Fenton Darien: Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18586. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour):I am happy to take a call on Part 2 of the Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill. As I indicated in my speech on Part 1 I am particularly interested in the issues around the changes to the tax treatment of accommodation and Canterbury migrants’ meals and rest breaks and clothing. I am particularly interested in those because although we support them and I think the Finance and Expenditure Committee had a good look at these issues it does bemuse me somewhat that we are able to do something in a tax bill that we are not able to do in other bills. For example in the accommodation area there are pages and pages describing what “accommodation” means. It seems to me to be fairly interesting that we are going to the extent of having to describe the accommodation the purpose of the accommodation what a workplace is and so on.But the particular thing that I am interested in and the Minister of Revenue might be able to help me is why accommodation is tax deductible under this bill for people who have temporary accommodation because of work but why it is not—I might be wrong; you might be able to correct me on this Minister—tax deductible for workers who come here and work under the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme. In fact what happens with workers who come here and work under that scheme is that they are paid the minimum wage minus accommodation. That is something that this Government changed I think under Minister Coleman when he was the immigration Minister. Under Labour it used to be that it was the minimum wage plus accommodation so it could not be deducted in the way it is. I am interested in why the Minister thinks that is acceptable and why there should be a difference for those workers when you are talking in this legislation about people who work in agriculture in particular.I think the other things that are interesting about these provisions are around meals. I would be interested to know a little bit more from the Minister about why he thinks it is acceptable that we have meal provisions or tax deductions for meals for workers who are working outside of their normal hours. I am pleased to see that you did away with the requirement for them to work 7 hours—for that to be acceptable. But I am interested in why he thinks meals are tax deductible or should be tax deductible for these workers yet we have another bill on the Order Paper which luckily thanks to John Banks—I never thought I would utter those words—will not see the light of day before the end of this Parliament and that actually does away with meal breaks for the majority of workers throughout the country. It makes it very difficult for them.So on the one hand we have one set of treatment in terms of taxation for people who work away from home and are required to have meals and then we have a totally different approach to workers who work in their normal workplace. The Government will be campaigning and John Key said he is going to campaign on it actually on whether those workers are actually entitled to meal breaks and rest breaks at all. So I am quite interested in that. I would be interested in some responses about why there is a different treatment for one group of workers and not another. Do not get me wrong—overall we support these changes.The other thing is about clothing. There is some interesting stuff starting to occur with the legislation that the Government is proposing around health and safety changes and clarification about what health and safety clothing requirements are. I had someone contact me the other day who said that he works in a car cleaning service and a lot of the time he spends his time outside in the snow often in Queenstown and outside in the rain or during the day and his employer is arguing with him saying that he should not have any sort of clothing provided to him and he does not give him a clothing allowance. Arguably many of us would say that that is a breach of the Health and Safety in Employment Act. But again what I am saying here is that under this bill there is one set of rules for one set of workers and under another piece of legislation that seems to be completely inconsistent with this there is another set of rules. So I am interested in the Government’s approach to this.I am also interested in how it has described workplaces in Supplementary Order Paper 455 which is being proposed by the Minister and would exempt offshore crew. I would appreciate an explanation about that why that was necessary and why that was not included in the original legislation. I genuinely want to understand how this will work and how it will work for people who are required to work away from home on vessels perhaps on trains and aeroplanes flying around the country but also on how it would work if it has any impact on people who are just doing their ordinary day’s work trying to earn a living many on minimum wage and who get no tax exemptions for any of these things at all. As I say I genuinely want to understand why there seems to be an inconsistency in the approach of this Government between one set of workers and another. I would really appreciate the Minister’s explanation.Maybe it is because the workers you are talking about here tend to be people who are able to stay away. I am looking at section CW 16D which is about “Accommodation expenditure conferences and overnight stays”. Are you sure those things should be tax deductible? The fact of the matter is that there are not many people on the minimum wage who actually get to have any tax benefits when it comes to issues around overnight stays and conferences. In fact most of them will be working all sorts of hours having to get on the bus and go home after working 12-hour working days and they get no tax deductions.Or take another case of the home-care workers whom I have talked about before in this House who go from home to home looking after older people or people with disabilities and in between their jobs they hop in their cars and they drive from one place to another. They pay their own petrol. They do not get paid wages for that and they get no tax exemptions for that. So there is nothing for those workers. Yes the Minister is looking confused but it is actually true. It is actually true.Andrew Little: The Minister doesn’t understand workers.DARIEN FENTON: Well that is true—that is true. That horrifies me because these are the women whom we are relying on to look after people in their homes so that older people or people with disabilities can stay in their homes. They get paid for the hours they are actually in the home. It might be 1 or 2 hours. In fact those workers cannot even have a tea break. They are not allowed to have a meal break because it would be considered an abuse of their powers to sit down and have a cup of tea with the client so they do not get tea breaks at all. As I said there are some inconsistencies.Overall I always support things that move in the direction of making sure that workers are better off. I do think that Part 2 of this bill does that. But I am interested as I said as I keep saying in the inconsistencies. Another group of workers are farm workers. Mr Chair I am sure you are familiar with them. We have a lot of issues—[Interruption] You are not? OK. You are from Invercargill but you are not familiar with all those Filipino farm workers down in South Canterbury who had been imported to New Zealand to do their job. There is a real issue around farm workers as well and accommodation comes into that. Accommodation is often seen as part of the wages. There are some appalling stories starting to emerge from that and it does shock me that we are relying in primary production on migrant workers being paid low wages and actually being ripped off.So I think there is a lot for us to consider in Part 2 of this bill. As I said it is great that we are making some progress on it and Labour is supporting it even though we have questions about it but I do think the Government needs to think about a whole lot of other things.