Watts SimonSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Mr Chair thank you very much for the opportunity to talk at this committee stage of the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2021-22 GST and Remedial Matters) Bill. I was actually hoping—listening to that last contribution it sounded like a party that were opposing this legislation but no they're going to be abstaining. So what that says is a vote for the Greens is a vote to sit on the fence and that is completely opposite. But I want to talk about Part 1 Annual rates of income tax" because that's what we're here to talk about. I think listening to the Minister's contribution just before the Hon David Parker he gave us a bit of a lecture in terms of how lucky—how lucky—Kiwis are to live in a country that were 24th on the list in terms of taxation like some sort of—you know the people sitting at home are going "Jeez I'm lucky to be getting more tax out of my hard-earned income that I do and contribute to this country every day." And that's sort of what we heard from that. What wasn't recognised is that what we've seen and what we're seeing as part of this bill is an increase in taxation on hard-working Kiwis and the opportunity really in terms of what's available for this Government in terms of the huge amount of tax take that they are going to be taking in the next three to five years. There's actually the ability to spread that benefit back to Kiwis and I guess that the ideological difference between National and Labour primarily is that National trusts individuals to spend their own money better than this Government. And that is key and a fundamental ideological difference. That's why National opposes this bill particularly because all it does is it increases the amount of taxes. Yeah don't get me wrong. There's some remedial actions around GST etc. that you know is part impartial and partly is sensible. But the key elements of this the three elements that make up this bill are really around increasing taxes. And you can't take your way out of a deficit right? You can't take your way out of a hole and you can't expect that this is going to create more economic value and more economic benefit for this country. Actually our view is it's going to do the complete opposite. So look the annual rate element I guess we've talked and we will talk a lot more about some of our changes that we want to see made in this bill. But the 39c tax rate is one element that's going to be coming in in terms of Part 1; we are obviously strongly opposed to this. We see that that is not going to create the benefit that this country needs. Actually you know as a result I think what we're really going to see is just a burgeoning of the benefits for tax accountants out there and other compliance matters—of people just getting their way out of it. And you know that's just a complete waste of time. There's been a lot of commentary from members including those that presented at the select committee that the payback on that isn't going to be there. And you know that's a great shame. But I guess in terms of tax rates National has proposed a number of pragmatic solutions in terms of what we would do differently around the way in which people are taxed and right at its heart we believe that the rate at which people are taxed should take into account the impact of inflation and haven't we seen the impact of inflation and Kiwi households have seen the impact of inflation in the past year. And I think what this shows is a Government and a Minister that are out of touch with hard-working Kiwis out there in New Zealand at the moment. They're seeing a Government that's simply saying "Look the only solution that we see for you is to increase taxes." and what people out there I think in hard-working Kiwiland are saying is this "Look we're doing it tough. Times are tough. Costs are going up across the board." And you know at the end of the day what they are looking for is a little bit of relief to allow them to do what Kiwis want to do and that's you know live aspirational lives in this country. And I think this bill and particularly Part 1 "Annual rates of income tax" is going against it. So look overall National will be opposing this bill. We don't believe that as I said it's going to make any significant difference; actually quite the contrary and we will look to hear a little bit more about that soon."