Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Mr Speaker. I've been listening intently to this debate and I was a little bit disappointed with some of the contributions from the other side. I thought Mr Clayton Mitchell was reasonable but I was disappointed that the Minister who chose to speak on behalf of the revenue Minister the Hon Damien O'Connor and Dr Deborah Russell the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee—I thought they were a bit mean-spirited actually and I thought they were very rude about the contribution of my colleague Andrew Bayly MP for Hunua.I say that because I was the Minister of Revenue who along with my predecessor in that got the billion dollars for Inland Revenue to update its systems so that we could actually put in the systems that this bill enables in terms of the law. It really is amazing to listen to the Government's side—other than Mr Mitchell who was reasonable—be so nasty when actually we're supporting this bill. We have enabled it to happen—physically enabled it to happen. And what we have got in fact now is a Government contribution which should be enough should I be so mean-spirited as to make us want to vote against it. But we're bigger than that and we actually are as electorate MPs primarily very concerned about the people who are overpaying their KiwiSaver taxes. When Mr Bayly spoke about the fact that there were last year 550000 people who underpaid their PIE tax which is mostly that while 950000 overpaid that tax and they can't get a refund—he has the solution he has the legal solution.And now Inland Revenue after the tremendous work that we did in Government to give them the system that could handle it are able—they should be able—to get that money back. But no the Government doesn't want to support it. Primarily I think it's because it's giving back people their own money. And also as Mr Bayly pointed out a lot of the people whose money has been wrongly taken in the tax take they are often people who are living on often quite a modest wage modest salary don't have extra money to throw around and this would make a difference for them. So why can't they have their money back? It's their money. They didn't get a choice about whether or not it was paid. It was taken without their permission just taken out of the investment and they deserve to have it back.I don't understand why the Government won't agree to it. They've certainly agreed to and have supported and now adopted the work in the amendment of our other colleague Nicola Willis to enable people who have life-shortening illnesses or diseases to be able to get their KiwiSaver money out first. But why not people whose KiwiSaver accounts have been overtaxed? Why can't they get their money back? They can certainly as a Government get these people who have had their taxes underpaid—they've sent them tax bills for it. Well why can't they send it back? I don't understand that. Why not? The answer is because they're so mean they don't want to give back people's money.Now our tax system works on the basis—and as a former tax lawyer I think I can speak with some authority—that most people pay their fair share of tax without anyone having to make much of a fuss. The PAYE system works very well for wage and salary earners and most of us have that system obviously. But also a lot of people in their investments their tax is taken out with withholding taxes and various other things. It's only fair that people know that the Government will do the right thing by them when they overtax them.If any business overcharges someone money when they shouldn't say $10 for a product they take a $20 note they don't give back the other $10 that they know that they should give back that is called theft. That's the way it is. And if somebody for instance goes into a jewellery shop—I say that just because I like jewellery so much—they buy an item the shop assistant sells them the item at let's say $1000 when the correct price is $10000. They then make the mistake. The person who takes that jewellery at $1000 knowing it's $10000—if they do that that's actually theft because they have wrongly taken something which they knew they were not entitled to. People should think about this. If it's OK for people who operate within—you know the people who are not the Government without the resources—to be liable when they owe money shouldn't it be the same for the Government?There's always been this exception for the Government agency of Inland Revenue because Inland Revenue's computer system was so old was so decrepit that everything in Government we tried to do with it would have crashed it. Everything was always: is it going to succeed with this change in something or will it crash? That's why we got in the toughest of economic times that we inherited in 2008 enough money later on in our term in Government to be able to spend a billion dollars or close to that in upgrading the entire computer systems of IRD.So I just say to the Government it's not too late for you. It's only the second reading of this bill. It's not too late for you in the Government to think a bit more carefully about this. If it's all right to pick up Nicola Willis' amendment from the National Party and then try to claim it as your own do the same with Andrew Bayly's. Andrew Bayly won't mind if you pick up his amendment or his bill that he put into the mix and claim it as your own. Just give him a little bit of credit. Why don't you do that?Why doesn't the Government do the right thing by these 950000 people last year alone who had their tax on their KiwiSaver investments and other PIE investments overpaid? Why not? It's a lot of money. It's a lot of people. Oh that's a lot of votes. But if the Government who has the ability to change the law with us and our support and with the ability to actually implement it with the funding and the support that we again gave to Inland Revenue when we were in Government—why don't they do it?The only answer I've heard so far is that it was Andrew Bayly's idea not theirs and why didn't we do it in Government. Well I've just told the people that. We didn't actually have the mechanism to do it because the system that we inherited in Inland Revenue—the computer system—was so overburdened that every time there was a change to anything it was basically a matter of holding your breath to see if it all fell over and that's why we had to spend about a billion dollars doing it. So my call to the Government is to think about the 950000 people whose KiwSaver accounts and other PAYE tax investments have been overtaxed. Think about how they feel when they're told If you're undertaxed we'll send you a bill but if you're overtaxed we'll do nothing—we'll just keep your money." That's not OK that's not fair and it's not something that a Government that has the ability to do better—because of the system that has been paid for and implemented to help them do it better—should do because that can actually enable them to do it. So my plea to the Government is to get off your high horses and think about the fact that this is something we can work on together to fix for 950000 New Zealanders."