Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm going to return to that topic in a sec but I must admit the Minister's sounding like the Minister of Education did last week when she started to talk about proportionality which was a very confusing sort of session if anyone had been following question time last week. When the Minister in the chair David Parker says Look hey the tax percentage take compared to GDP hasn't increased much." the reality is that GDP the gross measure of GDP has increased quite significantly in New Zealand. It was about $330 billion and now it's about $370-375 billion. Of course a lot of that is driven not from the actions of Government—in fact I'd have to say in many cases in spite of the Government even though this current Government has laboured businesses with we've estimated about $3.5 billion of additional costs because they just love socking it to businesses in New Zealand. But even though they've been socking it to New Zealand businesses none the less in the spirit of entrepreneurship New Zealand businesses have grown and that's why the GDP has grown quite significantly a major portion of that increase.So on one side of the coin we've got an economy that has grown partly through inflation but mainly through the efforts of people working in businesses—not only the owners; all their staff all that good stuff. Then at the other level we've got the tax take and what I take from the Minister is "Hey look as long as you keep that in balance that's OK." The issue is that would be OK (a) if you're spending on the right sort of stuff—and as I said before we've had that slush fund during the COVID period. But secondly what we've seen is just money going into other projects that obviously offer little benefit and at the same time we've been running quite significant deficits.So the issue around the tax position for New Zealanders is: how do we grow the economy? How do we support middle-income families? That is why it always comes back to: what is the personal tax rate that New Zealand pays? As I said before the US and also the UK has been looking at adjusting and have adjusted their tax thresholds in line with what the National Party has supported.Now just going back to the issue of looking for other sources of tax the issue has been raised around the witch hunt of those with owned trusts particularly. That's why my earlier comment which the Minister I think addressed was around "Is the trust tax rate going to go up as a result of going and looking at wealthy New Zealanders' trust position and their personal tax position?" But there is a perception that the Minister has used that initiative and used the IRD to further the policy intent of the Labour Party. I think Chlöe Swarbrick's question is actually appropriate because there is a view that this is a Labour initiative and using IRD to further its own policy agenda. It doesn't matter whether it's a confidential study or not. So I would reiterate in that question from Chlöe that it would be great to have visibility around the results of that prior to the Budget and we do need to understand the tax principles that the Minister's been talking about for quite some period of time.But the final bit I just want to touch on and we haven't talked about is the issue of the hidden economy and those not paying tax because the estimates of the hidden economy in New Zealand vary quite significantly from a billion dollars I've seen right through to about $10 billion. So the questions I put to the Minister about the actions of the IRD how much effort is going into it I've got to say from the—Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Point of order. This is Part 1 of the bill and it is about the annual rates of taxation. I just question the relevance of what the member is talking about—in your judgment of course Madam Chair.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Poto Williams): Thank you; I appreciate that. It is a very broad-ranging part of the legislation and I am feeling some anxiety as the member does traverse these questions over and over again. However I have given members some leeway considering it is a very broad part of the legislation.ANDREW BAYLY: Thank you. I'd just like to thank the tax expert Dr Deborah Russell for her helpful interjection there. The reason why I'm asking this question—one of the reasons—is that we need to maintain the personal tax rates to fund part of the Government's expenditure and if there is a good argument that we should be getting more income from the hidden economy it actually gives the potential to reduce the personal tax rates. I have written many written questions to the Minister. It seems the approach around—[Time expired]"