Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Well thank you Madam Speaker. In summary this is a lazy piece of legislation from a lazy Minister and a lazy Government who can't count can't tot things up and takes the easy way out by sticking in a slush fund and picking from that any levy which is effectively against the laws that are already in place. Now let's refresh. There was a problem. It was a plague on both Governments because the Companies Office were acting ultra vires. They were acting outside of the laws and frankly the conventions that go around levy-setting processes. We had to fix that. We fixed that in Budget urgency and the National Party supported that because there was an element of responsibility for where we'd got to. What we did not contemplate was the fact that not only do we do that retrospectively we go Oh well the sky didn't fall in; let's just keep doing that." and provide ourselves with the legal framework to do bad levy-raising into perpetuity.Hon Mark Mitchell: Not appropriate.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: And it isn't appropriate Mr Mitchell; you're absolutely right because the difference between a tax and a levy is that levies have to be specific to the costs that are incurred in producing the service. We have a plethora of them right across the Public Service. As Minister of Immigration I looked after a very large number of immigration fees and levies. [Interruption] Well thank you for the nostalgic reflection Mr Watts. I do too but it's only 16 short months away maybe less before there is a change and order will be restored to so many public services. But it's actually a legal requirement to make sure that the revenue collected in levies matches and is not more than the costs incurred in providing the service. It's not like a general slush fund. It's not like a GST or an income tax. There were 16 of them for a reason because each one of those levies incurred a different set of costs incurred by the Companies Office to manage the various registers that they did. There was nothing wrong with the framework. The framework was sound. It's the same as what we do in immigration. It's the same as what we do under the ACC legislation biosecurity levies aviation levies energy resource levies—any number of levies that we could think of are legally required to be set up in exactly the same way as the 16 Companies Office levies were. What's the difference? Lazy Government lazy Minister. Just imagine if the ACC scheme came along and said to the ACC Minister "Look we manage four or five funds. They all have different costs and we impose different levies but that's all a bit hard. Let's just chuck it in a single slush fund divide it by four and put it out to the various funds. The motor vehicle levy could be the same as the work account levy or the same as the treatment injury levy." There would be an outrage and rightly so because of course those costs don't fall proportionately across those levies. They don't here either. And the idea that this is somehow minor and inconsequential giving the Government a reason to be lazy is quite wrong. These 16 funds should be managed appropriately the way all the other levies are. My colleague Simon Watts a very good chartered accountant and I'm sure he knows management accounting principles—I also having been an accountant for 25 years know actually that this stuff isn't that hard. It's not that hard. It's not a manual process. The cost allocation methodologies the systems that underpin them are actually pretty easy and it's important because if I was the levy-payer for an incorporated society I would want to know I was only paying only the costs of managing that register and not the much larger costs of managing for example the Companies Office register. That's not fair but under regulation-making powers that's exactly what could happen.Now I will be very very interested to know not only what the submitters have to say to the select committee but what the very fine chairman of the Regulations Review Committee will say about the legality of the regulation-making power in these circumstances. Now I've read McGee. He's not that specific about it but he strongly implies that the levy needs to be matched to the cost and slush funds of this nature may well fall foul of the Regulations Review Committee. In fact it's probably necessary and I think appropriate for the Regulations Review Committee themselves to make a submission before the select committee. We could have one select committee making a submission to another select committee. We have select committees that meet jointly. Why not have them across the table and actually duke this out? Because this is very poor regulation-making power and it's certainly very lazy lawmaking power.I have every confidence that my colleagues in the Finance and Expenditure Committee a committee I'm very fond of—I've been a member of it twice and I think Mr Smith is also on the committee. I think ACT are supporting the bill at first reading but perhaps as they listen to the arguments that we are making against this bill because it's lazy because it's being led by a lazy Minister a lazy Government into lazy legislation—actually part of a track record I think of that Minister—then maybe the ACT Party might have a different view of that when they hear the submissions.The reality is that those 16 funds actually comprise probably hundreds of thousands of levy-payers and those hundreds of thousands of levy-payers rely on us elected representatives of this House to make sure that we do right by them that we understand the law and the legal frameworks and the conventions and the constitutions that go along with raising levies. Goodness knows they're high enough as it is even when the costs are appropriately gathered where they fall and those levies do reflect accurately. But the risk of cross-subsidisation that will go on if this law is passed and the Government passes regulations exactly as they have said they will makes this quite the wrong thing to do and I think even the Labour members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee need to look within themselves. They aspire to ministry. They know that there are Ministers holding seats around the Cabinet table that might be not that long for this world. Maybe they can impress the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister who will soon be the Prime Minister with their acumen their honesty their integrity around passing very very robust legislation not lazy law and maybe come up.I think that could be an awkward conversation in the Labour caucus room when they realise quite how slack this piece of legislation is and I'd love to be a fly on the wall when that happens but the reality is this is not good law. It's bad law. It's lazy law. It may be unlawful law in the context of the regulation-setting process and we cannot support it. I look forward to the hard work that the committee will do. I look forward to their findings and I can't commend it to the House."