Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you very much Madam Chair Tolley. It was very kind of you to answer my call. I'm delighted to talk about this. It seems to me that the winter energy payment which we're focusing on at the moment is emblematic of the intellectual and moral incoherency of this bill and much of the Government policy that we're talking about here. The Government has decided that it will not allow superannuitants to benefit from a tax adjustment which just to remind listeners and viewers to Parliament—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): No we are actually on Part 2.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yes indeed we're on Part 2 but I'm just—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Deeply on Part 2.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —trying to explain the context for this winter energy payment which is $700. I'm trying to get an understanding of why and I'd be interested if the Minister could explain again to us why they settled on exactly $700 for a couple and $450 for a single person. Because it seemed to me that there seems to be one speculative reason for that and that is just to try and plug the gap that is left by withdrawing the tax adjustment which would have had the consequence for superannuitants because their payments are linked to the average wage of seeing their income rise by nearly $700 a week if they were a married couple. So I'd be interested to understand the rationale for the number that they came up with for this winter energy payment.But the broader point I'm wanting to make is that rather than allow people to receive money on the back of rising average incomes and choose what they want to do with it they have taken the view that no they want to come up with a whole lot of—and Mr Joyce has referred to spaghetti—spaghetti in terms of a number of allowances that complicate the system make it more administratively difficult and start to flow. Because of course if you have a winter energy payment because people are concerned about the cost of energy well I suppose there's a logic we should probably also introduce a fresh vegetables payment as well because they get expensive at times of the year. And there should be also a payment that relates to the rates increases and there should be payments that relate to a whole host of things that superannuitants have to deal with. If you go down this track what you end up doing is rather than entrusting and believing that people can make judgments for themselves about what they want to spend their money on instead you have a whole lot of allowances and what you end up with is a very complicated system that is difficult to administer difficult to understand and difficult to predict for older people as they're trying to work out how to manage their affairs and budget and that undermines the simplicity and coherency of the system we have.But anyway getting back to the incoherency of the broader policy it's terrible this idea that Mr Peters in the House yesterday referred to a dreadful process of taking from the needy to give to the greedy which he would never support. That's why he didn't support the tax cuts. But now we're talking about a winter energy payment that goes to some of the richest people in the country as well. So there's no coherency about how he's gone about doing that. That is replicated time and time again right across the Government decisions that were made around not agreeing with this idea that things should be targeted to those most in need but instead putting on the table a cumbersome administratively expensive and confusing way of doing things in order to appease what they see as particular groups that were left out because of decisions that they made earlier.Why would we think it was a good idea for a superannuitant to receive a one-off payment over the winter supposedly to spend on winter heating rather than for it to continue to be pegged to the average wage which was rising because of tax cuts? They were only adjustments to the thresholds and everybody should have had them anyway. They would continue to get that adjustment every year and that amount of money would continue to grow and they would get a much better result than what is being delivered here by this winter energy payment. For me I struggle to understand the logic of it and I'm very keen to hear from the Minister as to where they came up with the figure for the $450 and $700 and how they explain it.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I call the Hon—Hon Stuart Nash: Stuart Nash.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Stuart Nash.