Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe; tēnā koutou e te Whare. Much like Dr Deborah Russell I don't really know where to start here and I'm a bit gutted for the new Minister because this is embarrassing mate. You're scared of the data and evidence that you've made a lot of a song and dance about caring so much about. So let's talk about precisely that.The first report under this legislation is due in 10 days. Two of those days are public holidays—that is of course Christmas and Boxing Day—two of those days are weekends and that leaves six ostensible working days. But I'm certain as with most white-collar jobs across the rest of this country that those who would be working in the IRD on this would be on holiday probably from tomorrow which means that all of the work necessary for the first report is done. Yet the Minister is rushing under urgency to repeal the enabling legislation because he is terrified of what that report might in fact behold.I do have to say that that kind of has to leave us with the conclusion that the National Party the ACT Party and the New Zealand First Party are terrified of the data and evidence that they profess to care so much about. I also just want to refer to some of the comments as made by the Minister in introducing this legislation that somehow these were these foreign and alien concepts when it comes to tax principles—those seven tax principles mind that we scrutinised heavily throughout the Finance and Expenditure Committee throughout this year and the National Party could not identify one that they disagreed with.But to that point of how foreign and out the gate these are these are the comments about independent adviser from that Finance and Expenditure Committee scrutiny on the initial legislation—Sir Rob McLeod none the less who said and I quote I would omit the descriptors because the meaning of each design principle is sufficiently well understood on their own." That is not ideological; that is independent advice about the inherent value of each of those tax principles and how they are understood out there within the sector.So there is a fundamental problem here and that is the fundamental problem of the lack of data and evidence that we have consistently reported against in Aotearoa New Zealand. That has led to an issue of perception which the National Party proclaimed to care about so much when they were repealing the dual mandate of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and refocusing things just on that sole mandate. It wasn't about the data or evidence then either by the way; it was simply about perception and the imputed behaviour of market players.So let's talk about that fundamental issue. Here I think I would invite all members of the Government to read Max Rashbrooke's Too Much Money published in 2021 within which there is a brilliant graphic contained. It was read the Hon Simon Watts by one of your former colleagues—that was of course the one now leading the Chamber of Commerce in Auckland.So this here [holds up chart] is a really really really important graph. What this tells us is the distribution of wealth that New Zealanders think is ideal. It looks pretty fair; it looks pretty equitable; it looks as though it's distributed in a relative equitable smattering. Then we have below that the distribution of what New Zealanders think the distribution is. So you can see that from the ideal we deviate into what New Zealanders think it is and they think it's a lot more unfair than it actually is. But in fact as reality and the data and evidence bear out Minister Simon Watts things are so so much worse than New Zealanders think it is. As you can see here that is the top 20 percent of New Zealanders holding far more than 60 percent to 70 percent of the wealth of everybody in this country.Of course this suspicion and this data and this evidence was even more borne out by the high-wealth individuals report from IRD and the subsidiary papers from Treasury at the beginning of this year. That confirmed what New Zealanders have suspected for a really really long time: that our tax system is fundamentally unfair and it results in the aggregation of wealth from the top 311 families of approximately $85 billion. That is more than the bottom 2.5 million New Zealanders combined hold. What that IRD report told us Minister Watts is that that is not an accident. It is a consequence of a tax system which sees the wealthiest New Zealanders pay effectively half the tax rate of our nurses of our firefighters of our front-line essential workers of those who work in early childhood of our teachers of the average New Zealander.So what we are standing here today debating under urgency is the repeal of a bill that is largely already done from a Government that pretends to care about data and evidence but spits in the face of public access to that information on. So I'm at a loss and really we will continue to prosecute this case throughout the committee of the whole House because the Minister should be embarrassed."