Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Oh I thank you Mr Speaker. It is a great pleasure to be standing on behalf of the Green Party and support it here at the third and final reading of the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2019–20 GST Offshore Supplier Registration and Remedial Matters) Bill. It is actually on some of these remedial matters that I want to draw the attention of the House because this bill does a number of extremely good things that I don't think have had enough coverage in the debates at each stage of the House that this bill has gone to. I just want to draw attention to those things because there are people out there who might not know about this who I think would want to know about this.So first of all university students and students of polytech who have got student loans—one of the things that this bill does scooped up in the innocuous title of remedial matters" is it actually makes it easier for people to manage their loan repayments because there was a technical confusion in the way that the student loan borrowers were set up to be eligible for interest-free loans where they ended up having to get charged interest. Then that got written off at the end of the year and you know—sort of one of those hopeless bureaucratic situations where you ended up being liable for something that you shouldn't be liable for and it made life a bit difficult. This bill cleans all of that up and makes all of that go away and makes life easier for tertiary students with loans. So that's a good thing.The second so-called remedial matter—and this given the attention that we have got as a Government as a country on domestic and sexual violence is actually in this tax bill. It cleans up an inequity where someone who ended up giving birth to a child as a result of sexual violence historically ended up being liable for child support payments as a result of the act against them which is completely iniquitous. This bill removes that. So it creates a child support exemption for victims of a sexual offence. That is a really good thing. Those kinds of issues don't often come through in tax law but here we are cleaning that up in this bill.Another thing that this bill does that I think is fantastic is it allows tax records to be held in Te Reo. So if you're Māori and you speak Te Reo and you want your interactions your tax records with the Government to be held in Te Reo they can now be as a result of this bill. Frankly the struggle that we have as a country to become a properly bilingual country—you know I think that's fantastic. One of those you know remedial matters—seems small but actually I think is certainly of symbolic importance to the people that it affects. So I like that.So those are three really significant things for students for victims of sexual and domestic violence for Māori. Together that adds up to quite a lot of people. This bill does something for those people makes their lives easier. It also of course deals with some part of the problem that we've got with the imbalance in the economy around investment properties. This is specifically around the ring-fencing of losses on properties. I know that the Opposition have put a lot of time and attention on this particular provision of the bill but given that they're also reluctant to allow for capital gains tax to be applied to investment properties or anything like that and given that they're constantly complaining at question time about GDP per capita and lost productivity and all of that kind of stuff—which is in part a function of the massive overinvestment that we have in the speculative part of the property market that diverts capital obviously to where it's easiest to make money and away from the productive parts of the economy—you start to see the inconsistency in this argument.So introducing loss ring-fencing I think is very significant. It actually helps to start to say "Look if you're going to be a property investor you actually start to need to treat that properly as an investment and to run it as a business and not just to use it as a tax write-off." To me that's not about revenue raised or anything like that although I know that the Opposition have raised points that they see this as some kind of tax grab. For me that's actually about rebalancing the economy away from the speculative part of the economy and towards the productive part of the economy. It's not going to do it by itself. It's an important part of the jigsaw puzzle but I think it's significant.Of course finally and related to that is this piece that was introduced during the committee stage which was making it compulsory for IRD numbers to be supplied on transfers of a main home. Again I think that's just one of those things where just for the integrity of the tax system applying one rule across all of those transactions whether it's for your main home or for an investment property or anything like that—it just kind of makes sense to do that and helps to maintain the integrity of the system.So I think that for all of the complaints about whether personal tax rates should be any different or whether we're being too hard on property investors or anything like this this bill actually does a number of things that make life easier for actually in many cases people who are amongst some of the more disadvantaged or excluded people in our society and communities in our society.So I know that the Opposition have said that there are things in this bill that they support but I just want to bring attention to those things because honestly if you're Māori and you think that you ought to be able to hold your business with the Government in your language you'd have to be wondering why the National Party were voting against that. If you were a student and you wanted your interactions with the Government to be less bureaucratic and smoother you would have to wonder "Why is the National Party voting against my ability to have a less bureaucratic interaction with the Government?" If you're a victim of sexual and domestic violence and you think that you shouldn't be liable for something that occurred as a result of your victimisation you'd have to wonder why it is that the National Party are voting against those things. If you're a young couple and you actually want to get into—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Can the member refrain from bringing me into the debate? "You"—when you say "you" or "your" you're speaking to me.Hon JAMES SHAW: Yeah no I understand Mr Speaker. I'm just trying to work out the—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Even if they are true.Hon JAMES SHAW: —alternative sentence construction that would enable me to—Dr Duncan Webb: "One"—"one". "If one is".Hon JAMES SHAW: If one—if one is—oh my God. We're really getting royal on this aren't we? If a person—Hon Andrew Little: "If someone".Hon JAMES SHAW: If someone—thank you—is getting started in life and wants to actually get to buy their own home and so on that someone would have to wonder why it was that the National Party was voting against their interests. If someone is a small-business person who is in the retail business and is selling books and small items one would have to wonder why it was that the National Party—the so-called party of business—was voting against small businesses in New Zealand and in favour of Amazon given how little tax Amazon pays in this country.So for all that we can argue about whether individual personal tax rates should change and any of those things this bill delivers for students for Māori for small businesses and for retailers for victims of domestic and sexual violence in New Zealand for people who are trying to get on to the property ladder and for people who are trying to rebalance the economy away from speculation and towards the productive part of the economy. That's what this bill does and the National Party are voting against all of those provisions because they can't stand the fact that tax rates this year will be the same as tax rates last year. That is mindboggling to me. It is absolutely astonishing. I think it is out of character for the National Party to be voting against the interests of all of those people.So on the other hand I think all of those things are good things. For those reasons and for many more I commend this bill to the House."