Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Chair. Just keen to debate the whole question of economic development and productivity and infrastructure in this country under this Government. At the start of the period that we're talking about 2017 the previous National Government had a very clear economic development strategy; it was outlined in the Business Growth Agenda and that asked the basic question Well what do New Zealand businesses need access to in order to grow in order to hire New Zealanders to pay them higher wages in order to grow the productivity of this country so that we could all enjoy a higher standard of living?"We broke that challenge down into six areas: we need access to quality investment in order to you know—you only get jobs if somebody invests some money and buys a plant and starts a business. So you need policies that attract investment. Then you need good quality skills so that people can make a contribution in the workplace. You need access to natural resources you need access to quality infrastructure export markets so that you've got somewhere to send your goods—that's why we worked so hard to bring in the free trade agreements—and a good innovation framework.Now when this Government came in they threw all that out—didn't like it because we'd come up with it—and what did they replace it with? Well that's when we run into troubles because there's no clear replacement clear economic development plan or economic plan for this country under this Government. I've asked David Parker the Economic Development Minister and he said "Well three things. We're going to do an R & D tax credit"—well yeah OK that's a policy. It's replacing the growth grants that we put through Callaghan Innovation with a tax credit. OK that's one. The second one was that there's going to be a massive shift in the way taxation was done to move away from speculation in housing. I think that was the capital gains tax but they dropped that last month. So that second one's gone. The third one was the Provincial Growth Fund under Shane Jones where they'd spend $3 billion in order to create lots of jobs—tens of thousands of jobs the Minister told us. Then when we actually dug into it we found 54 and 118 bureaucrats. So there's been a lot of money spent there and not many jobs created. The Minister comes up with all sorts of figures and let's see how they are demonstrated over the next little while.But the point I'd make is that under National the country was delivering 10000 new jobs every month for the last two years—10000 new jobs every month. So far with the $3 billion spent I think we're around somewhere between 20 and 50 new jobs created in the last three months across the whole country. We lost 4000 jobs; so we didn't create 10000 new jobs we lost 4000 jobs. So the jobs boom that we had under the previous Government has gone. Part of that is the confusion about what the economic policy is. So remember last August the Prime Minister got up in front of a business audience and gave a big speech to announce the Government's policy framework on economic development and she announced it: it was the Business Partnership Agenda. Then we never heard anything about it since—never once never mentioned once more. It was a big announcement announced with fanfare trumpets and totally ignored ever since. So that's why people are confused.When we come to infrastructure we've heard from the Minister of Transport about trying to—most people think the purpose of infrastructure and transport policy should be to enable New Zealanders to get where they need to go quickly efficiently and safely. But that's not what this Government is about as he quite clearly articulated. There is absolutely no focus on reducing congestion across the transport network in New Zealand. The Minister has been brilliant at stopping things. So he stopped the East West Link he stopped all the State highway projects that we were doing you know the four-lane highway north of Tauranga going up to Northland out of Christchurch extending up past Kāpiti. All sorts of projects he stopped and what's he replaced them with? Well nothing yet—nothing. There've been plans about the slow tram going down the Dominion Road to the airport but that still hasn't emerged. We don't know where it is. So he's stopped a whole lot of projects hasn't started any new projects and in the meantime if you're stuck in the traffic on the Southern Motorway in Auckland or trying to get out of Christchurch well help is not on the way because they're not putting any extra resources into building the roads that most people use because they hate cars under the Greens.So their focus is getting people out of their cars on to public transport. Well public transport of course is an important part of the package; yes you invest in it. That's why we invested in the City Rail Link it's why we invested in the electrification of the rail units and yes you have to have that as part of any transport policy. But if it's completely unbalanced such as it is under this Government that will not enable New Zealanders to get where they want to go. In fact their focus in transport is to make life as frustrating as possible for the motorists and that is not going to help either New Zealanders' quality of life or the economic development of this country."