Prosser RichardRICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am very very pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on the Appropriation (2017/18 Estimates) Bill. I want to pick up on something that Minister Wagner has just said in her contribution. It is to do with Canterbury and the rebuild there and the much-touted figure that the Government talks about having put—$11 billion or $15 billion or whatever it is—into the rebuild of Canterbury. Well the question in my mind is: what happened to the $15 billion of overseas reinsurance that the Earthquake Commission (EQC) was supposed to have and is meant to have come in and is meant to have covered that? It seems to me that this Government is very good at coming up with Canterbury as an excuse for soaking up lots and lots of money when in fact that money should have been—and we were led to believe it was—coming in from overseas. So that is a genuine question that I have.I turn to the Budget itself and what a weak watery insipid offering we have been served up with this Steven Joyce's first and last Budget. When I look at these meagre offerings I am given to wonder who it was who actually had the first turn with the teabag because these appropriations that New Zealand has been given—honestly it is very much like a watery second cup of tea out of the same bag. I wonder whether the Government saved the first turn of the teabag for an event that may be happening in Epsom—who knows—really quite soon.Todd Muller: Focus. Focus.RICHARD PROSSER: I am focused sir. This Budget will be much less memorable for what is in it than for what is not in it and it is not a visionary Budget. It is not an aspirational Budget unless of course you take aspirational as meaning aspirating—in other words it is gasping for breath. It is choking to death. It is not a visionary forward-looking Budget. It is a classic steady as she goes election year Budget—slightly less than more of the same.There are a few lollies in there but no grand vision and no great plan. Steven Joyce has not indicated that he has this marvellous agenda for taking the nation forward—so actually it is fortunate that he is not going to have to. What will happen is that on the morning of 24 September the nation will wake up to the glorious news that Winston Peters is the new Prime Minister. We will then set about repairing the economy. Now before the Nats on the backbenches get too despondent—and they have every cause for being despondent because in a little over 4 months' time a good number of them are going to be adding to the ranks of the unemployed—fortunately for them at least according to Mr Joyce those ranks are diminishing so job prospects may be out there for the myriad dozens of National backbenchers who end up getting dumped at the election partly as a result of this Budget. There are some good things in this Budget—before they get too despondent there are some good things—and the Family Incomes Package is one of those good things in a relative sense. That is why New Zealand First supported it. It is going to be short-term welcome relief for those families who are struggling to make ends meet on low and middle incomes and who are struggling to pay rent. So it is a very welcome and necessary coat of paint over the rust which as I had mentioned earlier in the week has to last only about 4 months and that is great. Then we will come in and sort it out. So the accommodation supplement—Todd Muller: Stop now.RICHARD PROSSER: Listen carefully Mr Muller and you will learn. The accommodation supplement increase is probably the greater part of that beneficial effect such that it is within the tax package. It is a necessary thing for people to be able to pay rents that are too high. But what this Budget does not do and what it could have done is address some of the reasons why those rents are too high in the first place. Rents in New Zealand are too high the way that house prices are too high because there is simply too much pressure on the available stock. You can beat around this bush as much as you like but it does not get away from the unavoidable reality that a significant proportion of the overpricing in our housing market and following on from that the overpricing in our rental market is down to foreign ownership. That is because we do not place any restrictions on who can come into this country—well not even come into this country; they do not even have to come here. Anyone from anywhere in the world can ring up or get online and buy houses as many of them as they want sight unseen in New Zealand; people with access to virtually unlimited money at virtually zero interest. So there is no restriction. When you have an unrestricted ability in a market that has a limited supply—when you have an unrestricted ability to purchase—then the market will rise to meet that demand. That is patently obvious. It does not matter what the Government says—the truth of the matter is that an enormous proportion of the overpricing both in housing and in rentals is down to foreign ownership.The Budget could have addressed that and it did not. In other jurisdictions there are punitive taxes and there are stamp duties applied. In the parts of the world where they do allow foreigners to buy property there are stamp duties and various taxes applied to foreigners who purchase property. In that sense the nation that is selling off its land from under its feet—in the way that we tend to do in this country—does get something of a fiscal return for it. This Budget did not address that.The accommodation supplement will go some way to plugging the hole in people's weekly budgets which has come about because rents are too high and the Labour Opposition is quite correct in saying that that accommodation supplement will end up in the pockets of landlords. Yes that is what happens with rent. That is where it goes. So in a sense through increasing this accommodation supplement yes we are assisting families but we are also assisting what are in many cases foreign owners to pay off the mortgages that they have taken out with foreign banks to buy houses in our country. We do not just allow them to purchase property in this country; we pretty much pay them to take it. This Budget could have addressed that but it did not.It is not just houses that are affected. Land is being sold off to foreigners in all senses. Forests are going. Farms are going. Landcorp the Government's own State-owned farmer is selling off farms to the Chinese without even going through the Overseas Investment Office (OIO). When it does go through the OIO it is simply a rubber stamp. All of this affects the bottom line of the nation. The Government talks about it being investment. It is not investment. It is plain and simple change of ownership. That is all. In the case of productive farmland and in the case of rental housing it is actually worse than that because not only does the ownership change but the profits that come from the farming operation and the profits that take the form of rent that is paid go offshore as well. And we wonder why we are struggling. We wonder why this country is struggling to raise GDP. We wonder why we are struggling to raise incomes in a relative international sense.The banks claim that there is lots of confidence out there. Well I am not surprised that the banks have confidence. The banks are all foreign-owned as well and they are creaming billions of dollars a year in profits that also disappear offshore. This Budget does not do anything to address that. They pay very little in the way of tax like the other foreign corporates.This Budget could have been visionary. It could have looked forward. It could have looked at tax settings and the ways in which tax settings can be used to enrich a nation. When we take the increase in family incomes and the accommodation supplement yes the tax changes could see families on low and middle incomes being better off by $30 $40 a week—$100 maybe—with the supplement. If we were to take GST off food that would maybe out of a $300 weekly grocery bill give those families another $45 in the hand. Yes that would cost the Government about $3 billion in lost revenue but apply that against the fact that large foreign corporations currently are avoiding paying about $10 billion in tax which they would be required to pay anywhere else in the world. We seem to be kowtowing to veiled threats that the likes of Facebook and the likes of Google will pull out of the New Zealand market if they are required to pay their fair share of tax. That simply will not happen. We need to call their bluff. Companies of that sort are not going to walk away from a First World market with 5 million people. They will pay their share as they are being required to pay it in other First World nations like Australia which is cracking down on them.Too much of what this country sends offshore still goes out with most of the value contained in it. A progressive tax system put in place by a Government with a vision for the future could do something to address that. If we look at the number of logs that go out from our wharves every day every week and every month with most of the value still contained in them—value that is going to be extracted by foreign companies foreign sawmills and jobs for foreign workers—that trade could be arrested by a visionary and progressive taxation system that this Budget could have put in place to make it unviable for people for forest owners and for cutting-rights owners to send logs offshore in an unprocessed form. But we did not see any of that. We saw a visionless Budget from a finance Minister who does not have a future and in about 3½ months' time all that is going to change. Thank you.