Ardern Shane: Taxation (Base Maintenance  and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Ardern Shane: Taxation (Base Maintenance  and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21462] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 First of all I congratulate the Hon David Cunliffe the member for New Lynn on taking a call before—a very passionate call. What that young new Minister’s call demonstrated overwhelmingly was two things. One is that there is no substitute for experience and the other is that David Cunliffe does not have any—he absolutely does not have any. I just say to that member that it was interesting to listen to him stand up and justify the Government’s position by saying that the way to defend poor hard-working “Joe Hard-worker” out there—a traditional Labour supporter—is to layer another tier of bureaucratic nonsense on top of him and employ another pile of bureaucrats to add to the now 38000 new bureaucrats and civil servants that this Government has employed. Somehow that will protect people. 
But what “Joe Hard-worker” will tell Mr Cunliffe when he goes back to New Lynn is that people have been told and have read that in this country we have had strong growth over the last 6 years. They have been told and they have read that the Government—the Minister the Hon David Cunliffe and his Government colleagues—have a surplus like none other. They have been told that. Yet those hard-working small business people or other hard-working New Zealanders have never had it so hard. They are struggling. They cannot pay the school fees cannot pay to get the 10-year-old Japanese import through the next warrant of fitness and are struggling to meet their mortgage payments so this Government is not working for them. The Minister will learn that when he goes back to his electorate in the election campaign that is coming up. 
The reason for that is very simple: this Government simply has its hands too deep in the taxpayer’s pocket. There are 34 new taxes. I congratulate my colleague from Whangarei on his newsletter which is now well out of date. It shows 24 new taxes and is a very important document. In fact we may table it at the end of this debate just to bring the Government up to speed with what it is doing. By the time that newsletter was off the print another 10 new taxes had been added. This Government has introduced 30-odd new taxes. That is the reason why the good folk of New Lynn will tell the Minister when he goes back there that he is just too tough on them. And he is not delivering the services he promised either. He said and they believed him that if they paid a little more tax—were a bit more generous and gave a few more dollars—the Government would fix the health and education system. 
Well what have people got? Three billion dollars more are going into health but there are fewer operations. A whole pile more money will go into various educational courses but with less end results there. We have 1200 more bureaucrats in the education system alone. I have before me something quite interesting. I have a document with a photo of a person who looks very similar to the Prime Minister. I am not sure whether it is her but it states: “My commitments … [are] No rise in income tax for the 95 per cent of taxpayers earning under $60000 year. No increase in GST or company tax.” Where does one go from there? The fact is that a huge number of the people who believed in that commitment have been let down. That is a broken promise like none other we have seen in the history of New Zealand. 
When we look at the legislation that we are debating tonight we see a complex list of regulations to try to stop some foreign banks from using the taxation system which has been designed by that Minister to avoid paying their fair share of tax. No one will have too much sympathy for the banks that do that and I accept the proposal the Minister has put forward in that regard. But here is a simple question for the Minister which he did not answer and on which there is overwhelming evidence: if he were to lower the tax rate and flatten the tax rate would those banks go to the effort that they do now to avoid paying that tax and would this regulation be necessary? The evidence in this country if one goes back through history is overwhelmingly that no they would not make the investment they do in terms of employing high-powered tax consultants lawyers and accountants to get around the New Zealand system. The banks just would not bother; it would be cheaper to pay the tax.