Dean Jacqui; Mallard TrevorHon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): The speech that has just been given to the House illustrates very perfectly just why this current Government is not trusted to run the economy of New Zealand. The speech we have just heard from the other side of the House illustrates very very clearly and underlines just why the latest Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion has got for the first time in six years business confidence tanking to below the level of 2008. GDP has slowed under this Government. It has got nothing to do with international trading conditions. It's got nothing to do with international economies; those are only being signalled. There is only a watch on those external economies. That is just signalling a Government in denial.I want to go back to the contribution made by the Hon Peeni Henare Minister for Youth who talked about the impact of the sudden and significant 7 percent rise in the minimum wage and how good it is for young people. The flip side to that point of view is that it is those very same young people who are just starting out in work who will be the very first people to be let go by businesses who can't afford to sustain that sudden dramatic 7 percent increase in their wage bill. If you think about small-business confidence and if you think about that 7 percent increase in the wage bill just on its own let alone some of the other impacts that this Government is having on small business it is that hiring intentions are going down. Who's going to miss out? It's going to be the young people who are the first to be let go to have their hours cut at the supermarket. Yes the supermarket and the fish and chip shop. We all started there or in the corner dairy—in my case in the fish and chip shop. But they will be the very first people who will find that their hours have been cut or that there is no work for them this weekend because in a small business what will happen and what is happening now is that the small-business owner will take those shifts themselves because they cannot sustain a 7 percent sudden rise in their costs without doing something.It is well known—and if only members of the Government actually talked to small-business people they would find out for themselves—that small-business owners pay everyone else first. They pay people they owe money to first they pay their wages first and if they don't have any money left over at the end of the month well they don't pay themselves and they do that because the thought is that they invest everything—everything—into their small business because they anticipate at the end after they've built this business up and they put it on the market they will get a decent capital gain. There is the reward for the risk they've taken all the hard work they've taken all the shifts they've done themselves on the weekend weekend after weekend after weekend. They can then enjoy the fruits literally of their labours in capital gain. Well not under this Government; under this Government they will then lose a third—a third—of that and I can tell you I can tell the House that I talk to small-business owners my colleagues talk to small-business owners and they are telling us one thing and one thing only: it's that the policies of this Government are firmly anti-business and we are beginning to reap the rewards of those policies.It's not just minimum wage. It's labour relations. It's access to good quality skilled staff. I've got a six-week backlog of work application appeals into the immigration department. Six weeks it is taking them to process immigration work visas. Well that's the fruit season done and dusted. It is simply not good enough for this Government to see only one side of the equation. Of course we all support and in Government did increase the minimum wage but it was done at a sustainable rate for small business. Unfortunately this Government is surely killing the golden goose and business confidence tanking is the proof of that.SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.