Bennett David: Debate on Budget Policy StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBennett David: Debate on Budget Policy Statement[Sitting date: 12 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16590. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East):Thank you Mr Speaker.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Oh no.DAVID BENNETT: Have you got something to say? No he has got nothing to say. He has got the next 10 minutes but he will not have anything to say. This is economic policy. I would like to hear what Winston Peters’ economic policy is. Do you know how Winston Peters’ speech will go? He will stand up and he will wait for someone to interrupt him—Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. As you will know there is a procedure in this House and there has been for a long time that a member can request that the other member yield so the challenge he is making out can be met. He wants to hear me speak so I am asking him to yield.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well that is not a point of order.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Yes it is.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No it is not a point of order. It is up to the member on his feet to decide whether he wants to yield.DAVID BENNETT: You see the other part of his speech process is to do a point of order because he cannot handle someone actually attacking him in this House and so he has to raise a point of order to try to break it up. He is an old dog with some new tricks but it is good to see him back. He has been here only 5 minutes but—Rt Hon Winston Peters: Call his bluff.DAVID BENNETT: Yeah nah that is right. We will be interested to see his economic policy. I will tell you what his economic policy will be. It will be squat it will be zero it will be nothing. He has never had an economic policy. He never will and never could get one together. It is such a shame to see a politician of such longevity sit there in pain and not understand what he has got to do for the next 10 minutes. He will just try to abuse people personally instead of actually doing anything of any consequence.Tracey Martin: Come on Mr Bennett. Say something about the actual topic. Come on.DAVID BENNETT: OK I will. OK let us have a look at the Green Party. The Green Party just spoke. It was Russel Norman the economic guru who said it was going to print money. Where has the printing money idea gone? The Green Party soon got rid of the idea of printing money. Or does it still secretly want to print money—is that what it really wants? Russel Norman came into this House year after year after year saying the Green Party would print money to solve New Zealand’s problems. Then suddenly Russel Norman worked out that it was a dumb move and he stopped saying what he had said he would want to do which was print money. Now he comes back in here with the next level of his agenda. He always talks about macroeconomic policy as if he were some economic guru who studied and got a doctorate in economics when he has no idea of what is going on in the world economy or in the New Zealand economy. When he talks about debt reduction and inflation let us look at the reality of what has gone on.New Zealand has had to deal with the biggest recession since the 1930s and we did not have this country go into depression. New Zealand has had to rebuild our second-biggest city. We have done all that at the same time as keeping our country’s economic finances under control and delivering a strong future going forward. We now have growth rates above 3 percent—the second-best in the Western World. That is the kind of economic management that New Zealanders wanted and got from this Government. It is not the kind of economic management that the Green Party and the Labour Party would deliver.The Green Party talks about housing and electricity as the two big expenses that are causing inflation. Let us have a look at both of them. I will come back to housing when we talk about the Labour Party policy around capital gains tax but let us talk about electricity first. The Green Party wants to bring in a carbon tax on New Zealanders—that $500 a year on everybody’s power bills that it wants to bring in around emissions trading. It has said that time and time again. What does that do to your power price? It puts your power price up. If it puts your power price up under the Greens’ logic that means you have got higher inflation. That means you have got higher interest rates. The Green Party is saying that power prices have gone up 20 percent in the term of this Government; yes they have. That is nothing compared with the 70 percent they went up under the previous Government. The Green Party would want to hike them up 70 percent in 3 years if it ever got near the Treasury benches because it would do that for its emissions trading scheme. Get ready New Zealanders: if you had a Labour-Greens Government you would have much higher power prices. That is the reality of the Greens’ economic policy.Then we look at the Labour Party. It has talked about a capital gains tax.Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Look at them.DAVID BENNETT: Look at them—yes what is left of the Labour Party there. A capital gains tax—if you go and talk to any international organisation like the IMF it will talk about capital gains taxes but it will talk about them as capital gains taxes across all assets not just what the Labour Party is talking about which is putting capital gains taxes just on the productive side of the New Zealand economy. Why would you want to tax the side of the New Zealand economy that produces the most income? Why would you want to tax businesses? Why would you want to tax the companies which pay for jobs and provide the income for this country going forward and exempt family homes? You exempt family homes under the Labour one but you tax the productive part of the economy. That does not make a lot of sense.When you go overseas you look at countries that have a capital gains tax. Have they got lower house price inflation than New Zealand? No. In San Francisco last year the price went up 30 percent in 1 year. That is what you are dealing with. Sydney has got a large increase in the prices of homes as well. They have both got a capital gains tax. It does not stop increases. It does not stop them.Phil Twyford: We wouldn’t expect you to support a CGT.DAVID BENNETT: That is Phil Twyford over there—the housing person for the Labour Party. He would have no idea. He is just doing what David Cunliffe told him to do. So if we look at it the Green Party wants to put up power prices. It wants to put up power prices through its emissions trading scheme. The Labour Party wants to attack the productive part of New Zealand and that is still not going to stop New Zealand property prices going up. That does not work in the economic sense.Before I finish I just want to talk about one local issue that is dear to my heart and dear to the hearts of the people of Waikato.Hon Todd McClay: What’s that?DAVID BENNETT: That is the Waikato Expressway. This country has got the ability to grow and grow successfully and we need the infrastructure to do that. When you look at the roads of national significance the Waikato Expressway has got two contracts that come up in 2015 for two parts of that road both of them around $600 million to $700 million: the Huntly and Hamilton bypasses. They need to be contracted in 2015 which is next year. The Labour Party and the Green Party mark my words will not commit to funding those projects. The people of Hamilton and the people of Waikato have the most to lose from this election. They have the most to lose from the National Government not being re-elected. If National does not get back in those roads will not happen—those roads will not happen. There will be no economic growth plan for Hamilton going forward.I see Nanaia Mahuta there. I bet you she will go back to Tainui and they will say they need that road for their inland port. Do they not? They do need it at Ruakura. I do not know how you can sit through those meetings with Tainui and say to them that you will not build the road that makes the biggest capital investment for that tribe going forward. That is the truth of what happens and that is the truth of what will happen after this election if you get a Labour-Greens Government. The people of Hamilton and the Waikato will miss out. They will miss out on the golden opportunity they have in front of them to leap with Auckland into Tauranga. That will happen because Labour and the Greens will not build the roads. You say: “How do you know that Dave? How do you know that they will not build them?”. Well the Green Party has already pulled the plug on two that are signed up now so it is certainly going to pull the plug on anything that is in the process of being signed up next year is it not? The Labour Party does exactly what the Green Party wants to do when it comes to these things because the Labour Party is under the hand and the fist of the Green Party when it comes to transport.So I say to the members of the public out there that this is an important election. This is an important election because it is about the economic future of New Zealand. This is what the Budget Policy Statement is about. Are we willing to back a growing strong economy? Or are we willing to vote for a Green Party that is going to put power prices up? Are we going to vote for a Labour Party that is going to put a capital gains tax in which is its trump economic policy and that will not actually achieve anything? Are you going to vote for a Labour-Greens Government that is going to hurt the people of Hamilton and the Waikato and deny them the future that they could have had under a National Government? That is why people will not vote for them.Then there is a red herring. There is New Zealand First over there which does not actually know what it will get if anyone votes for it. Its members would have no idea about economic policy. I bet you that Winston Peters is trying to look up what the Waikato Expressway is. He would not understand. That is the road to the future of Hamilton. If you ever visit you will see how important it is. This is an election that is going to be about economic policy. The choice is clear. We have had good economic management we have delivered good economic growth we have reduced unemployment and we have managed our finances in the most difficult of times. On the other side of the House you have weird and wonderful platforms that will actually increase the cost of living and that will not achieve the purpose that the Opposition says they will achieve. And the third party does not even have a platform. Thank you.