English Bill: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
English Bill: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17817. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 The previous speech demonstrates that the Minister may like to give the impression that he knows a lot but he just has no judgment. Because the issues involved in this— 
Rodney Hide 
: He went to Harvard! 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: What a waste of money that was! He may as well have done one of Steve Maharey’s dodgy community education courses because it has made no difference. The issue involved here is a matter of judgment. This bill sets out tax rates and the question the Minister needs to answer is this: under what conditions does he think the Government would have enough money to reduce taxes? Because the conditions the Government enjoys now were never imagined in my adult lifetime. In 40 years of government in New Zealand going right back to 1960 there has never been anything like this. Fortunately on the way through there have been Governments that have had the judgment to say that they have enough money to reduce taxes so the workers who go to work every day and earn an income can keep a bigger share of what they work for. This Government is unable to exercise that judgment because it does not have any judgment. 
He is right: the Government regards this bill as mechanical. The business of raising taxes is purely mechanical. It is like getting in one’s combine harvester and just driving into the paddock and going until it stops because then the fun bit is how one spends it. That is what Labour has always been about. It has no interest in the incentives that people face no interest in their aspirations no interest in a reasonable balance between what the Government takes from economic growth and what the people keep who actually create that economic growth. It is purely the mechanical business of raising as much tax as possible and then getting on with the party of spending. And oh what a party! 
The leader of ACT is quite right: the biggest issue actually is what is happening to this money. If we are going to raise so much what are we going to do with it? I raised questions yesterday in the House just in my portfolio about Steve Maharey the Minister for tertiary education having in the last 4 years spent $1.5 billion on certificate and diploma courses that were never finished. He has spent $1.5 billon on New Zealanders who never finished the courses they started. I have found that that figure is so big no one believes it. If he had spent that $1.5 billion only on the people who completed the courses every working family in New Zealand could have a tax cut of about $50 or $60 a week. He regards that as just a minor issue and he does not quite believe the figures himself—yet. That is just one example. 
This bill is giving permission to Ministers to do more and more of that kind of reckless spending. That is how Ministers see this. They see it as a licence not to print money but to spend the money that other people make. There is no restraint. Dr Cullen has decided to pitch himself as a fiscal conservative who is tight with the spending and his Ministers unfortunately seem to think that he is tight with spending. That is how distorted this Government’s view has become. They think they are being tight with spending when over the next 3 or 4 years they plan to spend $13 billion from the last Budget and in the December Economic and Fiscal Update yesterday they put it up to a total of $23 billion over the next 4 years. 
They are huge amounts of money and as my colleague Mr Key has pointed out household debt is going up. So the Government is improving its situation dramatically at the expense of households that are borrowing short term and long term—short term at high interest rates—in order to meet their requirements whereas the Government is keeping more than it should. That is why United Future should take the courage of its convictions in its own hands and vote against the bill. Because United Future voters are opposed to an endlessly taxing Government and an endlessly spending Government. United Future should vote against it.