Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you Madam Speaker. Just for those who are watching at home you may not be able to hear the kind of tone in the House or the gibes from the other side but it's a bit of a shame when they are—it feels like a bit of a classroom or a school assembly and people are shouting and joking when actually the legislation we've had in the House today has got real impacts on real people.So I'd like to acknowledge as the spokesperson for seniors retired couples who are the biggest losers. I am going to bring this back to this bill because they are impacted by this. As Dr Tracey McLellan said they were expecting $13 a week before the Budget. They're now going to be getting $2.15 each a week if they're a superannuitant couple. This bill—even though it's a silly little bill—it's actually tax by stealth. It will impact those people. It's quite desperate because they haven't been able to fund their tax cuts despite—it was bizarre when somebody in the House today said that they didn't use borrowing to pay for the tax cuts because in fact they have borrowed $12 billion to pay for $14.7 billion of tax cuts. So they clearly haven't read their legislation.This bill is bad law and it's unfair. The reason it's bad law is because first of all I'd say it's a tax but technically they're calling it a levy. Now it's not a levy. If you look at it technically it's a fee because it is targeted. A levy cuts across users and a fee is targeted. But it's really at the end of the day a tax.What irks me is that this applies to strict liability offences. This means that when somebody goes down the road parks their car too late they are guilty until proven innocent. It reverses the burden of proof. Now that's really unusual in our parliamentary system. So that in itself should be a reason why this should be going to select committee. It's a reason why it shouldn't be done under urgency. Any time that we're using urgency and this process to bring into being a change where somebody is guilty till proven innocent on the burden of proof is just bad lawmaking when it comes to jurisprudence.It's also the impact that it will have on marginalised communities including Māori and Pacific. The costs will be passed on. There is no way that councils are going to sit here and have the Government do their big reach into their pocket and do their money grab and not pass those costs on. They will pass them on to the people who can least afford to pay it. Now if we look at who's been really impacted by these cuts that the Government has made by these types of bills it is as the Hon Kieran McAnulty—[Interruption]ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I'm sorry to interrupt the member. It is becoming difficult to hear from up here. There are quite a few separate conversations going on in the Chamber.INGRID LEARY: Thank you Madam Speaker. Would you give me another five minutes?ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I've stopped the clock. I'll restart it now.INGRID LEARY: I'd be very keen to extrapolate. I'm sure that people couldn't hear any of it to be honest. But anyway I'll carry on.The Hon Kieran McAnulty talked about the rates going up and the fact that this is another way of the Government kind of throwing councils under the bus because it will be councils that will increase their fines that will pass that on to the people who are fined. When I look at what's happening in my electorate in Clutha we've got the mayor there saying basically the way the rates are going up because of what's happened under three waters and the fact that the water reforms that this Government is requiring councils to now pay when we had a solution for them—those rates are going up between 14 and 20 percent. Superannuitants in my electorate are paying up to 20 percent of their income into rates. So when I talk about superannuitants being the biggest losers under the Budget and I talk about the impact that this type of legislation has it's very very real for them. The costs that will be passed on because they maybe get a fine or they pay their fine slightly late and costs are added there is no way that councils will not pass those on.So this is more bad news for superannuitants. It's more bad news for councils who are going to seem like the bad people here when in fact it's the Government throwing them under the bus. Why? Because they didn't cost out their tax cuts because they're desperately trying to find little pinchy ways to try and get their coffers adding up and they're doing it in urgency when they haven't thought through how they're going to get a decent amount of money in a proper legislative way. It's bad lawmaking as the Hon Dr Duncan Webb has said. There is no rationale for the 10 percent that's been justified through the private market. In fact if we look at what the cost recovery impact statement says it says that a fee is only justifiable when it's fair and appropriate. So is it based on the dollar amount? Is it based on the volume? There's no justification. There's no evidence. It's a silly piece of law and I'm not supporting it.