Woods MeganHon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Thank you Madam Chair. One of the things that I'm just wondering whether the Minister in the chair Simon Watts has had a chance overnight to get some advice from officials on was a question I asked last evening that hasn't been answered around what the net cost of the tax cuts will be given that there are a number of Government payments that are based on after-tax income and given that there will be a rise across various brackets as laid out in clause 7 of the bill that this will affect eligibility and there will be a netting out of some of the cost.But my other question for the Minister—and we have spoken a little bit about the distributional impacts and I think given we're not having a select committee stage of this bill those distributional aspects are something that it is our job in this part of the bill where we are discussing what the thresholds are to explore how this is impacting various groups in our communities. One of the specific questions I have for the Minister is drawing his attention to the regulatory impact statement where it talks about the 8000 households who will be worse off under this package that they will actually receive less income per week. They're all in the lowest quartile so they are all our most vulnerable households that will indeed be worse off under this package. The reason that is given in the regulatory impact statement for this is these are typically families that move in and out of benefit eligibility throughout the year.Now any of us who do constituency work know that that moving out of benefit eligibility not only will have an impact on tax thresholds but also can mean a great deal of financial complexity for families around things like income-related rent subsidies and what is owing there. So this is actually putting this impact on some of the families who are struggling the most in the areas I represent and I would be remiss for the people of Wigram if I didn't get some full answers from the Minister at this committee stage around what that means for these 8000.In particular I'd like to know from the Minister what alternative policies were considered—if alternative policies were considered—so that we didn't leave these 8000 people who are going to be worse off under this tax package and if the Minister didn't consider alternative policies so that we didn't leave these families worse off why that was not considered why that would not be a priority for some of our most vulnerable families in our communities that we would make them in fact worse off.What we're already seeing and the regulatory impact statement pertaining to that schedule laid out in clause 7 already lays bare—something that I think that we'll always know when we seek to use the tax system to do redistribution—is that it is those in the lowest quartiles who will receive the least amount of benefit that we're seeing those on the lowest income and the regulatory impact statement does a good job of spelling this out receiving on average $13 a week in benefit. I think we can see that that is not going to deliver the relief that I think many people were hoping for particularly when they went through an election campaign when they were told they were going to receive $250 a fortnight in tax relief that $13 will be somewhat of a shock but more of a shock will be for those families that find that they are worse off under this package. Now as constituent MPs we're all going to have to go back to our electorates and explain to those people why it is they have less income as a result of the threshold changes that are being passed in this House today.So just to recap for the Minister: what alternative policies were considered to ensure that people were not worse off as a result of these threshold changes and if alternative policies were not considered why his Government did not see that that was a priority to ensure that some of our most struggling families in our communities would not end up worse off as a result? It is not insignificant. According to the regulatory impact statement there are 8000 families who are going to be in this situation and I think that each and every one of us at some point will be called on to explain to those families.