Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Climate Change): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2021-22 GST and Remedial Matters) Bill. I just want to pick up on a couple of points that were raised by the Hon Michael Woodhouse in his remarks then in opposition. One of the things that he said was that this bill increases the top tax rate on people who are earning over $180000 and of course it does do that. And then he said we're taxing the rich to which my response has to be: if only. If only we were actually taxing the rich because we do not tax wealth in this country at the same rate at which we tax work. So we are taxing high-income earners; that is an entirely different proposition from taxing the rich because that is a distinction between wealth and work that we still have not gotten to grips with in this country. This bill does a lot of things but that is something that it does not do.One of the things that he mentioned was that the bill is over 100 pages long—it's 177 pages. It has 204 clauses. It does many many things. My issue with this bill actually is that it doesn't fundamentally—in all of that kind of worthy stuff that it does do it doesn't actually do the thing that is probably most important right now which is to ensure that given what has happened in our economy not just over the last 20 years but in particular over the last 18 months of the COVID crisis it addresses the fundamental inequalities that remain in our tax system between people who work and people who own between wealth and income. It fundamentally does not address that challenge.And when you consider what has happened over the course of the last 18 months in response to the COVID crisis there has been a massive expansion of capital in our economy and I've supported that and I think that that has done wonders given the incredible pressures on our economy and the global economy as a result of the pandemic crisis but that monetary expansion has led to a huge inflation in asset prices in particular in property and that is because of the preferential rate at which those assets are taxed as opposed to the productive side of the economy. And so an existing—which has been around for many decades—fundamental design flaw in our economy has been exacerbated as a result of the COVID-19 economic crisis and we are not yet addressing that exacerbation or the underlying causes of it.People who own property in this country saw the value of their property increase by an average of $200000 during the last 12 to 24 months—an average of a $200000 increase in the value of that property right? During a global pandemic during an extraordinary kind of economic upheaval and turbulence we have seen those asset prices expand. I mean the old joke has been around for a while now: if I really wanted to earn money I'd be a house. I'd stop working and I'd become a house because I could earn way more through just unearned capital gains than I ever could just working for a living. And we've actually seen that get much worse.The other thing that Michael Woodhouse said in his comments then was he said that tax planning will return to this country. If he thinks that tax planning ever went away then he's sadly mistaken. And he referred to how trusts were diminished as a result of tax changes. Actually trusts were diminished in this country as a result of changes that were introduced because of the Panama Papers scandals and the fact that people were hiding their wealth inside trusts and those trusts had no look-through provisions and you couldn't see what was going on inside those. And credit to the previous National Government because they changed the law on this one and the vast majority of those trusts vanished in under a week because people who had that wealth and who were hiding that wealth—the moment there was some transparency those particular tools lost their flavour and they disappeared. Now that was a good thing. That wasn't a change of tax law; that was a change in transparency law so that people could actually see what was going on there.I have to say that right now we know that there are people in this country who are doing it incredibly tough—incredibly tough. So whilst the lockdown—there are people who like myself can have an easy time of it because we're well supported we've got the resources to be able to get through it. There are families who are still confined many many people to a house multiple people to each room; people unable to get secure incomes still despite the support mechanisms that are available to them. It is I think deeply unfair that we allow a situation to perpetuate where people who are well off and getting better off as a result of the economic stimulus that we are putting into the economy are not contributing back in order to enable those people who are really doing it tough to be fully supported to get through the situation. So when we reflect on the team of 5 million—and the health response has been phenomenal—we are not acting as a team of 5 million when it comes to the equality of the contribution that each person is making according to their means to be able to get us all through this in one piece.So the bill—I have to say the Green Party will be abstaining on this bill because it is a confidence and supply matter—it's a taxation bill—and it does do many good things. It doesn't I have to say deal with the fundamental challenge that is currently present in our economy. So whilst we're not opposed to most of the measures that are contained within it we also can't support it because there are so few opportunities in any parliamentary term to fundamentally address some of the major issues to do with our tax system that—in this case—we also cannot support it; not because of what it does but because of what it does not do.Fundamentally we think that the people who are really doing it tough as a result of the pandemic and the current lockdowns need to supported and that actually all of us have the opportunity to do so and this bill—I'm afraid—doesn't measure up to that standard.So I do commend the Minister and the agencies who have done a huge amount of work. Like the previous speaker I commend the select committee who are going to have to work through what is a very weighty bill. I think actually maybe one thing that the select committee may want to consider is the idea that we actually do tax the rich rather than continue not to and continue to tax only people who earn as opposed to people who own. Thank you Madam Speaker.