Cunliffe David: Taxation (Consequential Rate Alignment and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cunliffe David: Taxation (Consequential Rate Alignment and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:8244. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 Labour supports the Taxation (Consequential Rate Alignment and Remedial Matters) Bill. Labour believes this bill is a technical bill that continues one of Labour’s work streams and makes some necessary changes to the underlying tax law. In the Committee stage debate the Committee has considered the role the Finance and Expenditure Committee played in ensuring the House was not presented with a bill that would have unfortunately ended up with some 3 million New Zealanders paying more tax than they legally owed. The Committee reflected on the fact that that would have been an unwise and improper precedent for this House to set and it further reflected that it shows the importance of a proper select committee process. 
The Minister of Revenue in his closing remarks in the Committee stage quite rightly said that this was a tax bill unlike the previous one and we thank him for that because the process in the previous tax bill the international tax bill was a bit of a shocker I think is the technical term and we faced inordinate pressures. But at least the material for that tax bill was presented to the select committee albeit with a very tight turn-round and that does stand in contradistinction to the process followed by the emissions trading scheme bill that was considered yesterday. 
It is on the record of this House in the annals of this House that the emissions trading bill was deadlocked in its select committee and discharged back to the House without amendments and indeed without even seeing a departmental clause by clause report or a redline. That was added to by the fact that very substantial Supplementary Order Papers including a late amendment around a very important Treaty clause were presented to this House for consideration on the day on which the final bill was passed. We are happy that this was not a bill like that bill and happy that the select committee could play its role which was with the help of officials and a very useful submission from the New Zealand Bankers’ Association to make a significant change around resident withholding tax default setters. So we have ended up going for the default rate at the modal income tax rate of 21c in the dollar not the 38c in the dollar that was originally proposed by the Minister. He has been appropriate in accepting the recommendation of the committee. It should not in the best of all worlds require a committee’s intervention on a matter such as that but we are very pleased that the committee was able to work together to achieve the change. 
There are a range of other matters in the bill. I do not think the House needs us to go through all of them. There has been comment before about the Permanent Forest Sink Initiative the tax treatment of that and what defines a forestry business. It has been a matter of consideration at the Committee stage and in the second reading debate that has thrown into relief the provisions of companion legislation around climate change. My colleague Mr Nash has taken us through a summary of other important changes around beneficiary income rules electronic communications tax recovery obligations personal tax summaries GST and waste disposal levies and various other remedial matters. It remains at this third reading to commend the Taxation (Consequential Rate Alignment and Remedial Matters) Bill to this House. 
In closing I guess it is not a bill that is likely to see itself on the front page of a major daily newspaper but New Zealanders may reflect upon the fact that in giving this bill good consideration this is Parliament doing its job cooperatively and indeed consensually in the interests of all New Zealanders.