Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green) (remote): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I thank the Minister. I want to focus on how the economic response to COVID-19 and the ongoing inflation pressures have created winners and losers. We've seen that those without assets and on the lowest incomes have gone backwards while those with the most benefited from a huge boom in asset price. Some sectors of the economy like hospitality and the arts really struggled through lockdowns and the ongoing pandemic but other large businesses have taken Government support that was given in the form of wage subsidies and then we've seen them record huge profits paying out large dividends to shareholders—many of those shareholders might not even be in New Zealand. So my question I guess to the Minister is: given the response that the Government has taken to COVID-19 which saw $18 billion paid out to New Zealand businesses under the wage subsidy scheme and then most recently to respond to inflation pressures have taken actions like a more than $1 billion cut in petrol tax fuel excise duty and road-user charges—at the same time petro companies posting record profits. In other countries we're seeing things like windfall taxes being proposed particularly for energy companies or oil companies which have been posting these huge record profits. In other places it's called an excess profits tax. I guess I'm wondering is the finance Minister and this Government going to consider how those companies who have benefited or profited from Government support or from other circumstances that have nothing to do with their business but have enabled them to make excess profit well over and above what would be expected—is there a way that the Government is going to ensure that that excess profit is coming back and is able to help the community here in New Zealand?Hon Grant Robertson: Madam Chair?Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Oh go ahead.Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): It's a little bit hard with a remote sitting to quite tell if the member had finished. In terms of her comments around the wage subsidy scheme what I would say is that when we established the scheme obviously it was established quickly in order to achieve the goals of cash flow and confidence for businesses. We tied the wage subsidy scheme to a criteria of employment attachment so that you could only get it if you were continuing to keep your staff. I strongly believe that that approach made sure that New Zealand's unemployment rate stayed lower than it might otherwise have been. We did not put other criteria on the wage subsidy scheme. So the idea that somehow or other we could ask those companies to give it back with some kind of justification being that things didn't quite turn out to be quite as bad as we thought I think would be tremendously bad faith. A number of companies have made the decision to pay money back when they did achieve profitability and I welcome that. But I simply don't believe we're in a position to ask for that money back given that that wasn't the criteria. I also think there is a real risk that had we put further conditions upon people taking the wage subsidy they would not have taken it and that would have seen more people lose their jobs than was otherwise necessary. And so at this point in time I stand by what we did there in terms of the wage subsidy scheme. The wider point that the member is making is about those companies who have done well through this period of time. And I would like to make the point that it is a wide range of companies. I sometimes think in this debate we get a little lost in understanding just who the majority of the New Zealand businesses who benefited from the Government support are. They are by and large small and medium enterprises and I think sometimes we get numbers thrown around about balance sheets that are not accurate. Having said that there are some large corporates in New Zealand who are doing well. They are contributing significantly more in corporate tax than we have otherwise seen and the tax returns that we are seeing currently while some of it is about inflation it's also about the fact that our companies are continuing to do well and they are paying their tax and that is the money that then gets returned to the community as the member asks.New Zealand doesn't have a history of the kind of windfall taxes that you see in other countries around the world. And it's a little different than perhaps the UK where energy companies can very clearly be said to have that. What we have done particularly in terms of the petro companies is obviously using the Commerce Commission's report we now have passed a law that means we have a lot more information about the margins that are being charged and we are constantly keeping our eye on that to ensure that there aren't excessive margins. Similarly in the supermarket sector using the power of the Commerce Commission in their report we've been able to identify what we believe are excess profits and we're now moving to change that sector so that New Zealanders do get a fairer deal.