O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much Madam Chair. Seeing we're heading towards the dinner break and the speaker who's just taken his seat Andrew Bayly was talking about PIEs I'm feeling mildly esurient now. However I think he was discussing something far more complicated than mince and cheese.I'm obviously going to confine my discussion to Part 3 of this Taxation (Annual Rates for 2018-19 Modernising Tax Administration and Remedial Matters) Bill in particular to address what are exclusions for Housing New Zealand. I do not presume to be any expert in tax to the degree that the Minister of Revenue and his officials can be very relaxed about my contribution and any insight therein.Fundamentally tax rules have been designed particularly around land tainting as I understand it to make sure that as people are looking to sell their properties so mainly those who are working in development can in effect—well have sought to prevent if you will arranging one's financial arrangements in such a way that if you were to dispose or subdivide a piece of land make improvements there's always been an attempt in the past to separate that out so that you could in effect avoid tax obligations. There have been changes to tighten that up to make sure that actually if someone is rearranging through trusts through the erection of extra dwellings or so forth even if it's done by association a person or developer is still required to pay the rightful amount of tax. I'm more than happy for the Minister to correct me. In fact it would be fantastic if the Minister takes a call and educates this member on the 101 of land tainting if he so chooses.What this particular bill is seeking to do in this particular section is to allow an exception for Housing New Zealand so that they are able to get on with the process of building. As we see particularly in clause 109—if I have it right here in front of me; yeah in 109—as it says quite specifically in new section CB 15D there's an exclusion to not apply to [the] Housing New Zealand Corporation" and importantly as well "a company in the same wholly-owned group of companies". So this is an exception from the rules for Housing New Zealand. As I understand things it's an opportunity therefore for Housing New Zealand to get on with its business which is to build more houses. I know on this side of the House we do remain disappointed at the progress that is being made around housing. Obviously there's the question around KiwiBuild but I think the intention of exclusion here is a prudent one. If this enables Housing New Zealand to be more effective that's a positive. Obviously if it enables it to be more effective prudent and right when it comes to its tax to the Crown that is an excellent thing. So I think overall it's a good provision. I don't think from this side of the Chamber there are any major concerns.We would certainly encourage after some committee stages we've had that with the complexity of some of these clauses they be triple-checked. We had a situation two weeks ago where a commencement clause had some effectively wrong numbers; certain cross-references were not correct. When I look at CB 15D(1) it's referencing one two three—at least four five other references. It's a very minor point Minister; you'll have excellent officials but to make sure that they run through and make that correct. We don't need as we did two weeks ago to return to the House and reopen a committee stage to make sure one thing is inserted.Fundamentally where we sit here is that there's a whole way that land developers are able to arrange or have been able to arrange their affairs to obviously maximise I suppose their profit and minimise where they can their tax payments. There has long been concerns about these; there have been a number of changes that have been brought to this House and this particular one as I say and from the social housing perspective—what enables Housing New Zealand to get on with its job effectively to look after New Zealanders is a positive thing as I say. I'm very keen to make sure that this does actually bring about some better progress than we have seen to date in the building of homes. But Minister to the extent that that little contribution in this rather large bill again helps those Kiwis most in need we're happy to support that aspect on this side of the Chamber."