Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. So here we are. We're talking about the legislation that follows on from the Budget and we saw a lot of spending a lot of borrowing some extra taxing and very little about earning more as a country. The number one challenge for New Zealand as it has always been is: how do we maintain our international competitiveness in a tough world? The rest of the world doesn't care about New Zealand. We have to continue to provide goods and services that people want and that they're prepared to pay for at the best price so that we can make a living in a world and continue to sustain the high living standards that we have in this country and have the opportunities for young people to get jobs and to be able to afford to pay for good quality healthcare and good quality education and welfare when people get into trouble.That's why having a strong economy is so important and this Budget was based on the prospect of 3 percent growth in GPD—a little bit less than what we had in the last few years under the previous Government where we were getting close to 4 percent after years of strong stable predictable Government. We saw 245000 jobs created in the past two years which gave real opportunities throughout New Zealand and through the regions. It'll be interesting to know whether all the efforts of Shane Jones will lead to anywhere near as many new jobs being created in the regions than we did over the past couple of years based on good sound sensible fiscally responsible and careful spending. So time will tell—time will tell—whether we see more jobs in the regions in the next couple of years than we have seen in the previous couple of years.But one thing we do know is we're not likely to be seeing the 3 percent growth in New Zealand that was predicted only a few months ago in the Budget. All the signs are that it will be somewhere closer to 2 percent and why? Well it's certainly not the international situation because the US economy is going gangbusters at the moment. New Zealand has the highest terms of trade virtually back to the 1950s; we should be absolutely coining it at the moment and continuing to do well. But we're not; we're faltering—and why? Well I think a big part of the reason for that is the growing lack of confidence—business confidence—that we're seeing across this country as the result of all the uncertainty that this Government is bringing in.People listening in to this debate on their crystal sets and TVs will be wondering What's all this fuss about business confidence?" Well the fuss about business confidence is that ultimately people get jobs and opportunities and people get options to live a successful life to care for their family and provide for their family basically if there is a good development of jobs and a strong economy. Jobs and opportunities only come from somebody making an investment. Whether it's starting a new business hiring a new person building a new plant starting something new or taking a risk it all comes back to somebody or a company saying "I'm going to invest this money in this venture and I'm going to create a new job."Now why would you do that at the moment when you're not sure whether you're going to have to pay capital gains on that investment?DEPUTY SPEAKER: Don't bring me into it.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Why would anybody? Why would you be so sure about making a major new investment if there's so much uncertainty about what the industrial relations climate is going to be like—we got more strikes in the last nine months than in the last nine years—if you're unsure about whether you're going to be able to be internationally competitive and still pay one of the highest minimum wages in the world that will be developing in the next couple of years; if you're unsure about the immigration policy; if you're unsure about the foreign investment rules in which we've basically put up a sign saying to foreigners "Clear off. We don't want your investment"—unless of course you have the special exemption such as Shane Jones has with this very strange and murky power that New Zealand First and Mr Jones have within this Government.Hon Shane Jones: Power Ranger! Power Ranger! Power Ranger!Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: It seems—that's right. He seems to have this dark hand that controls the levers of power in this Government in an unusual and strange way so that he can get anything he wants out of the Labour Government out of Jacinda Ardern and the Greens. When Shane Jones calls the money just tumbles out. So they don't have enough money to keep their promises on mental health on education—all sorts of areas where they haven't kept their promises—but the money flows for him.And the sad thing is notwithstanding the money flowing for him there has been little evidence so far that we're going to get good value for the money that is flowing in his direction and that is some of the questions that we had today. I'm glad the previous speaker Minister Jones indicated that those questions were worthwhile. That's not what he said an hour or so ago. He said that they were quote "paltry and trivial" and he has a long record of attacking me for asking impertinent questions in this House such as: what are we going to get for $3 billion? I mean who would have thought—who would have thought—that anybody in this House would have the temerity to stand up on their hind legs and ask a Minister what we're actually going to get for $3 billion?We know that New Zealanders are uniquely resourceful and entrepreneurial people and they could do something with $3 billion. We know that New Zealanders if they had that money in their own pockets to invest in their own businesses and to have that money to invest in their businesses and their decisions they would create a lot of wealth and a lot of things would happen. We're taking that money off them and giving it to Mr Jones to spend so there is a high burden on him to ensure that he creates more wealth and more jobs out of that money than the money that was taken out of the hands of New Zealanders and so far we haven't seen much evidence.We've got $485 million being spent on forestry we've heard in the last couple of days; we don't know what we're getting for it. We know we're getting—apparently so he claims—2000 extra jobs. Well time will tell—2000 extra jobs—I think that works out to about quarter of a million per job. That's not very good. We're going to get a few trees—we don't know how many trees—and we're going to save $3 billion apparently. Where the figure comes from who knows? He just sort of plucked it out of the air. I think he's forgotten that there is the $3 billion fund that he's talking about but now he thinks he's going to save $3 billion based on something relating to the climate change proposition.I think even with the best will in the world the amount of trees that might get planted under this scheme might—I don't know—reduce our obligations by maybe 5 percent maybe 10 percent. Is he saying that's $3 billion worth? Is he saying that New Zealand somewhere in 20 years' time is going to write a $30 billion cheque to somebody for climate change propositions? I can't quite see that happening and I don't know who we're going to be writing the cheque to. But anyway so what—Hon Willie Jackson: Get to the point.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: The point I'm trying to make Mr Jackson is that one thing we do know is that we've got $3 billion coming out of the pockets of New Zealanders and going somewhere. We know that there's $3 billion but we don't know what we're getting for it and the Minister for Regional Economic Development refuses point blank to release any information about what we're getting any of the funding agreements and any detail about what we're actually getting for the money and his idea of openness and transparency in Government is to tell nothing and say nothing of any information whatsoever about that money.So we're left here all looking and saying well interestingly nearly half the funding is going to Northland. Well that's interesting. Only 2 percent is going to the whole of the South Island—well that's interesting. So there is a sort of a strange calculus going on as to how the decisions are made and because of the lack of transparency that we are seeing in the whole approach that the Minister has taken and that strong hand that he has somewhere in the deep workings and mechanisms of this Government to pull various levers in his direction we're left asking the question: do we have any confidence that this money will be spent wisely?I think the only point I'd make is absolutely we all back the regions of New Zealand and we do want to see them do well and we do want to invest in those regions particularly in the area of infrastructure for tourism. About a quarter of the money that Shane Jones is talking about for the Provincial Growth Fund is money that the previous Government was spending already in helping local government help deal with the infrastructure costs of the tourism industry for example.So we agree with that and we want that to continue to be funnelled through to the regions so that they can do well and deal with the costs of tourism particularly. But what we do worry about is the other three-quarters—a big chunk of that could be very poor quality spending and it is not as if as we've seen every week there is more money than we know what to do with in this country. There's a lot of pressure on this Budget. The Government is facing strikes in every direction. It's not keeping its promises and yet it seems to be quite happy to continue to have large amounts of poor quality spending in this area under Shane Jones."