Tabuteau FletcherFLETCHER TABUTEAU (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Madam Assistant Speaker—Hon Ruth Dyson: This'll be better.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Yeah it will be so much better. Look what we've got here in the House this evening ladies and gentlemen is a coming together of the parties in this House agreeing on something that is actually despite what we just heard the tone that we heard—Hon Member: The drone.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: —the drone of the previous speaker Paul Goldsmith—exciting legislation. It is exciting legislation because this was an incredibly collaborative effort on behalf of the select committee in formulating this legislation. Despite the years it took us of political campaigning and public pressure for the National Party to actually start down this track we got there eventually. So I say to the House and I say to the New Zealand public this is exciting and this is incredibly important.What this means—and I will invariably go into the dreadful detail—the summary of what this achieves is that New Zealand businesses will be competing on a competitive level playing field. Some of the other speakers noted this in their addresses this evening but what we're saying now and what has been acknowledged in this legislation is that New Zealand firms who were playing by the rules—and there are examples very close by of Kiwi firms who weren't able to be competitive because of the nature of the tax avoidance regime that these multinationals were allowed to carry on with for far too long.There were lots of excuses from the previous Government about an approach—a worldwide approach—originating out of some of the work from the OECD and the need to bring jurisdictions together. I respect that argument because as jurisdictions who are working together we do need to be unified in our approach. But there has been as of last week even some cynical commentary on what some of the European multilateral providers operators have been working on in this space in that we think they've been dragging the chain and we think that it looks like they're not actually getting to the point that we want them to get to in the timely fashion that New Zealand and other independent jurisdictions have said we need.So I do commend the now Opposition for finally getting there and what I would like to add—and I haven't done it specifically—is to compliment the operation of the select committee. As I will touch on—hopefully briefly for the forbearance of the public—there was a lot of good work done and there was a lot of good advice given to the select committee from tax practitioners who genuinely wanted to get this right. Those multinational operators themselves who see this as the way forward who understand that there is no such thing as a free ride as far as they're concerned—if they want good operations in New Zealand then they have to be part of contributing to that. So when they use New Zealand roads when they use New Zealand IT infrastructure they are part of that provision in the first place and they can profit from that. All power to them if they're paying their fair share and that is what we have been trying to achieve for a good amount of time.I know others have spoken to the nature of the New Zealand economy about the nature of foreign investment in New Zealand and I will absolutely go on record: it's critical. We've got to get that right. We've got to make sure that we enable good investment into New Zealand. But it's got to be good and it's got to be real so when we get there we also need to ensure that they're good and fair operators in terms of their compliance in terms of tax.I don't think for the purposes of this evening that there's any need to go into the piecemeal nature of each and every part of the legislation as we've got to this point. I do want to say that we absolutely wanted to ensure as a Government when we carried on with this legislation that it was imperative that what we were trying to achieve was fair transparent even and open so that not only New Zealand businesses but those multinationals who want to operate in New Zealand understood what it was that they were coming to and understood what their compliance was but more importantly understood that we were serious about making sure that they paid their fair share. We can't build our roads we can't upgrade our hospitals we can't do those core basic things if these big players are avoiding their contribution to our tax base.So fundamentally I actually hope that the revenue derived from these changes will be greater than forecast. The Government and Treasury have given what I think are quite I don't know—how do you put it? They're quite low.Hon Tracey Martin: Conservative.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Conservative" is a good word; thank you Minister—conservative estimates on the tax revenue from this legislation.Prior to this coming to the House the debate raged around just what it meant and some of the numbers per annum were close to a billion dollars not the kind of $100 million that we're talking about now. So New Zealand First hopes that an empowered tax department—which is part of the Budget—will work towards compliance and fair operations and that even playing field and I think we can look forward to more than was forecast.I congratulate this House. It's great to see a unanimous piece of legislation being passed through this House. I think it's great to see that we're all on the same page. Here I think it's great to see the Opposition eventually come on board and to be fair start this work. I'm not detracting from that—it was a good effort.Chris Bishop: Oh how generous of you!FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Look I'm not trying to defame you there Mr Bishop. I'm just giving credit where credit is due [Coughs]—and I'm choking on it apparently. So with that it's great that we can all support this bill and I do so myself. Thank you very much."