Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
Hodgson Pete: General Debate 
[Volume:647;Page:15938] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister for Economic Development) 
: 
 Would the National members please tell the Government why they have voted against every tax cut this Government has put forward? Why was it when we came up with Working for Families and all of the tax credits associated with that that they bolted and voted against it? Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of families are benefiting—against the wish of the National Party. Why when the KiwiSaver scheme came in—which now has more than half a million people belonging to it—and those massive tax changes came into place did the National Party decide to vote against it? Why when we decided to give tax cuts to businesses did National members vote against that? When we said that the 33c tax rate needed to come down to 30c they voted against it. Why when we said that we would have a research and development tax credit of 15 percent did those members vote against that? Why in the 8½ years of this Government every time we have decided to make it easier for savers businesses or families have those members voted against it? Why do they say that this Government never changes tax rates and never goes for tax cuts yet every time we have done it they have voted against it? Why do they continue to do that? 
I think I have worked out why those members are so obsessed by the buy-back of the rail carriages. I reckon that I have worked out why they did not want us to buy out Toll and I think it is to do with John Key’s history. In 1993 the then National Government sold New Zealand Rail. It sold the locomotives it sold the wagons and it sold the track. It was a disastrous privatisation. What we now know is that the Wellington branch of the Bankers Trust was the vendor’s adviser. It clipped the ticket to the tune of probably $3 million or $4 million—that is the reported estimate. What has not been made very clear is that John Key worked for the vendor’s adviser. John Key worked for the Bankers Trust the vendor’s adviser in 1993. He rose to lead its foreign exchange desk. He rose to have some position called treasurer within the Bankers Trust. He would have been in his 30s. He would have been surrounded by the purchasers. Who were they? They were Fay and Richwhite. Do members remember those names? That was where John the trader was at that time. So he probably thought it was a pretty good privatisation. He probably thought that he had done a pretty good job whatever it was on his part as he worked for the Bankers Trust. 
That is why all these years later when it comes full circle everyone in New Zealand thinks that it is a good idea to have an integrated train system to have an integrated rail network and to have better control over our land transport system and John Key says that is “buying back the train set”. And Bill English in the remarks he has just made again misquotes and misrepresents the price paid. He does it on purpose because National members do not like it. They do not like the idea of the Government owning something that John Key had a hand in selling. That is the truth of it. You see that is because John Key is the trader. Open up John Key and what do we have underneath? We have ourselves a trader. First and foremost he is always a trader. He comes into politics and he thinks that politics is about trading. He does not think about political philosophy he does not think about making a stand and debating his position—whatever it is—in the spectrum. He thinks about trading. 
That is why National has been swallowing dead rats for the last 12 months—trading policy changes for votes. Those members have decided that they will not do the things they really think they would like to do like selling assets even though deep down they really want to. That is why there are splits and divisions right through the National Party caucus. Actually I will just sit with asset sales which will do as an example. Richard Worth wants to partially privatise everything; David Carter wants to privatise but only Landcorp; and Tony Ryall when he last had the chance to do privatisation privatised so quickly that his leader the former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley said one day rather mischievously “Oh I wonder what Tony has sold today.” You see they are really privatisers at heart but John Key the trader says “Oh the public don’t like it so we will inoculate them against that particular predilection that we have. Our proclivity will remain under the radar. We will be a very small target. We will simply run the clock down to the election and see whether we can fool them.” Well we have got news for the National Party.