McClay ToddHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): When our spokesperson Barbara Kuriger spoke in the debate a moment ago she said that for every $1 spent there was an 11c benefit for New Zealand. The problem we have is that if businesses in New Zealand ran their accounts in the way the Government does when it comes to investment there would be even more businesses closing than the 28000 that closed over the last few months because of the Government's extremely restrictive COVID policies.I feel for our officials. I thank them for their work but I could tell when they were listening to submitters that they actually thought there was probably a better way to do this but were not able to bring that advice frankly to the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee because of the position the Government had had. I also feel for our chair. He's actually one of the best chairs of committees I've served on. He's very fair everyone gets a fair hearing and we often work to find solutions to challenges or problems that submitters have raised to make legislation better. But the reason I feel for him in this instance is I think it feels like he and the other members of the committee were whipped into supporting this and weren't allowed to make the changes necessary to make it a good piece of legislation.You see we do support decommissioning. The industry supports decommissioning. It's actually lazy for the Government to say National doesn't care about these things. We do but you need good rules and good regulations that people understand and that make sense because when you don't there is confusion when it comes to things like this. It means less investment in New Zealand from overseas. The Government has borrowed and spent $97.5 billion under the name of COVID but most of it not on COVID. We need investment from overseas to grow the economy to be able to start paying that back or else the poor old Kiwi workers' taxes are going to have to go up under a Labour Government. They'll take more from them to pay back the reckless spending we've seen over the last year and a half. The problem with legislation like this is when you don't get it right it sends a signal to the rest of the world that New Zealand is not open for business. When the Government says they want to be world best well they're not world best when it comes to having good investors in New Zealand and the benefits that flow through to Kiwis.The new member of Parliament for New Plymouth Glen Bennett—I'm sure he wanted to improve the legislation because his electorate is in the heart of the oil and gas area of New Zealand. Before he was the MP when Jonathan Young was the hard-working successful MP for New Plymouth do you know that the average income in New Plymouth was one of the highest in the country of any region and the unemployment rate was one of the lowest of any region in New Zealand even during the global financial crisis when the rest of the country's economy was challenged because businesses were losing markets overseas and they were losing jobs? Do you know why that is? Because of investment in oil and gas and particularly gasfields. When the Prime Minister made that announcement on the steps of Parliament after meeting protesters in Greenpeace in the first term instead of meeting the President of Indonesia and talking about maybe a trade deal with Indonesia she stood him up and made him wait. He was a President from a country that actually can do a huge amount for New Zealand but she stood him up to go and make an announcement of a ban on oil and gas exploration.Do you know what happened the very next day? People that had large incomes and that were working in New Plymouth went to their bank to say We want to buy a house. We need a mortgage." and the bank said no because they had no certainty for employment for the future. The engineering workshop started not taking on young people and laying off workers. Now New Plymouth has a higher unemployment rate than it should and its average income has shrunk quite quite significantly because of bad decision-making.That's why I think Glen Bennett the MP for New Plymouth wanted to see changes here to make sure that the industry had to be responsible that the legislation was fair and that it was well understood so we could still have investment from overseas in New Zealand particularly in his electorate. That hasn't happened and I feel for him because he will have to account for that at the next election and the platitudes that come from the Government around things like this won't actually work then because the very people that deserve support and need those jobs have missed out because of that previous decision of Jacinda Ardern the Prime Minister and now this legislation.This bill is retrospective. What that means is decisions that were made years ago are now impacted. It also means that for people that were directors of companies many many years ago who are no longer directors the rights have been sold the companies have been sold but they still have liability—retrospective liability. That is not reasonable it is not fair and it just does not make sense. It is the case that there was one problem that the Government had to fix but there was one problem. Every other time this works well and the Government's reaction to that one problem they had to work out was to blame the industry and overburden them with unreasonable legislation that is not going to work as well as they say. There are 11000 highly skilled New Zealanders and others employed in this sector. Well because of legislation like this that number is going down at a time when we need higher-paying jobs jobs built on good technology. We need to partner with countries overseas. We should be making it easier for people to come and invest actively in New Zealand and to create jobs and to create partnerships so more of those young people in New Plymouth and other parts of the country get those apprenticeships and get the skills to actually earn more and contribute more to society. That's the way the Government gets to have the tax it needs to pay back the huge debt that they've run up: through increasing productivity and through greater investment from better jobs; not putting the tax rate up as we will see in this term and many terms to come.For every $1 spent only an 11c return—my gosh! No wonder so many Labour MPs have given up their businesses and come to this House or so few of them had businesses before they came here because that is not a good return at all. [Labour members interject] All of a sudden they've woken up—look at that. So they didn't wake up because of the jobs that have been ruined and because the investment has disappeared or because they've ruined Glen Bennett's electorate seat for him; they woke up because they've been accused of not knowing how to run a business. That proves my point because they were asleep at the wheel then they woke up and now they've gone back to sleep again. So I'll speak more quietly; I wouldn't like to rark them up. Poor Glen is sitting there thinking he wants to get back to his electorate to start explaining how he wanted changes to this legislation but that the changes couldn't come through.Business New Zealand said that creating perpetual liability on industry business should be strongly opposed. They don't do these things lightly. Actually they are a measured organisation that looks after the interests of New Zealand not just businesses and they said "We can think of no other situation in New Zealand where a business is legitimately sold and the seller is responsible for any liabilities which might be accrued by the new owner." That's fundamental.I tell you what if a New Zealand company was to invest overseas and there was legislation like this they would come running to the Government saying "That's unfair. Can you go and sort it?" If this was a rule in Indonesia they would come to the Prime Minister and say "Prime Minister could you arrange a meeting with the President of Indonesia to say this is unreasonable? We want to invest in that country. There'll be a return for New Zealand. It will be good for their economy. We'll create jobs for the people of Indonesia. Can we get this sorted out so we have greater certainty because there is uncertainty here? It is not worth the risk to invest in that country." and the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern would say "Actually I can't do that because he's waiting upstairs in the Beehive and I'm down there banning oil and gas exploration."Turn that around; it's exactly the same thing. We do need investment in New Zealand. We are not a wealthy country. In fact now after COVID because of the Government's reckless borrowing and spending we are an even poorer country than we were. We have people in New Zealand that have to choose between paying their rent or feeding their kids. They work hard they are the working poor. I cannot see why the changes were needed to make this legislation actually achieve what it needs to which is to hold those to account when they give up rights or they have to decommission but not retrospectively not unreasonably not punitively. We could have got it right so the investment may have been a 40 or 50 percent return on every dollar spent. That would have been a great start. That's something that members of the Government should be screaming and yelling about not proving they know nothing about running businesses."