Cheque Duty Repeal Bill, Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill, Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2)

on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I move, That the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill, the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill, and the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time. The Cheque Duty Repeal Bill repeals cheque duty from 1 July 2014. The Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill prevents reregistration arbitrage by post-1989 forest land participants from 16 May 2014. The Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2) temporarily suspends dumping duties on building and construction materials from the day after the bill receives the Royal assent.

The Government’s decision to suspend anti-dumping duties arises from a market study that found that anti-dumping duties are having a chilling effect on competition in building materials markets. So suspending these duties will increase competition and reduce the cost of constructing new houses. The bill is intended to provide an immediate benefit to the Christchurch rebuild and to increase residential construction elsewhere, particularly in Auckland, by reducing the cost of building materials. As well as preventing the imposition of any new anti-dumping duty on a broad range of building materials, it suspends the anti-dumping duty currently in place on standard plasterboard from Thailand, reinforcing steel bar and coil from Thailand, and wire nails from China.

The Government’s decision to suspend anti-dumping duties was made together with a decision to temporarily introduce tariff concessions on a wide range of building materials. I expect these decisions to reduce the cost of building materials both through a direct reduction in duties and tariffs and through increased competition in the residential construction sector. Reducing the cost of building materials is part of the Government’s wider approach to improving housing affordability, which includes work being done on standards and regulations to increase competition and reduce the price of New Zealand building materials, freeing up new land for development, improving sector productivity, and reducing compliance costs.

To sum up, Part 3 of this bill aims to reduce the cost of building materials used in residential construction by temporarily suspending the application of anti-dumping duties to those materials. This will provide an immediate benefit to the Christchurch rebuild, and allow sufficient time for the development of a bounded public interest test so that consideration can be given to amending the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Act to provide for the wider public interest to be taken into account before anti-dumping and countervailing duties are imposed or extended. I commend these bills to the House and move that they now be read for a third time.

Here we are at the end of the Government’s turbocharge of the economy—through the removal of cheque duty. I want to make sure that we get this right. The Cheque Duty Repeal Bill will go down in the annals of Parliament as one of the Government’s finest measures. Not only will it transform the economy but it will also give New Zealanders the social dividend from the 5 years of austerity in the Budgets—the social dividend of 35c a year. It is 35c a year, which Moana Mackey tells me will not buy you even a K-Bar at the dairy any more. It will not even do that. This is a pathetic bill. It is a pathetic piece of legislation to have us here in urgency on a Friday afternoon at 4 o’clock.

The legislation is emblematic of a Budget that contains some good things. And let us be honest that everybody in this House would agree that reducing the cost of going to the doctor is a good thing, building on the Labour Government’s achievements over 9 years in reducing the costs of seeing a general practitioner. We had an extensive debate on the importance of paid parental leave, and I acknowledge the shift in the National Government’s policy to support paid parental leave and now to see it increase. It is a timid increase. It could go much further. It is not responsive to the evidence that says that 26 weeks is the minimum that would be appropriate for paid parental leave, but it is a step in the right direction, so we acknowledge the Government for that. But these small steps in the right direction pale alongside a Budget that has no vision or ambition for the New Zealand economy. There is almost nothing in this Budget about economic development, about job creation, and about actually creating the economy that will deliver better jobs with higher wages. We cannot go on with politics as usual delivering policies as usual and outcomes as usual. We cannot go on pretending that commodities will get us there, pretending that unprocessed dairy and logs are all we need. We have to be adding value to the economy and we have to be training and educating people to do those jobs, to lift those wages, and this Government and this Budget simply fail to do that. It is a step in the right direction, but to where. It is totally absent.

These bills before us show that the Government does not know where it is going. It has prioritised putting Parliament and all the costs associated with Parliament through the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill. It has put up the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill. If this is the response, we are in trouble as a country. Climate change is a serious issue, and the response to it requires all New Zealanders to be involved. It requires a partnership between Government, business, and the community. Instead, this climate change response bill here targets one sector, the forestry sector, and leaves alone the big polluters with which the National Government is friends—the members of the Cabinet club. So it is not a climate change response bill that as New Zealanders we should be proud about.

Then we have the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2), which is the response of the National Government to the housing crisis. Let us set the problem here. The problem in the last month in Auckland is that the cost of a home went up by $6,000. We see in the Budget that in the future if you are going to be servicing a standard mortgage and you live in Auckland, you will need 83 percent of your wages to do that—83 percent. At the moment it is 49 percent, and that is tough enough for someone who wants to get into the housing market. In Auckland by 2018 it will be 83 percent. This is a crisis. It is a major problem, and the Government’s response is to make varnish, nails, plasterboard, and things like that a little bit cheaper. The Government does not know how much cheaper. The Minister of Commerce was totally unable to respond to questions asked of him about where the $3,500 figure came from. It was plucked out of the air, and, in reality, it might pay for a little bit of the conveyancing fee. That is what it might do. But it certainly is not going to address the housing crisis. This Budget is woefully inadequate in terms of housing, with absolutely no hope for first-home buyers from this Budget. They are the three bits of legislation that the Government has decided it wants to show off and showcase as being what this Budget is about. Well, it is probably right. This is a Budget that is about a fragmented, ill-conceived, inadequate response to the needs of New Zealanders.

What Labour has been saying from day one is that it believes that what New Zealanders wanted in this Budget was something that gave them confidence that there would be jobs for them and their children in the future, that there would be a quality of life that means the Kiwi dream of homeownership is still there for New Zealanders, that there would be some hope for the future, and that there would be opportunities for New Zealanders and their families. That opportunity has been completely missed and completely lost by this Government. This Budget is a massive missed opportunity for New Zealanders to build for future generations a sustainable economy. These three bills, sad and pathetic as they are, are the best the National Government has to offer.

I speak on behalf of the Government on the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill, the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill, and the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2). I think what disappoints me is that the member opposite Grant Robertson does not seem to understand that is it not Governments that create jobs; it is businesses that create jobs. The role of the Government is to create an environment in which businesses feel confident to invest, confident to employ people, and confident to grow their businesses.

This is a Budget that has carried on in the right direction for the last 6 years and we have arrived at a place where we are back in surplus. It is a Budget that is a confident Budget for a confident nation, a nation that is overwhelmingly heading in the right direction. It is a Budget that sees the books back in surplus, growth at 4 percent, wages rising faster than inflation, and more money available for families, businesses, and the most vulnerable. That, I think, is something to celebrate.

That is why we are growing so well, in contrast to our friends across the Tasman, who have suffered the blight of 6 years of a Labour-Greens Government and runaway spending and debt. We see ourselves back in a position of great optimism. On that basis, I commend these bills to the House.

It is a bit rich for Paul Goldsmith to talk about business confidence after he has just completely pulled the carpet out from under the post-1989 forestry sector. I am guessing that it is not feeling particularly confident right now, Mr Goldsmith, and it has every reason to be absolutely irate with this Government for the nasty surprise it has dropped on the industry in this urgency motion. As my colleague Grant Robertson said, it is astounding that this legislation has been done under urgency. If you look at the 35c saving that families are going to make from the abolition of the fees on cheques, as seen in the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill, that is kind of up there with the tax on paper boys that the Government brought in in a previous Budget. This is just pathetic, it really is, and it does not need to be progressed under urgency. Although I am sure that every little bit helps, I do not think getting that 35c a year to families is going to be what makes or breaks the Budget.

The second bill, the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill, which amends the Climate Change Response Act, definitely should not be in an urgency motion, because of the wide-ranging implications it has for the post-1989 forestry sector. This is a sector that was not consulted on about these changes. This is a sector that did not have the ability to come to a select committee to ask the National Government why it hates the forestry sector so much. The Minister responsible for forestry, the Associate Minister for Primary Industries, is in the House. Go and talk to some of the sector, Minister Goodhew. You have? Yes, it loves you. Here we go: someone is actually responding. Why was it not consulted?

💬 Hon Jo Goodhew: Actually, if you understood—

Oh! Actually, if I understood—right, OK, I do understand. I understand that you are not applying this to your corporate mates in the heavy-emitting industries. They still get to engage in arbitrage between New Zealand Units and Kyoto units. The Cabinet club still gets access to these cheap units, so why are we not limiting access to those cheap units for the Cabinet club heavy-polluting industries and instead applying that only to forestry? The Minister responsible for forestry is now ignoring me, just as the Minister in the chair did during the Committee stage of this legislation, because there is no good reason why you would not apply this across the board. The great irony, of course, is that iwi are also going to be disproportionately impacted by this, and I am very disappointed that the Māori Party voted for Part 2 of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill and voted down my and Kennedy Graham’s amendments, given that iwi are going to be disproportionately affected by this. I am very, very disappointed.

Ironically, iwi and the post-1989 forestry sector have been calling for a restriction on these units for years, and that has fallen on deaf ears. The sector has called for a restriction on these units across the board, in a more equitable way that applies to everyone fairly, not with one rule for it and another rule for National’s mates who are heavy polluters, who got a free allocation of New Zealand Units, but are perfectly entitled—according to the National Government—to go out and engage in arbitrage and speculate on those units, playing off the differential price between the New Zealand Units and the Kyoto units. But now we are saying that the forestry sector, the one sector actually doing anything to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, is not allowed to do it. We did not tell the sector about it. We did not consult with it. We did not check what the impact would be. We are not allowing any kind of—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: The Government didn’t.

—the Government did not, sorry. There is no transition period and no select committee process. This is an absolute outrage and the Minister responsible for forestry should absolutely hang her head in shame.

There are going to be a lot of people out there—and a lot of these are mum and dad foresters—who have bought emission reduction units, these cheap Kyoto units, and they know that they are going to deregister or harvest and that they need to meet that obligation, and they now cannot do anything with those emission reduction units. Those units are worthless, and those people have paid good money for them. They have made investment decisions based on having those units and being able to surrender them to meet any deregistration obligations. How is it fair to completely remove retrospectively the value of those units? And then they are going to have to go out and buy New Zealand Units to replace them. We could have simply said that from today no more emission reduction units can land in the register for post-1989 forestry, and that would have taken away the completely unfair retrospective element of this bill.

What we should have done is what the forestry sector and iwi for years have been calling for, which is to apply this provision across the board to everyone. I look forward to the next National speaker explaining how they can justify allowing these cheap units to be accessed by their mates in the Cabinet club—the heavy emitters—whilst they are removing access to the one sector that got them out of a hole when it came to the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. We would have ended up with a financial liability at the end of the first commitment period at Kyoto had it not been for forestry offsetting our ever-increasing gross greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions kept going up and we were just lucky that there was enough forestry to mitigate it.

So how does a National Government say thank you? By yet another attack on the forestry sector. It is absolutely outrageous. This is not about fiscal risk, because the fiscal risk to the Government of foresters sitting on New Zealand Units is estimated to be between $11 million to $66 million. The fiscal risk to the Government of all the other New Zealand Units that are being sat on by the other sectors is $107 million. So why are we attacking the $11 million fiscal risk and leaving the $107 million fiscal risk? The answer is that the Government hates forestry and it likes heavy-emitting industries. That is the simple answer.

The Minister referred to this as an unintended consequence. I want to point out that this is absolutely not unintended; it is absolutely deliberate. For years we have been putting up Supplementary Order Papers in the House, bills in the ballot, and calling on the Government to restrict these cheap international units across the board, and those amendments have been voted down. The calls from the forestry sector and from iwi have been ignored. The Government has allowed the carbon price to collapse. It has allowed a differential in price to open up between the New Zealand Units and the Kyoto units, and so it is about $3.20 for a New Zealand unit at the moment and about 35c for a Kyoto unit. That is the problem. That is what we should have a bill fixing. There should be a bill to fix the carbon price and to reduce the differential between the international units and the New Zealand Units, and this will all go away. We will not end up hurting the one industry that we are hugely reliant on in terms of our climate change response.

This bill is not about reregistration at all, as the Government has claimed. This is not about the fact that foresters can go in and register and deregister and then reregister again and get more New Zealand Units and continue to speculate on the differential in that price. We could have fixed that by simply saying that in any 5-year reporting period you can register only once. That would have fixed it, without all the down sides of this piece of legislation. That was one of the options that officials actually put up to the Government in the regulatory impact statement. That option was simply saying that you get to register only once in a reporting period, and the problem would have gone away. Instead, the Government went with the most brutal, over the top, unfair, retrospective option. So for the Government members to sit there and talk about business and being friendly in terms of business investment—give me a break. Give me a break.

Tell that to the foresters out there who have suddenly had the carpet whipped out from underneath them with absolutely no warning and absolutely no ability to submit on that piece of legislation, to let us know how damaging it would be. They found out about it only when we sent an email to a few of them saying: “Have you seen this? Have you been consulted?”. Suddenly it went around the industry, and the reaction has been incredible. They have every right to be furious, because this is an absolute betrayal of good faith. Minister Goodhew, the forestry Minister, thinks it is funny. Well, we will be taking that out on the road, Minister Goodhew, because whatever the forestry industry thought of you before, I have to say that this is an absolute indictment on your Government. As forestry Minister you should be ashamed of yourself—absolutely ashamed of yourself—because this bill is yet another attack on forestry by an anti-forestry, anti-environment Government.

That is why we need a change of Government on 20 September—so we can have a Government that takes climate change seriously, that takes the environment seriously, that supports regional development in sectors like manufacturing and forestry, and that does not continue to whip the carpet out from underneath them so that it can snuggle up to its cronies, its Cabinet club mates, giving them favours, protecting them, and shielding them whilst all the time hurting one of the most important industries in this country, the forestry sector.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to vote in favour of the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill and the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill but to oppose the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2).

This is my first Budget call in this patch of urgency. From listening to the debate in my office and in the House over the last 2 days, I think what you can see in the two bills we have seen in front of us in urgency is the Budget actually summed up in the legislation. Obviously, we heard the Budget in the Hon Bill English’s speech and we heard it in the leaders’ debate, but I believe you can see it in the bills this Government decides to put through in urgency. The fact that these bills, which do not require urgency, are being put through in urgency also sums up the Government very well.

We see a Government that has repeatedly used urgency with no need and a Government that has not given New Zealanders true, accessible democracy and the right to a fair hearing and parliamentary scrutiny of legislation, which we have seen over and over. We have seen the likes of democracy being taken away in Canterbury. You can see it in the likes of this Government choosing to breach New Zealanders’ human rights by putting on our law books the ability for the Government to terminate people’s internet accounts for copyright infringement. This is a Government that did that in urgency—a Government that made the unlawful lawful with the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill.

You can also see the nature of the Government and of its Budget in 2014 in the substance of the legislation. With the paid parental leave bill, the Budget Measures (Financial Support For Newborn Children) Bill that we previously debated, you can see a Government that is moving only slightly in the right direction, a Government that is extending the inequality we see in New Zealand, and a Government that votes against extending the right to the most vulnerable New Zealanders—those on a benefit who are raising kids.

You can see it in the housing legislation we are debating right now, where the Government is focusing on the 0.7 percent of housing affordability yet ignoring the real issues facing us, like how our young Kiwi families can get into homeownership and how we can see cheaper house-building materials, greater competition, and the State taking a more active role in building more State houses. We are seeing a Government that is throwing the wood industry under the trucks.

On the climate aspect of the legislation in front of us you can see a Government that is singling out the forestry industry, and a Government that says: “We’ve got one rule for the big emitters and the big polluters if they are a smelter or a factory or a steel mill, but if you’re a forestry company, you’re out of luck.”

You have got to wonder—did they somehow forget to pay their Cabinet club dues and that is why they are missing out? In all the reviews of the Budget and in the actions of this Government what we are seeing is this sector missing out. They are the losers. This is a Government that is quite willing to pick winners, sadly, in the polluting industries, but throw them under the truck.

As I am a bit of a greenie who used to work for Greenpeace, I am often accused of hugging trees. I am proud to say that I have hugged a few trees in my time. This Government, however, cuts down the trees, pours petrol on the roots, and sets them on fire. That is its approach to forestry in New Zealand.

I have described some of the legislation we are seeing passed in urgency today, but what is the big issue that we see in front of us? Well, it is the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill—the 35c that Kiwis are going to be saving, the 35c tax cut Kiwis got this election year. That sums up the lack of vision, the lack of direction, in an economy that, sure, is doing slightly better than Australia temporarily at this point in time—an economy that has the stimulus of the Christchurch earthquake—but an economy that has no long-term direction. What we need is to embrace the entrepreneurialism, embrace the innovation, and actually go into the future with confidence with a national strategy so that we can deliver a richer New Zealand, and so we can build a more prosperous country for our kids.

What we are seeing in New Zealand is Kiwis working hard—we work some of the longest hours in the OECD for some of the lowest wages in the developed world, and we pay some of the highest costs of living. Yet this country, on the economic rankings, is losing the race. Every year we slip a little bit more down those OECD rankings.

When we are dealing with wood, which is a major part of the legislation we have in front of us, it reminds me of my home town of Gisborne. You can actually see our country’s economic story graphically laid out on the waterfront. When we are looking at wood, what you see is the beautiful old freezing works. They were demolished, and now all you see is literally almost a mile or more of raw logs piled up for export. What you can see is a good example where 100-plus years ago our country embraced the future, new technologies, looked to the future trends, and invested in technologies like refrigerated shipping. That is how we built our wealth. That is how we raised our kids in a prosperous country. Yet what we are also seeing now is the short-sighted nature of our modern economy—the simplification, and the reliance on simply exporting raw logs and milk powder around the world. That is not a recipe for a prosperous country or for lifting those 290,000 Kiwi kids out of poverty.

So when we look at the wood aspects of the countervailing measures part of the separated bills—the bill that removes the dumping tariffs, or suspends them temporarily—you have really got to question the reason for urgency. I have not heard a compelling reason from the Government benches. This should have gone through a due process. We should have seen a select committee. We should have been able to hear from the companies that are being affected by this legislation, because when you look through the Government documents it describes the impacts on the companies, but this is what you see: black marks—the redacted parts of the regulatory impact assessments. We should have been able to hear from these companies being affected. Every New Zealand company, just like every New Zealander, deserves a fair go.

We should have had the chance to debate the pros and cons, because I admit that there are pros and cons. But on something as, let us say, arcane I think many New Zealanders would not be aware that we have tariffs on dumping provisions overseas. We have not had a chance for a national discussion, because there are, I acknowledge, pros and cons. But at a time when we are seeing our sawmills close, like Southern Cross Forest Products sawmill recently, and at a time when we have recently seen 4,000 Kiwis laid off in the timber and forestry sector, we should not be risking further job losses and contraction in that sector with bills under urgency, when we cannot even hear from the sectors involved. We cannot keep going on as we are at the moment, just hoping countries will continue to buy our raw logs.

The cost of this suspension of the tariffs is estimated at $27.8 million. We should have been able to have a conversation nationally involving the sector, involving experts, economists, academics, the public, and our Parliament. Gee, could that $27.8 million have been better spent on supporting the New Zealand home-building supplies industry to become more competitive, to ramp up with the challenge of scale in the Christchurch rebuild? We should have had that conversation.

Both the Labour Party and the Green Party have put out comprehensive, well-thought-out strategies for our timber and building sectors in New Zealand. A few weeks ago Dr Russel Norman announced a structural timber award. In the rebuild of Christchurch we should be using timber products and supporting them. What we need to see is a comprehensive plan for cheaper housing. Focusing on the 0.7 percent, as this legislation does, is no panacea for the chronic crisis we see. With the new data showing we can expect up to 41,000 immigrants to New Zealand, the challenge, or the crisis as it already is, is going to get a lot, lot worse.

What we see in this Budget legislation is a lack of action for first-home buyers, a lack of action to drive down the costs of housing for Kiwis. Too many of our Kiwis are living in housing poverty. They are spending too much of their income on it, and that is increasing every year over those historical trends.

When it comes to climate change—and I am running out of time—what we see is that the arbitrage rule is changing. Sadly, it is changing for only one sector. Very briefly, what is happening is that the Government over the last 6 years has gifted New Zealand emission units to polluters but also to foresters who do the right thing by sequestering carbon. But it has also said you can bring in any number of cheap offshore credits from Ukraine or Russia, where they did not actually see real emissions reductions.

What you saw in the last year, and I think this most graphically demonstrates it, was that the Government handed out, on a platter, $110 million of New Zealand Units, but all the companies had to do in reply was purchase $7 million equivalent of offshore junk units, making a $93 million windfall profit. That is not good for the New Zealand economy, that is not good for New Zealand competitiveness, and it is not good for us building a smart economy, which takes the gravest challenge of our time, climate change, into effect.

What we need to do is do what the amendment and the member’s bill by Dr Kennedy Graham would do, which is stop these junk, hot air credits coming in offshore and to actually focus on building an economy that is a low carbon one, that grows jobs, that has people planting forests, people using timber products in their buildings, people insulating under people’s roofs, and other people installing solar panels on the top, and investing in public transport. That is the smarter, greener economy that we are going to be building and taking to the public on 20 September this year. Kia ora.

I am pleased to stand to speak to the third reading of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill, which has now, of course, been split into several bills. I think we are hearing a strong contrast here between the Government’s approach and the approach of the Opposition. We are a Government that believes in the market. At its most basic, it is that we produce what other people want.

We have heard a lot of talk about logs, raw logs, and added value. The thing is that if there was a demand and drive for value-added wood products, there would be a market for it, not an arbitrary decision by Moana Mackey and friends to just back it. You have got to study the contradiction that has been going on here today as well, about how the Government is supposedly backing winners and losers. Yet if you listened to members on the other side, they are choosing who they want to back as winners and losers. We know from their supposed policy announcement that they effectively want to nationalise the electricity industry too. They do not believe that you can choose, in areas of insulation, say, whether or not to put wool insulation into your home—no, the Government must be involved.

It is a very, very different approach. You see too with this particular legislation an understanding of the importance of removing regulation, and you see it around things like tax duty. Yes, it is a small amount—even in total, it is only about $4 million a year—but this is a Government committed to removing stumbling blocks, be they large or small, to make it more efficient for New Zealanders to do business, in order to ultimately look after their families. That is another element that we looked at in the first bill around this Budget debate. I commend this legislation to the House.

I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the legislation arising from the omnibus bill, the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill: the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill, the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill, and the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2).

Just to cover them briefly, in terms of removing cheque duty in the Cheque Duty Repeal Bill, New Zealand First supports that change. We feel it is very late, it is overdue, it should have been done a long time ago, and we cannot understand why it has taken this Government 6 years to get around to it. I pulled out a cheque book a few weeks ago to write out a cheque. I do not think I have used it for more than about 2 years. I noticed that that particular cheque book was first issued in about 2007 or 2008, so I paid that $2.50 some 6 years ago. Cheque duty is a bit of a nonsense and, really, it should have been done away with a long time ago. Again, it was a little fiddle around the edges in the Budget—another little lollipop—to try to make things look good, but, at the end of the day, it was immaterial.

The second thing, in terms of climate change in the Climate Change Response (Unit Restriction) Amendment Bill, again, we think it is just fiddling around the edges. New Zealand First has no time for the emissions trading scheme. We think it is just another money-laundering scheme for bankers, financiers, and people from the likes of Merrill Lynch to take and extort money from the New Zealand economy and put it into places like New York, London, Frankfurt, and other financial markets trading on the emissions trading scheme, and, basically, New Zealanders, the New Zealand Government, and the New Zealand economy will pay dearly. We, again, will be the guinea pigs, the suckers. We will pay out around the world to these people, and probably in years to come we will all look back in hindsight and say: “How on earth did we get dragged into that? Why did we bother?”. Well, New Zealand First says we should not have a bar of it. We should get on with our own problems here in New Zealand in terms of our emissions, and we should sort out our own emissions here in New Zealand. We should work constructively in New Zealand in terms of what is polluting our own environment and what is happening around our own country in terms of emissions, levy the polluters here in New Zealand, and make sure the money goes back constructively into sorting out the issues with pollution here in New Zealand and not send it off to some money-making scheme administered by the likes of Merrill Lynch in New York.

The third part of the bill, which is the main part, in our view, in terms of issue to New Zealand, is the building supplies bill, the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2). We have huge opposition to this bill. New Zealand First believes that this is another attempt by the National Government to undermine New Zealand manufacturers. Again, New Zealand manufacturers bear the brunt of this. We sat on the manufacturing inquiry in the last year, and we were prepared—the Government was not prepared—alongside other Opposition parties, to listen to our manufacturers. Those who are in the manufacturing sector—not in the agricultural manufacturing sector, not in sectors that are exporting our primary produce and other things, but those that are in basic, everyday manufacturing—are finding it pretty tough. With our dollar up around US86c and heading towards US90c, they are finding it very tough. Therefore, they do need some assistance to stay viable here in New Zealand when they are up against very, very cheap sources of materials, such as those in the building industry coming out of the likes of China, Indonesia, Thailand, and other places, which have already been identified in the last 2 or 3 years as being dumped in this market and seriously undercutting our own manufacturers of wallboards, steel coil, steel reinforcing, nails, and other such construction materials. It has already been proven that that has gone on and it is having a very serious, detrimental effect on our manufacturers in New Zealand.

We in New Zealand First say we will stand up and support our manufacturers. We will go into battle for them. We will make sure that they do have that level of protection, because they are up against other economies that have got huge scale, much lower wage rates, much lower standards of production in terms of quality and warranty that come with it, and, therefore, it is not a level playing field. So the whole idea of these anti-dumping tariffs is to try to create a level playing field to ensure that those New Zealand manufacturers are not disadvantaged. The Minister of Commerce refused to answer some of the questions I put to him in the Committee stage. In the regulatory impact statement from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—the “Ministry of Everything”—it said that it was going to be something that would give us a $900 saving per house in this. We have heard from the Minister that it is going to be a saving of $3,500. It is very interesting that there are contradictory pieces of information being provided, and, yet, the Minister has not stood up throughout this whole debate today and given an explanation as to why those figures are different. There might be a reasonable explanation. It might be justifiable. But when I read a regulatory impact statement that says that the saving is only $900 per residential household, that is the figure I take—when I see it in writing from the officials.

We have also heard from the Minister that this will help reduce house prices in Auckland. I held this document up earlier in the day and said that the problem in Auckland is that houses are being bought by people from all over the world—not just by people from Asia but by all sorts of people from all over the world. These people are buying them because the Auckland housing market is hot and it is going up, and it is going up at a rapid rate. They are bidding via telephones to auction floors in Takapuna—rooms full of people in Takapuna. And those people are on phones overseas—

💬 John Hayes: Where?

They are, Mr Hayes, I can assure you. I have a daughter who has been in the real estate market and she gives me information as to what is happening. I have got other friends in the real estate market who have told me, as well. They are bidding, and half the time these people are sitting back overseas and bidding blindly on properties and buying them in Auckland. There are properties on the North Shore that are bought, closed up, left empty, and nothing is done with them. They are sitting there on the basis of a speculative purchase, knowing how fast property prices are going up in the Auckland market. Those houses are sitting empty—million-dollar homes sitting empty. Three houses in a row in a street are being bought, they are taken off that land, and six dwellings are being built in their place for speculative purposes. And it is all being done in a large cash market. Then there is a paper in Auckland like this one—a huge paper, huge paper—and it is not in English, selling properties all over Auckland, but a New Zealander would struggle to read it. They would struggle to read it. So this is of concern. I stand as a fifth-generation New Zealander, whose family on both my mother’s and my father’s side came here in the 1840s, and I stand up for the young people of New Zealand who ask us as politicians, and they ask us all the time: “How on earth are we ever going to afford to buy a house in the likes of Auckland when the properties are being bought from many offshore sources?”. It is incredible.

At the same time through this whole thing, the Government has said through the Budget that it is going to try to massage things—it is doing so well, we heard from Mr Goldsmith. He gave his checklist of how wonderful the Government was and he was checking off all these things and saying how it is saving all these various things. Then you hold up this piece of paper from the Budget documents, which shows contributions to superannuation from the Government in the next 5 years. For 2015, it is zero; for 2016, it is zero; for 2017, it is zero; and for 2018, it is zero. Mr Goldsmith, you cannot claim a $372 million surplus and say how wonderfully you have done while New Zealanders and future New Zealanders—and with the baby-boom bubble coming before us—will be retiring in years to come with a superannuation scheme that your Government will not have contributed 1c to in the decade between 2008-09 and 2018-19. That is a whole decade of no contributions to the future of this country, while at the same time the young people of this country are up against this sort of thing when trying to buy a house in Auckland.

This Government is really disappointing. Then it comes to this House, under urgency, puts forward these pathetic little things like the removal of cheque duty on cheque books and a little bit about climate change, and it thinks that that is the urgent business of the Government, under urgency. Well, it is not. New Zealand First says otherwise. We think that there is a much bigger picture here—a much bigger picture in terms of what is happening in our economy—and New Zealand First will address that on 20 September.

I am conscious that I am standing between the House and the end of the sitting week, but I feel that I should put on record at the conclusion of this debate the view of the Labour Opposition on the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Amendment Bill (No 2), which was Part 3 of what was the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill, and which contains the centrepiece of this Government’s offering to the public of New Zealand in its rather haphazard and inadequate response to the housing crisis.

If you were a Government that wanted to do something about the housing crisis, there are a number of options open to you. You could do something about taxing speculators, for example, with, for instance, a capital gains tax. You could, as Andrew Williams was just saying, put a stop to foreign speculators bidding up the price of houses in Auckland. You might like to consider building large numbers of affordable homes and selling them to first-home buyers. That would address the supply shortage that really lies at the heart of the sky-rocketing house prices. You might like to build more State houses, because people right at the bottom end are struggling under this housing crisis. You could master-plan ambitious, new urban development projects, revitalise town centres, and invest in transport infrastructure. You could do all of those things, which would make a huge difference to the housing crisis that we have now.

But if you are a Government that does not care for those kinds of bold gestures, or if you were a Government that prefers to tinker round the edges and you prefer the photo opportunity and the insignificant gesture, then there are a number of other options that are open to you. One of those might be trying to do something about building and construction costs. If you were serious about tackling construction costs, you might, for example, hold a Commerce Commission inquiry into the lack of competition in the building supplies industry. You might, for instance, use a Government-backed building programme to build at scale, thereby allowing off-site manufacturing and prefabricated construction to drive down the cost of housing. As a recent industry group estimated, doing that could knock $32,000 off the cost of a new house.

But if you were determined to look at building and construction materials and at what they add to the cost of a new home, and you had read the Productivity Commission report that said that New Zealanders are paying an extra $20,000 per newly constructed house because of higher prices in this country, then what would you do about that? Well, if you were serious, you would address the anti-competitive practices and the lack of competition in the building and construction industry. But if you wanted to just tinker round the edges and look as if you were doing something, then you might look at a measure contained in the third part of this legislation, which is to temporarily suspend anti-dumping duties and tariffs for certain building materials.

This is the Government of the insignificant gesture. Nick Smith is the “Minister of the Photo Op”. The credibility of the housing initiatives in this Budget really sum up how pathetic this Government’s record has been on housing. It has got nothing. After a year of running around doing photo opportunities, talking up the problem, blaming councils, blaming the banks, and blaming the construction industry, it has run out of scapegoats and other people to blame. All it has really got is a lame housing accord with the Auckland Council, which, on its own numbers, will deliver only 5,500 new houses in the special housing areas over 3 years. That is all it has got, and this pathetic, little gesture in this legislation, which it claims, after doing some calculation on the back of a cigarette packet, might save $3,500 on the cost of a new house—with no evidence brought to this House to justify those calculations and with no assurance that that saving would not be swallowed up by builders and developers. This is all that the Government has got, and it is a very sad thing for New Zealand.

Cheque Duty Repeal Bill read a third time.