Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Well it is my pleasure to be leading off on the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill. Now I have a lot of respect for the Hon David Parker but gee all I can ask today is that we've got a long time here and you've got to show—and I'm saying this to David Parker; I ask him to show some passion for this issue because that was one of the most boring speeches I've listened to for a while. And I'm just surrounded by high-functioning ex-Ministers of tax or revenue. I've got the Hon Michael Woodhouse and the Hon Todd McClay here and I don't know which one was more exciting and dynamic whether it was honourable Todd or honourable Michael but gee at least they showed something; they had passion. They wanted to make a change do the right thing—but that was just boring. We're going to be here a long time tonight so let's settle in let's have a ride because there is a lot in this bill that we need to discuss.Now I noted that the Minister talked extensively about the tax changes and the Working for Families and look in the main we agree with most of those things; they are mainly driven by inflation. Of course we have just seen a Government oversee a massive amount of inflation 4.9 percent up to September and it is sky-rocketing. A lot of it has to do with not only policies they put in like changing minimum pay rates and all the encumbrances they put on small businesses but we've also seen so much wasteful spending going into the economy and just exploiting it. And that's meant that we have an economy that's overheating; of course the outcome of that is inflation. And that is why they are having to put up all these benefits. As the Minister said family tax credit going up the family credit abatement going up from 25 to 27 percent. We will be asking the Minister about that because the effect of that is that it increases the marginal tax rate for working families and therefore actually provides a disincentive to work. And I think that's a question that the Minister will have to answer in the chair.Best Start tax credits—another one that's going to go up the minimum family tax credit. All that in the main is OK. But this bill is not so much about that; this bill is about the second stage of the COVID delivery element that we've been debating all last night and all this morning. And what a shambles—what an absolute shambles we have seen today and the earlier COVID debate. It's all being done on the hoof and this is another example of that. This bill is one where it sets out no details—and we've taken the opportunity to ask the Hon Grant Robertson over the last couple of days: what are the details about these revised payments that are set out in this tax bill? All this tax bill does is it enables something to take place but it never says what is going to take place. And he's been noting that the Government announced the change on 22 October over a month ago. We've only got eight days before these changes come into play—eight days. That's why this Government is trying to ram through these two pieces of legislation today and tomorrow to make sure that we can actually have the mechanism in place for the end of next week. And of course Parliament doesn't sit next week.It's an absolute shambles. Everyone knows that we've been having this issue for 18 months and they talked about it a month ago and yet Labour has only fronted up with a bill today that has no more detail than actually enabling something to happen at some point in time. What certainty does that give the small businesses? I heard Simon Watts talking about his businesses in the North Shore. I've got thousands of them every electorate MP and I bet you some of the Labour members have got them as well crying out for help. Give us certainty. No tell us what's going to happen." And not a skerrick of detail at the moment—not a skerrick. This is what's wrong with this bill.So what's going to happen in this bill? All it's going to do is say that the Inland Revenue commissioner is going to be able to set the criteria. So that's going to be one of the points of dispute in this debate. Why would you empower the IRD? That should be a legislative function. But actually the legislation gives the commissioner the right to set the eligibility criteria and that is wrong. We will be testing the Minister on that. Then we'll be asking "What about the whole mechanism?" We know that there's going to be a change of the payment system we've heard that but we don't know whether it's still based on revenue drop. And of course many of those businesses that we've been talking about will have suffered and will continue to suffer from revenue drop. I know Grant Robertson says it's all going to be nirvana by the end of next week; it's not actually. A lot of those businesses will have run out of cash and actually it won't be that quick to take up. Of course we're going into January holidays and a lot of businesses are simply not going to be able to see the upturn in business they are hoping for. And of course they've got to pay provisional tax in January they've got to pay terminal tax in February and then of course they've got more tax payments to make in April. That is a bleak outlook for many of our companies and that is why we need to have much more clarity. So we don't know whether it's going to be based on a revenue drop and I think that's a really important principle.The second thing: the Minister wasn't able to say which six sectors were going to be targeted because he has made it clear that specific sectors will be targeted. But when asked today he was unable to answer that. Hon Member: He doesn't know. ANDREW BAYLY: He doesn't even know what areas—we don't even know what areas are going to be in red orange or green. It is just chaotic—it's absolutely chaotic. This is the issue with this bill and that is why we are very worried about it.Then there's an element of this bill which is the Shane Jones mark 2 or version 2.0. What I'm referring to is that the bill empowers the Government to provide any person or organisation to receive payments under the framework without a clear and consistent approach as to who should receive the Government financial support. Now up to now the payments have been directed to businesses. Suddenly in this bill we see a reference to "any person or organisation". What's that about? We're talking about financial support to people or are we talking about financial support to businesses? And actually all the support to date has been to hard-pressed businesses. It is unusual and unclear why there's this big change in this part of the bill and of course that will be an issue of what we want to test the Minister on today.We also think there should be a greater focus on those on the job seeker benefit. Coming back to the issue of the changes there's been a lot of emphasis on changes to the benefits but we've got 190000 people on job seeker benefits. We need to make sure that they are looked after but also we want to make sure that they're back in business back getting a job because that is the thing that will help people get out of poverty. When the Minister says that this package will lift up 6000 children out of poverty the best thing this Government could do is to create the framework for more jobs and to get those 190000 people back into work. And just to remind the Labour members there are currently 32000 people who went on the job seeker benefit 18 months ago after the first lockdown—Hon Member: How many?ANDREW BAYLY: —32000 who are still on the job seeker benefit. And they are the people that we need to have back in work. It is appalling that they're sitting on the job seeker benefit 18 months later.So this approach what the Government keeps wanting to do every time inflation goes up—mainly as part of the Government's own making—is to do the only thing which is to push up benefits—push them up. What this Government should be doing and what we should be debating today is a system where we're allowing businesses to get under way to trade their way out of the current plight that they find themselves in. That means removing the traffic light system as soon as possible. We don't accept it. We don't think it has validity now that we're getting very close to 90 percent. Once we get to that point open up New Zealand allow businesses to flourish allow them to hire more people. Let's get this economy much more rocking. This is a poor piece of legislation. It's going to be a long night tonight."