Court Simon; Parker DavidSIMON COURT (ACT): To the Minister you've just pointed out that this is a very brief amendment and that the payment is tax-exempt but are taxpayers exempt from having to fund this payment? All of those taxpayers who are not eligible for the payment are not exempt from the cost of making the payment.So I'd like the Minister to consider the impacts of this piece of legislation which has been brought to the House under urgency tonight whether taxpayers are exempt; whether in fact those even receiving the payment who are taxpayers are exempt? If the money has been borrowed and appropriated from the COVID response fund which was borrowed to respond to the COVID pandemic situation when New Zealand's borders were closed where aircraft had stopped flying to New Zealand which meant that the Government at the time had to say put funds into Air New Zealand to make sure there was cargo coming is it appropriate that this payment this one-off $350 payment—which amounts to less than a dollar per day over a calendar year.Now when I was a young person and I used to watch television ads would come on the television and they would say—they would say—please donate money to this poor country where people earn less than $2 a day and yet this payment is for a dollar a day which wouldn't have even solved poverty in an impoverished starving country in the 1980s.So a dollar a day let's just consider the $350 payment which the Minister says that people who receive it will be exempt from paying tax on. So let's assume that that's your starting point Minister. These individuals who receive the payment will live in a country called New Zealand which has borrowed tens of billions of dollars to fund the COVID-19 response. That's where the money has been appropriated from. That money was intended to deliver shovel-ready projects most of which the shovels are still sitting in the shed clean and shiny apart from the ones which potentially Minister Wood or Minister Parker or Minister Robertson—if he's here—have held for a moment just long enough to get their fingerprints on the shaft while the shovel touched the ground so they could get that photo op for the shovel-ready projects.But let's just come back to what the COVID-19 response fund which this is appropriated from was for. It was to respond to COVID and it was borrowed. So it would appear by your statement Minister that these payments are tax exempt ignores the enormous debt elephant in the room that this Government has created which is that even the taxpayers who receive this payment will be liable through their future taxation to pay the interest on the COVID-19 debt to pay that interest potentially for decades as these bonds mature over time and at a much higher interest rate no doubt than the Government assumed they could borrow the money from when they took it from the air or hit print over at the Reserve Bank and created the money out of thin air that money that has since created an inflation pressure that is common to all countries around the world which have used money printing to generate some kind of revenue for their Governments at a time when they weren't collecting money from normal business activity. So to say that it's exempt from tax Minister appears to be missing the point that every taxpayer who receives it and everyone who doesn't will through their taxes pay for it in the future through the interest on the COVID-19 debt that that Minister who is part of this Government is responsible for incurring on behalf of New Zealanders. So I want the Minister to explain how taxpayers are not going to pay for this.And Minister considering that and considering what other options the Minister had—as I pointed out before at the current inflation rate of 6.9 percent the cost of living increase for a New Zealander on $70000 a year is over $4000. So does the Minister seriously believe that this $350 payment less than $1 a day on an annualised basis is going to make any difference whatsoever in the quality of life in the wellbeing and the family circumstances of people earning the average wage in New Zealand? If he can get up and explain this then then the ACT Party might potentially support it. But at this stage we wouldn't.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): The latter part of that contribution related to Part 1 so I won't respond to it. The earlier part was repetition of the same point made by his colleague in respect of Part 1 so I won't repeat my answer.