Carter DavidRt Hon DAVID CARTER (National): I also rise to make a very brief call in support of the Taxation (Neutralising Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Bill. Can I start by commenting on the previous speaker Fletcher Tabuteau and saying that the longer you spend in the House the more interesting it gets to know your colleagues—be they from another party. Here is a man who must lead a very dull life indeed if he gets excited by this legislation. He was the only one around the Finance and Expenditure Committee—be it Labour; be it National—that got excited by the legislation. But whatever turns you on Fletcher Tabuteau! If you're excited by this legislation then I feel a little sorry for you.Can I say that unlike the chair of the committee Michael Wood—who I must say did a very good job in chairing it—I don't need 10 minutes to explain National's position on this legislation. But can I also for the point of view of protecting Labour's image in this case note that this is not a new tax. For a Government that campaigned throughout the campaign on no new taxes and has now introduced what I think is up to seven this is not a new tax.Fletcher Tabuteau was quite right in suggesting that this was very good work done by the former National-led Government and in fact the history of this legislation is quite interesting. It goes back to sort of 2011-12 when most of the developed world realised there was a real trouble a real problem with multinationals managing the tax system to their advantage and in fact not paying fair tax in any country in which they operated. Upon recognition of the problem the OECD was charged with doing some very good work which concluded at the end of 2015. In response to that in 2016 the then National-led Government introduces this legislation and takes it through into the House and to the select committee and of course with the change of Government it's now the role of the Labour - New Zealand First Government to complete this process.The tax legislation that's before the House tonight is by nature very complex and it has to be. This issue is one where some very sharp tax lawyers work for the multinationals. They spend their time living and breathing and finding ways to minimise their tax burdens. The most common one which has been mentioned in the debate now is by artificially high interest rates being charged by the parent multinational to the subsidiary operating in a country like New Zealand. Another one that we learnt about was of course the ability for them to structure a management system or a management fee overcharge the New Zealand operation and minimise the operation in New Zealand.What we want—and it's bipartisan on this issue—is that those companies should be able to operate in a country like New Zealand but we collectively want them to pay fair tax on the profits that they make in this country.There was talk about quite an important change which we made really at the instigation—from memory—in the discussion from Dr Deborah Russell. The IRD wanted the ability to go back seven years and suddenly start an investigation into a multinational. We did not think that was fair. We think there should be an alert from the IRD to the particular multinational of an issue within a four-year time frame and that that may then drift on for a further three years but it was unreasonable for us to suddenly have IRD raising it in issue after seven years.This is good legislation. It has been taken through in a very cooperative collegial fashion by the Finance and Expenditure Committee. It is complicated. I don't expect that it was easy even for the committee members to get their heads around it without the help of a very good independent adviser Therese Turner who gave us good advice. I think the committee has made good progress in bringing it back to the House this evening. I commend this legislation to the House.