Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I thought you might like to declare an interest—but OK thank you Madam Deputy Speaker.There are some things in this taxation—I won't repeat the whole title; we've heard it enough—bill that we think on the side of the House are good changes. We're not disputing that. We've certainly heard from members previously in this debate about some of those changes and I actually would agree with the speaker who's just resumed his seat Michael Wood that actually the committee I think worked well at improving some of the aspects in the bill. So there are certainly components that on this side of the House we think are meritorious: changes to KiwiSaver certainly the direct refund ability provided for in the bill the binding ruling changes and also following on from the last speaker's contribution the pushing back on the extra powers of the Commissioner of Inland Revue was seeking to address anomalies in legislation.We can all see the merit. And yet when you are giving a delegated quasi-legislative—well certainly a tertiary-level decision-making power to an official in an area like tax law I think we do have to get that right and be very careful with it. And I would actually agree that the committee worked very constructively across party lines on some of those issues and on those we've got to a good place. So I certainly don't want the fact that we are voting against this bill to take away from the fact that there was some very good work to improve some aspects of the bill that we thought—as I say without party-line divisions—weren't quite right and that also there are some aspects of the bill that we think are certainly worth advancing. But—there was always a but" coming; and it is a "but"—we will oppose the bill because the core part of this bill fundamentally is still setting the annual tax rates. It's all right there in the title. As it says on the tin it sets the annual tax rates. And this side of the House is not going to vote in favour of legislation which overtaxes New Zealanders. That's what fundamentally this does. It says to New Zealanders that because the Government can't control the loose spending of Shane Jones and others who occupy the Treasury benches New Zealanders will be paying more tax than they should and more tax than they need to and of course New Zealanders know—you'd have to be under a rock not to know—that there's a whole bunch of even more taxes coming but we'll have plenty of opportunity to discuss those. But think of this bill as the beginning of this Labour - New Zealand First - Greens Government taking more money from New Zealanders than those New Zealanders should rightly be paying. And we are not on this side of the House going to vote in favour of that.The first aspect in that regard is that the tax thresholds in this bill at which the tax rates apply now haven't been adjusted since 2010. Now National adjusted the tax thresholds in 2010 to make sure they were continually being updated for inflation and they did again in 2017. But of course the first act of the incoming Government was to cancel that. So we are now back at New Zealanders paying tax on thresholds that were last set in 2010 because this Government is content to let inflation mean they can take more and more money from New Zealanders. And that is not something we're going to turn a blind eye to to fund loose poorly targeted poorly overseen and low-accountability spending. But it isn't just that issue of keeping up with inflation which tax rates absolutely should. In fact the IMF in Australia just came out and told the Australians "You should have a system for automatically linking your tax thresholds to inflation. It is bad practice not to." And I look forward to their next review of New Zealand when I'm sure this Government will get a similar message. But there's good news: do we have a solution for them. But it goes further than that because in those changes that I have mentioned that were legislated in 2017 and then cancelled by the incoming Government New Zealanders would have found themselves getting more than $1000 a year more in their own pockets. Now $1000 a year might not be much to Michael Cullen who gets that a day but it is a lot to the average worker. And again if it wasn't for poorly-targeted pork-barrel spending from Shane Jones and others New Zealanders could have had that money and the country would have been better off as a result. But no no this is a Government that said "Let's overtax New Zealanders; let's take more money out of the pocket of every hardworking New Zealander and we'll use that to funnel money through weak poor-spending programmes that aren't going to help New Zealand but it keeps us sweet with New Zealand First and others." That is not a bill and that is not an approach that the side of the House will support. We will be opposing this legislation."