Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am a little surprised but delighted to be able to stand up and speak today. I am surprised because the ACT Party and Māori Party have not taken up the opportunity to speak in this important debate about tax in our country. I was looking forward to David Seymour's contribution given that earlier in the day he excoriated the Minister of Finance for wearing a hammer and sickle because of these Working for Families changes but then meekly voted in favour of the Budget. So I was looking forward to his contribution tonight. I was looking to the contribution of the Māori Party whose constituents for the very great part will be those who receive the scraps out of the tax package that is in this bill and I will talk more about that shortly. I have got to say anyone watching this debate will have been slightly confused this evening. We have had contributions of course from the Government but also from Opposition parties. Opposition parties are often good allies in the cause of a stronger and more just and fair New Zealand but have somewhat surprisingly voted in favour of the tax cuts package that is in this bill.Let me just break down the issues with that because it is all very well to say Oh well it's better than nothing and some people at the low-income end will get something out of this." but it ignores the question of opportunity cost. As we all know the Government coffers are not infinite and every dollar that we put into this tax cut package that goes to the people at the top end is another dollar that is not spent on the people who really need it another dollar that is not spent on housing and the social services that we need.Let us look at this really simply and I would invite members in this House to actually spend some time in front of a spreadsheet. This is a $1.9 billion tax cut package. Do you want to know how much of that $1.9 billion goes to the top half of income earners? It is $1.5 billion of it. So when any member of this House gets up and pretends that this is a tax cut that will deliver a greater level of social equality in our country they are ignoring not only common sense but the very facts the very data that the Government has put through in its own documents. Over 75 percent of the benefit of these tax cuts goes to the top half of income earners.Do you know what? The top 10 percent—the top 10 percent—of income earners get the same benefit from this tax cut package as the bottom 50 percent. So I am not going to stand here and listen to any other member of this House tell the Labour Party—which will proudly stand here and oppose an inequitable tax cut package as we always have because we stand up for working people not just the privileged few at the very top. I am not going to stand here and hear anyone in this House say that this tax cut package delivers a greater level of equality or greater social justice in this country.I will just demonstrate that further by talking about a family that could have lived in my electorate back in 2007. If their rent at that time was $450 a week—we will go along to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Consumers Price Index calculator. That will tell you that their rent if it was $450 back in 2007 which was the last time that the accommodation supplement was increased—under a Labour Government—their rent today would be $690 a week. That is $240 more. Do you want to know what? If you take the very very best-case scenario out of this miserable package that has been put forward by the Government today and you add up the tax cut you add up the accommodation supplement increase—which would be an $80 increase for that family—and you add up the family tax credit that family would be $155 better off. They would be $155 better off when their rent has gone up by $240 a week. So just on the increase in housing costs under this Government that family is worse off.So we are not going to stand here and hear about the generosity of the Government for putting up an accommodation supplement that it has frozen for 10 years—bear in mind it does not come in until 1 April 2018 so it will have been frozen for 11 years at that stage—at the same time as ordinary working families over the last 3 years alone have had a $40 average increase in their rents. So what we see at the very best in this Budget—at the very best—is this Government kind of sort of part of the way making up for the erosion in the incomes of ordinary working families under its term in office over the past 9 years.There are a number of other things in this package that bear a bit more scrutiny. I was interested to see in the bill claims that only 80 percent of people claimed the independent earner tax credit—I thought that was quite high. But actually in the finance Minister's speech he claimed it was only 30 percent. It would be good to hear which is actually correct.Chris Bishop: 32.MICHAEL WOOD: Being as this is the Budget could we understand whether this is right or whether the finance Minister is correct. Read the document yourself Mr Bishop. This bill delivers nothing but scraps for ordinary working families. It is time for a fresh start and we look forward to delivering that in 4 months' time. Thank you."