Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Mr Chair. Can I acknowledge the excellent contribution from my colleague Brett Hudson. I think his questions are very good questions and I'm sure that the Minister in the chair will want to answer those. But I want to just speak on this bill because this is a bill that I started—and the Minister's acknowledged that before so it's not a big thing. But it's not as though it was all my work. Revenue worked so hard to make this all happen but also I signed us up as a country at the OECD to the multilateral arrangements around tax and information collection that this bill is part of.It addresses a situation in Part 2 of the bill very much around the fact that we now have big multinationals in the world who are in many ways much bigger much more powerful and far better-resourced than some countries including ours. Those particular multinationals do shift their profits from one country to the other but also they use their losses or their cost of business to put them in tax advantageous places. As was explained to me at the OECD some of these big multinationals do in fact have entirely massive tax departments and as a tax lawyer I found that very interesting. But also they have these big tax departments which are very much focused as part of their business on shifting the losses and the profits depending on where they can pay the least tax.Now that works OK for them and it works OK for their shareholders. But it does not work OK at all for the rest of the world that does not get to do that. By the way the rest of the world's paying for the roads and the schools and the law and order and all the things that help make places safe for people to undertake business in.So I am someone who is very pro - this bill. I know that our party absolutely supports it because we agreed to it before when we were in Government and started it. But I am also someone who thinks that we need to sometimes dial back our enthusiasm for all things collected internationally and shared because we also need to be aware that with the greatest and best of intentions we can in fact empower a group as professional and responsible as our Inland Revenue Department people are—and I have great confidence in them having been their Minister—but also understanding that what actually helps the Inland Revenue Department to remain a very well-respected department and well-thought-of department and trusted department is that they do not just have carte blanche to go and do anything that they particularly want to do. They have to keep to the law.So I am just a little bit concerned along with my colleagues around the penalties and particularly when there are multinationals that New Zealanders may be involved in in some way: law firms accountants other professionals or even shareholders or whatever and people who are directors who are going to under this legislation bear—I think in some ways—a disproportionate responsibility for the actions of others. One might say that Well that's their fault for being involved in these businesses." But actually as a law professional we also have a code of ethics that requires us to—as they say people take the first cab off the rank. That means that law firms do not get the luxury of saying to a client or someone presenting as a client "I don't like you much so I'm not going to act for you."So I think we need to think about that and I think the questions raised by my colleague Brett Hudson are incredibly valid. We do not want to have a situation where rushing to agree with everything that we've signed up to before—rushing to agree to all the things that we share in terms of the intentions—we actually create a bigger problem a little bit further down the track.So I think it is important: the issues raised by the law firm Russell McVeagh and others around this—that we don't actually penalise our law professionals or our tax professionals or others who are working in these areas quite legitimately—that we don't penalise them because of what's being done overseas where they have no control of it. That's the thing with the law profession or the accountancy profession: you have your obligations you certainly have your code of ethics and what that doesn't always allow you to do is to actually delve into all of the things that are going on elsewhere.We need to be very careful that we don't end with a situation where the penalty for members of a large multinational group failing to provide information under clause 53 of the bill becomes one that actually means that our very competent lawyers and other professionals have to say to overseas companies or multinationals—or even New Zealand companies—"I'm actually sorry. We can't act for you. We can't do anything for you. We can't be part of this organisation. We can't be a director. We can't do whatever it is that we'd normally be able to do because the penalties that could be imposed on us for actions over which we have no control are so onerous that actually we just can't do it." I think that actually creates quite a bit of a conflict for anybody who is in one of those professions around their ethical obligation to take on clients who turn up seeking assistance. So we just need to get some clarification from the Minister as to how that will in fact be undertaken.I think we've also seen some pretty chilling—and I want to actually just raise this as an issue because I think it's a very good point. We've seen in the United States recently—and I don't want to go into any details of people's court cases—where some lawyers have been specifically targeted around their actions or actually even the actions of their clients. That I think has a chilling effect and should have a chilling effect on all lawyers and professionals who are working in these very often very difficult ethical areas in the liberal democracies of which we form a part. I'm not saying that what happens in America necessarily affects us but I certainly see that there is a certain culture of going after if I can use that colloquial term people connected to those in high places or those who are seen as being a legitimate target. So I really want to hear a bit more from the Minister about this. I'm sure he'll give us some good assurances.But it's the sort of thing where I think that it's good for Parliament to question just how this law will in fact or could in fact—a very legitimate profession and one that we should actually protect ourselves because it goes to the rule of law. When we can't have lawyers and other professionals whose job and career and ethical obligations are around the protection of rights—if they cannot continue with their work free of fear that they will suddenly end up penalised for something they have no knowledge of and no control over—then we are going down a very very slippery path.I don't want that to happen. I know it has never been the intention of this Parliament but what I also know as an experienced lawyer is that the intention of Parliament is not necessarily what matters; it is the actions of Parliament that matter and it's what the law itself says. So I would like to hear from the Minister in the chair Stuart Nash—and I'm sure he'll want to address this—just to make sure what it is that we are talking about how this will operate and how professionals in this very important area will in fact be protected from undue bullying or pursuit by revenue and the Inland Revenue Department investigators."