Browning Steffan: Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:18033. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill. There are a number of concerns but I will be focusing primarily on the building and wood products part of the bill. I will note what Kennedy Graham said when speaking before on the emissions trading scheme aspects that it is about time there was some catch-up on the rorts that have been done by predominantly overseas interests in the forestry area but that it is absolutely unfair that forestry cops it when other major industry are not being dealt with in the same way. So I support his statements on that.I want to move through to the removal of duties and tariffs on building products. I spent a lot of the morning trying to work out how broad that goes and what things will be affected. I think we all need to reflect on the processes; the tradesmen in our towns and in our cities who are working on everything from kitchen cabinets and bathroom cabinets to trusses doors window frames and things like that the people with skills; and the businesses that are feeding into the local economy. These are going to be knocked heavily by this allowance of dumping of materials into the New Zealand market.Hon Craig Foss: No they’re not.STEFFAN BROWNING: You say that. I look at the tariffs and I see 5 percent on some countries. If that is not going to impact when we have industries that actually need boosting—you are talking of savings here going on to $30 million. Not savings; costs to the Government of $30 million. Why do you not put that into boosting those local industries instead of hitting them with the costs here?Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.STEFFAN BROWNING: I was able to use the lunch break to look a little bit further at the bill and I had a good discussion with the Minister. I certainly appreciate and the Green Party appreciates some of the intention of the part of the bill that I was debating which was to deal with some of the monopolistic behaviour of some of the suppliers in terms of plasterboard in particular. However my concern in the earlier part of my speech and also now is with what I would call the collateral damage of that. I think that the bill needs some fine-tuning to look out for the New Zealand businesses that are involved in the construction of joinery for example and some of the timber products.We would like to see a Christchurch rebuild in wood. We would like to see it done with New Zealand producers New Zealand manufacturers and New Zealand tradespeople for New Zealand people. I checked with some suppliers manufacturers and joiners and I talked with a kitchen manufacturer from another town nearby. I was checking as to how much they were using that was imported and it was very little. But I also talked to a Christchurch door manufacturer business down there. They are New Zealanders doing New Zealand stuff and they have tooled up in anticipation of the growth that is expected with the rebuild. I am concerned that this bill will impact very negatively on them on timber products and on New Zealand businesses and that. So it is collateral damage. I realise that my time is nearly up so we will talk more on this later. Thank you.