Twyford PhilHon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I'm surprised—but I shouldn't be surprised—that a National Opposition who are so opposed to taxation generally they clearly haven't heard the quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr that taxes are the price we pay for civilisation" and so addicted are they to the cheap easy shots of Opposition that they're prepared to ignore the fundamentals of good policy. How can we have a tax system that doesn't tax people equally consistently fairly and transparently?The National Party are very happy for Uber to have a tax advantage over the taxis it's competing against. They're happy for digital platforms like Airbnb to have a tax advantage over hotels and motels. Well how can that be right? How can that be fair? Why should it matter how you are selling your services how you're connecting with your customers—why should that be the basis of a tax advantage? But that's what the National Opposition are arguing for and it's a very sad commentary that the state of the Opposition is such that they're willing to get up in the House and try to defend the indefensible. Apparently for them the level playing field doesn't matter anymore.The intent of this very good omnibus tax bill is to level the playing field to treat everyone equally regardless of the technology or the platform they use to conduct their business. It does two main things in this respect. It puts in place an information-reporting and exchange framework based on the very good work done by the OECD in this area designed to make the digital economy visible to tax authorities. And secondly of course what it does is it collects GST from people doing their business through digital platforms.Why is that important? Of course because as other speakers have said—and David Clark most recently—fairness and consistency are critical to the legitimacy that any tax system relies on to be effective. But there's another important reason for doing this and that is that in recent years nation States around the world have found their tax base so badly undermined by both transnational capital and the global digital economy their tax base has been gutted in many cases and this is not a fantasy it's not scaremongering. If anybody needs evidence they only need to look as far as what the likes of Google and Facebook have done to the New Zealand media market. They have gutted it and put the existence and the future viability of our news media in New Zealand in peril because they have sucked hundreds of millions of dollars a year in advertising revenue out of the New Zealand market. It's not the same thing as digital platforms like Uber like Airbnb but it is an example of how radically and quickly the digital economy can transform the operations of our tax system and of our economy. That alone should be enough to convince the other side of the House that it is important as a matter of principle to bring the digital economy fairly and squarely into the formal economy and into our tax system.I want to say a couple of things about two of my other favourite parts of this bill. One of them is the provisions in the bill which exempt climate-friendly transport from the provisions and the workings of the fringe benefit tax. The fringe benefit tax exemption is already enshrined in legislation—it provides an exemption for parking that is provided for employees at work. That makes no sense in the context of one of the most important changes we have to drive in our economy and that is that we have to decarbonise the transport system. So while the tax system is providing a subsidy for people who drive to work we are undermining everything else that we're trying to do to decarbonise the light vehicle fleet to encourage mode shift in the transport system so that there's more walking cycling more micro-mobility in our cities more use of investment in public transport including rapid transit in our major centres. We're shooting ourselves in the foot if we continue to subsidise the private motor car in that regard. I want to acknowledge the advocacy over many years on this issue by Julie Anne Genter my former colleague as Associate Minister of Transport. She's been on about this for a very long time and Labour was very happy in the committee stages to bring a Supplementary Order Paper that extended the fringe benefit tax exemption beyond just public transport and the operations of the Total Mobility service—for people with disability access—to a range of other forms of mobility including bicycles; e-bikes of course; scooters; e-scooters; and micro-mobility sharing services that in a short period of time have become a staple for urban commuters in many New Zealand cities. So what this will do is it will act as an incentive it will nudge the behaviour change that we need by workers and their employers to use climate-friendly travel to get to and from work. It's good from my point of view to see Labour and the Greens working very nicely together on promoting the agenda of climate-friendly transport.Finally just let me say very quickly that I think that the extension of the exemption in perpetuity for build-to-rent is another highlight of this bill for me. We need more tenure-secure high-quality rental housing in this country. The build-to-rent sector has enormous promise as many other speakers have said and what this bill does by extending the same exemption from the interest limitation rules that applies to new builds in order to stimulate housing supply to give that in perpetuity to the build-to-rent sector is a fantastic move. I commend this bill to the House."