Foss Craig: Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second Reading 
Foss Craig: Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:664;Page:12183] 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 I acknowledge previous speakers. I thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee for its participation in the work done on the Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill before us now. It has changed a bit since it arrived at our committee and I congratulate Minister Dunne in particular but also Minister English and Minister Power because this bill is part of the negotiations on a single economic market with Australia. They are all involved in these discussions and reaching agreement. As Minister Dunne just noted some changes are still to happen on the Australian side but the goodwill and good faith are there and they will be facilitated. 
I also thank the officials of our committee and the Inland Revenue Department for their advice and particularly our specialist tax adviser Therese Turner. Almost by default we have an independent drafting specialist adviser Mr David McLay in this instance for this tax bill. Of course I thank members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. The Hon David Cunliffe is quite right: the committee worked very well together on this bill and saw what it needed to do to make some changes and amendments to the bill that came before us. 
I will not be making a long speech but I raise a couple of points in the bill that we will be addressing in the Committee stage. Of interest to submitters—I think there were about 18 of them—were the binding rulings around which there was a fair bit of discussion; solid representation from the professional sector; and particularly the branch equivalent tax account debit changes. There were some quite robust submissions on those issues. I think the committee as a whole learnt a fair bit about that. We have made substantive changes to what was originally proposed in the bill that came to the committee. Generally we have found pretty good common-sense solutions which follow intent and acknowledge original notice given to the proposed changes. 
Another item that had discussion was the remedial amendments to KiwiSaver. As policy as large as KiwiSaver pans out some changes need to come on the way through. But particularly in respect of the treatment for under-18s in KiwiSaver there were some quite strong allegations of children being signed up without necessary knowledge of their parents. Suddenly an 18-year-old is making a decision for the rest of his or her life to opt into KiwiSaver and we thought that was unfair so we had some good advice on that. 
I agreed with most of what the previous speaker the Hon David Cunliffe said until he got to his context part. We reject totally his allegations of a broken promise in and around superannuation but we will save that for another day. I will leave the House with one point: when the Government is borrowing about $14 billion and paying something like 5.5 percent for it and it has financial assets on the other side achieving something like 4 percent for it well there is 1.5 percent worth of quite substantial loss to the taxpayer. Simply trying to keep one organisation going while funding another one is like having a $400000 mortgage and a $200000 savings scheme. One gives away the spread both ways but at the end of the day the taxpayer is the loser. 
I look forward to the Committee stage of this bill. I commend the bill to the House.