Goldsmith Paul: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoldsmith Paul: General Debate[Sitting date: 19 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16087. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): It is a great pleasure to have the final slot in today’s general debate. It has been a week of very interesting facts and quotes. The one that I was most interested in was the Fairfax poll that indicated that most New Zealanders do not want more tax and spend. Funnily there was also a poll that said that National was riding a wave of soaring optimism which I thought was rather good. The poll said that 67 percent opposed and only 27 percent were in favour of raising taxes to fund new initiatives which must have come as a bit of a shock to the Labour Party and the Greens. But what I found most interesting was the quote from David Cunliffe. He said the question was unfair because the vast majority of New Zealanders would not be affected by its planned tax rises which would include a higher top tax rate and a capital gains tax. I thought: “Well there it is. There’s the Labour philosophy in a nutshell. It is perfect: you’re going to give lollies to everybody but you’ll make only a few people pay for it. There’s the way to win political salvation.”But of course nobody believes that. They all know that we all end up paying for it in the end. We already have massive redistribution in this country where we have the top 6 percent of income tax payers paying nearly 40 percent of the tax—more when you take Working for Families into account. And do not forget that about 70 percent of taxpayers in New Zealand pay a 17.5 percent tax rate or less. So this is a Government that has been very successful at keeping taxes down and New Zealanders like it. It is interesting when you drill down to the figures. Funnily enough it is the under 30s who are strongly opposed to higher taxes and more spending and funnily enough more Māori. There is 50 percent net disapproval amongst Māori. More Māori than Europeans opposed raising taxes to pay for spending. Those with no qualifications at all were most stridently against paying more taxes and having more spending by the Government. Those with household incomes below $50000 were more opposed to paying more taxes than higher-income ones.New Zealanders have realised that they are better equipped to spend their money than the Government and that is because money is very hard to find and it is hard to earn and it is annoying to see it being wasted by councils and Governments. That is why this Government has being so disciplined in its spending has been so disciplined in the way it has gone about making sure the Public Service gets results for the best prices and that is why this Government enjoys the level of support that it has.I must say I found it positively weird listening to Mr Hipkins’ contribution on debt saying that National is being bad because it has left a high level of debt. Well he seemsto ignore the Christchurch earthquakes and the billions of dollars that were spent he has ignored the global financial crisis and he ignores the lag effect. Yes Labour inherited a well-run economy in 1999 and held things reasonably firm for a few years. But it left a country pregnant with 10 years of future deficits in 2008 and massively unfunded spending schemes which has meant that if the Government carried on the policies that we inherited in 2008 we would have massive deficits and massive debt. But National did continue spending to protect the vulnerable and to deal with the earthquake but importantly it has set a path back to surplus which we are going to achieve this year and it has got a path back to paying back debt and that is why New Zealanders trust National with the economy.It is also weird to hear from the Greens. They spend their whole time arguing for measures that will increase the cost of energy in the economy yet they jump up and down with a couple of gimmicks about somehow subsidising solar energy as if that is salvation for a problem that they have created themselves by advocating for policies that increase the price of energy.Finally I do not want to comment particularly on Mr Shane Jones’ claims. There have been lots of allegations lots of innuendoes and not many facts but I am sure there will be due process. It will be very carefully figured out. All those issues will be taken seriously to get to the bottom of them. But I must say that there is a strong anti-Australian strand coming through everything he said. He was standing there this morning in the Finance and Expenditure Committee going on about Aussie banks and he was going on about Aussie companies all the time. Well I do not think there is a hang of a lot in favour of this country taking on an anti-Australia campaign such as has been carried out by Mr Jones. There is that old saying that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. I have never really understood that until now but when we look at Labour when it is on to the third leader and we have got Mr Cunliffe it is a bit like the words of the singer Pink.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.