to shareholders. I don't care about the big corporation and its agenda. What I do care about is the sustainability of New Zealand and making sure as a nation we stay productive we stay in the world's intelligent economies and we have a network of laws that actually make sense—it facilitates business and people coming here to invest in this country. This is another example of legislation which continues to position us as the Shaky Isles in terms of investing. What are you going to get when you get to New Zealand? Are they going to close you down in oil and gas? Are they going to let you operate a steel furnace? Are you going to have to get your boilers replaced 20 years in advance and come to the Government to get the money? We're just a soft touch now for getting these things through and it has to stop we have to reduce debt we have to reduce the size of the Government and we have to be efficient with taxpayers' money. Thank you very much."