Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to take a brief call in this third reading on the Venture Capital Fund Bill. It's been a little while since I sat on the Finance and Expenditure Committee but I was a member of that committee at the early stages of the bill and as my colleague the Rt Hon David Carter said in his excellent contribution we are going to support this legislation because we do see it as something that will assist business in this country. Unlike most of the members opposite National understands that any Government can spend; actually what marks a good Government from an average Government is a Government that understands how hard the businesses and the people of New Zealand have to work to earn that money. It seems very clear to us that we now have a Government that has completely dropped the ball on thinking about how it can best support business to actually earn the money create the jobs and pay the taxes that give Governments the ability to make any investments. You can talk all you like about investing in infrastructure or housing or health or education and all of the other things that are necessary; if the money isn't being earned there is nothing to spend.National will support the bill because we do see it as the only tangible business-supporting initiative to come out of the Budget and for that reason alone it is worth supporting. However and again as my colleagues have said it shouldn't be mistaken for what I have heard it portrayed as by this Government. It shouldn't be mistaken as an investment into business because there is no new money going in. The Government has taken money from the New Zealand Superannuation Fund taken money that has been contributed to pay for future superannuation and carved a bit of that off to put into business so they can pretend that they have invested in business. Now the money to business is real but it isn't new. It has been taken from Peter to pay Paul. So let's not kid ourselves that this is the Government actually choosing to invest any of the surpluses they were left in supporting business.It also shouldn't be taken as being a panacea for what is a deeply deeply weak sentiment of business confidence in this country and a rapidly slowing private sector economy. Now we're seeing already from this Government very clear signs and the ghost of Michael Cullen coming back to haunt us once more. Well when the private sector is going backward at the rate of knots the Government borrows and spends to create activity to try and make it look as if the economy is good. You cannot build a future on Government spending. The only sustainable economic growth is economic growth that comes from the private sector. Borrowing and spending is a band-aid on a system that is slowing very fast. So that's what they're doing and we should not pretend that this Venture Capital Fund Bill is going to reverse that deeply worrying trend that has been gripping this country's economy for the last 18 months to two years.In fact just last night members of the National caucus met with a major New Zealand business a significant employer who told us that while they have been growing steadily in New Zealand for most of the last decade the last"—and I quote them—"18 months have been the hardest they have experienced for many many years." worse than the global financial crisis worse than the periods through the earthquakes and other hard financial times we've had. The last 18 months under this Government have been the worst they have had and this is a business that employs thousands and thousands of workers.So we'll support the bill because it is a step in the right direction but this is not by any stretch of the imagination a solution to the crisis of business confidence the failure of the private sector economy that this Government is causing in this country."