Faafoi Kris: New Zealand Business Number Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: New Zealand Business Number Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 12 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10447. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is an absolute pleasure to take the final call for Labour on the New Zealand Business Number Bill and to bring together some of the arguments that my colleagues have made during this final reading.I do want to address some of the comments made by the previous speaker Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi and the fact that he believes his side of the House is not out of touch. Well I think that if you put this piece of legislation together with an earlier piece of legislation that we were debating around GST you will find that this Government is increasingly out of touch with the likes of small to medium sized businesses. If you were a small business and you wanted the full effect of this piece of legislation then you would want to see the kinds of changes that were proffered by Dr David Clark and by Ria Bond from the New Zealand First Party put into this piece of legislation at the Committee stage. They were not. If you were watching earlier from home about the GST taxation bill you would want to make sure that the tangible products that are being bought overseas were tackled by this Government and GST put on that. But this Government is not willing to do that. It is not willing to support small businesses and put GST on those products. So this Government is becoming increasingly out of touch with the likes of small to medium sized businesses.I think that the legislative process that we have in this House is a good one. We start with a first reading and then through those various stages a piece of legislation is meant to get better. It is meant to get better at the select committee because the public and businesses and organisations and political parties can have input into that process to make changes that hopefully all parties in this House can agree to. So we get through the select committee process into the second reading stage and the Committee of the whole House where different parties and individual members can put forward changes amendments SOPs—a Supplementary Order Paper in parliamentary language—to make things better. But what we have here is a piece of legislation that started out with great promise but has actually got worse during the parliamentary process.The big question I want to ask is: what happened to clause 34? What happened to clause 34? It was there in the first reading and it gave a mandate for all Government departments to use and prioritise the New Zealand Business Number but somewhere along the process clause 34 went missing. The Government bottled out. It said: “We want to back this New Zealand Business Number so we are going to make all Government departments use it.” That was the essence of clause 34 but that went mysteriously missing after the select committee process quite simply because the Government said “We want to do this.” and then it realised “Actually we can’t do this. We can’t do it because actually we’re not ready for this.”So we are going to get ourselves into a farcical situation where the Government has introduced this New Zealand Business Number to make things more efficient for businesses out there but we may have some businesses actually having to have two numbers making things tougher and creating more red tape for businesses. Not only will they probably have to have an Inland Revenue Department (IRD) number with which they will deal with the IRD as per usual but they may also have to have a New Zealand Business Number. So the whole premise of this piece of legislation to have one individual identifying number for businesses could be out the door because this Government is not backing itself is not backing those Government departments and is not properly resourcing those Government departments to make sure that this business number can be rolled out around all the relevant departments and so it can actually be of use to small and medium sized businesses.Of course I would say that because I am biased. I am on this side of the House. But hold on. The Government was warned about this by the officials at the very beginning of the process. But do not take my word for it. I will read from the last paragraph of the opening page of the regulatory impact statement: “A second issue for the success of the NZBN”—we all want that; you want that; we want that; we’re going to vote for it; but I do not think it is going to happen—“is ensuring that there is an efficient and rapid uptake of the number by businesses and state sector agencies.” That sounds pretty common-sense. If you are going to introduce a number make sure that Government departments use it and businesses use it. “This is needed to build momentum for infrastructure development and private investment in commercial opportunities.” And here we go: “A potential conundrum arises if agencies ‘wait’ for all businesses and conversely if businesses ‘wait’ for the agencies. Without significant uptake there is a risk that the identifier is not integrated and utilised widely and just becomes another number rather than a replacement for the many current identifiers—as is intended.” That is official-speak. That is from the advisers to the bill. In English that is saying that if we do not get the Government departments ready to use the number in an effective and broad enough manner so that sufficient businesses pick up the New Zealand Business Number we think the New Zealand Business Number could be a waste of time ineffective and make things harder for the very people whom we want to help.Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Sounds like a Labour Party meeting.KRIS FAAFOI: Ha ha! You just keep eating your slops. Ha ha! It reminds me of the kind of legislation you support and the answers you give at question time. He is still smiling from the slops. You just keep eating your slops. Ineffective just like that Minister; hopeless just like that Minister; and not willing to be rolled out—we wish he was rolled out.This piece of legislation started with good intentions. Labour supported this legislation and thought it would get better during the process. But it has actually got worse. So a big message to those out there those small business owners and medium business owners whom this Government says it is working for—well it started but did not finish the job. So all that hard work the Government said it was going to do for you—to make your life easier to save you money—could be absolutely ineffectual because this Government bottled out. Again where is clause 34—the very important clause 34?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): It is not in the bill. We can only talk about those things—KRIS FAAFOI: Well it is not there because they took it out.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! We are on a third reading debate. I have mentioned this previously. We are talking about what has been reported back from the Committee of the whole House back to the third reading. I would ask members to concentrate on the content of a third reading debate and what has been reported back from the Committee of the whole House. And that also refers to amendments; I gave a ruling on that earlier.KRIS FAAFOI: Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker.This bill could have been better if the Government had taken on amendments from Ria Bond and David Clark that would have essentially reinserted a clause that was there at the beginning of the process but is not there now. It would have put pressure on Government departments to take up this business number to make sure that they were offering it to as many of the people as possible who interact with those Government departments so that they could get the benefits of the number. The legislation that we have got now does not have that in it. And I think it is weaker for it because now there is no mandate no pressure on those Government departments to say: “Look the Government has introduced this number. The pressure is on us to get people out there signed up so we can get the benefits of this.” And quite good benefits were offered up at the very beginning of this legislative process. I think there was around a $60 million benefit to people—individuals and businesses out there—which is not an insignificant amount of money that could have been redirected into giving people pay rises because they have not seen one of those for a while or into creating some jobs because that has not happened for a while. But no—we do not think that entire $60 million is going to be realised because the Government has bottled out.So let me put this in very plain English for those people who are listening. This could have been better. It started off very well. But the Government did not back itself and therefore has not supported those small and medium sized businesses to make sure that this piece of legislation which at the very beginning of the process had wide and broad support could be effective. The Government will congratulate itself on passing this piece of legislation but it is only any good if it is effective—and it is not. It could have been better. This Government says that it backs small and medium sized businesses but in this case it has not.I think that is another example of how this Government has got out of touch with the very people whom it says it supports.