Cunliffe David: Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill — Third Reading 
Cunliffe David: Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:269] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 I think it is fair to say that many members of this House come to the third reading of this Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill late this evening with a strong sense of sadness—a sense of sadness about the process that has been employed a sense of sadness about a wasted opportunity to make a significant positive difference for our economy and a grave sense of sadness about the social impact of these measures. Let me take each in turn. 
I said in my first reading speech that the public could if nothing else take from this bill that the honeymoon was over that the sheep’s clothing had fallen from the National wolf and that the true nature of its intentions was becoming all too clear. But I have to say that during the course of the debate the exact nature of those measures has become even clearer and the—perhaps duplicity is not too strong a word of the Government in this matter has been stark. It is highlighted by the process. Here we have a Leader of the House who has contradicted an earlier undertaking to the House and refuses to place bills on the Table as has always hitherto to my knowledge been the practice. That is an innovation. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I think you need to be careful about allowing repetition of a point being made somewhat unfairly. The Standing Orders are very clear in this matter and I have been pulled up considerably over the last couple of days for apparently not understanding the Standing Orders. Now I have actually cottoned on to how they work and I am simply following the Standing Orders to the letter. It would be an absurdity in the middle of an urgency motion to ask a party that has voted against that motion to grant leave for the bills to be tabled in that motion. So I think we are caught in a bit of a cleft stick created by those who are utter sticklers for the way in which the Standing Orders are applied. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: There are two points here. The first is that leave is not required for the Minister to table bills under urgency. Once urgency has been taken the bills can be put on the Table of the House immediately at that point. The member is getting confused I think; if a bill had been tabled in a previous sitting day then urgency could not be taken on that bill until the bill came above the line after some 3 days. The Minister can table any bills now that he wants that are being dealt with under urgency. That does not affect when they are taken during the urgency debate. The member need not worry about that fact. 
Further than that the fact that the member can be discourteous and can behave badly within the Standing Orders does not mean to say that it is not discourteous and behaving badly and that it cannot be the subject of reference by members on this side of the House. One has to live by one’s decisions in this place. The Minister has made certain decisions. He will have to live by the consequences of those decisions. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Standing Order 263 is clear but that does not prevent members raising the timing of the availability of bills in the debate. The point that was made earlier was that there is no requirement in the Standing Orders for the bills to be tabled prior to the urgency debate taking place. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: For the record the point being made before the member’s point of order was not that it was against the Standing Orders but that it was against an earlier undertaking given by the member. That seemed relevant because it was yet another example of the same practice that was preventing this bill going to a select committee in the first place. Mr English said that it was in their manifesto so it did not need a select committee process. By implication everything that was in National’s manifesto could do without a select committee process. Would not that be terrific—and where would our democracy be? 
This is a very very important bill; this is a very very serious matter. New Zealand is at a serious crossroads facing an international crisis the magnitude of which we have not seen in several generations. But apparently no select committee process is appropriate for a principal tool for dealing with this recession. It is a wasted opportunity because this bill does nothing to assist New Zealand to face the challenges. It reduces savings paradoxically at a time of the most serious international liquidity crisis when our domestic savings now count for more than they ever have and we are undermining them to the tune of $3.5 billion plus there are the spin-offs from behaviour that that undermines. It does nothing to encourage innovation. It has the contrary effect of taking away a much-needed incentive and a much-needed international equilibrator for companies that are high-tech and that employ more innovate more and export more than average. Those are the companies that ought to lead us through recession to the productivity growth we all share as a goal. 
And it is bad economics because as many speakers—and I think most notably Russel Norman—have contributed it seems to mistake a short-term stimulus package where it is a wasted opportunity for what one of my colleagues has called medium-term wealth redistribution. There is nothing of what could be done to provide more houses for the needy to retrofit more houses to keep our children healthy to boost skills to import technology or to improve our woeful lack of private research and development. It does none of that. It is even bad fiscal policy because it comes against the context of formal advice from Treasury that says that the existing level of fiscal stimulus is appropriate that we have already invested nearly $10 billion and that this $5 billion is misdirected and unwise. 
Mr English talked about KiwiSaver as if somehow this bill were a measure designed to advance it. It caps the automatic enrolment at 2 percent it caps the employer contribution at 2 percent it cuts the enrolment subsidy—which is a regressive move—against low-income contributors and it cuts the tax credit on superannuation contributions thereby disadvantaging our more senior savers. It is a 2 percent plus 2 percent scheme with the grave risk that it ends up with the employee bearing more and more of the 4 percent and the employer bearing less and less and the Government has misrepresented the position of the union movement to boot. 
So that brings us to the social re-engineering aspect of this bill. It is kind of ironic is it not for a party that says it has been listening and that we have not. Those members have been listening so much that they thought our poorest New Zealanders wanted a $750 million kick in the guts just before Christmas and we have seen the most bizarre display from the Minister of Finance attempting to veto a well-intentioned amendment from the Opposition that would have ensured that those people did not suffer at this time. He put on the Table the veto quantifying the penalty to them and then took it off again after it was already made public— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: A little embarrassed. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: —a little embarrassed. What we do know from our analysis is that anybody with a couple of kids who is earning less than $40000 is worse off and that income earners in the $14000 to $20000 range are particularly worse off because of the higher rate they find themselves in relative to what is already in the law. Again to give credit to Dr Russel Norman he asked the question as to why this bill is urgent because this policy is medium-term stuff. He offered the insightful comment that it is urgent because the Government does not want to be discussing this around next March or April when the next lot of Labour-led tax cuts come into effect. National members would rather that people thought they were National’s tax cuts even though they are rather less than many of them would have got if this bill were not to be passed tonight. 
We the media the bloggers and the commentators have seen through the charade. We have seen through the electoral rhetoric—the sad part is that David Bennett still believes it—and we understand this for what it is. It was remarkably frankly acknowledged by Mr Craig Foss who reminded us that “You did 39 percent tax in your first year.” That is what this is about—taking it back again. It is about utu. Mr English said “KiwiSaver was Labour’s latest vote catcher.” That is what this is about—that we thought of it and not National and therefore it deserves to be undermined. That would seem to fly in the face of our higher duties to the public which are to do what is good for New Zealand not what is good for our own egos and not only things we thought of first. 
I guess that brings us to the rather sad position of the Maori Party. There is much in that party’s ideals that I admire and I look forward to Labour working together with Maori of all parties to redefine constitutional relationships in the future but not by supporting a National Government that is harming the people the Maori Party was sent here to represent. 
This is a sad day for New Zealand. It is a sad sad day for this Parliament. It is not a mana-enhancing day for any of us actually that to get us here on its first working week the Government has breached longstanding constitutional practice. It has done so based on the argument that anything that was in National’s manifesto before the election does not deserve select committee consideration and in fact it does not even deserve we hear now a bill to be placed on the Table after an urgency motion but before the bill has started. 
And National members had the gall to say that we were not listening! My God New Zealand is lucky that the Government has a few cards in its hand to deal in the interests of good government and New Zealand’s future. Those cards are a debt to GDP ratio that is half what we inherited from a National Government last time; the fact we have got research and development up a fair bit mainly through Government sponsorship; the fact that income levels of our poor are a quarter higher than they were a decade ago in real terms and therefore there is some cushion. I do not see people choosing between going to the doctor and putting food on the table or paying rent in quite the way I used to. As someone rightly said there are still poor people in New Zealand. Yes there are so I say shame on the Government for making many of them $750 million poorer through the Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill. Do not kid yourselves and do not kid New Zealanders I say to Mr Bennett that you are doing it for their sake. Just be honest about it and say that you are doing it for the sake of others who voted for you—at least that is honest. 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: Not “you”. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Not you Mr Deputy Speaker. We hold you in high regard and we appreciate your chairing of this debate. We are only sorry that we do not have better news to bring to New Zealanders. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member’s time has expired. Can I make it very clear that members cannot use the words “you” or “your” in any debates. That brings the Chair or the Speaker into the debate and that is not allowed. Please abide by that ruling.