Jones Shane: Taxation (Annual Rates Savings Investment and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — First Reading 
Jones Shane: Taxation (Annual Rates Savings Investment and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:631;Page:3450] 
SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to support this further development to regularise our tax laws in order to ensure that tax anomalies do not drive the investment decisions of New Zealanders and that the tax professionals will not have the capacity—rapacious I might say—to derive even more innovative schemes to evade circumvent or further complicate the taxation system. I look forward to the Taxation (Annual Rates Savings Investment and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill coming to our Finance and Expenditure Committee. 
I follow my whanaunga Hone Harawira the honourable member for Te Tai Tokerau but I want to talk about the content of the bill. I am not interested in redefining economics to suit the views of deep ecologists or other far-flung thinkers who are a hangover from the San Francisco flower power movement in terms of finding the most sophisticated way of measuring the affairs or activities within an economy. We need to bear in mind some key points. Some extraordinarily innovative proposed legislation is being considered by the Finance and Expenditure Committee at the moment. It is designed to grow the number of Kiwis who are saving and also provide them with an option to move into home ownership. The bill we are debating is related to that intention and it will ensure that people are not unreasonably penalised for their investment decisions when they are investing in Australasia—that is Australia and Aotearoa. 
I am sure that legions of lawyers and bankers and a variety of other professionals are matching their wits and skills against those of the learned officials from the Inland Revenue Department—and one or three from Treasury—so I look forward to that contest. However I have no doubt that the sovereign powers of the State as reflected through Parliament will continue to be vigilant to ensure that those people who are moving into creating a greater sense of worth and long-term security through a savings culture are not penalised by unfair taxation rules. 
In relation to what the bill is trying to achieve at a deeper level I remind members that mention was made earlier by the Green Party speaker Jeanette Fitzsimons of Mary Holm’s writings— which were somewhat fanciful and led to all sorts of letters from confused contributors to the  
New Zealand Herald 
—about whether we would be better off lessening the burden on income tax and increasing the burden on capital in general. That is a fine philosophical point but this bill ensures that those who have enjoyed a loophole will have to work on the same playing field and on the same basis as those who live in “Strugglers’ Gully” who do not have access either to the sophisticated advisers or the disposable wealth needed to be able to enjoy the cleverly “conspired” and conceived schemes that in my view give an unfair advantage. 
I look forward to hearing what my friends from the National Party have to say about these issues when the bill gets to the select committee. It disappoints me that the most loquacious of the boys from the National Party Mr Foss—the mokopuna of Granny Smith and a possum in the headlights—is absent but no doubt he will find great fault with this bill which is very unwise of him. However I look forward to the bill coming to the select committee. No doubt there will be a considerable number of submissions—not the least of which will focus on how the Guinness Peat Group has captured its current status—and I look forward to hearing from a variety of other entities.