Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): I wish to speak to a very specific part of the bill in front of us and I do so in the context that this is a bill that explicitly breaks an election promise. Members on the other side of the House need to remember that they told New Zealanders they would not introduce a capital gains tax on residential property and tonight in this House that is what you are voting—they are voting to do not you Mr Chair I apologise. Although—yes. So that is what is happening here. This is an explicit breaking of a pre-election commitment and it's in that context that I want to ask the Minister about exactly what he's up to with the tricky amendments in this bill around main home exclusion. It has been an agreed principle across the Labour and National Parties that the main home that someone resides in should never be subject to a capital gains tax. The only circumstances in which it has ever been the case that someone's home that they live in would be subject to a brightline test is where they are engaging in regular transactional activities in order to make speculative gains from selling property. But what we see in this bill tonight is a step further—now we're seeing that that exclusion for main homes is not as it used to be; instead if people are no longer living in their home for a period of more than 12 months then their home is instantly eligible to be affected by the brightline test. Now this is significant because it is not uncommon for people—for example for work—to need to move to another city for a period of time and not to live in their main home. There are many New Zealanders. Let us take the case study of an Aucklander who's offered a wonderful job in the ever-growing Public Service in Wellington a secondment. They choose that they want to keep their family home in Auckland—to which they plan to return one day—and they say Right I'm going to go down to Wellington and I'm just going to rent a property in Wellington but I'm going to rent that for the duration of two years". The way I read the rules that are being introduced by the Minister and by Labour tonight is that if you chose not to live in your main home for a period of more than 12 months then you would instantly face a brightline capital gains tax on your main home if you sold it within the 10-year period. So I invite the Minister to address that because if that is the case then I believe that is the second breach of an electoral promise in this bill tonight because it is making people's family homes subject to a capital gains tax against the many promises that Labour have made in this area. And if it is not that Minister then I want to understand why you're doing these tricky changes tonight. Why is it that having had a tax bill that went through all of the stages of a select committee—all of the examination all of the submissions—that specifically included reference to the way the main home exclusion was working. In clause 5 we had put some detailed changes through and they had been amended at committee. Why is it that you've chosen to overrule those and put in a new series of amendments in your Supplementary Order Paper? What is it exactly that you're after if not more revenue from capital gains this time going after people's family homes? So I think that matter needs to be addressed and we need clarity about the basis on which this is happening. I accept that the part does propose a buffer but the buffer is only for 12 months and it is not uncommon for people to have one family home which they live outside of for more than a 12-month period and I don't think that in those circumstances a reasonable person would expect that they should face a capital gains tax for later sale.I will in future contributions also look at this issue of the treatment of short-stay accommodation because there is a similar issue here. This is potentially a new class of taxation on a type of accommodation that has been fairly common in New Zealand—that is people renting their property for the purpose of Airbnb or short-term rental—and again Labour did not signal at any stage in the election campaign and it had not been signalled at any stage during the earlier debate of this bill that people with short-stay accommodation would be facing additional capital gains taxes. So in the same way that I ask why their amendments to the main home exclusion I invite the Minister to give us a bit more information about exactly why these amendments to the treatment of short-stay accommodation are required and included in this bill."