Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Madam Speaker and thank you everyone for the applause. That's a great way to start my speech off with such appreciation—I haven't even said anything yet but I do welcome that.It is a pleasure to actually speak on the Taxation Principles Reporting Bill. Isn't it a pity—isn't it a pity—that David Parker doesn't have that same passion about allocating our taxpayers' money in a most efficient way minimising waste in the Public Sector. If he had done that then we would not have the current account balance that we do today. He's caused a whole lot of issues—or his Government has—by not actually carefully spending other people's money and that's what you do when you gather tax.I was going to raise it later on in my speech but I'll do it now seeing the Minister mentioned Sir Roger Douglas. I think he seeks to make a mark in the Labour Party in the history books up to that sort of level but unfortunately he will never get to the level of Sir Roger Douglas—the best Minister of Finance I would argue ever. He was a Labour Minister and I think it would be good if more of the Labour Ministers aspired to reach the level of effectiveness of that Minister because he made a massive mark on New Zealand's history and set New Zealand down a path of success for many years after he retired from Parliament.No debate on taxation I think would be complete without a quote from Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Now Jean-Baptiste Colbert was Louis XIV's most trusted adviser. He was accredited with developing trade and with developing industry and of course the Merchant Navy which made all of those things possible. His quote on taxation was: The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing." I would argue that this bill lays the groundwork to test the upper limits of the hissing and the tolerance of the goose—that being the taxpayer. This is definitely laying the groundwork for a wealth tax. I don't think anyone disagrees on that—they might say otherwise but I know deep down that is exactly what it's all about.Why wouldn't we want a wealth tax? Well I'm going to tell you that. The countries that have tried it are backing off from it. In the OECD there's only three countries that have wealth taxes now. That's Norway Spain and Switzerland. Norway now they've brought in their wealth tax have had to actually bring in or are considering bringing in an exit tax because the wealthy are leaving. The problem they forget with wealth is the wealthy people don't own all the houses in New Zealand and so they they're not rooted in this area. They can take their money with them and go elsewhere. Their money is used to create wealth. It creates wealth for all of us. So I think that's something that's been forgotten in this debate.I think the GST nonsense that David Parker was going on about—we did have a good GST system but they're going to ruin it—that's if they win of course on 14 October—by taking fresh fruit and frozen fruit and vegetables out of the out of the GST system. That makes it more complicated more expensive to run and it actually breaches one of—I know David Parker who spoke earlier is a great fan of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations but it breaches several of his maxims for tax: equity and fairness. It certainly doesn't meet that these proposals for his wealth tax. If we're going to have a tax on capital gains and if it was to meet the first equity and fairness test it would also be able to count the losses as well as the gains. It would count everyone's gains and losses not just a select few which a wealth tax seeks to do.I can't go through all four of them but what I can say is that this is definitely setting the groundwork for a wealth tax. We oppose it and it's actually quite a waste of Parliament's time."