Moroney Sue: Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Moroney Sue: Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 18 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5330. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 I think in order to understand the importance of Part 3 of this bill the Taxation (Annual Rates Returns Filing and Remedial Matters) Bill I actually want to get members of the public to just rewind a bit back to Budget 2012. I think that will help them to understand the importance of Part 3 of this bill. 
Remember Budget time 2012—unemployment soaring economy flat-lining trouble everywhere in New Zealand families under huge pressure and stress and what was the big idea that this Government rolled out? It was taxing paper boys and paper girls up and down the country. That was the big fix and the big idea the Government had back in Budget 2012. That was going to deliver the brighter future according to John Key. People—I am sure when the parents of these paper boys and paper girls saw the Government promise them a brighter future—they never imagined in their wildest dreams that what this Government was up to was to tax their children who were doing jobs after school trying to get just a little bit of pocket money for themselves. 
I do not think that any parent in this country believed that that was what John Key meant when he promised them a brighter future. But here it is in clause 106 of this bill that we are debating here this evening. This is the part of the bill that actually brings in the big idea from this Government. It actually taxes paper boys and paper girls and all of our adolescent children who do a bit of work here and there to get a bit of pocket money. Apparently clause 106 is the provision that brings this in. It is the big idea from National that was going to change the direction and deliver this brighter future that it promised at the last election. 
Of course what we know is that it is a complete and utter joke and that even though this will be passed into law this clause 106 in Part 3 is not going to deliver a brighter future. That is just tinkering around the edges. That is what the Budget was known for. It was known for clause 106 of this bill tinkering around the edges trying to imagine that we would somehow get ourselves a brighter future by taxing adolescents who are doing a bit of work for a bit of extra pocket money going into their families. That is what clause 106 is about. 
But I cannot let the irony of tonight’s debate go by without understanding the irony of debating part by part what the obligations are of ordinary New Zealanders to make sure that when they sign documents they are actually making honest declarations and spelling out as in this part of this bill what they are doing and what they are required to do in order to make sure that they are putting forward information on taxation issues in the appropriate manner. 
How ironic that we are debating the detail of what ordinary New Zealanders are required to do and the implications of when they put their signature to documents what that actually means because that is what is covered in Part 3 and how ironic on the same day that the Prime Minister seems to have a completely different standard for his Ministers. He seems to believe that a signature from someone who is now a Minister in his Government can be put on a document and that that person cannot be held to account for it. Yet here we are in Part 3 of this bill spelling out all the measures by which ordinary New Zealanders are going to be held to account for signatures that they put to documents with regard to their taxation income. 
I thought that actually clause 130 was going to be the one that would ensure that the John Banks fiasco would be uncovered and discovered. It is called “Knowledge offences”. I thought that was going to be the part of this bill that was going to make the Prime Minister see sense over his ducking and diving today over John Banks’ affairs. But no it seems that it is not about actual knowledge offences over the type of return that John Banks signed his name to. It is actually about employers’ superannuation contributions. What it does is it just makes it a bit more explicit that the knowledge offences under the taxation bill—