Madam Speaker, I do apologize to the member for going on ad nauseam about New Zealand, but now he has asked me a whole bunch of questions about it so I guess I will have to do it again.
First of all, I would mention that in New Zealand the type of government he is calling a conservative government which was in power just before the crisis was reached was known as the National Party. However by North American standards, all governments in New Zealand were socialist. When I lived there I thought the National Party was a progressive conservative style of government, but it was not really; it was socialist and I soon learned that.
They were all tax and spend governments. They were the first with a welfare state in the world. They really set the stage for the total collapse of a welfare state.
Yes the Labour Party which took power had to clean up the mess because within a few days of taking power, those investors who had been prepared to buy government bonds deserted en masse. The New Zealand government ran out of international currencies within a few days of the Labour Party taking office. Then the World Bank stepped in and helped them to recover. As a result of that, New Zealand really has found the optimum size of government and taxation. The government is now about 40 percent of the size it was in 1983. The country is functioning better.
Last year New Zealanders were given on average a $200 per month income tax reduction. However, the New Zealand government first began to pay down its debt before giving tax relief. It realized that as soon as it started to pay the debt down, the interest payments would begin to retract very quickly and there would be more money to spend on other programs. It has actually increased spending on social programs by almost $1 billion in the last year.
Now on the GST, of course the Liberals promised to scrap, abolish and get rid of the GST, which they did not do. It is true that the PCs asked New Zealand representatives to come here to give them advice on how to implement the GST. The advice was ignored. New Zealand's GST has no exemptions. It was at a lower rate across the board. There were no exemptions at all and they urged that if there were to be a GST in Canada, it should be that type of GST at a lower rate.
From a personal perspective to members, I am not sure that a GST could ever be successfully introduced when we have a bordering country that does not have such a consumption tax. It makes it very difficult and very competitive. Perhaps more consideration should have been given to that before that style of tax was introduced.
I thank the member for his questions. I am sure he will hear a bit more about New Zealand from me, but that goes with the territory, I guess.