Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Well that was not a bad effort from Mr Robertson. Mr Robertson's speeches on tax bills—and I have heard a few of them in the House now since I have been a member of Parliament—generally follow a fairly strict formula. There is the generic abuse of David Bennett in the first 2 minutes of the speech and actually to be fair to Mr Robertson that can be reasonably amusing because David Bennett is a unique character in the Parliament. He is a superb chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee which I have the privilege to be on shows real leadership and actually the defamation that he has to suffer from Mr Robertson is uncalled for. So there are 2 minutes of generic abuse—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): A point of order Clayton Cosgrove; I hope it is one.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: It is. I just wonder whether it would be worth reminding the member speaking about misleading the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Mr Cosgrove I think you are aware of the fact that that is not an appropriate point of order and therefore you will stand withdraw and apologise for making it.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I withdraw and apologise.CHRIS BISHOP: So we start with the 2 minutes from Mr Robertson about Mr Bennett and then we get on to the generic complaints about Government tax policy. The reason that Mr Robertson does this is that the Labour Party does not have a tax policy. So he will spend about 3 minutes of a 10-minute speech with complaints about how there is no plan. It is like 2009 redux all over again when Labour used to say The Government has no plan." "Where's the plan?" says Mr Robertson. "There's no comprehensive statement of principle. We don't know where they are going with tax policy. We need more fairness in things like that." So there are about 3 minutes of very repetitious behaviour about that. And then we get from Mr Robertson in the last quarter of his speech the cursory references to what is actually in the bill. To be fair to him that was not a bad effort because he spent about half the speech talking about look-through companies and various other things that the bill does.Actually the Government does have a comprehensive tax programme that it is implementing. This is part of it; this is the May tax bill. There are two tax bills per year. This is what is known as the May tax bill and if Mr Robertson bothered to do his reading he would know that the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) runs a very comprehensive process called the generic tax policy process which is extremely transparent and extremely consultative. It publishes tax policy discussion documents it publishes material online and it consults with the various stakeholders with the companies with the various interest groups in the area that are affected by tax law. It is extremely transparent. Actually the bill that we are debating in the House which is going to go to the Finance and Expenditure Committee for further consideration is actually a fair way along a very consultative process to make sure that our tax law is fit for purpose and make sure that it is refined every year as we need to do.We have in New Zealand a very large body of tax legislation the bulk of which is contained in the Income Tax Act 2007 of course. But we are far better off than many other countries that have extremely bulky pieces of tax legislation—tax codes. I think if you put the Income Tax Act and the various other pieces of legislation—if you printed them off and stacked them up—they get up to about my height or perhaps to the height of one of my colleagues who is a bit shorter than me. If you did that for the United States I suspect you would be hitting the top of the New Zealand Parliament here with its high stud ceilings—and perhaps going a bit further. We have a very very good tax system in New Zealand and the aim of it is to have a comprehensive system that is broad based and has low rates. That is exactly what this bill does.I want to make only another couple of points. The first is to just highlight for the House that this bill adds 14 organisations to schedule 32 of the Income Tax Act 2007 which makes these organisations exempt from income tax because they are charities. That is fair enough. It adds things like the Cambodia Trust (Aotearoa-New Zealand) First Steps Himalaya the Hornsby Pacific Education Trust and the Siphala Foundation. Fair enough. But you do have to wonder why it is that we have to pass a piece of legislation through Parliament and send it to a select committee in order to add organisations to a schedule to make them exempt from income tax under the Act. Surely this must happen a lot. I seem to recall about a year ago debating a similar piece of legislation—debating the May tax bill a year ago basically probably around about the same time soon after the Budget—in which we did various things to the schedule as well. I have got to wonder—surely there is a better way? Surely there is some regulatory process that would take this mechanism outside the legislature and put it in the hands of Ministers acting on behalf of advice or organisations. I think that would be a better process. So we will wait and see. I for one am looking forward to exploring why that is the case with officials in the select committee.There is one organisation that ceased operations which is Bicycles for Humanity which I know Mr Assistant Speaker that you will be interested in as a charity. I am also interested in it as well. It ceased operations sadly. I do not know the organisation but why is it that we have to turn up in Parliament and pass a piece of legislation to remove them from the schedule to remove them from the charitable status exemption? It just seems a little bit strange. So I am looking forward to examining that at the select committee.The second remark that I want to make about the substantive policy of the bill is that this bill does do some of the things that Mr Robertson said it was not doing. It does actually make some useful contributions to the law around trusts and around multinational tax behaviour. This bill brings into place rules designed to stop multinational corporations sidestepping withholding taxes and levies that are imposed on interest paid on borrowings by New Zealand operations. If Mr Robertson had bothered to read the KPMG commentary on the bill he would have found that out. I expect that KPMG along with the other organisations in this space will be submitting to the select committee and I am looking forward to hearing what they have to say. I am looking forward to hearing further from the IRD about what exactly we are doing in this piece of legislation and how that fits into the Government's overall tax policy process. This is a good bill. I think it is going to receive unanimous support in the select committee. I look forward to serving on that redoubtable Finance and Expenditure Committee with my colleagues Mr Cosgrove Mr Bennett and others and examining it in more detail."