Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Madam Chair. Hon Member: Go on give him a go. CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Andrew Bayly. ANDREW BAYLY: Oh Madam Chair you are so gracious. That was a very good speech from my colleague Lawrence Yule. I've got to compliment him. I think I know why Mr Nash is smiling. I know why he's smiling because he's overseeing this huge tax take where this Government is going to take what about $80 billion this year and in four years' time is going to be raking in $100 billion worth of tax every year. That's the Minister in charge of it the Minister of Revenue. That's why he's smiling. It's nothing else. That's why he's smiling. I heard from the previous Labour speaker Mr Jamie Strange. He said What's the plan? What's the plan?" and he looked at us. Well actually we know what the plan is. The plan for this Government is to tax more and spend more and that's the issue. We know they're really good at taxing because we know that they have introduced all these new taxes. I was looking at a list here actually. It is extensive. Apart from cancelling our tax relief there are three new fuel taxes the regional fuel tax extending the brightline test ring-fencing losses Amazon tax GST on mobile roaming WorkSafe levy increases tourist tax car taxes—all these taxes—and that is why that revenue is growing so dramatically. But I think the reason why everyone on that Government side looks across at us and they claim that we're black and we're talking down the economy—well the fact is that this is a squandered opportunity. This Government is actually squandering a huge opportunity because as we know when they came into power a short 20 months ago we had an economy that was actually motoring along. We had an economy that was growing strongly at just under 4 percent—in fact their stats were 3.3 percent every year for the last three years of our office. Now it's down closer to 2 percent and what that means is that for every year we've lost roughly about $5 billion of activity if you say that we've lost nearly 2 percent and it means that the Government's lost nearly $2 billion of tax revenue. That is because the business community the people that go out there and be entrepreneurial and hire people are worried about what's going on and that is the issue that we've got going on. I hear this thing about the headwinds about the world economy and all that sort of stuff. It's not true—it's not true. If you look at the exports from New Zealand they have grown month on month right up to the last month that was reported—last month. There has actually been no impact on the exports from New Zealand and that's on the back of fantastic terms of trade. We've got a lower dollar; we've got all the things going right for us. This is not what is affecting the New Zealand economy. It may do in the future but at the moment our exporters are rocking. They are sending more goods overseas at higher prices and that's why our export receipts to this country have gone up month on month. The real issue about what's going on is nothing to do with exports. It's about what's happening locally and that is just where people are worried about what's happening with this Government. I was actually in a meeting with some business people the other day. One owned a machinery hire and tool hire business; the other one was a concrete-cutting machinery business. Both were local businesses with no export potential—don't even talk about export. No foreign exchange exposure—nothing like that. All they were exposed to was what was happening in New Zealand and they were just so angry at what's going on with their businesses. They employed people and they were all talking about the avalanche of changes that are having an adverse impact on their businesses. They were talking about how their wage bills have gone up so dramatically. We all understand the need to raise the minimum wage but the cascade going up through those businesses immediately meant that they were having their profits if they were in that situation—but certainly driving them towards a loss situation. They were worried about the working conditions. They were worried about just the lack of activity of people coming into their business. That is the loss of confidence that we're seeing in this economy and that is through poor governance. That poor governance is through poor Government and that is the disappointing squandered opportunity."