Bishop Chris: Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBishop Chris: Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 12 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8001. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS BISHOP (National): Phil Twyford just said that this bill was about a bunch of blather and flimflam. Well I have got to say that that is deeply rich and ironic coming from that member. That member has spent the last 2 years while he has been the shadow Minister for housing going up and down the country speaking flimflam and blather himself. This is the guy who supported loan-to-value ratios before he opposed them. This is the member of Parliament who supported the thrust of the Government’s social housing reforms before he decided that they were a bad idea and he was opposed to them. In fact he even turned up to the social housing providers’ conference and told them that transferring ownership of social housing to the private sector or to the community sector was a good idea and that they would do a good job and that often they were better than the State before he decided to oppose that.So this is the person who is the king of outrageous slurs and accusations. You can see it every day in question time. You can see it every time he gets up and speaks in the House—the anger and the venom against Nick Smith who was mentioned about 14 times during his speech. So for Phil Twyford who launched by himself a personal vendetta and campaign against people of Chinese ethnicity in this country to turn up in this Parliament and say that this bill is full of blather and flimflam is I find deeply ironic.I think it is worth reflecting on the campaign that the Labour Party—or Phil Twyford I should say—has launched against people of Chinese origin. It was deeply offensive. It was deeply repugnant to New Zealand values. And it was deeply strange coming from a party that in 2002 quite rightly issued an apology to people of Chinese backgrounds for the poll tax of the 1860s. So to turn round in 2015 in multicultural New Zealand—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member Phil Twyford who preceded this member did take a very wide approach to the bill but he did not take a full 2 minutes until he mentioned it. I want to invite the member to at least address the bill.CHRIS BISHOP: The Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill is a good bill. It is not as the previous member said a political response to the housing crisis. It is not as the previous member said something that the National Government is introducing only because to do anything more than that would be to disadvantage its rich mates. I think on all three readings of this bill Phil Twyford has made the outrageous slur against the National Party that we are doing something or are not doing something because of interests outside this House because of money or because of donations or things like that—outrageous. That is not the point of this bill. This bill is all about fairness in the taxation system. It is all about making sure that people do actually comply properly with tax rules. My colleague David Bennett has given a very good elucidation of how the bill does that.I briefly want to focus on this issue of the main home exemption. Members opposite in all three readings of this bill have criticised this provision the exemption that the bill provides for the main home. In particular they have criticised the exemption that is provided or the definitional term around the person with whom—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: The connection.CHRIS BISHOP: Yes as Mr Cosgrove says with whom the person has the greatest connection. They said I have got to say some really silly things about this provision. So let us run through what they have said.The first thing that they have said—Grant Robertson said this in the first reading and other members have repeated it subsequently—is that this is an invention. In fact we have just heard Phil Twyford say: “This is an invention. This term does not exist in law.” Well yes that is true. As I think I said in the second reading or it might have been in the first reading of this bill actually this is a Parliament. Parliament makes law and sometimes we use terms that do not exist already. It is not actually that radical. Sometimes we pass pieces of legislation that contain words that have been combined to make a phrase that does not currently exist. So that is not actually a particularly good point of rebuttal to the idea that this is a good bill—that the phrase is an invention. OK? So that is the first point.Secondly in response to this I have talked to the officials. The phrase “the greatest connection or with whom the person has the greatest connection” is a carefully chosen phrase. It is carefully chosen because although it might not exist in New Zealand’s statute law right now it does exist in case law. Members opposite should know anyway that the laws of New Zealand are not just based on what we pass here in Parliament or on regulations that the executive passes but also on what has built up through case law. That phrase has been carefully chosen and it would allow the courts to apply this law properly.What was the second thing they said in response? We heard this from Jacinda Ardern yesterday. Jacinda Ardern got up and said: “Oh this is totally subjective. This is just subjective. It is just a subjective test.” No it is not a subjective test. It is not up to the person to define that. It is an objective test.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Sorry—I apologise to the member. Members have a set amount of time for which they can speak. It is not the role of Opposition members to try to shut them down in the way that members are trying to do at the moment.CHRIS BISHOP: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It is not a subjective test. It is an objective test. So Jacinda Ardern is completely wrong. If people try to claim that they have a greater connection to the crib or the bach they will have to prove that. It will have to be objectively proved. They will have to produce evidence and the courts if it gets to the courts will have to examine the evidence and they will find one way or the other. Again it is like explaining the judicial function to members opposite. It is like Public Law 214 at Victoria University. David Parker must be ashamed of some of the stuff that gets said by members opposite.What is the third thing that Labour Party members have said? They have said that this will just let people classify the apartment they live in in Wellington when they come to Parliament every week or they will be able to classify their bach or beach house as the place with which they have the greatest connection and they will be exempt from the law. As I said before that is not going to happen.This phrase does not exist in law as it is at the moment but that is not remarkable. That is not an argument against passing the law. It is just a statement of fact. So some of the criticisms from Labour members in response to this bill have been very silly. This is a good bill. This is a bill that will improve compliance with tax law. It will make our tax system fairer. I commend this bill to the House.