Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. We're in a really funny situation here because the bill as introduced was one which as the previous speaker the Hon Barbara Edmonds has just alluded to this side of the House actually supported at its first reading. We had a really constructive time at the Finance and Expenditure Committee as well making changes that were roundly supported by all parties there around particularly the de minimis changes and otherwise. But the issue that we have in front of us right now is that this Government is using the vehicle of an Amendment Paper at the committee of the whole House stage to drop fundamental structural changes to the intention of the legislation as was introduced bypassing the opportunity for public consultation engagement and input and the conventions of this place not the least when it comes to something that has a price tag in excess of $3 billion when we're talking about those changes not only to tax deductibility but also to the brightline test.These are questions which of course we teased through with the Minister as we had nowhere near enough time as would have been afforded had we had a select committee process for these changes in the committee of the whole House stage. We made the point to him and tried to elicit answers around advice that he may have received around for example the impacts that this may have on property speculation and therefore the bidding up of house prices and therefore the creation of less housing affordability. Yet we received pretty opaque answers in response which once again goes to show the mockery that this Government is making of this institution this institution of Parliament. And they use the argument that they won the election and they campaigned on these things. But as we've seen play out amply over the last few weeks those promises that they went to the electorate with throughout the election that they promised were rock solid have been proven to be anything but.This House of Parliament has been asked in fewer than 48 hours to rubber stamp their will without the due scrutiny that we would expect of any Budget or any other piece of legislation. And it simply is not the case this side of the House contends that winning an election and being able to cobble together a Government gives you the ability or the mandate to bypass the typical conventions of lawmaking. And these were the questions that we put to the Minister: whether he had received any advice whatsoever as to whether the intent to ram this through prior to the Budget process would have degraded the quality of the advice or the lawmaking that was in front of us. And again we got next to no meaningful response out of that. So I guess they just wanted to make this appeal to the Government benches for us to be able to meaningfully and properly engage in the things that they want to put on the Table beyond the rhetoric and the slogans of campaigning. But to dig into the devil of the detail we need to have respect for the institutions and the conventions of this place so that we can have due public scrutiny and that we can make laws better. That's kind of the point of a Parliament and it's kind of the point of the separation of powers between those of us in the legislature—i.e. the Finance and Expenditure Committee—and those in the executive. But I think that point has been amply made.The second point that I wanted to make is about the choices that are in front of us the choices that every Parliament that every Government gets to make. What we've seen here is that the centrepiece of this legislation is that $2.9 billion commitment to those changes on tax deductibility. So let's just really spell out the trade-offs that this Government is making with that $2.9 billion commitment. We could be asking should we be prioritising that $2.9 billion in tax cuts for landlords or could we for example retain food in schools at its current levels expand fees-free for tertiary education retain free prescriptions and have money left over for other interventions and investment into our public infrastructure? Should we spend that $2.9 billion on tax cuts for landlords or should we retain Jobs for Nature? Should we double the Department of Conservation's funding? Should we give those $2.9 billion in tax cuts to landlords or should we retain half-price public transport which not only is a benefit for increasing patronage and reducing the barriers to people getting around our towns and cities but also for reducing our carbon emissions profile which by the way is highest in transport in all of our major town centres?These choices are being made the Government tells us because they apparently and ostensibly want to put downward pressure on rents. Now this is the point that we in the Greens have been really trying to unpack and I put a slew of parliamentary written questions to respective Ministers on this and obviously we've sought to prosecute it with the Prime Minister at question time. So I just really wanted to unpack this because it was a particular point of contention that was unpacked at question time just yesterday. Here I want to quote directly from an answer that I got from the Hon Chris Bishop the Associate Minister of Finance and obviously the Minister of Housing where I asked him what evidence advice briefings documents statistics or otherwise if any the Minister had received on restoring tax deductibility that landlords will lower their rents for tenants. And the answer from the Minister was—and I quote—I received advice from Treasury and Inland Revenue officials in December last year on restoring interest deductibility for residential property investment."In that advice officials said that the policy change could"—this is the operative word: "could"—"put downward pressure on rents in the long run. Research however by the Housing Technical Working Group a cross-agency group of housing experts suggests that rents are primarily driven by household incomes and relative supply and demand for rental housing. Officials advise me that changes in taxation would not significantly impact rents in the short run as the stock of housing supply is fixed." That is what we're dealing with here: this Government is saying that they are taking a punt and putting a whole lot of weight on the potential of "could" and the notion of potential downward pressure when they cannot guarantee us whatsoever that there will be a reduction in rents as a result of this $2.9 billion policy which as I have just demonstrated comes at the trade-off of making those investments—and far far better investments—in for example reducing inequality or poverty or paying to increase the public housing stock for example.Now some of the other points that have been raised throughout this debate and the commentary particularly in the public domain have been—and it's been fascinating to watch this play out particularly the arguments between the Labour and National parties about the number of landlords in this country and the distribution of ownership of rental houses amongst those landlords. The honest truth is that we don't know. The best that we can kind of glean from Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment bond lodgement data from Land Information New Zealand and from the Companies Office and seeking to synthesise that information is that we have approximately 120000 landlords. We don't really know that nor do we really have a figure on how many property managers are managing those property portfolios. And of course there is a bill currently in front of a select committee to seek to address this. We know that we have approximately 120000 landlords but we have approximately 1.5 million renters.So the question to this House must be: whose interests do we serve here by not setting in place structures so that we can properly look at the data and therefore seek to make better evidence-based policy that actually impacts these groups in our society? And I just put a solution on the table for members particularly of the Government who will be considering this at select committee—that there is a vehicle through the registration and the regulations for property managers in front of the House at the minute to expand that to regulate and create a register for landlords so that we have the baseline data to make good policy and not have this nonsense tit for tat about who has what data when it appears as though none of the legacy parties are actually interested in answering that question.The other solution that I would put on the table is that we've heard a lot about these rock solid figures particularly from the now Prime Minister saying throughout the campaign to just trust us because you know we're the party ostensibly of economic management despite the fact that that completely fell apart when any independent economist sought to put a lens over what was being proposed. But these costings blow out the better part of a billion dollars when we're talking about the tax deductibility changes contained within this legislation. This stuff could have been pre-empted and resolved without the unnecessary bickering and back and forth again from a place of evidence-based policy were we to implement the independent policy costings unit or otherwise known as the PCBU around this place. This is something which the Hon James Shaw sought to put forward with the Hon Grant Robertson in the 2017 to 2020 term. It was shot down by the Hon Simon Bridges who then was the Leader of the Opposition and I would encourage the Hon Nicola Willis now as the Minister of Finance to make good on her promise to see this institution come to light.At the end of the day this legislation just continues to deeply entrench the deeply unequal tax system that we have in this country and we all know it. We have screeds and screeds of evidence independent and commissioned by successive Governments which tells us that. We're talking about the Tax Working Group we're talking about the International Monetary Fund not a particularly well renowned lefty organisation that is and we're talking about Treasury. This legislation simply doesn't cut it and it's trickledown economics."