Jones Shane: Taxation (KiwiSaver and Company Tax Rate Amendments) Bill — First Reading 
Jones Shane: Taxation (KiwiSaver and Company Tax Rate Amendments) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:9400] 
SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Kia ora anotatou. I rise to echo the remarks of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance because today is the inordinately important day on which we as a nation through this document address the deficits of our history especially in savings. Up and down the country people are already ringing members on this side of the House because they are realising that had we been tempted to adopt the confetti-based approach in relation to colourful cheap gimmicky give-aways as that side of the House proposed to do it would have disappeared in a puff of a Warehouse experience. They know that today at the very time our birth rate as a nation increases this Government is prepared to act boldly and invest in a future that not only our children but our mokopunas will look back to gladly and celebrate the year that we were prepared to take the dividends of economic buoyancy and put them into deepening the wells of capital in our own economy. 
 Those people were not willing to follow the tasks or follow the route outlined by members of that side of the House who unwisely think that reacting to a Budget is an opportunity for indulging in minutiae. They unwisely think that members can come to this House and give flippant trivial ill-informed stories about tiny parcels of information that completely overlook what the country is really looking for. That is why this is a great day; there is an appetite a thirst and a hunger to address the issues of economic security in our families that lie at the root of the problem we have as an economy—scarcity and paucity of capital. 
Let us just recite recent history in terms of the Treasurer’s efforts in this regard. Undoubtedly his legacy will be firstly the Cullen fund. A small economy with a relatively modest population has been prepared to build step by step on enlarging its capital reserves to deal with the inevitability of the flood of ageing that has already affected that side of the House if not physiologically then certainly intellectually. Nowhere are we seeing it more brightly than in the member for Tauranga. In fact we have been told by our Maori colleague here that people in Tauranga are wandering around not with a headache but with a hangover. They curse the day they sent that man to Parliament. He boasted how he would come down humiliate Winston Peters and teach everyone else here a lesson on how the real world works. He sits over there and never says a single lucid constructive or memorable thing. In fact he joins Tony Ryall and a host of others who every time they throw foul rhetoric in this House the walls of this esteemed institution are smudged; that is all they have to offer. That and these flights of fancy into minutiae is all they have to offer. 
What exactly are we offering today to the happy workers eager families and very respectful providers of aged care? We are addressing what National refuses to do. We are dealing with the issues of security amongst those families who eke out an existence on pitifully low wages. 
What do National members say? They say that wages have grown too high the public sector is too large it has become bloated and when they come in they are going to force it back down. That is why they will never be here on the Government side of the House. They will never ever come back until they can match the quality of stewardship and the vision because there is a massive appetite out there that we have tapped into. 
KiwiSaver started last year. It arrived at our committee and was addressed by some very—well some—fine minds with occasional inputs from my colleagues from the other side of the House. I will say one thing for John Key. At the end of the day he heard what people had to say in the select committee and he realised that there was a well of massive support inside society for a savings scheme of this nature. After he had hung “Uncle Don” upon the petard which he constructed himself he then began to ape and then don the garb that we have created. I will say that much for him—he is adaptable he is a chameleon he is a plagiarist and he will do anything to occupy the benches of power. But what is his remedy and what is the grand narrative he has for our nation? 
What have National members done over the last 4 or 5 years to obfuscate the fact that they have no grand narrative? No. 1 is that they have tried to chase everyone to Australia. No. 2 is that they have tried to pit Maori and Pakeha against each other. No. 3 is that they constantly carry on about taxes. There is a clear choice. They should put their choice to the people. We have put ours in this document and we will meet all comers. On every single street corner we will be there and by Jove it will be a fantastic debate because for the people of New Zealand there are remedies in this document—clear remedies. 
Let us talk about business tax. How on earth could a party that professes to be the friend of business not even have the presence of mind to at least acknowledge the overdue steps that our colleague Mr Dunne Mr Treasurer and Mr Peters have taken. They know that in a small economy with a GDP of $160 billion there needs to be a private enterprise sector that is continuously buoyant resilient and that looks to the Government to provide through the tax system some useful incentives to enable them to keep more of that money to plough it into the business. 
That is the very thing they talk about profess to know about and have the opportunity to vote for—but no they will not do that. So we have two of these massive planks—business tax reform and KiwiSaver—that will characterise the era when this party laid down which we call in Maori the huarahi the pathway where the full benefits will be enjoyed by our mokopuna. 
Let us go back to the pool of human capital—the tertiary education sector. Fortunately Dr Cullen had already adumbrated during the last few weeks that we are continuing to invest in the tertiary sector. We do it in such a way that we remedy and redress the slights and the omissions of the 1990s—a time when trade qualifications and those skills of practical application were almost wiped out. We do it through our tertiary education investments and—of particular importance to me and my colleague in the Maori world—ongoing investment into human capital. 
So what have we here? We have leadership and boldness prepared to invest well into the future and economic capital we are continuing to grow in relation to tertiary education which is human capital. We take it from the kohungahunga the very young and nimble right through to adult students the pakeke. That is a seamless lifelong approach to learning something that this Budget is willing to invest in. It is not the politics of divisiveness it is not the politics of triviality or of an obsession with minutiae. This approach reminds me that every time Mr Ryall rises he stands almost as if he is speaking with a set of latex gloves—one can only imagine why he would need them. 
The final thing I point out about this Budget is that I look forward to the legislation associated with this grand vision we have laid out coming to our committee. I look forward to input from my colleagues who no doubt will join the fray to ensure that the legislation comes back to the House in as robust a form as possible after the theatrics the predictable rhetoric and the tired speeches of Mr Groser and others. If there was ever a reason why we have a current account deficit his speech tonight gave it. It is infrastructure—we have covered all the bases—it is physical capital human capital economic capital and a tax system that will enable private enterprise to realise its full potential. This is a grand night for a grand Government that has put forward a grand vision. Kia ora tatou.