Newman Muriel: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — Second Reading 
Newman Muriel: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:621;Page:16410] 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the ACT party to speak on the Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. The ACT party will be voting against this bill because essentially it is legislation that allows New Zealanders to remain overtaxed. We are overtaxed. This Government is running a surplus. It is a very simple matter. If the Government took just as much as it needed we could say that it was not greedy. But we do have a greedy Government that takes far too much money from working families and is spending it essentially on trying to win the next election. We all know what it uses a lot of that money for. It is simply vote buying. 
I will start by saying that as I sat here quietly listening to this debate I found it absolutely unbelievable that United Future claims on one hand that taxes are too high in New Zealand and on the other hand will vote for this bill. It is the worst example of double standards that I have seen for a very very long time. I think it is appalling that there can be a party sitting in Parliament today agreeing with the Government to pass the laws that keep New Zealand’s tax rates too high and that then says it will campaign in the next election on lowering taxes. 
We have to remember that voters out there have a great deal of common sense and that they will look at the antics of United Future which is in cahoots with the Government and ask whether that is a party that they can trust or hold to its word. The answer is no. If on one hand one says one wants lower taxes and then votes with a Government that is keeping taxes high then clearly that is not a very clear statement from a party. 
I say to voters that we have a situation here whereby the only reason taxes are being kept high is that United Future is voting with the Government. If United Future were to do what it said and vote with the side of the House that says taxes are too high this bill would fail and New Zealand could look forward to a tax regime that is much easier to take because it would not be such a greedy regime. 
The bill reconfirms the annual tax rates in New Zealand. We have already heard in the debate that since Labour has been the Government it has taken $34 billion extra in tax. It is keeping tax rates high up there at 39c. Since Labour has been the Government we have seen a 38 percent increase in the number of working New Zealanders who now pay the top rate of tax—the number of New Zealanders who now have to pay that rate has gone up from 185000 to 255000 in spite of Helen Clark’s credit card promises when she was elected in 1999 that the top tax rate would apply only to 5 percent of New Zealanders. That rate is going up. The Government has not looked to adjust it in any way at all. United Future can talk all it likes but it is not doing anything to help so more New Zealanders are now being stung by taxes that are too high. 
The result is not the rising standard of living that we would all expect. If we look at the numbers—the growth rates—we should be seeing families who are feeling wealthier and who are more prosperous today than they were 5 years ago. But they are not. They are struggling harder. We have a situation whereby working couples can no longer choose to have one parent stay at home to raise the kids. They are both having to work because they are struggling just to get ahead—to pay the mortgage to pay the bills and just to get by. 
I say to the Labour Government that it is meant to be looking after workers in New Zealand. We have an appalling state of affairs. The surplus each year is $6 billion to $7 billion but instead of just giving it back to those families who are struggling so hard the Government keeps it as a windfall gain. We on this side of the House see all sorts of spending that we think is irresponsible—like the $21 million the Government is going to use to sell last year’s Budget. It will spend most of that next year in election year. It will be wrapped up with Labour Party branding that states: “What a great Labour Party we are—and by the way this is how your family support package is going to work.” It is an outrage that it has even been able to get away with doing that. That is a gross misuse of public money. 
I think if we cut through it all we come to this point: in the last week or so we have heard of people dying on hospital waiting lists. We have heard of emergency services in hospitals that are having to be closed down because they cannot afford to provide the health care that New Zealanders absolutely deserve. Here is a Government that is allowing that to happen on its watch—while it takes $6 billion or $7 billion extra in tax it is not able even to provide the basic services to New Zealand that New Zealanders deserve. I think it is absolutely disgraceful that that is happening under the watch of this Government that likes to say how much it cares. 
It is ridiculous really. How can we trust a Government when that sort of thing is going on? How can any New Zealander trust the Labour Government when it is allowing people to die and when it has $6 billion or $7 billion in its coffers with nowhere to go? The Government is looking for a home for the surplus—it is sitting on it and keeping it so that it can try to spend it next year to win votes to get it elected. 
I think that by next year the public of New Zealand will look at that situation and say that it is a disgrace and that this Government is too greedy by far. The public will be demanding lower taxes—as much of the Western World is demanding that taxes come down. 
Earlier on last year Treasury did a report about how we could bring taxes down to 20c in the dollar. A low flat tax would create a prosperous New Zealand and it would not cost any more than the surplus. We could leave all the other spending in place—just take the surplus and drop taxes down. Treasury did not even refer to the incentive effect that would drive this economy to growth rates we cannot even imagine. 
In Ireland the company tax rate is 10.5 percent. If a person in Europe is thinking about where to build a factory the place to go is Ireland because its tax rates are so low that they generate a whole avenue of productivity and growth. New Zealand could do that if it had the political will. 
This Government is a socialist Government. It certainly will not do it. But if we think hard about New Zealand in the future low taxes should be what we as a country should look forward to. In this bill are a whole lot of provisions about venture capital. If we had low taxes New Zealand companies would not need to look offshore to try to get money to support their new businesses. We could look internally. If families had more disposable income they would put money into venture capital funds. They would put money into saving for their retirement. They would put money into buying health care so that they did not have to trust the Government system that is being underfunded by Labour. 
ACT opposes this bill and we suggest to the Government that it should take note of some of these ideas that have been raised by the Opposition and lower taxes.