Watts Simon; Parker DavidSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Staying on the same topic and I don't mean to ruin the party but I must say you know the observation is that this cost of living payment has been a spectacular failure by this Government. I guess the reference that I want to quote as context before I get into my questions in regards to this payment is that the Treasury recommended caution with progressing such a significant policy in accelerated time frames as there are significant risks associated with designing this proposal at speed. And they went to on to say that This payment in terms of being broad-based is not going to be able to provide the benefit or support to those that are struggling the most."My questions to the Minister are quite simple—and we've traversed this throughout the Chamber that various people overseas have received this payment. We know British lawyers and dead people and people in China who have not lived in New Zealand for over 22 years have also got the payment. But my question to the Minister is quite simple: isn't this an embarrassing example of either poor execution from IRD or poor policy design by this Government? So I'd be interested in his perspective on that.Secondly in regards to that despite this payment being there—I remember the night when we stood here pushing and ramming through that legislation under urgency and raising these questions in the committee of the whole House stage and just you know getting the smile but no answers of substance. Despite promising to pay over 2 million Kiwis this payment around 800000 people have not received it. So my question quite simply to the Minister is: is this fair?The last question I want to ask is: does he stand by their statement that there is nothing to investigate when this policy as he's just quoted has led to over 1 percent of ineligible people receiving that $350 payment?Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Well responding to the member's assertion that the Treasury was saying that support would be better given to people who need it more in Government we believe that we have done the best by people on low incomes. We've increased benefits twice. We have also pegged benefit increases to the higher of inflation or wage growth so that they don't fall back as a proportion of working people's incomes which they have for many years in New Zealand. We've introduced the winter energy payment—superannuitants get that as well as all main beneficiary-class categories. So we thought that we were already doing the right thing by those people together with the transport-related initiatives that I've already traversed. So in our opinion we actually disagreed with the Opposition and sometimes with the Treasury as to whether there should be some targeted assistance that was short term in the low to middle income grouping people earning up to $70000 in the year ended 31 March 2022.Now we know that not everyone agrees with that prescription and that other people such as that member's party have preferred tax policies which would give huge tax cuts of many thousands of dollars a year and indeed to a highly paid CEO earning more than $200000 a year by reducing the tax rate on their incomes over $180000 from 39c to 33c. I also know that you would restore interest deductibility for landlords in a way that would benefit overseas landlords and effectively reduce the tax they pay in a way that puts the occasional payment under our cost of living payment well into context."