Nash StuartHon STUART NASH (Minister of Revenue): Let me start off by dealing with the penalties issue—well I will deal with the penalties issue. First and foremost to the last member Judith Collins who I have the utmost respect for and who did some fantastic work in this area I acknowledge the fact that she went to the OECD and signed up to this and set New Zealand on the path to actually enhancing the integrity of our tax system which is what we all want. It's a little bit rich for her to share concerns over certain obligations to which she signed New Zealand up for but one thing I will say to her and Mr Butler—Hon Judith Collins: The Minister started so well and let himself down.Hon STUART NASH: Ha ha! I absolutely trust the Inland Revenue Department first of all—[interruption]—to prosecute under the appropriate law Mr Butler; so that will happen. There is no doubt about that. The second thing is that we know that Inland Revenue operates with huge integrity—we know that. We also know—and I can give you my utmost assurance—that Inland Revenue is not going to go after" a large organisation or an individual just because they're high profile or a tall poppy. They just haven't got the time or the resources or the inclination let alone this is not how they operate. They will only "go after" someone if they believe they have broken the law—and so they should—which is what this legislation is about.Now talking about clauses 54 and 55 well it's a little irrelevant because what we actually did is we took criminal charges out of the bill. So they've been removed. Criminal penalties don't apply anymore; so it was not necessary to amend these penalties.The other thing I would say to the Hon Judith Collins is that we're talking about failure to provide information OK? So someone is going to get prosecuted if they fail to provide information that the Inland Revenue has requested but the penalties that we're talking about in the $100000-range only apply to large multinational groups with global revenues of more than €750 million. So the former Minister the Hon Judith Collins talked about lawyers and accountants; well if you're lucky enough to have a client with global revenues of over €750 million then the practice is probably doing really well and you're probably highly experienced and incredibly competent in a certain area of law. So we don't think that in this context a civil penalty of up to $100000 is excessive at all. In fact you could mount an argument that it should perhaps be higher but we won't go there. So let me deal with this.The second one is that civil penalties were introduced because we consider the existing penalty of $4000—$4000—is unlikely to be adequate when applied to failures of large multinationals to cooperate by providing information that the Inland Revenue has requested. So this is a big area. I hope I've dealt with those concerns with regard to penalties and with regard to clauses that have been taken out and with regard to the scale of the penalty but also with regard to whom Inland Revenue may seek to prosecute. I just want to reiterate: Inland Revenue is not going to go after someone if they don't think there is a very good case. Thank you very much."