Cunliffe David: Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cunliffe David: Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 28 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4827. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call on this Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill—they always have such exciting titles. It is of course instructive to listen to the speech of the member who has just resumed his seat Todd McClay because he finished off by making a monumental blunder which was to say that because Labour might be considering some new forms of taxation to neutralise investment signals across the economy—a very good thing any economist would say—he is leaping to the conclusion that that would therefore mean a higher net tax burden. In fact that is not necessarily the case as it was not the case that the Government’s own tax switch was not tax neutral but $1 billion in the red over 4 years. That is leaving aside the fact that upper-income earners of course got a massive tax windfall and medium-wage earners just for example have gone backwards because their real wages even before tax are 3 percent lower today than they were when the current Government took office. 
Looking at the title of this bill and looking at Maggie Barry opposite and thinking about annuals and perennials I am reminded that although the rates revision is an annual gardening term the Minister in the chair is in fact a perennial Minister of Revenue. In fact so perennial is the Minister that he is now amending his own amendments to his own bills on previous amendments from previous Governments. A bit like the perennial spinach that keeps people fed with greens during the winter there is the perennial—I think you would say he is a spinach-type of Minister. There is no icing on that cake—well maybe there is actually. He is more a meat-and-potatoes man is he not? 
In all seriousness this seemingly innocuous bill does give the Labour Party some delicious opportunities to remind the good people of New Zealand for whom we are working so hard that we had some excellent policies for them that they narrowly—narrowly—failed to grasp at the last election some of which are still going to occupy an important place in their futures. For example there is KiwiSaver. This bill tinkers with KiwiSaver. National’s big bad savings secret was—wait for it—first off it reduced the member contribution rate from 4 percent to 2 percent. That was brave—that was brave. Now it is putting it up by precisely half the amount that it put it down last time—stirring stuff from the National Government! It half re-amended its own amendments. 
Todd McClay 
: It’s time for another shave. Ring the bell. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Would the member for Rotorua like to consider that one in relative silence? That would be lovely. The really important thing about this is that Labour’s universal KiwiSaver plan achieved the objective of growing New Zealand’s savings rate by—wait for it—four times the rate of National’s tepid plan part of which we are rather sadly and forlornly debating tonight. That is four times more opportunity for New Zealand mums and dads to save for their future and to build up a nest egg. For somebody who starts out in work in their mid-20s and saves at the minimum wage that was going to be at least half a million dollars by the time they hit 65—a really important complement to their superannuation and a real opportunity to get a deposit on a house to have a nest egg and to buffer them from major ill fortune. But remember that Labour’s savings plan would have had a rate of savings increase four times faster than this tepid little amendment in this bill. 
Dr David Clark 
: Four times? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Four times—Kiwis would be four times better off under Labour’s plan than under this so qualified little change which only half reverses the previous backsliding. 
Then of course we get on to the subject of GST. There are GST amendments in this bill. Well go ahead make our day. New Zealanders are not going to forget that GST has been raised by this Government on every single New Zealand family and on every single product: the school books the shoes the raincoats the milk the bread—you name it GST on these has all gone up to 15 percent. Kiwis cannot afford that—they cannot afford that. That was why Labour offered some relief in that area in the last—