Twyford Phil: Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 08 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6349. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): It is a very good choice from a crowded field Mr Deputy Speaker. The thing that is most galling about the truncated select committee time frame for this bill is that the National Government has been denying that property speculation in the Auckland housing market is a problem—denying denying and denying it for the past 3 years. Now it brings this bill to the House—a tax bill. This is probably the last kind of bill that it should be rushing through the legislative process with a shortened select committee hearing time when there has been for at least the past 3 years intense public debate about the effect of property speculation in Auckland.It did not need to be this way. It did not need to be a truncated select committee hearing period. Tax bills of any kind deserve the right kind of scrutiny expert evidence officials giving considered advice to the select committee and the chance to really tease out the provisions of the bill because goodness knows this bill is fraught with problems. The problem that we have got with a shortened time period is that we will not actually do the much-needed job of improving the bill—going through it clause by clause putting it under the microscope and trying to improve it. If we do not do that there is every chance that we will be back in the House here at a later stage fixing those mistakes and rectifying the errors.In the papers supporting this debate Treasury makes it clear that it thinks this billwith the so-called brightline test requiring people who purchase and onsell a property within 2 years to pay income tax on the capital gain will raise about $5 million a year. It says that if there was not that avoidance—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I just warn the member that he needs to restrict his comments to the issue of the shortened time frame for debate before the select committee not the value of the bill or his view on the bill—solely on the shortened time frame. He seems to be wandering away at the moment.PHIL TWYFORD: If we consider what Treasury said which I was just referring to how on earth are we going to get the proper analysisin a truncated time frame—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Take your seat.PHIL TWYFORD: —from economists like Tony Alexander of the BNZ who I think said when this policy was announced when the bill was foreshadowed by the Government that he did not think that it would have any effect? How are we going to get people like Tony Alexander to come along and do the analysis and check the work that Treasury has been doing? John Shewan who is one of the most influential of the tax advisers the Government uses also said by the way that he did not think that this bill would have much effect at all on house prices and that it certainly would not deter speculators. That kind of technical expertise is exactly what we want to see at the select committee. If we do not have enough time at the select committee to go through this bill and give it the scrutiny that it deserves then the glaring errors and loopholes that are evident in this bill will never get fixed.As Grant Robertson said the legislation is going to be retrospective anyway. The handling of this bill has been so ham-fisted that the Government has made a commitment that the legislation is going to come into effect on 1 October and there is no shortage of commentators who have observed that the frenzy of speculative buying and selling in the Auckland housing market that we can see right now is a direct response to the fact that people are anticipating this bill coming in on 1 October. So there is an imperative now to see that the bill does pass into law but because of the Government’s ham-fisted management of the legislative process it is going to be retrospective. No one likes that.Why rush it now? If it is going to be retrospective you may as well take it through a proper select committee process air the issues and give the select committee the time to do its work. After all we have a unicameral Parliament—we do not have many of the other checks and balances. The select committee process is one of the few protections we have against the very inferior lawmaking that has been a characteristic of this Government’s time in office. We are constantly coming back to fix up the messes that Nick Smith and others have made with legislation that they have brought to this House yet here we are being asked to do it again. We are being asked to push a taxation bill that is actually a reasonably complex bill through and not give it the proper select committee scrutiny.This bill is hopeless and there are no shortage of commentators—not just members on this side of the House but experts—who have pointed out that there are real flaws with the bill. At its heart is a loophole that you could drive a bus through. The very intent of the bill is to stop or reduce property speculation but the fact is that people need to hold on to properties for only 2 years and 1 day in order to avoid the provisions of the bill. That needs to be properly scrutinised and we need to see the modelling on how many speculators will get caught by this bill. We want to see what the modelling is based on Treasury analysis about how many speculators will get caught and how much money will be brought in by this tax. If we do not have the time at the select committee we are never going to really unearth this.This bill is being rushed through. It was like so much of the legislation on housing that has been brought to the House by this Government. It has been cobbled together at the last minute because of the polls and because of the media. As a result of that shambolic political management we are being asked to support a reduced select committee process that undoubtedly will produce an inferior result. Thank you.