Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I shall only take a short call on this one as I actually haven't sat through the Finance and Expenditure Committee—I'm not part of it. I took great care in listening to all of the speeches right from the Minister when he opened up the session trying to learn a little bit about this particular bill in its second reading. I have actually read my notes and listened very carefully to the debates on both sides.Obviously as previous National members have stood up and said I stand with them in support of this bill. Having said that I'd like to perhaps bring some perspective to some of the comments that have been made in this House. One of the things that I always found very interesting as a speaker of English as a second language was the saying rob Peter to pay Paul". I couldn't quite understand what that literally meant but it's actually about the going around of things like you know borrowing or robbing someone to pay someone else—it's the same pocket of money.I think that's what some of the earlier speakers were actually talking about in terms of the supposed $300 million Venture Capital Fund where $260 million is actually coming from what was already in the Superannuation Fund and $60 million from the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund's existing assets. So literally when the Government made an announcement that they were going to create a completely new $300 million Venture Capital Fund it wasn't actually creating a new fund but they were literally robbing Peter to pay Paul. So I guess I'm using the terminology correctly—I hope I got that right.I guess that is sort of the state of affairs or the standard of this Government. For example the super fund—I think it was earlier that Brett Hudson was commenting—doesn't have to return a dividend. I mean to me it just seems ridiculous. When you create a Venture Capital Fund you would want some markers for success. You create any business any venture; anyone would want to know that this is successful. Where are the markers? I guess when you put a Minister in charge of a portfolio you want markers to suggest that the Minister is doing well. Perhaps that's where the Hon Phil Twyford failed because he had no markers for him. Well there was actually—there were 1000 KiwiBuild homes to be built in the first year; 5000 KiwiBuild homes to be built in the second year; and 10000 KiwiBuild homes to be built in the third year but he literally only built 258 homes and he got dumped—the whole idea got dumped.So I guess that is the standard of this Government—in the year of delivery—that there are no markers for this Venture Capital Fund that the Government is creating. They don't have to deliver a dividend. For example half of all State homes that were supposedly built by this Government were started under the National Government. Seven out of nine child poverty indicators which basically suggest that perhaps they might be doing well—but seven out of nine child poverty indicators are worse under Labour. These are some of the markers that people can use to see if this Government or anything that this Government creates is actually doing better or not. Like everything else that this Government is doing this Venture Capital Fund has no markers to show whether it is performing well or not.One of the things that I'm a little bit confused about—I think one of the things that the select committee have actually sort of disagreed on that members of the National Party have disagreed on is this whole idea that the Government or the Minister can decide what the Venture Capital Fund can actually invest in. I would have thought that you really don't want politicians involved in deciding what the fund can invest in. You would want to leave it up to the experts to decide what to invest in so they can gain something out of the fund but obviously not. The politicians—the Ministers in charge—are apparently going to be making the decision.The other thing is that the decision to tax the Venture Capital Fund was not removed from the bill at the select committee stage. I guess this is contrary to what they have actually done in terms of the treatment for the Provincial Growth Fund or the Green Investment Fund in that there wasn't going to be—I guess the policy's intention behind the fund should be treated the same way but apparently this is quite different to the other. I don't understand why they are treating this fund differently to the Provincial Growth Fund or the Green Investment Fund when it actually comes to the tax area.I guess we have some reservations as earlier members have commented and I stand with my colleagues in our reservations. I think all in all anything that grows the economy has to be a good thing or any attempt to grow the economy is a good thing because at the moment the 10000 a month job creation that the National Government delivered for New Zealand is actually providing only about 3000 jobs a month and so this Government is actually not doing as well as it should especially under great economic conditions.You know how people can tell whether the country is actually doing well is if businesses are confident enough to invest. Business confidence and business investment—both have failed. Business investment has actually fallen from 5 percent to 0.6 percent. That means that businesses are not confident in this Government.So I say as I said earlier anything that can boost a little bit of confidence in our economy to grow our economy has to be a good thing. So I commend this bill."