Woods Megan: Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 31 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11543. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a short call on this bill. The last speaker Alastair Scott said he was going to focus on the title of the bill the Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill. I will come back to that. I think the reason the last speaker read it out is that really he had nothing to contribute to this debate. I think what we have seen in this House tonight is an incredibly low standard of debate a low standard of debate where actually there is some political consensus around what should be—I mean these are very simple measures.If we take for example the flexible tax for business: this is going to be a popular policy. I know this because when I was out talking to businesses in Wigram when Labour launched this policy they liked it and they thought it was a good policy. So to have the kind of standard of debate we have had in here tonight where all that people can talk about is grown-up political relationships and what they mean is disappointing. All I can say is that it smacks of someone whose relationship is going bad. After all they have David Seymour through all the Budget debate telling everyone in front of everyone—Alastair Scott: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I was talking about relationships and I was sat down.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Look I am the judge of this. The member Alastair Scott will sit and I will ask the member Megan Woods to come back to the third reading.Dr MEGAN WOODS: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I was just pointing out the absurdity of the level of debate and just how obsessed the Government is.But if we are going to talk about this legislation—and other speakers have talked about this—I think that what this piece of legislation suffers from is a branding issue because it has a very grand name. It purports to be transformational and then we have some very micro changes. If we are thinking about the kinds of changes that we could have after 8 years in Government is this what we would dream up? Is this the big idea that the Government has got? It is a tired old Government that has run out of ideas has nothing new to offer and cannot even string a 10-minute speech together from its backbenchers on a piece of legislation that should be a walk in the park. It should be a doddle because there are some sensible measures in this legislation. I have talked about the flexible taxation for business. We are seeing some sensible measures like the fact that the Inland Revenue Department can now send emails and not a pigeon to communicate around some of these issues which is sensible.This bill is about bringing our taxation system in very small ways into the 21st century but it does not address some of the big transformational ideas about taxation that we on this side of the Housewould like to see. There is nothing in this legislation that addresses the very real and growing concern that New Zealand is being increasingly internationally recognised as a tax haven. That is because that is an issue that this Government will not own up to. It is an issue that this Government will not own. It says “Not a problem. Nothing to see here look the other way.” while all the time New Zealand is developing a reputation on the international stage as being somewhere where tax-dodgers can hide their money away and not pay their fair share. That is the kind of issue that we would see as needing to be addressed in a bill that purports to be about transformation issues in terms of our tax system. We know that there are many things that we need to do in this country and many of them do involve our tax system because it is an important lever.