Burns Brendon: Taxation (GST and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Procedure Third Reading 
Burns Brendon: Taxation (GST and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Procedure Third Reading 
[Volume:669;Page:16130] 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I would like to take a moment in this Part 3 debate to ask a question about the regulatory impact statement and clarify exactly what the Minister in the chair the Hon Peter Dunne was referring to. My understanding is that he would have been referring in his comments to the regulatory impact statement as it relates to the bill as introduced. 
Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: I remind the Committee that before we broke for the lunch break we were discussing Part 3 of the Taxation (GST and Remedial Matters) Bill. I asked the Minister of Revenue to clarify comments that he made in his introductory remarks about the regulatory impact statement—in his spirit of openness I think he called it—and whether in fact his reference to the regulatory impact statement refers to the bill as introduced to this House in August a bill of some 57 pages or whether his reference to the regulatory impact statement refers to the 70-page Supplementary Order Paper that was released by the Minister in the last 48 hours a document that is some 13 pages longer than the bill itself. If we are not to have a select committee process to inquire into the details of the Supplementary Order Paper if urgency is to be applied in this House a fortnight before Christmas as we try to see this bill and the Supplementary Order Paper through and if there will not be any opportunity for others to have input into the bill through the select committee process then I would have thought that a regulatory impact statement on the Supplementary Order Paper to try to get some sense of dispassionate analysis on the raft of changes it introduces would make absolute sense because that Supplementary Order Paper is detailed and complex and New Zealanders have a right to know what is being passed. This Committee cannot give the scrutiny to it that a complex piece of tax legislation truly demands.  
I also note that the last time this Minister featured in the House in respect of tax issues of any note was when he supplied the wrong speech notes to another Minister Jonathan Coleman. The speech notes were for a different bill to that which the Minister was speaking on. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: “Coleman-itis”. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: I think that the Minister himself quite rightly claimed culpability for that error because it was his office that supplied the notes. I suggest to the Committee that he has gone from bad to worse because here we have a situation where we do not have just the wrong speech notes for a bill that has already passed but the Minister giving speech after speech to the House defending a Supplementary Order Paper that is bigger than the bill itself.  
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Is this Supplementary Order Paper a plot? 
BRENDON BURNS 
: That is a comment that others might make. I am not drawn to conspiracy theories. In my past life as a journalist sometimes people came to me with things that suggested there was a conspiracy and I usually went for the other option which is the stuff-up.  
Hon David Cunliffe 
: The con job. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: No normally it is a stuff-up rather than a conspiracy. But this one has different hallmarks because as we have noted there was a process in which the Labour Party supported the bill’s introduction worked through the issues in the Finance and Expenditure Committee to ensure that the legislation was valid and made a number of changes to the legislation. Our colleague Trevor Mallard highlighted one of the particular concerns earlier and I think it is repeated in another part of the bill about the issue of Inland Revenue Department access to jointly held bank accounts for the tax debts of a particular person. It was a very astute observation from my learned colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I’m not learned. I’m not a lawyer. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: He is not learned? No. The point is that the Finance and Expenditure Committee scrutinised the bill to ensure that there were not things within it that would not be good law for New Zealanders. But we have had no opportunity whatsoever for that scrutiny on the Supplementary Order Paper and it really is a recipe for disaster because inevitably there will be things that come through from the bill that do not help New Zealanders and we are very likely as a Parliament to have to revisit it.  
Again I note that of the nine tax bills introduced to Parliament by this Minister who is generally highly regarded as a good competent Minister— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I remind the member that we are on Part 3 of the Taxation (GST and Remedial Matters) Bill and during the course of his speech Part 3 was not mentioned. We are debating Part 3. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: I suggest Mr Chair that in fact I did introduce Part 3 of the bill but I will take your steer on that point. The Chairperson is quite right; this debate is on Part 3 of the bill and it relates to clauses 77 to 86.  
One of the parts of the bill that I would like the Minister to give some clarification on is clause 82 which is the clause titled “Disclosure of information for verification of government screen production payment entitlement”. I want to know whether this clause will relate to the  
Hobbit 
 deal. It was a deal done in a flash under urgency in effect by the Prime Minister at Premier House with the Hollywood moguls to ensure  
The Hobbit 
 was filmed here in New Zealand. In fact  
The Hobbit 
 was always coming to New Zealand. But I would like to know whether the clause will have any relationship to the funding that will be provided by the Government in that secret deal which was done under urgency. It had some of the hallmarks of this legislation that we are going through. Clause 82 as provided for in the bill is around replacing the phrase “large budget screen production grant” with “government screen production payment”. I would like to know whether the 
 Hobbit 
 productions will be beneficiaries of this change and whether we should read anything into it.  
The good thing about it is that this particular clause has come through in the bill as it was introduced so the Finance and Expenditure Committee has had some opportunity for consideration and could take account of the wide range of issues that one must consider in the select committee process. That is not true of the Supplementary Order Paper which of course has a huge number of changes incorporated in it. The fact that we are here under urgency with the Government’s wish and intent to see the bill passed today gives no opportunity for us as members of the House to consider the changes. So I would like the Minister to take a call and give some clarity as to whether clause 82 will indeed allow for the provision of financial support to  
The Hobbit 
. Is that the particular clause that will allow the taxpayer to fund to the tune of I think tens of millions of dollars the 
 Hobbit  
series—the two films? Was that clause drafted ahead of the Government’s intention to provide support at that level to that particular bill?  
The other thing I will say is around the issue of the complexity of the legislation. As a new member of this House and of the Finance and Expenditure Committee I must say that when we see tax legislation come through it is eye-watering in detail and it is obviously a task indeed for members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee to stay on top of the legislation in order to ensure it gets the sort of scrutiny that Parliament and the New Zealand taxpayers would demand because they understand the importance of tax legislation. Everybody in New Zealand is affected by tax legislation whether or not they are an earner because if someone is not earning they are supported by someone who is earning and is therefore subject to the Inland Revenue Department’s regime. I would really like to say that we have a situation where given the opportunities that we as a select committee have to scrutinise tax legislation still stuff goes through. I referred to nine different tax bills in just 2 years in this Parliament which whistled through at a fair rate of knots. That involves hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of complex detail in total which is entrusted to the select committee members to give due regard to—to listen to submissions to make sure that the legislation is doing what the Government intends it to do and to look for the fish-hooks in it. I think we do a pretty good job in a bipartisan manner across that select committee and that relates as much to Part 3 of the bill as to any other part of the bill.  
But of course it does not apply in respect of the Supplementary Order Paper tabled by the Minister just 48 hours ago. It is a 70-page document which makes it extraordinarily hard for anybody to follow what is being introduced. I challenge the members opposite to take a call and to use the value of the call process to give some real substance to their contributions to this debate in order to let Parliament and the people of New Zealand know that members are scrutinising legislation carefully and making sure that this bill will deliver what the Minister originally intended before he introduced the Supplementary Order Paper.