Falloon AndrewANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Good evening Madam Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to be taking a brief call tonight on the—Chris Bishop: Is it?ANDREW FALLOON: —Taxation (Neutralising Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Bill. It is actually a pleasure Mr Bishop. I've actually been fascinated by this bill as it's passed through the House. But look my very learned colleague Mr Andrew Bayly gave I think a very good technical summary earlier this evening of the bill so I'll keep my comments relatively brief.Mr McKelvie who also sits on the Finance and Expenditure Committee—now he mentioned during his comments that he came on to the committee quite late and that I guess put him on the back foot. Well I don't sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee at all so I'm probably several yards behind him. But I was fortunate to be subbed on from time to time and so I have been involved somewhat in the passage of this bill as it's wound its way through the House.I have to say it is a very good bill. Some of my colleagues on this side of the House have mentioned why it's such a good bill. It's because it was actually drafted by this side of the House when we were in Government based on the very good work that was undertaken by the Hon Judith Collins and also Steven Joyce to address base erosion and profit shifting.Now as we all know we have a multitude of multinational entities that operate here in New Zealand and it's important that they all pay their fair share of tax and that we limit the opportunity for them to exploit gaps in the tax arrangements both of New Zealand but also in other jurisdictions around the world. Many multinational companies that operate here in New Zealand do so in a competitive environment with other domestic New Zealand - based companies and what we don't want on this side of the House—in fact on all sides of the House—is for those companies that operate here that are multinational companies to have an unfair advantage against domestic companies that are just trying to make an honest dollar.During the first reading of this bill some of the members opposite unfortunately did make some interesting comments about unilateral action by one individual Government. I've never been in favour of unilateral action when it comes to multinational tax arrangements for the precise purpose that they are by their nature international and therefore are multinational.Chris Bishop: It's in the word multinational".ANDREW FALLOON: Exactly. We have to work with our other partners overseas to ensure that multinational companies are paying the tax not just in New Zealand but frankly in every country around the world. So that's why we've worked for a very long time with the OECD on their very good report that they put out I think at the end of 2015 and that resulted in some of the work that we're looking at now coming to the previous Government in 2016.So that does take some time. That's the unfortunate thing I think as we all find about working in Government and particularly when you're working across multiple Governments—not just your own—that things do take much longer than you'd like. So this bill is the culmination of some very hard work and I think that there'll be more of that good work coming through from the OECD and other multinational tax partners for the next few years. As has been commented earlier tonight this isn't going to completely fix the problem. It's one step in the process of making sure that all multinational companies pay their fair share of tax. It's a very good bill though and I commend it to the House."