SpeechRATES REBATE (STATUTORY DECLARATIONS) AMENDMENT BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Substantive AmendmentsHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you Mr Chairman. I do have a couple of questions and I'm very pleased to see the Minister in charge of the bill the Hon Nanaia Mahuta therefore is in the chair so that she has an opportunity to respond to them directly. The first is to make the observation that while this bill will certainly be welcomed by some—it could be welcomed by quite a few people; I acknowledge that—nevertheless it is to some extent a stocking filler. I would ask the Minister to explain to us why she considers that it is appropriate for this bill to be being dealt with under urgency in the House at this time. That is a serious question because unfortunately we have reached a stage now where governing or legislating under urgency has become the norm for this Government. One only needs to look back over the last few weeks to see that we have spent a huge amount of time passing legislation under urgency that doesn't in any way meet the usual test for that sort of thing. All Governments use urgency from time to time particularly in a post-Budget period. But here we have a bill that under no stretch of the imagination fits that description and so I do ask the Minister to explain to us why it is being done.We saw what happened with the prisoner voting bill just a few days ago. Legislation that is passed under urgency fails frequently to receive the appropriate scrutiny and leads to mistakes. I'm not wishing to relitigate the debates of last night or previous days other than to point out that when we sit under urgency the potential for things to be done incorrectly is obvious. In fact last night most of the sitting hours of Parliament—up until about 25 to 10—were taken in rectifying a matter that shouldn't have been necessary if the Government hadn't been rushing the week before. So I ask the Minister if she could deal with that.I also want to turn if I may to probably what is the most significant aspect of Part 1 and if I can just for the benefit of those who are listening point out that clauses 4 to 7 amend sections 5 6 7 and 7A of the principal Act which prescribe requirements for different types of rate rebate and refund applications. In particular the relevant point here is that the amendments remove the requirement that applications be verified by the applicant making a declaration which had the effect of obliging an applicant to attend a local authority office or make some other arrangement to have their application witnessed by a person authorised to take statutory declarations under the Oaths and Declarations Act 1957. Of course that is where the fundamental disagreement between our side of the House and the Government arises. It is our concern and we raised it in previous readings—particularly I was in the House when we dealt with this matter at its second reading I think it was last Friday where the National Party raised our concern that while we think the vast majority of New Zealanders are honest and would not look to defraud the system unfortunately we know from past experience that there are some who are not. That's the whole reason why the statutory declaration of course has existed because if somebody is to make a declaration that is to their financial benefit and it is false then they are effectively—to use the vernacular—ripping off the taxpayer. I used the analogy actually last week that this is effectively a bill that robs Peter to pay Paul because we're looking at benefits for ratepayers that effectively have to be paid for by taxpayers. The money still has to come from somewhere. Of course at this stage in particular we know that local government is under particular pressure—all agencies are—because of COVID. We understand that and we understand that there are many ratepayers who therefore would welcome the rebate. So it's not that we oppose the principle of a rebate; it is that we oppose the principle that a rebate could be obtained fraudulently. The obligation therefore to have a statutory declaration—to say in front of somebody who is of good standing in the community What I am signing here is true and I therefore am entitled to claim the rebate that is available to me."—is not something that we should throw away lightly. As I say I have no doubt that the vast majority of people who seek that rebate do so honestly but here we are removing the protection that all ratepayers and taxpayers should be able to enjoy so that their honesty won't be taken advantage of by the few who are dishonest. This is the worst possible time for enabling some dishonesty to creep into the system which simply means that the honest people pay more.So I ask the Minister if she would please respond to that in particular and give us her view as to why she thinks that is appropriate. I understand that there is an argument of making it simpler for people and that some people don't have ready access to transport and all the rest of it. But surely those arguments are not strong enough to override the important principle I've mentioned."