Goldsmith Paul: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoldsmith Paul: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 09 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:8785. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): It is my pleasure to speak as part of the Government’s response to the Prime Minister’s statement at the start of this parliamentary year. What a great summer it has been in this wonderful country that we live in with the sun shining and so much optimism as we go out and about and talk to people around the country. One of the first things I did politically for the year was go to Rātana Pā with the Prime Minister to support the Prime Minister there and go on to the marae and hear the speeches. I have to say that one of the things that surprised me was the question “Well what’s in it for Māori from the TPP? What’s all this TPP about and what’s in it for Māori?”. And I thought the answer to that was pretty obvious: most Māori like most New Zealanders want access to a job when they leave school access to earn a good income for them and their family to be part of a country that can afford the best quality health-care and education and to afford a living standard that is good for them and their family. And that is why this Government continues to focus on doing the basics well. The basics are about providing that strong stable sensible and economically sustainable environment which is what a Government can deliver. If we do that over an extended period which we have done in this Government for the last 7 years then that leads to higher levels of confidence as we see in every review of consumer and business confidence that comes through. And it is that confidence that leads to investment and it is investment that leads to the jobs that employ young Māori and young New Zealanders from all around this country.One of the problems that we have had in New Zealand—and if we go back when I grew up we often heard that New Zealand was one of the three or four richest countries in the world back in 1951 and in the 1950s and the 1960s and it has all been downhill since then and woe is us as a country. That is a negative way of looking at New Zealand’s history but there is an element of truth in the fact that we were a highly prosperous country back in the 1950s and the 1960s and the primary reason for that was that we had open access to the UK market which was one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We lost that in 1973 and we have been out in the wilderness ever since looking for access to markets to sell our goods. We are living in a big bad world. Nobody has to take our products nobody has to receive things that we sell them without putting tariffs on or making life difficult for us.Why do we have to sell our goods? Well most people would notice that we do not build cars in New Zealand we do not build TVs or iPhones. So there are things that we import and in order to pay for them we need to export. That is why we have to have access to international markets. It is not written in stone. There is no rule out there saying that every country should accept New Zealand’s goods. They do not have to and they make life difficult for us and they have made life difficult for us over many decades. Over the last few years they have put high tariffs on New Zealand products and right now New Zealand farmers or producers of all sorts of materials who employ New Zealanders compete against other countries that have tariff-free entry into markets such as Mexico or the United States. New Zealand producers have to pay tariffs and so we are at a competitive disadvantage. That is why it is so important that we continue our efforts to break down those barriers.So for me I struggle to understand why any New Zealander would not be fully supportive of the massive massive progress and breakthrough that we have had with the TPP and the opportunity for New Zealanders to have better market access to markets with 800 million people there to buy our products. That will enable us to sell more of our products more effectively become a wealthier country and be able to employ more New Zealanders whether they are young Māori near the Rātana Pā or New Zealanders from all over the country and provide them a better opportunity to do well in their lives. It is a cause for great celebration. It astonishes me that the Labour Party the once-proud Labour Party the once - free trading Labour Party that Phil Goff represented so well when he was trade Minister has now lost its way entirely. It does not know what it stands for in my view and has retreated back. From the point of view of a New Zealander it worries me that the main Opposition party has lost its way to that extent and that that consensus that we had in New Zealand about the importance as a small country at the bottom of the world of gaining access to international markets has been undermined under this current leadership. I just hope the Labour Party will—and I encourage it to—rethink and get in and support that.I was also pleased to see the Prime Minister’s announcements on the huge investments going on in and into Auckland a city where I live and am proud to call home. As every Aucklander knows the place is booming. It is growing fast and we have all the challenges of growth that you would expect. We need to build more roads and transport infrastructure to move people around and we need to facilitate the more rapid development of housing so that our Aucklanders can afford good housing in their city. So I was very pleased to hear the Prime Minister advancing the City Rail Link which will be an important part of the overall Auckland transport package. At the moment we have a dead-end there at Britomart Place; if we can get that circle going we can massively increase the throughput in the rail corridor in Auckland and you can expect over the next 20 or 30 years as the city continues to grow and continues to be prosperous that development will cluster along those railway lines and the city overall will be more efficient. I was also very excited to see the announcement that the East-West Link will be advanced. For those who are not sure what the East-West Link is it connects the motorway going from State Highway 20 around the Māngere Bridge across to the southern motorway and that again will be very important basic infrastructure work. The National Party as the Prime Minister said this morning is the party that develops the infrastructure for the city; unfortunately the Labour Party supporters are the ones who sit in the middle of it and block the traffic like they did last week. We are trying to make some progress and that is important.In terms of the broader atmosphere I am not surprised that New Zealanders are feeling confident. We continue to grow well; the New Zealand economy grew 2.3 percent last year. If we look around the world that is rare; that is good-quality performance. We have had annual wage growth in New Zealand: the average annual wage is now $57000 an increase of $10000 since we came into power in 2008 and employment is growing rapidly. So we have got 175000 extra jobs that have been created over the past few years. In my role in the commerce space one of the sorts of things that I will be focusing on over this year that I think is very important for New Zealanders is that we are reviewing the financial adviser space. New Zealanders have been very strong in the habit of seeing investment in private property and residential real estate as an important way to save. That is fine and very good but we should also encourage New Zealanders to invest in financial markets and to broaden their asset base. KiwiSaver has made good progress in that area over the last few years but the most important thing we can do as a Government is maintain confidence in the conduct of financial markets in New Zealand so that New Zealanders can feel confident to invest and grow their wealth. That is why we have had big changes in that area in the last couple of years.One of the areas that we are looking at very closely this year is the review of financial advisers. At the moment we do have a system where the average man or woman on the street looking to invest is having to navigate the way through authorised financial advisers or registered financial advisers or qualifying financial entities and it is a bit confusing. So we have been out working hard trying to work out how we can have a system that is easy to understand and enables New Zealanders to get better access to financial advice. We are working very closely with the industry over the course of the year to get that right because it is an area that is very complicated and we want to regulate in the best possible way so that we are facilitating good advice.The other area that I might just mention briefly is competition law. Here we are in a small economy an isolated economy at the bottom of the world. It is very important for New Zealanders to make sure that we have a robust competition regime for the domestic market so we can get access to the best possible prices. That is why we have been reviewing section 36 of the Commerce Act at the moment and we will be looking very closely at that over this year. Thank you very much.