Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well it's been a long night and actually a couple of long days debating COVID bills under urgency. I think I just want to first of all acknowledge the Minister in the chair tonight for standing up and being actively engaged in the debate. I think it's very very important particularly as this bill is being passed under urgency.I am very concerned that Labour members in the main—and there are a number of them sat in the House tonight that made absolutely no contribution to a bill that's not going to a select committee; there were very very few contributions. And I think not only does it disrespect this Parliament that a bill that is going to be rammed through under urgency in the case of one day—or in fact a matter of a few hours—only by exception did any Labour backbenchers stand up and make a contribution to this debate and I think that's appalling especially when you understand the importance of this bill. We have got thousands of business owners who are just wanting clarity they want to understand what the process is they want to understand what the new rules are and yet the members did not feel beholden to stand up and support the Minister in this bill. Of course this bill was going to be passed by the Government because it has an absolute majority but the assumption that you do not have to defend it you do not have to engage in that debate I think is appalling I think it's really disappointing I think it will reflect badly on the party and I just make that comment.And I do acknowledge that the Speaker of the House has made certain comments about the passage of these bills.SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member may not bring me into the debate.ANDREW BAYLY: OK. So with that of course this bill's going to pass through tonight with no select committee process no input from any parties independent of this Parliament. I think the main aspect that the Government is trying behind this bill is it's dealing with the issue of poverty and increasing the Working for Families components and there are a whole stack of components that will be improved and will be adjusted. And that will occur. That is a process that always occurs. It always gets triggered when the Consumers Price Index accumulative impact is greater than 5 percent. There is nothing special in this part of the bill even though that was what the Government members chose to focus on.The only real difference was the $5 per child increase. I think the argument we've heard tonight is that this inflation index adjustment of certain benefits is going to be a game-changer in terms of lifting children out of poverty. And we had this disconnect between the Minister who in his original speech claimed that 6000 children would be lifted out of poverty and then subsequently all the members of the House chose in their very short contributions—the maximum being 1 minute 30—to focus on a figure of 3000. They couldn't even get the story around the impact of the improvement to reducing poverty. But the reality is I find the argument spurious that as a result of doing a historical readjustment—or doing an adjustment taking into account historical increases in inflation a $5 per child increase is going to lead to any substantive change to child poverty in New Zealand I think defies logic.I think as the Hon Louise Upston said during her contribution during the debate the Prime Minister claimed when she first became Prime Minister that she would reduce child poverty by 100000. The real number's that about 1500 children have been lifted out of poverty even with all the benefit increases that have occurred over time. I think the Government members have significantly over-egged that.But the main part of this bill as the Speaker will know is about putting in place new COVID arrangements. This is an enabling piece of legislation and it will bring about changes. As I've repeatedly said in the House we are moving to a new traffic light system—actually in seven days' time and one hour and five minutes. In seven days' time the new traffic system will be in place and the enabling piece of legislation that has been rammed through tonight I just have to question why has it taken so long since the initial announcement on 22 October—over a month ago when the Government announced it was moving to the change the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance made it clear we were moving to a new arrangement. Why has it taken to the second to last day of the sitting of this House because tomorrow is the last day before these rules will have to come into force and the detail about what the rules will mean will have to be announced and put into place? Why the delay?That was a perennial question through all the debate tonight and this afternoon: why was this left to the last and why have we had to do this under urgency? I think for the many thousands of people out there hurting across all of New Zealand—many of them facing the prospect of losing their businesses many of them have geared themselves up mortgaged themselves to the hilt many of them will be of older age and will be thinking How am I ever going to be able to repay this debt to the bank?" and possibly and probably facing the prospect of having to work well into their late 60s and early 70s to be able to even get to a stage where they have enough financial horsepower to have even a half-decent level of retirement.I find that callous. I find it callous that the Government cannot give that certainty cannot give that clarity at this late stage. Even in the rules in this bill it is unclear. There are rules—the criteria are going to be determined by the Commissioner of Inland Revenue. It was a question we asked of the Minister. We didn't actually get a response on it. Why should the commissioner be determining the criteria? We thought it was important that the Government and the executive determine that but the bill clearly states that the commissioner should be involved in that.There's a whole stack of other things that really we couldn't understand. There was this reference to people in the new arrangements. Up to now the resurgence payment has been focused on businesses as has the wage subsidy. Payments have been paid to businesses. For some reason this legislation talks about making payment to people. It also used new terminology of "grant". It was unclear what that meant. It was a question we put to the Minister tonight. Does that suppose that we're going to move to a different payment system to business owners or to people or organisations? And what is the nature of the grant? Obviously a grant you can't get back. Well we assume you can't seek repayment from people that you're going to make the payments to but again the language is unclear. There were just so many questions like that which I think if we'd had had the time to have a select committee we could have worked our way through that and actually people would have had the knowledge that it had had proper scrutiny.We've literally passed this bill—I think we started it about 4 o'clock from rough memory. We're now closing in on it at about 11 o'clock. That is not long given that we had a dinner break in amongst that. I think it's a shameful process. I'm disappointed on behalf of the Parliament and what it means for many people out in New Zealand who will be facing a bleak Christmas because in January they've got to pay provisional tax in February they've got to pay terminal tax. Many of them will be thinking "Where do I get that money? And am I assured that I'm going to have continued support for my business?" In seven days' time basically many parts of New Zealand will be at red but that does not mean that they can fully operate. They'll be operating under restricted conditions. We need and should and could have provided much more certainty and this bill does not deliver that."