Foster AndyANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thank you Madam Speaker. Look I rise for New Zealand First to support this bill. Actually it was an interesting read. A lot of people might see it as a dry read but I thought it was actually quite interesting and also to see how it fits into the—[Interruption] The Minister's feeling offended but it was also very interesting to reflect both on the Minister's speech and the Hon Deborah Russell's speech just on where this fits in the legislative framework but also the tax framework in terms of legitimising the tax regime.And basically it's a regular housekeeping bill. As an omnibus bill it amends some 10 Acts. And there's actually a lot in there. And the first part of that is it embeds the tax rates for the 2024-2025 tax year. And we had the Hon Julie Anne Genter complaining about those tax rates and saying It's only $2. It's only $20."—whatever it might be—"Those things matter." and talking about the incredible pressure on public services. But I'd like you to look later on in the bill. There's some reference to the exempt employee share schemes. What's done there is that not only is this a scheme that supports startups—it incentivises employees and says to employees they're part of and it gives a sense of ownership in those start-ups—but what it also does is it changes the dollar numbers there. It says that inflation's happened since 2018 the last time that those numbers were set in place and it moves those up. And that's a good thing.I guess the question I would say is: why don't we do that every year? Why do we have to legislate on the odd occasion when we get round to it? Why do we legislate to change those numbers? And then you go back to the argument that Julie Anne Genter was having. That is: how long is it since the tax thresholds will move for income tax? It's not five or six years; it's 14 years. And as a matter of course—as a matter of course—those numbers should have been changed year after year. They should be automatically changed because otherwise the Government is putting its hand deeper and deeper into people's pockets because the amount of money they have got left the value of that money they've got left goes down and down and down with inflation. So I think it's a very important response to those issues there. And of course on this side of the House we're saying to people they should be rewarded for their hard work not the Government be rewarded for the hard work of other people all the time.The second thing I wanted to mention is that also this bill gives us a much better way of responding to emergencies. And of course during an emergency the last thing if you are under pressure—and I look at Catherine Wedd over there at the areas that were affected by the cyclone damage—if you're under pressure or your business is under pressure the last thing you want to do is say "Well I'm not quite sure where I'm going to be at. I've got to wait for the Government to pass some legislation to give me some certainty that maybe I'm not going to be in quite as dire a situation from the tax system on top of the damage being done by the weather or by the earthquake or whatever it might be." So this gives the ability for Order in Council to be able to respond to those kind of emergencies. And that makes absolute sense.And it's good to hear the Hon Dr Deborah Russell also saying that work was being done by the last Government. And it kind of makes sense because we've had a rather large number of very large emergencies over the last what 15 years or so since the Canterbury earthquakes. So that's a very common-sense response as most of this bill—or all of this bill—is.And the other one I wanted just to mention is just the response to the Crypto-asset Reporting Framework which is an international framework as the Minister said. So the idea here is it just simply brings us in line with all of our OECD partners before this regime is to be brought into place which is going to be in 2026-27 That is a very sensible move and this is just reflective of this bill as a whole a sensible common-sense bill. It might be a bit dry. There'll be a lot of work to be done in looking through this. But I think the other thing to say is there'll be some real benefit in going through the process with submitters who know things about tax and those sorts of issues that will provide a lot of value I'm sure to the process. I commend this bill to the House."