Russell DeborahHon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): So much to say; so little time. It's a little hard to know where to start with that speech from the Minister of Revenue but where I want to start is with the idea that in actual fact this bill repealing the Taxation Principles Reporting Act does away with an incredibly valuable piece of information that we need in New Zealand's democracy.I want to put the idea out there that as Mr Watts said this bill does not collect more tax. It does not change how our tax is calculated in any way. But what the Taxation Principles Reporting Act does is it gives us information about our tax system. It tells us how well our tax system is doing. Now that's incredibly important in a democracy. Every three years we vote—that's part of our democracy. We spend time lobbying the Government we spend time making presentations to select committees we spend time on petitions and on demonstrations we engage in our governance on all sorts of levels. That's our democracy. It's a complex and multifaceted beast.But one thing that makes our democracy function better is information so that people have a good understanding of the issues in play. Now here's the problem: tax makes up half the Budget. It's an incredibly important part of our annual Budget process. It's something that people need to understand. It's something that people need to have good information about. Yet most people find it quite mysterious and it's actually hard to find information about our tax system.Now Mr Watts asserted that this was redundant reporting suggesting that we could get all the information that the Taxation Principles Reporting Act would give us elsewhere. But I'm going to challenge him on that during the committee stage of the debate to find out where else we could get this information.But I also want to talk about two other things that that Mr Watts said. He said that New Zealand has a broad based - low-rate tax system. It certainly has a low-rate tax system. Tax as a proportion of GDP is lower than OECD averages but it does not have a broad-based system. It has big gaps in our tax system and that's something we do need to address.There was something else that he asserted. He asserted that what the Taxation Principles Reporting Act does was ask Inland Revenue to report against principles that had been and I quote him Tax principles that it dreamed up."—tax principles that were just made up out of nowhere. That's a canard. It's just completely false. These tax principles have a long long history and I've brought to the House my trusty copy of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations from 1776—my well-thumbed and well-read copy of this really important work. Sitting in this incredibly important early work of economics and political theory are what are referred to as the four canons of taxation. So now we refer to them as the four main principles of taxation and what they give us is how to assess a tax system.Way back in 1776 Adam Smith set out four principles of taxation: fairness certainty convenience efficiency. Since then other principles have been added but they are widely agreed. They are widely discussed and widely agreed amongst the tax community. There may be some nuance there may be some detail but to assert that they are dreamed up out of nowhere is absolutely ridiculous. We do have well-established tax principles. We can use them to judge the effectiveness of our tax system and this is exactly what the Taxation Principles Reporting Act was in place to do to enable us to have good information so that we could make good judgments about our tax system. This throwaway Government is going to throw away this incredibly useful piece of information. What a way to end the year. I do not commend this bill."