Venture Capital Fund Bill, New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill

I move, That the Venture Capital Fund Bill and the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Can I also pass on my thanks, as Mr Speaker has already, to the prior speakers, and also give my best regards to those who are adversely affected.

This bill puts in place a key element of the Wellbeing Budget economic package. I’ve said earlier in the debate on this bill that I think the timing of this is very important. The world is in the midst of this technological revolution which is born of this confluence of affordable computing power, mobile positioning systems, sensors, robotics, big data and the internet of things, artificial intelligence, and, I’d add to that, a better understanding of genetics.

We know that the enormity of these changes is such that Governments around the world, including in New Zealand, are having to deal with the challenges that this throws up. We do that in New Zealand under the banner of the future of work. The fact that we’ve got to have a separate programme for that in Government shows the enormity of the change on the way. I think the estimate from McKinsey is that in the next 20 to 30 years about 60 percent of the jobs in New Zealand could theoretically be automated and that, in reality, around 30 percent will be. The enormity of that change, I think, measures the size of the opportunity, because the flipside of the challenge is the enormous business opportunity that arises from these opportunities to improve the efficiency of existing methods of production or the opportunities to commercialise new products and services that are born of this revolution. I think it’s the duty of every Government in the world to do their utmost to get their share of the upside in the world, and in New Zealand the Government thinks that we should be doing that so that we can harness those opportunities and obtain these new high-value jobs and the export value that this creates.

We know that too many of our high-growth, early-stage companies struggle to access capital. Some of them are well funded, but the conversion rate of our early-stage ventures to high-growth companies is lower than international countries that we compare ourselves to. We think this is in no small part caused by a shortage of available capital in series A and B capital rounds. Earlier in the growth of these new tech companies, they had good support from the seed capital part of the market. In part, that’s been brought about by the Seed Co-investment Fund, which is another fund run by the Venture Investment Fund directors—that in itself has been supported by Government intervention.

I think we should reflect on how well we’re doing as a country in this area of the economy. If you go back 20 years, we didn’t have this sort of economy to any great extent. Of course, we had Gallagher group and other technology companies like Fisher & Paykel Healthcare—they had already started their journey—but this ecosystem was a lot smaller.

The prior Labour Government, under Helen Clark, held the knowledge wave conference, and there was general agreement that we needed to lift the diversity and value of what it is that we were offering to the rest of the world, and they identified the need for some interventions. They chose three sectors, in particular: creative sectors, biotechnology, and information and communication technology—ICT. They chose the right three sectors. The subsequent National Government morphed the biotech more towards food and beverage, and I think that was a wise thing to do. As a consequence, these technology exports are now one of our highest growing export centres—third after primary products and tourism. We can do even better if we get this ecosystem working better at the series A and series B capital funds.

Three hundred million dollars is going into the fund over time. This will be leveraged by investments from the private sector so that the amount that is going into these early stage ventures will be more than $300 million. We’re trying to build the capability in the sector at the same time as we better capitalise the companies that are going to have investments made in them. We think that we are going to help develop the domestic and international networks that we need, and that alongside the R & D tax credit, the ring-fencing of losses, and extending the brightline test this is another part of the Government’s economic package that really is helping weight investment towards the productive sectors in a way that we think is going to lift economic performance and productivity more broadly across the economy. It does that in part because these companies also have the effect of enabling diffusion of technology more broadly across the economy in a way that lifts productivity.

One of the complaints I’ve heard from the Opposition is the relative performance of our export sector compared with domestic consumption. They point that out as if it is a bad thing; actually, I think it’s a good thing. We’ve had an economy that for too long has been weighted upon consumption, which has had its underpinnings in high rates of immigration, in gendered population growth, and in a house property price bubble that has made people feel wealthy, and, therefore, they have consumed their equity in their houses. It does take a while to rebalance the economy towards an export-led recovery, but we’re actually doing that. Exports as a percentage of GDP are on the way up and we are seeing a balance away from an excessive reliance on speculative investment in the housing sector.

💬 Chris Bishop: Really?

Yes, we are; the stats show that most clearly.

Now, in respect of the framework for governance here, we have the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation helping set up the structures which lead to the choice of private sector venture capitalists who run the funds that invest the money in the companies that we want to grow. The Venture Investment Fund administers that on a day-to-day basis on behalf of the Guardians, so I think we’re using the capability that we’ve got in the sector to best effect.

There is a policy statement that can be changed from time to time and that’s intended to get the balance right between international involvement and local providers. We actually need both, but we don’t want it to become completely dominated by overseas participants, because we are wanting to build the New Zealand ecosystem, as well.

The second to last point I would make would be to respond to a complaint that was made by the National Party during the second reading, which was complaining that this money’s coming via money that would otherwise have gone to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund for them to invest directly. I would point out the hollowness of that criticism, given that in their nine years of Government, they made no contributions to the Superannuation Fund. They actually gathered $5 billion in tax from the Superannuation Fund, but made no contribution to it. We, of course, are making contributions of around $2 billion per annum, and we are building the Superannuation Fund at the same time as we think it’s appropriate to divert some of the money into this fund. We think, as a consequence, that the productivity of New Zealand will grow and that we will have higher export earnings, higher wages, and interesting jobs for people to go to. This is one way we can futureproof our economy in respect of these changes that are coming from those technologies that I mentioned at the start.

Lastly, can I thank Government officials for the work that they have put into this. Can I thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee. It’s good that we’ve got almost universal support for this bill in the House. Can I thank the many participants from the private sector, who have already—even before we announced this policy—given us advice as to how we might best structure this, and I think we’ve struck on an outcome which will prove to be a wise investment for the country. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking in the third reading of the Venture Capital Fund Bill. As we’ve flagged before, National will be supporting this bill, although there are elements of it that we still do have concerns about. But we do need a bill like this because we need a venture capital industry that is more sustainable. When you look at the context of New Zealand, we’ve got an economy that is starting to slip backwards quite rapidly, with a decline in GDP by 1 percent, or roughly $3 billion a year of lost opportunity; we’ve got high levels of people now on the dole—over 22,000—and we have seen a decline in the number of new jobs being created, from a high under National of 10,000 per month, which is now down nearer to about 3,000 per month, and that’s just lost opportunity for people to be involved, to be gainfully employed, and to be earning more money. Also, we’re now seeing two years of a flat economy, largely because the investment community and the mums and dads that own the hundreds of thousands of small businesses around New Zealand are worried about the situation. They’re worried about the New Zealand situation, where things are just not going ahead.

We hear all these excuses—and, again, we’ve just heard Minister David Parker talking about international trade winds—which really, on the face of it, don’t stack up, because exports are at a record high because of incredible terms of trade. So that’s not the situation. The situation why we’ve got declining GDP and declining incomes for New Zealanders is because of what’s going on here with Government policy.

But this Venture Capital Fund is a way of dealing with what people term the valley of death in investment circles. You have the seed capital, which is the very first stage; then you have the venture capital; and then you have private equity, before you move on to traditional banking arrangements which help fund and turbocharge our businesses. So this is a way of dealing with that valley of death—that second stage—where people, who are often young people, invest their time and a lot of their money, and often their family’s money, to try and start up these new businesses that in the end, ultimately, sometimes achieve great things.

There have been many examples in New Zealand, but they’re not always that numerous. But the ones we have seen have been fantastic: Rocket Lab, LanzaTech, and, if we go back in time, a whole raft of ones which have come out of a huge amount of work and have come out of people taking risk. They’ve been prepared to invest their time, to not take full salaries, to borrow money from friends and family, and for the friends and family to back them, even though they know there’s often little chance that they’re going to be successful.

So this bill creates an opportunity to amass $300 million, with $240 million coming from the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and $60 million from the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund, and that is an element of trying to make the venture capital industry more sustainable. So that is the first issue. The first issue is that the Government can put up money, but the most important thing is that we end up with a more sustainable industry, and that means that we have the New Zealand venture capital scene being prepared to continue to invest, alongside this fund, and to make sure that it achieves a recycling over time and that people find the confidence to do that.

One of the interesting things is that the terms of this Venture Capital Fund, in terms of the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation—who will be overseeing it—could, theoretically, be achieved by using just the international players that would be involved in it, and that, in itself, would be highly disappointing. A number of the submitters, including Lance Wiggins and a number of other people highly involved in venture capital firms in the sector in New Zealand, suggested there needed to be much more clarity around the purpose of this Venture Capital Fund, and that is an ongoing issue that we are concerned about. But the ultimate aim must be to ensure a more sustainable venture capital industry.

The other thing that’s really intriguing—and I’ve noted this before—is that I’ve never found an example, and I’ve never even heard of an example, where you set up a fund like this, with $300 million, and you do not set a required rate of return or a financial target to achieve, because what that means is that you can invest in these businesses and you’re not worried about what sort of level of profitability you achieve, and, ultimately, whether, in fact, you get your money back. That is all part of that recycling I talked about, and it is incredibly unusual for a fund to be set up on these grounds, with no targeted return. That I find very perturbing, when you’re talking about $300 million that we’re spending of taxpayers’ money on this particular part of the sector, which is a highly risky part of the investment cycle. I think this is an oversight and it shows a lack of commerciality of the Ministers overseeing this particular proposal.

The other one is that there’s no clarity around the nature of investments, so what type of investments should the fund be investing in? That is a really important thing, particularly where you’re trying to grow New Zealand’s economic activity and trying to grow a minnow into a giant through the venture capital process. I think that lack of clarity is a worrying thing, as well.

The other aspect that’s come to light is that this particular fund will be required to pay tax, yet, at the same time, the Provincial Growth Fund run by the Hon Shane Jones and the new green fund that the Greens were very keen to have set up both have tax-exempt entities. So I’m not quite sure of the justification why this one should be paying tax, particularly when you’ve got no financial objectives for it. It’s incongruous and inconsistent.

These are some of the issues that we’re worried about. Then, more recently, we’ve had some extensions of what the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, who are going to be managing this fund, are going to have to meet in terms of overall objectives, and they are set out in clauses 32 and 56, which mean that the Minister can now interpose himself—at the moment—in terms of what the guardians report about the Venture Capital Fund in their annual reporting cycle and,

More importantly, they require the guardians to have regard for the wider objectives of the Government, particularly around taking into account all the aspects of government and making it a more inclusive Government. I would say to you that this is blurring of the objectives of what otherwise should be a very clear objective—namely, to invest in New Zealand businesses, to help and promote them, to make sure we get at least our money back and, hopefully, make a return on it so that we can create a successful venture capital industry in New Zealand. It should be crystal clear, yet under this legislation and under this Minister, it is very, very blurred, and, I think, possibly the words the Minister just spoke—about being sure this is going to be a very successful entity—may in time come back to haunt the Minister.

With all those issues that we’ve raised, none the less we will be supporting it. There are other aspects we have raised about it, but in the main I hope we will have the opportunity to clarify its objectives in time, when, hopefully, we come back into Government, because this does need some clarification. But in terms of the general intent of it, we do support that and I commend it to the House.

Well, he is often verbose, but I still like him—Andrew Bayly, the member who was just speaking across the House. I think that the 10 minutes it took him to say they agree with what this side of the House is doing, and that they are going to support the bill, is probably far too long to say exactly that. So in light of the remarks that have been said, it is a privilege to support and commend the bill to the House.

As my colleague Andrew Bayly said, we will support the legislation, principally because there is a need for more venture capital in New Zealand—that’s accepted. But what drove me to be very supportive of the legislation is that I went through Budget 2019, and you go through the Budget and this is the only piece of legislation, the only idea the Government came up with, that could be described as business-friendly.

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: Rubbish.

Somebody interrupted, “Rubbish.” Well, I’ll let that member stand to their feet and take the next call and give me the second business-friendly announcement that was in the Budget, because that member won’t be able to find it.

What we have got is a Government that for two years has been completely anti-business to the extent that we’ve now got business confidence as low as we have ever seen it in this country. I’ve been saying to the Government, on many occasions when I have the privilege of speaking in this House, that that lack of business confidence will lead to lower growth for the economy. Various economic “experts”—and I say “experts” with inverted commas—on the other side of the House said that was rubbish, and yet we’ve got proof out today with the latest Treasury forecasts. They were optimistically forecasting GDP growth at 3 percent. They’ve now revised that to 2.2 percent, and I still suggest to Treasury that they are probably over optimistic at 2.2 percent.

What that means is we’ve now got a Government that had been forecasting a substantial Budget surplus now having to acknowledge Treasury’s forecast of the economy going backwards to the extent that we now face a Budget deficit of $1 billion for the year ending June 2020.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: Shocking.

We’re now in the vicinity of a $1 billion Budget deficit. Well, my colleague, my friend, Amy Adams said that’s shocking, but we shouldn’t be surprised because this is just par for the course for Labour Governments. They inherit an economy that is well-established, well set up—and they were forecasting, as they took over from National after the election of 2017, a sea of Budget surpluses. The economy was in good shape. And what they’ve done is, sadly but almost immediately, in two years, take it from surplus to deficits because of wasteful expenditure.

So when we look through the Budget and we find the Venture Capital Fund being announced—$300 million to give some boost to New Zealand businesses—I’m supportive of that. But I do want to point out that looking at the $300 million figure, even that was a case of figures by mirrors. There is no new money for this bill. What they’re doing is they’re directing the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to make available $240 million, and they’re directing the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund to make available $60 million. Those two figures add up to the amount being available for the venture capital bill of $300. So, again, it is mirrors and trickery by the Minister of Finance. There is no new money at all, and you wouldn’t expect it from a Government that is so anti-business, so prepared to let business confidence slide to the level that it has recently to the announcement today from Treasury, forcing Mr Grant Robertson to come up with a raft of glowing announcements of $12 billion of infrastructure, and I guarantee we won’t see any of them ready for starting construction before election 2020.

So what we’ve got is a Government full of rhetoric. It’s been full of rhetoric from day one but it fails to deliver. This piece of legislation will be of benefit to business, but it shouldn’t be confused—it shouldn’t be sold as $300 million of a new initiative. It is simply the reclassification of two other appropriations. But at least, finally—at least, finally—we have a Budget announcement in the last Budget that showed some friendliness to business, and business will grab, I hope, the opportunity, although if I was a businessperson with an entrepreneurial idea, the first thing I’d be thinking about is, “What else will the Government come up with that’s completely anti-business?”—and therefore would I have the confidence even to apply to the Venture Capital Fund? Would people have the confidence to apply to the fund, to take their entrepreneurial idea out of that valley of death scenario that most entrepreneurs find, and take it into a situation where, with the borrowing of extra money, they can mature their entrepreneurial idea and take it to a sustainable business that may or may not be so successful that it even stays in New Zealand or goes elsewhere.

So while National does support the Venture Capital Fund Bill, it’s not without reservation. We support it because at last we’ve seen the Government come up with something that shows it understands a little bit of business. But in the raft of other anti-business pieces of legislation that have been advanced from the start of this Government’s tenure, it is not surprising that business confidence is as low as it’s ever been. It’s not surprising that today Treasury has revised its growth figures and revised the Budget outlook, and I think it’s a very sad day where within two years of a Labour Government we’re seeing their old habits come to the fore—a Government now forecasting deficits into the future.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support enthusiastically this Venture Capital Fund Bill, as we seek to broaden the New Zealand economy and transform it and address some of the long-term challenges. And, of course, one of those challenges has been productivity. We simply have been lagging in the comparators on productivity. One only has to look out—like I do—my office window on to the wharves and see those unprocessed logs sitting out there, which is a completely lost opportunity.

We know that one of the issues that we’re dealing with is a historical long-term underinvestment in R & D, and we know the correlation between R & D spending as a percentage of GDP and actual wealth, and we are, as a Government, aiming to get that up to 2 percent, up from less than 1.5 now. We know that countries like Denmark, that we might like to compare ourselves with, are up around 4. So we have a ways to go.

To the member opposite who just resumed his seat, David Carter, I say I know he’s a retiring member—that’s coming up—and it seems to me that he must have checked out early because he’s missed a plethora of announcements that the Government has made to address some of these long-term challenges. There is $1.25 billion in R & D tax credits; the massive infrastructure boost that was announced today by Minister Robertson; that $12 billion above what was already in the pipeline. The Provincial Growth Fund, that $3 billion behemoth that’s investing in our provinces, up from—I think the previous Government’s budget was $11 million a year for that sort of initiative; a massive ramping up, a hundredfold ramping up of investments into our provinces. The extension of the brightline test to take the weighting away from property speculation. The restarting of payments into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, which actually gives us the capacity to bring this bill forward today and which was shamefully stopped. The opportunity cost to the New Zealand public of doing that was circa $20 billion, I understand. And, of course, we’ve got a significant ramping up of the trade deals under Minister Parker and Foreign Minister Peters.

We’ve got the EU trade deal under way, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership deal progressing, we’ve got a significant upgrade to the China trade deal just announced, we’ve got pending deals with the UK when it’s able to get into negotiations with us, and, of course, at a political level, we’ve got an agreement with the US to start proceedings around a trade deal with the world’s biggest economy. So there is an enormous amount that this Government has done to rebalance the New Zealand economy and put it on a more sustainable footing.

In terms of this Venture Capital Fund, it is designed to fill a gap. There is a gap. There does seem to be money available for start-ups, and that ecosystem has developed, but there is a gap between businesses that get to that sort of $2 million to $20 million turnover. This bill does seek to target specifically those businesses. There does seem to be some market failure there. There’s been a complete dearth of listings on the NZX of late—I think only two for this calendar year—so the Government is putting its shoulder to the wheel there. What is happening is instead of developing in New Zealand and turning into significant businesses that are in the billions of dollars, we are selling these opportunities off to overseas companies at an early stage because of this lack of capital. Of course, we’ve seen banks tightening their criteria, particularly into the farming sector, and I think that’s probably across the economy as they seek to pull back their exposure a little bit.

So this Venture Capital Fund does seek to plug those gaps. It will leverage private sector equity coming in. It will lead to a more balanced New Zealand economy which has the ability to reach the potential that we all know that it has. So New Zealand First are very enthusiastic supporters of this bill. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to take a brief call in this third reading on the Venture Capital Fund Bill. It’s been a little while since I sat on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, but I was a member of that committee at the early stages of the bill, and, as my colleague the Rt Hon David Carter said in his excellent contribution, we are going to support this legislation because we do see it as something that will assist business in this country.

Unlike most of the members opposite, National understands that any Government can spend; actually, what marks a good Government from an average Government is a Government that understands how hard the businesses and the people of New Zealand have to work to earn that money. It seems very clear to us that we now have a Government that has completely dropped the ball on thinking about how it can best support business to actually earn the money, create the jobs, and pay the taxes that give Governments the ability to make any investments. You can talk all you like about investing in infrastructure or housing or health or education, and all of the other things that are necessary; if the money isn’t being earned, there is nothing to spend.

National will support the bill because we do see it as the only tangible business-supporting initiative to come out of the Budget, and for that reason alone it is worth supporting. However, and again, as my colleagues have said, it shouldn’t be mistaken for what I have heard it portrayed as by this Government. It shouldn’t be mistaken as an investment into business, because there is no new money going in. The Government has taken money from the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, taken money that has been contributed to pay for future superannuation and carved a bit of that off to put into business so they can pretend that they have invested in business. Now, the money to business is real, but it isn’t new. It has been taken from Peter to pay Paul. So let’s not kid ourselves that this is the Government actually choosing to invest any of the surpluses they were left in supporting business.

It also shouldn’t be taken as being a panacea for what is a deeply, deeply weak sentiment of business confidence in this country and a rapidly slowing private sector economy. Now, we’re seeing already from this Government very clear signs and the ghost of Michael Cullen coming back to haunt us once more. Well, when the private sector is going backward at the rate of knots, the Government borrows and spends to create activity to try and make it look as if the economy is good. You cannot build a future on Government spending. The only sustainable economic growth is economic growth that comes from the private sector. Borrowing and spending is a band-aid on a system that is slowing very fast. So that’s what they’re doing, and we should not pretend that this Venture Capital Fund Bill is going to reverse that deeply worrying trend that has been gripping this country’s economy for the last 18 months to two years.

In fact, just last night, members of the National caucus met with a major New Zealand business, a significant employer, who told us that while they have been growing steadily in New Zealand for most of the last decade, “the last”—and I quote them—“18 months have been the hardest they have experienced for many, many years.”, worse than the global financial crisis, worse than the periods through the earthquakes and other hard financial times we’ve had. The last 18 months under this Government have been the worst they have had, and this is a business that employs thousands and thousands of workers.

So we’ll support the bill because it is a step in the right direction, but this is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a solution to the crisis of business confidence, the failure of the private sector economy, that this Government is causing in this country.

E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to speak to this Venture Capital Fund Bill. As many have spoken about their experiences pertaining to the content and intention of this legislation in their contributions so far, I feel it probably only makes sense for me to refer to, as many of the former National Party speakers actually have, the former National Government. My father was moving house recently, and we found a pile of letters and notes and other paraphernalia that I had had in my room as a child. One of those things that I found in that cabinet was a letter that I wrote to the Rt Hon John Key as a 13-year-old. I wrote a letter to Sir John Key asking for him to invest in my idea for a car that ran on magnets. There wasn’t a whole lot more thinking behind it, but at that point in time what I was concerned about was that we were moving towards a clean, green economy. So if there’s a more earnest Green Party opening to a speech, I don’t know where you can find one.

We’ve had the Rt Hon David Carter referring to where we’re going to find some sense of whether this Government is business-friendly or not, and I really want to unpack that statement, because what on earth does that actually mean? We bandy around words like that in this place all the time, and it is so disconnected from the reality of the so-called everyday New Zealanders that the Opposition likes to speak about so frequently. Talking about being business-friendly, I genuinely believe, if you look to the core root of it, puts the cart before the horse. Surely, the point of Government, the point of the State, the point of a House of Representatives, is to be people- and society-friendly. Business is the means to help achieve that, but increasing the size of business is not an end unto itself.

That’s why I think it’s really important that we note, in responding to the contributions from members of the National Party, that such thinking leads to an absolute perversity in ideology, because growth and prosperity are two separate things, as we all know.

I actually, most recently, sat on a panel with the Hon Paul Goldsmith at the University of Auckland where we were talking about how GDP is not the sole measure of wellbeing for a society. He himself and the National Party say that they believe that there need to be broader measures of the economy and how well it is doing. That is why we need to recognise that simply talking about growing the pie, simply talking about growing the economy, can lead to perversities such as not recognising that GDP, that growth, unto itself doesn’t recognise or tell the story of the distribution of wealth, nor the quality of transactions that lead to that growth or that GDP.

This is where there’s a really great example, actually, which is something which I’ll allude to and then reference explicitly within this legislation. That’s the story of green energy. If you actually follow the investment pathway for something like solar panels, for example, that initial transaction—that purchase and installing of solar panels—contributes to GDP. To begin with, it contributes to growth. But as soon as you have installed those solar panels and you, as a family or an individual or a household, have that sovereignty over your energy, you are no longer plugged into the grid and therefore no longer paying for that electricity, and therefore your clean, green energy, which is good for the planet, is good for reducing carbon emissions, is no longer contributing to GDP growth. That is just one of the many examples of the divergence between prosperity of society and of us as Aotearoa New Zealand and GDP growth.

Which brings me, to—I believe it’s clause 36 or 35—clause 35(4)(c) in the Venture Capital Fund Bill. This is really important because it speaks about the directions that the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation must have regard to when they are utilising this $300 million Venture Capital Fund. That is that they must have a regard to the Government’s commitment to a low-emissions economy and, in paragraph (ca), the Government’s commitment to an inclusive economy.

I would, however, note that this doesn’t quite go far enough for where the Greens would like it to be. But this is something that I believe that, with the contributions of our co-leader and our economic spokesperson, the Hon James Shaw, has contributed to that discussion across the three parties in this Government to help get that in there. I would, however, note the contributions of New Zealand First in making sure that we do have a more human face to our economy in particular—and that being the parallels, or the Venn diagram as to what makes this Government work with regard to that commitment to an inclusive economy.

So this doesn’t go far enough, because it allows for, for example, the opening of a window where there is perchance, in some distant future, an oscillation of Government and other parties find themselves in charge of the reins of this country, and we may end up with an unfortunate situation like what we’re presently seeing with the State-sanctioned investment in fossil fuels under ACC at present—that billion dollars which is presently invested in those fossil fuels. It is quite simple. As we all know, every Parliament is sovereign unto itself to change those directions, which any Government may give. But, nonetheless, as many of those who’ve contributed so far to the debate have highlighted, this fills an important gap in our economy in Aotearoa New Zealand. This legislation, this Venture Capital Fund Bill, as administered by the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, in opening it up and enabling, but also directing and channelling that $300 million directly into businesses—particularly, hopefully, small businesses—in this country is really crucial to helping those mums and dads that the National Party so often invoke.

But, in wrapping up my conclusion, I’d just like to say that it’s really critical that we end up continuing to move towards that clean, green economy and recognising the distinction between simple GDP growth, which we all now on the record explicitly recognise as not the sole measure of the wellbeing of our society and our prosperity. Kia ora.

Debate interrupted.