Goldsmith Paul: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoldsmith Paul: General Debate[Sitting date: 13 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10471. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): It is a privilege to be here in the House this afternoon. I have to say I did have to listen to the Leader of the Opposition Mr Little really complaining and bagging the Government saying that this was a dreadful shabby little Government that has nothing to offer New Zealanders. Basically he seems to be saying that the 50 percent of New Zealanders who support this Government are fools. Is that what he is saying? Is that what he is saying—that the 50 percent of New Zealanders who support this Government who continue to support this Government and who put their trust in the Prime Minister and this Government to do the best thing for this country are fools?Then he talked about morality. Does he really think that he as Leader of the Opposition and leader of the Labour Party lives on some higher moral plane than the rest of us over on this side of the House? Does he really think that he is of a higher moral standing and of a higher morality than the many hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who stand behind this Government? I do not think he is. The moral thing to do—in my opinion being involved in the Government—is to work every day to improve the living standards of New Zealanders. That is what we do. That is what we on this side of the House get out of bed every morning to try to do.That is why we work hard every day to reform the Resource Management Act so as to make housing more affordable for everyday New Zealanders. We think that is the moral thing to do. [Interruption] It is interesting that members on the other side of the House do not seem to think that that is important. We think the moral thing to do is to remove barriers to entrepreneurship to remove barriers to competition to help small businesses to get through the difficulties of business and pay their provisional tax and get on and do well. We think the moral thing to do is to provide a stable environment that is sustainable and predictable so that New Zealanders in every walk of life can know where they stand and can make plans for the future can make investment for the future and can do well for themselves and for their family. We think the moral thing to do is to focus on getting good results out of Government spending rather than the lazy idea of just throwing money at a problem and expecting that that is a solution in itself.We think the moral thing to do is to continue to reform welfare in this country. It is not good enough just to accept multigenerational dependency which has developed in many parts of this country but you actually have to think hard and tackle those long-term issues. That is what we think and that is what I believe is the moral thing to do as a member of Parliament and we strive to do that every day.I do not take criticisms from people on the other side who claim to be living on some kind of higher moral plane than everybody. I have not met a single person in this Parliament on either side of the House who does not come here and think that they are going to do the very best job that they can for New Zealanders. We disagree very strongly about how to go about doing that. We have strong arguments about what the best way to raise the living standards of New Zealanders is but I personally am not one who would want to throw such abuse at members on the other side of the Parliament.The Prime Minister made a very interesting speech this morning around the progress that the Government is making on building a more productive and competitive economy. He did mention a couple of things: that the overall spending of Government—Dr Megan Woods: Isn’t 5 minutes up?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you very much. He mentioned that the overall spending of the Government on structural expenses had gone from 36 percent of the entire economy in 2004 up to nearly 45 percent in 2009—an 8 percent increase; a massive increase in Government spending. And why is that a problem? It is because there is very little money left over for ordinary New Zealanders to spend on what they want to spend if Government is taking 45 percent of the whole economy in terms of spending.We have to be mindful of the fact that most Government spending is done by monopolies and it is not subject to competition and real discipline. That is why I am proud to be part of the Government that has managed to bring that down and it is very difficult. We have got it back down to 39 percent—dropped it 6 percent—and we still have got a lot more work to do. But it is that hard work that we carry on in this Government. The task is not finished and we have got a long way to go.Finally I did want to mention the progress that we had been making in the financial literacy space. I was very pleased last week to have the launch of the Sorted website and I encourage all members of the House and anybody listening today to have a look at that for help on financial capability. Thank you very much.