Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It's a pleasure to rise and speak on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand in this one contribution that we will be making to this taxation bill today the COVID-19 Response (Taxation and Other Regulatory Urgent Measures) Bill. It is a rare circumstance in this Chamber that we do find consensus across the floor but of course what has been elucidated by the Minister of Revenue is that these are extraordinary times and it is incredibly important that we are providing immediate relief particularly for those small businesses.Of course the Minister himself has outlined that this bill broadly does two things the first of which is to implement targeted measures for those economically impacted by COVID-19 particularly business and small business. The second is measures to address regulatory compliance issues that COVID-19 has prompted or exposed particularly pertaining to that first broad subset of issues. We have of course loss carry-backs which the Minister spoke to in quite a lot of depth which is basically access to previous tax payments as cash refunds from a forecasted loss offset against the tax paid on profit from the previous year. There is also administrative flexibility for Inland Revenue and tax treatment for New Zealanders who are stranded overseas during this pandemic.I think it's also important to speak to one of the seemingly more minor or technical amendments that this piece of legislation creates—that being bringing forward the commencement date of the Credit Contracts Act and this is a really important thing particularly for cracking down on loan sharks by way of enabling us to protect our most vulnerable consumers who are often exploited by those seeking to exploit that vulnerability that need for immediate access to cash. So of course the Greens are incredibly in favour of that amendment.Just in summation of why the Greens are standing today and supporting this bill along with I understand every other member in the Chamber: I want to refer to some of the kind of broader economic thoughts that have been raised by other speakers thus far noting as well that the Minister of Revenue himself has spoken to the need for greater economic investment transformation and obviously that there are further circumstances and context shifts that we will be facing. Here inside of this legislation we can see that there is primarily a focus of course on those small businesses that are going to be immediately impacted and only a so-called minor or technical focus on those vulnerable consumers. And here I think that we see the way that balance is regularly perhaps far too often struck in pieces of legislation and policy like this.It so happens that oftentimes those who have access to the levers of power those who have the wealth to do things like lobby are those who end up with the kinds of changes that they need to see in legislation to ensure that they don't end up losing out.I want to reflect on the statement that was made by the Secretary for Education Iona Holsted who said that this pandemic didn't cause inequity but in fact exposed it. This is where moving forward with pieces like this COVID-19 Response (Taxation and Other Regulatory Urgent Measures) Bill we recognise where the breadth of focus has thus far gone. And we recognise the importance moving forward of focusing on equity and reducing that wealth gap which existed far before this pandemic.Just in conclusion it's pretty obvious here that in measures such as this we are borrowing from the future and that we need to be investing that wisely. We have the opportunity to break the routine of so-called normality which upheld that inequality we took for granted which was already fraying under pressure far before this pandemic came into effect. The Greens are proud to support this legislation and hope that it is just the beginning of broader reforms to come.