McKelvie Ian; Rurawhe AdrianIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Well I'm not going to say the name of the bill because it's so long it would take the first couple of minutes of my speech but as a taxpayer of long standing—probably of the longest standing of any taxpayer in the House at the moment—I think I need to comment on a couple of comments by the Government.Firstly on the last one. Gareth Hughes often makes very measured speeches; he talked a lot of nonsense in the first minute of that one. But I also want to pick up a couple of points Michael Wood made in respect of the speech of the Hon Amy Adams. He talked about her being ideologically opposed to tax and then went on to criticise the National Party or the Opposition for its lack of care and whatever else. Well I think that's a gross misstatement on his behalf and we certainly aren't opposed to tax and people paying their share or taking their responsibility in respect of paying tax. I think that was an offensive thing to say and particularly to the Hon Amy Adams who is of course our finance spokesperson. I think it was quite unnecessary.I want to talk about the bill and the fact that it's a fair and it's an unfair bill so you could rename it in fact the Fair and Unfair Bill". There are some parts of this bill which I think are eminently fair and do some very good things. One of them is the fact that we're trying to even the playing field a little bit with respect to tax on imports or as Mr Bayly called it the Amazon tax. I think that's a very good system. It's trying to level the playing field with respect to our retailers and the ability to import things without paying GST. If we can get to the post with that and perhaps even in due course get it to a lower level than it currently is being able to be set at it would be wonderful but of course that's an international issue and a very complicated one. But I do think that's a very fair part of this tax bill and I think it's well worthwhile.Now I want to talk about a couple of things that I think are unfair—and I think it is the ideological difference between the two sides of the House—and that is that we think people are better at spending their money themselves and the Government clearly think that they are better at spending our money for us. That always will be an ideological debate and one that's worth having at all times. So I agree with Mr Hughes on that point that we certainly do need to have a debate on the sensible and un-sensible bits of this discussion because it is a major difference between I guess the National Party and the Government.The other thing I want to talk about very briefly is the rental losses situation and the reason I want to raise it is because it's really a sign of a Government interfering—well you could say it's a Government interfering—in a process to try and alter behaviour. Now the problem with that—and we've seen it many times in the past in New Zealand where you get involved in trying to influence behaviour—is that you sometimes influence that behaviour in a negative manner. When you think about the changes to this taxation around rental losses it could have the impact of distorting the market and not in the manner that the Government intends—we don't know that—but it also could have an impact on changing the investment market in New Zealand. Now that might not necessarily be for the better. So it is dangerous for Governments to get involved in this kind of I guess singling out one area for different treatment from another area because it will change the behaviour of investors. I think that our rental market in New Zealand has been very well served by landlords and the other thing of course when you start to put pressure on landlords is that it makes it very difficult for them to upgrade the properties in a manner that they clearly need to in some cases. So I think we've got to be careful how we manage that part of the thing.The other thing I want to talk briefly about because it's only a very small part of this bill but becomes part of every taxation bill that the House considers is the changes to the IRD. The changes they're making—I think they're great if they work. The challenge we've got with some of the changes to the IRD—there are two I want to identify very quickly. One is that there are hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who are going to suddenly be required to correspond with the IRD in one form or another who have never had any association with the IRD before. I've got great concerns about that because I think it would be intimidating for people. People will not grasp that very easily and I think it's going to be a great challenge for the IRD to ensure that where they do need to transact with those people they do it in a manner that those people can get a grip on because I think that is a concern.The other thing that I think is also of great concern—and particularly in rural New Zealand—is that a lot of these transactions are done through the internet and through technology. That is very challenging for some parts of New Zealand still and very challenging for the demographic that I come from interestingly: the kind of over-65s. A lot of us have challenges with that. So there are a few things that I don't think are entirely good.That's my contribution. I think it's kind of unfair in some ways this bill and it's grossly unfair in others. Thank you.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call—five minutes."