Mallard Trevor: Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill — First Reading Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMallard Trevor: Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill — First Reading Second Reading[Sitting date: 09 December 2008. Volume:651;Page:103. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I do not intend to spend much time dealing with that speech from Chris Tremain. It was the typical bumbling incompetence that we have seen from the National Party. I would like to refer to an earlier speech one which I found much more disappointing.As much as Sir Roger Douglas and I have over the years grown to disagree on many issues I have always thought that he was a person of principle. I thought he would have carefully examined this tax package but if he had done that he could not possibly vote for it. I will soon refer to Hone Harawira and the fact that I am getting a call because the Māori Party has chosen not to take one but the very people whom he says he cares about—those people who are on not much more than the minimum wage those people who have got kids—are the people whose taxes are increased as a result of this package. It is unfair. It is inequitable. At a time when some people get a $500-a-week tax cut there are other families that when the KiwiSaver changes and the tax changes are combined will get a $60 or $70 tax increase—when the packages are compared—in 2011. That Sir Roger Douglas who says he cares about marginal tax rates can vote for a package that puts them up by as much as that shocks me because it goes against everything that he has said over the years about fairness and equity.Hon Darren Hughes: Over 42 years!Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Over many many years.The other point that I want to make is that I also do not understand how the person who was the architect of the Norman Kirk superannuation scheme can vote to gut the closest thing we have had to it since then. I ask Dr Cullen to excuse me for saying this but I think the scheme that Sir Roger Douglas designed was better than KiwiSaver. I think it was a better scheme I think we should have kept it and I think the country would have been better off. It probably is not politically acceptable in current times but it certainly is one of the two best arrangements yet Sir Roger Douglas is taking his troops—like lackeys—into the lobby to support something that cuts New Zealanders’ savings that cuts investment of New Zealanders in New Zealand firms and for that matter overseas firms. That will mean that we own less and less of our own country and are subject more and more to balance of payment deficits as the profits of the overseas-owned companies are stripped out of New Zealand and we have nothing coming back in the opposite direction. So it is not fair.I say to Hone Harawira that I am gravely disappointed that the Māori Party has chosen not to stand up and say why it is voting for legislation that disproportionately hurts Māori. If one thinks of the families who are in the $20000 to $30000 bracket the families whose combined incomes are around $50000 and include kids one finds that they are disproportionately Māori families. And he is voting to put their tax up if they are in KiwiSaver by about $60 a week. What is mana-enhancing about a tax increase of $60 a week for a low-income family? What good does it do those people? How do they feed their kids? How do they get the clothes they need? How do they give their kids Christmas presents?Hon Dr Michael Cullen: They can own the foreshore and seabed.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: They might own the seabed and the foreshore as Dr Cullen says but if they cannot put food on the table they cannot buy the occasional treat for the kids they cannot occasionally buy them some new clothes or even some second-hand clothes what is mana-enhancing about that? It is absolutely shocking.I want to make a comment or two about KiwiSaver. Every single person who is in KiwiSaver—800000 New Zealanders—is worse off as a result of the legislation we are debating today. Bill English says that more people will go in the scheme. If he were telling the truth he would have budgeted for $1000 for every person who enters the scheme—the increase in numbers. Has he done that? No he has not. He knows that it is likely that as a result of this measure fewer people will join KiwiSaver or stay in KiwiSaver. It is a much less attractive scheme as a result of the changes that are proposed.There is another point. Some of us have been sick to death of John Key talking about the brain drain to Australia. Well one of the things that Dr Cullen negotiated with the Australians in an attempt to reverse that brain drain was portability of superannuation. It meant that people in Australia who were later on in their careers could come back to New Zealand and have a leadership role over here. He did a lot of work on it. It was not easy. He had to convince the Australians that the schemes were near compatible. To be fair “4 plus 4” plus the tax credit gets to 9 percent but the sources are different. Of course in Australia the 9 percent is paid by the employers. But the schemes were pretty close. That was the basis of the negotiations to have two-way portability. What is the story now? The National Government has walked away from it. National has walked away from something that makes it easier for high-achieving Kiwis to come home to work in New Zealand. I think that is disgraceful.What is worse is that National did not have the courtesy to pick up the phone and tell the Australians that it was doing it. National did not pick up the phone and say that it was walking away from the portability deal. Well the Australian Government might bea Government of a different hue; there is a Labor Government over there and there is a National Government over here. But in the past it did not matter. It did not stop Michael Cullen from talking to Peter Costello. It did not stop Helen Clark from picking up the phone and saying to John Howard: “Well we’re planning to do something that might affect you. What do you think?” or at least informing him of the direction we were taking. I think that it is a sad indictment on the National Government and its arrogance and that it shows a lack of coherence in its policy.I come back to the point that so often we have heard of the brain drain to Australia. We work hard to get something to reverse that especially for people who have some assets who are likely to have higher incomes and who are likely to make a leadership contribution in New Zealand and what does the National Government do? For reasons of ideology that none of us can work out it decides to cut it out. I ask Hone Harawira about the Māori who are currently in Australian superannuation schemes and want to spend some of their later years here at home with the whānau. What will they do? It will be a lot harder as a result of this measure for people to come back to New Zealand and for families to be together. I want to know whether that was explained to Mr Harawira. Will he come with me back to the National Distribution Union? He and I had a very good session with the Northern Distribution Union. He made a pile of commitments. He did not commit to put up the taxes of nearly everyone in that room. He did not commit to cut their KiwiSaver to cut their ability to save a bit for their old age. I say to him that they treated him with respect they treated him as someone who had integrity and he is failing them now.