Bayly Andrew; Williams PotoANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It is fascinating just watching tonight. It was only a few months ago that the Greens and New Zealand First supported the wonderful National Government's tax bill and of course there were all the good reasons why they supported it and of course we are just watching everyone tonight—particularly from New Zealand First and the Greens—now backtracking on all that sort of stuff. I just think it is a fantastic opportunity to see consistency in action.The thing I've just listened to from Jan Logie the previous speaker was that the Greens are saying their policy was that they'd like to see the bottom threshold for income tax changes to be increased which of course was part of our package that was passed and is now enshrined in legislation. Then I heard a comment around targeting winter fuel payments that Well we don't now believe in targeting payments." but as I understand it it was actually the Greens' policy during the election. So we've got all this backtracking and this lack of consistency.Anyway I spoke earlier about the claim around the 384000 families that are going to benefit from this package put forward by the coalition but I still want to reiterate the same point I made earlier. Under our bill 1.64 million families were going to be better off. That's 1.2 million families that are going to miss out on some form of financial advantage as a result of this bill tonight—as a result of this bill tonight. Most of those people are the hard-working people that that party over there—as we do—claim to represent. But somehow we protected them and looked after the 1.2 million. Somehow these guys have forgotten.Of course a key part of our strategy was about reducing the income tax thresholds to deal with the fiscal drag that I spoke about before. Of course that was about raising the minimum tax threshold from $14000 to $22000 at which point you pay only 10.5 percent and then the next threshold at 17.5 percent was raised from $22000 to $52000. Again every single taxpayer in New Zealand—anyone who paid tax—would have benefited by at least the first of those changes. But somehow perversely the coalition Government think that is a poor thing and a wrong thing and I just don't get the logic of that. These two changes made sure that everyone was going to participate in the benefits of a growing economy.Now I just want to turn to a couple of the key elements—new elements—of this package. Bear in mind that the Labour coalition Government has adopted broadly our family credits package changes and also the accommodation supplement changes that we had proposed. So those two parts are a substantial part of their tax bill. They've just—if I can use the word—borrowed it from National. The two new parts are the bits that I struggle with a little bit. The first one is the Best Start. It's a $1.4 billion package over four years for newborns and up to the age of three so on the face of it it sounds a wonderful policy. But my first question to the Minister of Finance is: why use this mechanism? It is interesting. I looked at the Australian Government's position on this and I think the Minister may have just borrowed a little bit from the Australian situation as well in developing this package. It was very interesting that this Best Start—or they talked about a baby bonus—was implemented in Australia in 2004 but it was dumped by the Labor Government in the 2013-2014 Budget. It was the Labor Government that actually dumped it. My question is: what evidence has the Minister of Finance got to support the amount of $3000 per child? Where is the evidence for that? Secondly where is the evidence that by paying $3000 to everyone rich and poor alike that that will lead to better outcomes? What is the justification for the $3000? Or is it just a politically motivated figure that sounds great? I would like to see the research from the Minister on it.It was noted actually—in the Australian scheme there was an independent review by the Henry tax review and again I hope the Minister is listening to this—when they did a review of the Australian system which they started out as A$3000 just the similar amount that the Minister suggests in the Budget they estimated the real cost for the first child was $2000 and subsequent ones were $1000 and that's why the benefit changed over time before it got scrapped by the Labor Government. Now another interesting aspect is the extent of what the baby bonus actually did. There's a review that just got completed early this year that showed that it led to a significant increase in new babies being born—and that in itself is not a bad thing. But I think the Minister just needs to be clear in what he is trying to achieve with this and to what extent that it is justifiable—the amount of $3000—because in Australia it wasn't justified.The second element I'd like to just turn my mind to is the winter energy payment. Again this is a universal payment as we've heard tonight which means that rich and poor alike share in its benefit. Of course there's the differentiation between a single household who gets $450 and the couple who gets $700. Again there doesn't seem to be a lot of logic for this and for some reason that we haven't heard yet heard from the Minister as to what the logic is and why there is a difference in the amount of money paid between a single and a couple because essentially if you look at the stats there is no difference.Furthermore the actual cost will differ depending on where you live the type of heating system you've got and the type of energy system you use. For some reason—there is no research on this issue that I've heard spoken about by the Minister. So one needs to question whether in fact this is something that has been calculated with some certainty or whether it again is just a politically motivated figure that's been adopted to fill in the gap in the tax changes to make sure that superannuitants were not worse off. I think the issues that we've heard earlier about the wealthy having to go back and make an express claim that they don't want to receive this benefit is just downright flabby policy—flabby policy. In terms of designing a policy that it means that it's reliant on people voluntarily going out and doing that is just bad flabby policy.I just want to round off. To me this package raises some issues that I think just need to be drawn out. The first is that there are conflicting policies and they're deeply inconsistent—deeply inconsistent. One is around a universal payment which is the reason given for doing away with a lot of the tax cuts and yet in two of the new ones they have adopted a universal approach. That is illogical.The second one is just the extent of the Best Start package that abates at $79000 which is a significantly high income level but it starts abating at $79000. For a single parent with one child that under a broad calculation will require that that family can earn up to $119000 before it's abated. That in itself is a very expensive and overgenerous policy by anyone's account.The last thing I just want to draw attention to: these two elements have made the tax system even more complicated. One of the things that we were trying to do was to simplify the tax system. What we've now got is a Minister who's introduced complexity—unnecessary complexity—into this tax system.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Before I call the next member could I just ask for the file box on the Green Party benches to be turned the other way please. Thank you. I call Paul Eagle—five minutes."