Peters Winston: Taxation (Depreciation Payment Dates Alignment FBT and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Peters Winston: Taxation (Depreciation Payment Dates Alignment FBT and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:630;Page:2007] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister for Racing) 
: 
 I appreciate the chance to tell drive time radio listeners just exactly what is going on in the New Zealand racing industry. 
Darren Hughes 
: Lockwood has scared them all off! 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Ha ha! I point out that there are two amendments in my name to do with Part 2 and Part 4 of this legislation and they go to the core of the changes announced last week to the racing industry in this country. Those developments are hugely significant for the racing industry both to create an equitable basis for it to conduct its business and to foster an environment in which the industry can begin to reach its economic potential. 
Achieving the changes has been a priority for New Zealand First and for me since becoming the Minister for Racing in order to ensure that the inherent unfairness of the duty levied on racing which nearly every political party had to acknowledge by the end of the last election campaign was rectified. We also wanted to ensure that the racing industry would be put in a position to reach its economic potential and particularly its export potential. 
I thank the people from all three sections of the racing industry who have contributed greatly to the announcements and particularly those on the New Zealand Racing Board. I also offer my thanks to Cabinet for recognising the need for urgency in making the changes. As members know the changes were part of the confidence and supply agreement between New Zealand First and the Government and it is pleasing to be able to deliver them so soon. 
The key changes are first a reduction in totalisator duty which is down from a headline rate of 20 percent to 4 percent of gambling profits—that is amounts bet less amounts paid out—so as to make it just the same as it is for casinos. The second is a decrease in the write-down period for stallions from 4 years to 2 years. Third there is a decrease in the maximum write-down period for brood mares from 8 years to 5 years or if they go into breeding at 2 years which would be extraordinarily rare it will be 6 years. Brood mares that commence breeding at age 8 and over will be written off in full in the first year of breeding. 
The changes will come into effect at the start of the next racing season on 1 August 2006. I note that already one of the racing entities in this country has just put back its sale by 2 weeks so that it can avail itself of the 1 August deadline we have set for this legislation. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: They still don’t get the benefit of the write-down until the year of 2008. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: The member is quite wrong; he is utterly and totally wrong. A brood mare at age 3 years is written off at 20 percent or thereabouts each year until year 8. If it goes into breeding at year 8 it is written off when it reaches year 9. Those are the fundamental facts. 
I am not listening to the National Party on this matter. It went to our website in 2005 stole our policy and had the audacity to go to Te Rapa and try to read it in its name. If anybody doubts that let me say this: he or she should look at the National Party’s 2002 website. What will people see on racing? A doughnut—a zero; nothing! Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery but it is a disgrace to go around purloining other parties’ policies and not to have the integrity to say where they came from. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: The industry knows where it came from—that’s for sure. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: The industry knows where it came from all right. The member should go and see who the big players were who backed New Zealand First in 2002 and 2005. Did anybody from Fair Tax support National? No so the member should stop making it up as he goes along. He should stop stealing other people’s policies. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. I think the member has been in this House long enough to know that the Committee stage of a bill requires the focusing of attention on the detail of particular clauses. The member is meant to sit down while a point of order is being taken. Are you going to apply the Standing Orders of this House or not? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The member will continue. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: The member should know that he should focus on the detail of the clauses. That is what the Committee stage of a bill is all about. I suggest you bring him to that point. 
Ron Mark 
: I am sure that you will also know from your knowledge of the Standing Orders that the Hon Lockwood Smith who has been here a very long time and should know them completely by now also knows that one can respond to interjections and that if people want to broaden the debate with their inane interjections then the person on his or her feet speaking has every right to deal with that. I ask you to go one step further and rule that spurious points of order that are not points of order that are irrelevant and that are raised only in order to interject on and break up a member’s speech should be called to order at that point. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I will respond to the point of order. Certainly the member Ron Mark does make a point. There was an interjection that did take the member along that line. He was responding to it so members do interject at their peril to that extent. However the member now needs to come back to the bill. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Madam Chairperson you will note again how the interjection illustrated precisely New Zealand First’s point. I was challenged on the detail and I gave the facts. The Opposition spokesperson on racing of course did not know anything about them because he had stolen the policy from us. It is one thing to steal a man’s horse stumbling outside the saloon; it is much harder to stay on its back as one tries to ride out of town. Mr Tisch has just fallen off. 
The changes I have announced are about achieving a fair income for racing and creating a level playing field. It is an exciting development for the racing industry and I want to pay tribute to the perseverance and hard work of a long-suffering industry that has waited all these years for some fairness to be returned to it. 
Hon Member 
: Where is it? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Why does the member not go and read the reaction from the industry when it went to the announcement last week and found out the Government’s policy would be that articulated by New Zealand First in the supply and confidence arrangement? Every one of the people concerned came out and applauded that. In fact I have been dealing with invitations from Ireland Dubai all around Australia Hong Kong and elsewhere to come and talk about the exciting changes to the New Zealand industry. I can see people coming in from overseas. I can see them relocating their studs to Cambridge. It is all good news.