Clark David: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clark David: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2446. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 Mr Speaker—[ 
Interruption 
]  
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! I can hardly hear the member who is trying to seek the call. Courtesy is contagious. I call the honourable member David Clark. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. In fairness he did not seek the call; you asked him whether he wanted the call and he said yes. So this side was calling for the vote in fairness because no one else in the House had called. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you thank you. The member has now called. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: Thank you for the call. I was somewhat surprised that the member did not have much more to say about this bill the Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill. Then again perhaps I should not be. There really is not too much more that one can say about this bill. It is tinkering. It is the worst kind of tinkering: pinching the money from our paper boys and paper girls around the country but dressed up as something more. This is a Government that gave tax cuts to the wealthiest New Zealanders not very long ago. We know that in 2010 the wealthiest 10 percent of New Zealanders got 44 percent of the value of the tax cuts. Just 2 percent of the value of those tax cuts went to the bottom 20 percent. That is the Government’s idea of tax change. It has done it it is all over that has all happened and now it is just tinkering. That is really not going to get us back on the right track. We have issues as a country. We have been buying more than we have been building selling and exporting. This has been going on for some time. Our country must address the problem that we have with our trade balance and this Government seems to have no ideas at all. 
We are here under urgency to pass a bill that would rob tax credits from 68000 children. That is what we are reduced to. That is the base-broadening vision of this country. The base-broadening vision is to pick the pockets of the paper boys and paper girls around the country. Mr Goldsmith seemed to suggest I wanted to keep the student loan scheme situation that was encouraging students to pay off their loans more quickly; I was merely trying to point out that it fitted a pattern of trying to take things away from students. The actual detail of that part of the bill is something that Labour does not oppose but we were merely pointing out that it fits with a pattern. Mr Dunne himself introduced it not so long ago as we have just heard from my colleague Mr Grant Robertson and far from doing a flip-flop it was so recent it can only be described as a flop. It was not meeting its intended purpose. 
In my previous opportunity to speak I pointed out that in the regulatory impact statement which I am now searching for the point is made that—thank you to my colleague Mr Mallard—businesses that employ only schoolchildren on very low wages below $2340 per annum may have to begin withholding pay-as-you-earn tax from these employees from 1 April 2013. We are talking about the kids who clean after school. We are not just talking about the paper boys and paper girls of this country; we are also talking about those kids doing low-wage jobs to help them get a bit of pocket money maybe to help out at home maybe to buy one or two things or maybe to buy some school books. And the Government is trying to claw that money back. As my colleague Megan Woods said we can imagine the conversation round the Cabinet table: “How are we going to broaden that tax base? Why don’t we have a go at the kids on their bikes out delivering newspapers? That’s our big vision—we’re going to go for it.” 
The point that I did not make in that previous address was that actually what this regulatory impact statement tells us is that there is additional compliance introduced here. Employers are being required not only to pinch from the pockets of kids but to do it at their own expense. Their time and effort is being put on the line to pinch this money from the kids. So not only is it the wrong thing to do but also it is an expensive thing to do. We know that there will be many small businesses operating pamphlet deliveries or whatever that have kids out doing that work and they too will have an increased overhead as a result of this bill. It is not a bright idea and not a great way to increase our future and brighten our future; it is already going to drive kids offshore to see that their opportunities are going to be greater in Australia. There will be 50000 more people leaving the country for Australia every year there will be 50000 more people unemployed—this is the record of this Government—and there will be 50000 more people collecting the unemployment benefit. But also it is going to cost business more. This is National’s big idea and it is going to cost business more. I ask you: pinching pennies from kids and charging businesses more for the privilege—most business people would be embarrassed by that. I am pretty confident in saying that most business people will think that pinching pocket money from kids is not a good idea. And most business people would think that having to pay for the opportunity to do that is just outrageous. This is just not a good idea. But it does fit with this theme of tinkering with the tax system. 
If you look at the Government’s tax work programme for this year you will see that there are some fair objectives some loopholes that are going to be addressed and some attempts to do some minor base-broadening here or there but you will not find inspiration there. If you are going there in the morning to have something to read over your bowl of muesli then you will be back asleep in it before you know it. We need real inspirational change if we are going to turn our country round. We need pro-growth tax measures. We need measures that are going to support our exporters. We do not need measures that are going to take the pocket money away from our kids. I cannot say much more about this bill because there is not much more to say about it. It is tinkering it is no more than tinkering and therefore we will oppose it. Thank you.