General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. We can get the opportunity to debate Kiwibank anyway, because it is here. But has it not been interesting, just listening to the preoccupations of the Labour Party? For a party that is meant to be concerned about jobs and incomes, its overriding concern this week is to assist the tax authorities of Mexico and Malta and the Cayman Islands. We are seeing more outrage about whether or not Mexicans are using a financial structure in New Zealand than we are seeing about family violence, about the fact that too many young people still cannot find their way directly into work, or about any number of the other things that used to be the preoccupations of the Labour Party—used to be the preoccupations of the Labour Party.

What happened to Labour? We saw Dr Cullen at the press conference today. What happened to the kind of energy and focus he used to bring to this House around issues that mattered to the Labour Party? What happened to the capacity to make people feel like the Labour Party really did care for the needs and the pressures of low and middle income New Zealand? He could do it with some real force, and occasionally we listened—not very often, because he was often wrong, even though he was well intended. But at least he could do it. What has happened to that capacity?

💬 Hon Steven Joyce: It’s gone.

No, it is Grant Robertson, which does mean that it has gone—it does mean it has gone. A party that cannot seem to find itself getting motivated about the things that it used to care about has been reduced to directing what little passion it has at demanding that the New Zealand Government deal with tax avoidance problems in Mexico. That is where it has ended up. That is the Kiwi Dream—that is, apparently, what really does matter today! Well, it is an interesting issue—

💬 Dr David Clark: Get a grip.

There are a handful of people in New Zealand who have got a grip on it—

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: Get your head out of the sand.

—and probably not the member for the West Coast. He probably does not have a grip on it. And, of course, we will have to pay some attention to how that issue rolls on with these revelations in the international media. But, in the meantime, the Government is getting on with much more important things, like keeping the New Zealand jobs machine chugging along.

We are in an economy that is strong enough for us to know that the people who will lose their jobs at New Zealand Post, which is a fading industry, and the people who will lose their jobs at Fisher and Paykel because it cannot be globally competitive at manufacturing electrical products—we know that they will be able to get other jobs in this economy. And they will not need a massively expensive, universal basic income to do it, because they do not need to be told by the Government that they are so hopeless that we have to guarantee to pay them, whether they are working or not.

💬 Grant Robertson: Which you do now, so fair enough—good on you.

Well, that is Labour’s big, new, innovative idea. Let us find the people who are working and pay them—that is the new idea. That is the innovation. The new Labour Party superannuation: everyone over 18 gets New Zealand superannuation.

Meanwhile, we are paying attention to keeping the jobs machine chugging along, and working alongside those regional communities that are affected by the downturn in dairy prices, for instance, because their full resilience is going to be called on over the next 6 months or so. It is an important part of the New Zealand economy, but the good news is that as we work alongside them, more people are realising this economy is more diversified than everyone expected.

Well, that comes from a Government that claims it has got so many ideas it can only talk about ours. That is what it has now come to, faced with big problems. Can it give an assurance that it will buy back the Kiwibank shares if they are offered up for sale by the Cullen fund or by ACC? It cannot even give that assurance.

And it talks about the young unemployed—the young unemployed have bloomed under this Government over the last 8 years. The average level of unemployment for the 18 to 24-year-olds is now up to 15 percent—that is a National Government achievement. But like with all of the National Government’s failures, those members always have to turn it on somebody else, so now we are responsible, somehow, for their failure to get to grips with the ambitions and the dreams of young New Zealanders. Those members are doing nothing, have done nothing, and will do nothing, which is why New Zealanders now know they need a change of Government if they are going to have a chance for the future.

There is one question that New Zealanders are asking this week: who is the National Government governing for? Who is it there for? Because what has become blatantly obvious to every New Zealander who cares is that that mob over there does not care about ordinary New Zealanders. They do not care. And we have Mossack Fonseca to thank for the fact that this Government’s abject failure to deal with the tax fraudsters and the tax dodgers of the world—it has done nothing about it. It has done nothing about it. We know what those members’ response is, so the Prime Minister is saying, “Oh, it’s all too complicated. Kiwis, don’t worry, you will never understand.”—of course, he does, because that is the industry that he comes out of. Doing dodges, doing dodgy deals, coming out of the finance sector—he loves that stuff. That is him. Of course we would not understand it.

Those members are arrogant, they are out of touch, and they do not care—they do not care. So they say: “Oh, don’t worry, we’ve got full disclosure.” Never mind that you will never find out who settles these foreign trusts, who the beneficiaries are, or how much the assets are worth—we will never know any of that under this Government’s full disclosure regime. There is no need for any of them to file a return, so we will never know exactly what is going on. And “Is it a tax haven?”, we asked, and the Government said “No, we’re not a tax haven.”, but this is what the experts are saying. This is what McVeagh Fleming, a reputable Auckland law firm, tells its clients: “New Zealand is not seen as a ‘tax haven’ country so the use of a New Zealand trust is generally not perceived as a means to avoid tax or as being tax aggressive.”, which is lawyer-speak for “Come ’ere, because you can be a tax dodger and we’ll be tax aggressive.” That is exactly what that is saying. And then, what do others say? Another one says: “It should be noted that New Zealand does not have a central trust registry, thus offering a considerable degree of privacy”—secrecy—“and flexibility.” This is the Government’s full disclosure regime.

And do you know what? Those members do not care about it. They do not care about us becoming a harbour for the tax dodgers and the wrongdoers of the world. They do not care about it—they do not care about it. And the only question then is exactly who is this Government looking after, because now it has become pretty obvious. We should not be surprised. This whole thing about tax dodging and inexplicable financial arrangements is exactly what John Key stands for. He does not stand for the hard-working New Zealanders, or for the hard-working New Zealand business people starting with their small businesses and trying to grow them, and trying to get capital finance so that they can generate those new jobs and generate a bit of wealth for themselves by doing things the honest way, which is what Kiwis are always good at.

Those members do not care about this stuff because that is not the world they live in. They live in a world that is about looking after the mega-rich and the mega-wealthy who add nothing to New Zealand. What has John Key said? “Let’s be the Switzerland of the South Pacific.”, he said. “Let’s get the European mega-rich down here. They can build their mansions.” And the rest of us? We will tug our forelocks and we will do as we are told and polish their shoes. That is the New Zealand future that John Key has in his mind. That is his vision for New Zealand.

It is not a New Zealand that is about hard-working Kiwis doing their best, and doing the best for the country they love and that we love too. That is the National Party vision. It is not about good things; it is about the dodgers and the shirkers and those who owe no allegiance to any country or to any people. We do not want a bar of it, and we will not have a bar of it because the Labour Party stands for those who do good things, for those who work hard, and for those who want a great country.

Look, I had a couple of days in Australia last week and, let us be honest, it is a marvellous country, that country. It has huge resources, the wonderful city of Sydney, and a very vibrant economy. It is growing quite well—actually, its growth figures are broadly similar to ours, although its Budget surplus is not so good. But the interesting thing, spending a bit of time in Australia, is that there is definitely some angst in the community and in the business community and some uncertainty, and one of the criticisms the Australian Government is currently being labelled with now is that it has not been crystal clear about its priorities and the sense of direction is somewhat lacking.

I do not know whether that is a fair criticism or not because I have not spent enough time there, but there is no question, in comparison, as to what the priorities and the sense of direction that is coming from this Government is, and has been for the past 8 years. I think that is one of the reasons for this Government’s success and for the country’s progress that we have made in the past few years. For the last 8 years now we have been consistent about what this Government has set out to achieve, and the starting point has always been to restore our finances and to have a sustainable Budget balance and well-maintained finances.

Why is that important? It is important because if people can stand back and make a judgment on the Government’s management of itself and say that what it is doing is broadly sustainable, then you can have much more confidence to invest, and it is ultimately only investment decisions by individuals and Governments either to hire a new person or to buy a new plant or to start a new business—that all relies on confidence. And you can have confidence if you can look at what the Government is doing and say that, well, what it is doing is economically sustainable. It is not going to have to lurch off in a new direction and change all its policies in order to get back into a reasonable state of affairs.

That is why business confidence fell in the final of the three terms of the last Labour Government. People looked at their budgets and saw that they were spending more and more, and that future budgets were going to be in deficit for the next 5 years. They knew something would have to change, and that undermined confidence. Restoring the Government’s finances has been essential to what this Government is about. We have achieved that. We are back in surplus, and that is a very important foundation for this Government to build on and for the country to build on. The second thing is about building a more productive and competitive economy, which is the relentless task of working through what it is that businesses in New Zealand need in order to employ more people, create jobs, deliver people higher incomes, and succeed on the global stage.

We have set out a very clear agenda of what we are trying to do through the Business Growth Agenda in terms of working in areas such as infrastructure, which is so important in Auckland, where I come from, where we have got a rapidly growing city that is prospering, doing well—

💬 Chris Hipkins: Which electorate?

—the Epsom electorate, where I am based—and where the population is growing. We are struggling with keeping the city moving in terms of traffic congestion, and that is why investing in infrastructure—in roads and rail, particularly—is so important and why, if you have a strong economy, you can do that effectively, and that is what we are doing.

Also, in terms of investment law, we are hearing the Opposition members raging and gnashing about foreign investment into New Zealand. But it is so important. If we are to grow, ultimately we only get jobs, and we only get the higher-paying jobs, as a result of investment from people. If we limit ourselves purely to the money that we have saved ourselves in terms of domestic investment, well, then that is fine. We can grow, but we can only grow so fast. But if we want to grow faster, we need to also be able to draw in investment from around the world, and that is what we have continued to do.

Finally, the other area that the Government has been working on is building better public services. Ultimately, you cannot have a competitive economy if 35 percent of the economy, which is that which is run by the State, is not done well, and if it is inefficient and ineffective. You get good Government services only if you actually give people what they want and achieve success, whether it is in health or in education.

So when you look back at what this Government has done over the last 8 years, people know what we stand for and know what we are trying to achieve. We have laid it out, crystal clear, and we are making great progress. That is why New Zealand continues to have high levels of confidence and continues to do well. It is my hope that we will get the opportunity to carry on that work in the near future. Thank you very much.

The leak of over 11.5 million documents in the Panama papers is further proof that there is something awfully rotten in the world of international finance. The PM’s response was to childishly claim that he is right and that every international commentator—including the UK’s much-respected economists—and tax experts everywhere are wrong.

The scandal has clearly claimed the Icelandic Prime Minister, and swirls around the Government of Malta and many others. Mr Key is clearly rattled when he resorts to curt statements like “I’m right.” on tax haven status, before blaming the previous Government—all in the same sentence, all in the same breath, and with him being well into his third term. Above board and foreign jurisdictions, he says, can ask our Inland Revenue Department (IRD) for information on their foreign-owned trusts in New Zealand. That is an answer worse than Wall Street. How would Germany be able to make an inquiry of our IRD if it did not have any registration or identification, and that trust is hiding under the veil of secrecy? It is moronic to say that. Unless it asks for every file, which the IRD will instantly plead privacy for, then it could not possibly know what it is looking for. It is a nonsense. If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, quacks like a duck, and smells like a duck, it most probably is a corrupt duck.

The PM says that all is above board, there is nothing to look at here, and that he is right and everyone else is wrong. But in the same sentence he says to blame the last Labour administration. Today he said to blame me—that is, yours truly—and my smart, clever colleagues. If everything is above board, why would you blame the last administration? But it is not above board, and countless warnings have been ignored.

It is a bad look for the National Party, and yesterday’s and today’s body language tells you everything. Every front-bencher and backbencher is looking downwards. All of a sudden they have got some urgent written material to read. They are trying to escape public scrutiny. The PM was asked—

💬 Hon Members: Ha, ha!

Do not laugh, guys. This is not funny. The PM was asked: “Are any of your present and former ministerial colleagues involved?”. Twenty-four hours later, we want to know what checks he and his colleagues have made. Were any of his present and former colleagues involved? Twenty-four hours later, not a mutter, not a syllable, not a sound. But this is not going to go away. This we can say already.

This matter is not going to go away, and any National MPs over there, and others who need National to get more than 40 percent at the next election, should be refining their CVs. Brett Hudson is gone—goodbye, Ōhāriu. Bakshi is gone—goodbye, patsy questions. Jian Yang is gone—goodbye, our man in Beijing. Sadly, Alfred Ngaro is gone—no more kia orana. Paul Foster-Bell is gone—goodbye, cherub. Parmjeet Parmar is gone—goodbye, the Indian connection. Chris Bishop is gone—hallelujah, praise the Lord! Nuk Korako is gone—goodbye, “Never Nuk”. Jono Naylor is gone—goodbye Wellington, hello Palmerston North. Maureen Pugh, who just got here—hello West Coast, again. And “Jimbo” and Marama and Peter Dunne and Seymour—all gone.

But there is one great benefit from these Panama papers. Do you know what it is? More and more people are seeing the Prime Minister for what he really is like, and that is a good thing. More and more people in the National Party are seeing this man for who he is. He is running into some heavy weather, and is deciding to look around now for Rudolph. I can see in their faces the shock and fear of yesterday. But I can tell you one thing: New Zealand First is not in this Parliament to muck around. We have much worse coming on this. We will make sure it is sheeted home. The Prime Minister is at the centre of a cover-up. He is the veil of secrecy’s greatest defender, and he is going to take his party and a stack of people over there down with him. I say this sincerely, and so do my colleagues: the National Party voter deserves much better than that.

💬 David Bennett: Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Order! [Interruption] Order! I have not called the member yet. David Bennett.

There are not many times in life that you get an opportunity like this—to follow on from a dead duck like that last speaker, the Rt Hon Winston Peters. He listed more members of the New Zealand National Party than he can name in the New Zealand First Party. I will bet you he could not even list all of his members of Parliament if he tried to, even if he wrote them down—even if they were written down. But there are some names he left off that list. Where was Brendan Horan? Where was that fine member of the New Zealand First Party? Andrew Williams—another great member of the New Zealand First Party. Asenati Lole-Taylor—where is she? Where is the rest of the New Zealand First Party? When you need them, they do not stand behind you, Winston—they are not there.

Do not trust these ones. As soon as you left today, Mr Peters, the next man beside you—I cannot remember his name—

💬 Jacqui Dean: Ron Mark.

Ron Mark. He stood up. He thought this was his chance to do question time. He was more important, and he wanted you out of this room. He let you go, Mr Peters. I would not trust him—just see what he did to the past deputy of the New Zealand First Party.

But we have got news for the New Zealand First Party: it is already in coalition agreement talks with the Labour Party and the Green Party. They have actually come to policy agreements. The New Zealand First Party, the Labour Party, and the Green Party have already worked out their manifesto. Let us look at this manifesto. The Labour Party is doing one of the big party policies of this manifesto.

💬 Alfred Ngaro: What is it?

It is going to set interest rates. Andrew Little, with his great experience as a union leader, knows everything about finance and the world. He will set the interest rates for New Zealand. Andrew Little will tell all the banking sector that he knows best, and that his idea of what the interest rates of New Zealand should be will be the one that everybody has to follow. I would like to see him set those interest rates. I would like to see him actually make sure those interest rates happen, and I would like to see what sanctions he would do if those interest rates were not followed.

But there is more. There is James Shaw from the Green Party. His contribution to this manifesto is $100 million for Kiwibank. That is to make it a commercial enterprise so that it can become a fully commercial bank. When would $100 million get a fully commercial bank in New Zealand? That would not happen. All Mr James Shaw is doing is fiddling with the deckchairs amongst the Labour - New Zealand First policy arrangement. It is not going to work. If anything, it would cause Kiwibank to go into the commercial market of larger loans, and we all saw what happened to the BNZ last time. And Mr Peters knows all about that, because he was there.

The next part of policy that both the Labour Party and the Green Party have agreed on is the universal basic income—over $200 for everybody not to work. It is the way to say that just because you are a New Zealander, we are going to pay you over $200. I wish that approach would work for all New Zealanders, because we come to the fourth policy plank of the manifesto, which is the “Mr Winston Peters” policy plank, which is to say no to immigration, and also no to foreign investment. If a New Zealander is not a citizen or a resident permanently active in New Zealand, they will not be able to buy a home under New Zealand First policy. The Labour Party—

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: That’s right.

That is right; you heard it there—you heard it there. The Labour Party has agreed. The Labour Party has said that it is going to increase the refugee quota but at the same time reduce the total migration to New Zealand. So all those migrants out there in New Zealand, remember that the Labour Party and the New Zealand First Party want to say no to bringing your family in, no to bringing your children into this country, and no to people who want to make this country their home, because that is their policy to stop immigration.

And the last part of their policy is greater taxes for New Zealand. We all know that the Labour Party wants to see greater taxes for New Zealanders, the New Zealand First Party wants to see greater taxes on New Zealanders, and the Green Party cannot wait to see New Zealanders pay greater taxes. We know what they are doing. They have created their manifesto. It is to say no to immigration, it is to say no to foreign investment, it is to say yes to higher taxes, and it is a policy that will never work. We cannot wait to see Andrew Little actually deciding how to set interest rates in New Zealand, and Winston Peters actually deciding who can become a New Zealander and who cannot. Thank you.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek an extension of time for that last speaker. We like a good joke.

Order! The member cannot do that. I wish he would bone up on the Standing Orders.

New Zealanders ask a basic question of their politicians: “Are you on my side?”. They are not asking for much. They are not asking for the Government to tell them what to do or how to live their lives, but they want to know that the Government is there for them, and that if they do their bit and they pay their fair share, they will get a fair go.

What we have discovered about this Government over the last 8 years is that this Government does not subscribe to that. It does not subscribe to the idea that it is its job to be on the side of New Zealanders. The choice it is making about whose side it is on could not be more obvious. And we have seen it in the past. It is on the side of Mr Al Ali Khalaf. It is on the side of the Skycity directors. In the last couple of weeks we have seen just exactly who it is that this Government thinks it is working for.

We first saw it with the response of the Government to the scandal that is multinational tax avoidance in this country. Whether the amount of money involved is $500 million, as one newspaper investigation thought, or, as Craig Elliffe, the tax expert from Auckland University, said, it is a billion dollars a year—it is a big problem. But this Government would not know, because it has not even asked the basic question: how much are New Zealanders missing out on because multinational companies will not pay their fair share? This Government is not prepared to stand up for the New Zealand taxpayers, who pay their tax, who go home—the small business owners—and do the tax at night, and who pay their fair share because they want to be part of this society. But the National Government will not stand up for those people. It will not even bother to find out how much tax is being avoided.

Then we have the release of the Panama Papers. Let us be absolutely clear. New Zealand is donkey-deep in this—60,000 of these documents mention New Zealand. What is the Prime Minister’s reaction? He does the shoulder shrug. He says it does not really matter. He brings to bear the ethics of Wall Street. Well, I say to John Key, how about remembering the ethics of Hollyford Avenue? How about remembering the idea that we look after each other in New Zealand? We give people a fair go, we do not look after the most powerful, and we do not look after the mega-rich. We look after New Zealanders.

John Key has stood up and told us we are not a tax haven. Well, I have got news for Mr Key: he is the only one who thinks that. He is the only person in the last few weeks who has been saying we are not a tax haven. This is what was in the Australian Financial Review. It has a list of the countries that Mossack Fonseca operates in. It says that it is across 21 tax havens, and there is New Zealand.

In 2005, before he became the leader of the National Party, John Key said that he wanted New Zealand to look at how the experience of small island economies went, how they would go, and how we could replicate them. I am not sure that New Zealanders thought that he meant small-island economies like the British Virgin Islands, the Seychelles, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, British Anguilla, the Cayman Islands—that is the company that John Key’s Government is keeping. He even said in that article in 2005 that he wanted to have a look at how Jersey had built its economy off the back of offshore trusts.

That is not the economy that we want in New Zealand. We want an economy where people are not serving coffee to the 1 percent. We want an economy where we are actually making and building the things that will help people to have a share in prosperity, that builds wealth from the ground up, and that focuses on a productive economy. Instead, we have got a Prime Minister who shrugs his shoulders, who talks about the fact that the lawyers and the accountants earn $24 million from the fact that we are tax haven, and who wants New Zealand to be the Switzerland of the South Pacific.

John Key has lost his moral compass. He does not get the fact New Zealand is now on the world stage and having its reputation damaged day after day, and he will not lift a finger to do anything about that. That is because he has proved to New Zealanders that he is on the side of the mega-rich and the wealthy and the 1 percent. He is not on the side of ordinary, hard-working New Zealanders.

New Zealanders deserve a Government that gets alongside them, that supports the building of a productive economy, and that gives everybody a share in that economy. They will get that only with a Labour Government.

Debate interrupted.