Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Madam Chair Williams thank you. Well I look forward to continuing on with what I was saying in my earlier contribution. When I was making that contribution I was talking about the independent earner tax credit and I wanted to talk about it. It isn't the biggest part of the bill but we've had a lot of discussion around the core aspects already today and this is a part that I think does deserve some attention. So in making this change—let's just be really clear about this—this bill and the Labour Government will be enabling those earners to retain $520 a year on the face of it but in return they're taking away from them $1060 per year. So they get to keep $520 a year but lose $1060. Just earlier the Minister of Finance was complimenting me on my maths and I'm sure he will agree with me that $1060 being lost is a heck of a lot worse than $520 being given back.Actually there's a common theme here—there's a common theme in here—because when you look through the package the bulk of it in Part 1 and you look at the families that it purports to help 625000 families that are included in the numbers that the Government claims this package will help are only $13 on average a week better off. Now again it doesn't take a whole lot of maths to know that those families will therefore be worse off than they would've been under the package that the National Government put in that this bill that we're debating tonight is repealing. So let's just be really clear that there are at least 1.2 million New Zealanders—and I would argue a heck of a lot more than that—who lose under this bill; 1.2 million New Zealanders who work every day and as Dr Smith was saying who understand that money has to be earned and that earning it is the hard part are going to lose out under this bill. In addition even some of the people who under this bill on the face of it get an extra entitlement are getting less than they lost. They're getting less than they lost and I think that is something that the taxpaying members of New Zealand certainly want to hear about.Again when you look at another part of what's included in Part 1 we have the baby bonus. We have this strange anomaly where in a package that has been sold to the public as being a better way of targeting spending we have a baby bonus that is paid out indiscriminately. And again over the course of this afternoon I've heard so many crocodile tears and so much railing against any sort of indiscriminate giving back of money to the poor people who earned it because they don't need it because they're too wealthy and yet in Part 1 we have a baby bonus paid out to anyone irrespective of need irrespective of income just for having a baby. Why would you put up a package that is supposed to be about targeting better those in need where 1.2 million New Zealanders at least are worse off and the money is spent in a large part without any sort of targeting at all paying a baby bonus to the very people they say don't deserve a tax cut—the very people who don't deserve a tax cut?The tax cuts that are cancelled through Part 1 of this legislation have almost—well the biggest part of them has been used to fund even more untargeted spending which is the free gap year at university for young people. And again none of that's targeted. So the very people who the Labour Government say don't deserve a tax cut and who can support their children through university—and in my case are happy to do that—still get funded and as a result the hard-working plumbers cleaners truck drivers and sparkies around New Zealand are told they don't deserve a tax cut.Well I'm sorry Madam Chair and I'm sorry to the members of this committee but I cannot accept that a Government should take money that it doesn't need off people who've worked damn hard for it and spread it around in a way that even Treasury says they have no idea whether it will make a difference or achieve its goals. If you read the departmental disclosure statement Treasury have said they cannot assess whether this package would achieve its goals. So why would you breach the fundamental duty of a Government not to take more money away from people than it needs to do something that isn't giving attention to the purposes of the bill in terms of targeting it; isn't allowing people to keep money that they've worked damn hard for; and isn't according to Treasury even able to tell us whether it will meet its goals? It makes simply no sense at all.