Goff Phil: Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2608. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):I just want to pick up on the comments of the last speaker Jami-Lee Ross. What this bill does under clauses 3 to 6 is it allows a person to withdraw their tax credits. Those tax credits are about $10 a week—$10 a week under this bill in I think clause 4 or 5. So $10 a week goes to the prospective homebuyer and at the same time house prices in Auckland are going up by $1700 each week. So $1700 a week is the increase in house prices and this bill benevolently allows a person to use $10 a week of their own money to bridge that gap. The gap is not bridged; the gap gets wider and wider which is why today instead of 75 percent—or three-quarters—of Aucklanders owning their own homes it is 61 percent and falling. The fundamental problem with this bill is that it does not go far enough. The changes made in clauses 3 4 5 and 6 do not make a real difference to the dilemma that a person in Auckland wanting to buy their own home faces.Homeownership is dropping. It is becoming harder for people to buy their own home and this bill is far from helping people to do that. If we look at the Treasury commentary on this bill it says that the Government will end up undermining affordability for first-home buyers. That is what Cabinet was told by Treasury I say to Mr Ross. That is what Treasury told the Cabinet was going to be the result of the clauses that we are now debating. Will it make it easier as the member just claimed? No. According to the financial advisers of the Government it will make affordability harder for first-home buyers. It will undermine them and it will undermine them because when you put more money in and increase demand but you do not increase supply. All that happens is the prices go up and homeownership moves further and further from the grasp of the people who desperately want a home of their own.I want to come back to the other parts of this bill—from clause 8 on—that are addressed in the title of this bill where it says “Remedial Matters”. We are told that this part of the bill is the result of a colossal stuff-up that the Government has made in what it promised veterans in the Veterans’ Support Act. An hour ago I asked the Minister in the chair for answers on specific questions that this Committee is entitled to and the Minister has not yet taken a call despite the fact that notes have passed from officials to the Minister. I think this Committee is entitled to answers to these questions. Firstly why did the Government make the error that promised that the veterans would get the gross amount of the money paid to them when in fact they are going to get only the net amount? That cuts income expectations by one-third for some veterans. How could the Government have made a mistake of that dimension?Secondly when did the Government discover when that mistake was made and what did it do to communicate to the veterans and the organisation representing veterans the RSA that the mistake was made? When I spoke to the RSA this afternoon it did not even know that this bill was before the House. It did not know that this bill was before the House.Next question: having made that error how much money if any has been paid out wrongly under the Veterans’ Support Act which this bill seeks to correct and to how many veterans? Will this bill be retrospective? Will people be required to pay back money? I do not know the answers to that question. Minister you have access to advice that can give us those answers. Our veterans surely deserve first of all an explanation; secondly an apology from the Government for getting it so wrong; and thirdly some advice about whether if they have been paid more money than they will now be entitled to the money that they have been paid will be required to be paid back.They are simple questions the Minister knows the answers to those questions and I am asking the Minister to take the time in this Committee—which is why we have a Committee of the whole House stage—to answer the questions that members genuinely have about this. She knows that under the Veterans’ Support Act the payments were not to be taxable. Now we find under this legislation that the payments being made to them are going to be taxable. That makes a huge difference to the money actually received in the hands of the veterans. To add insult to injury this bill also takes away further from veterans in a couple of different ways. It reduces their Working for Families entitlements—it reduces their Working for Families entitlements. Why is it that this bill has been debated twice before in this House and no Minister has got up and told the House what the bill does and how veterans are affected to their detriment by having their entitlements—promised in the original legislation—taken away?I accept that that was a mistake by the Government. It does not make it any easier for the veteran who believed they were going to be paid at this level to find that now they may be getting a quarter or a third less. It does not make it easier for the veteran who loses his or her entitlement to their Working for Families entitlement. It does not make it easier for the veterans who now find that their obligations in regard to student fees and child support have gone up. The veterans under this remedial bill are being caught in a double whammy. The actual money they receive in the hand goes down from what the original Veterans’ Support Act gave them and their obligations to pay out money for a whole series of social obligations go up.So you would think that the Government would at least give the Committee the veterans and the RSA the courtesy of an explanation as to how this happened. You would think that there might just be an apology by the Government for making an error of this magnitude. You might think that we could get an explanation as to whether any money has been paid out to veterans—if so how much and to how many—and whether that money will be required to be paid back.I have not finished my speaking entitlement but I am going to sit down now to give the Minister the opportunity to answer those straightforward questions.