Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I've got to say yeah very disillusioned—unusually—by this debate this morning. I can't seem to really follow the threads of argument as raised particularly by the Opposition. So I guess just to kind of outline it as I've been listening to the points that have been raised and to try and bring it back to what it is that we're actually debating and discussing there are two things here and they've been the core threads of many of the contributions so far. The first is what this bill actually seeks to do which is to collect data to inform an informed public evidence-based debate on what kind of tax system we should have; whether we do—as the National Party is so terrified of—conceptualise income to include economic income. And the second part of the question which is more the ideological and values-based one is what fairness looks like; what kind of system what kind of economy what kind of society and what kind of communities we want to create legislation and policy to inform. And the kind of conflation between those two things has perhaps been the most frustrating element of this debate because all this bill does is create a framework for reporting on an annual basis—and a more detailed form of reporting every three years—on income in this country. It also outlines as members of the Opposition put forward a range of tax principles which I heard they in general kind of seemed to agree with. So my question is: what are they so afraid of? The very points that they've been raising in debate about how they don't think that economic income or accumulation of capital wealth is the equivalent of income in the way that we tax it with PAYE well that's outlined. It's in the IRD and Treasury reports. It's not hidden. They make their methodology and their assumptions crystal clear. And that's the point; we should be having a data-driven evidence-based discussion about where income and capital accumulation exists in this country because then God forbid we can have an informed and robust debate that New Zealanders deserve. So to that effect I do need to applaud the Minister of Revenue for the work that he's been doing pushing all of it up a hill against real nonsense that's been coming out of the Opposition so terrified of the premise that Jeanette Fitzsimons put so well that sunlight is the best disinfectant. So the Greens will be supporting this legislation because it's common sense. We should have information about what it is that we are doing—the impacts of our policy and our tax settings in this country—to help inform how we do that better how we improve as a country. And I don't know why that's so terrifying. Because that then brings us to the second point which is as I said being conflated with this first one. It is the notion of fairness. It is the reality that all of us in this place are inherently ideological because we have ideologies. Those are things that we believe in and will go out to the electorate and campaign on in October. The point again of an election: to go out and put forward our policies and have the New Zealand public decide what they want to see implemented. All of us are ideological all of us have ideologies and we should be upfront about those. The Greens are incredibly explicit; in 2020 we ran our poverty action plan policy and it was incredibly popular. It proposed a wealth tax the very wealth tax that the National Party continues to accuse the Labour Party of wanting to do. But guys you're looking at our manifesto not theirs. So if New Zealanders the 52 percent of them who polled this week said they want to see that happen well guys you can put your vote here and see us continuing to work for it. But what we also saw as reflected again in that research out of the IRD and Treasury is that not only do we have a system that—we are incredibly clear—we believe is deeply unfair and it seems the majority of New Zealanders agree because the wealthiest people in this country are paying an effective tax rate at less than half of the average New Zealander; less than half of our front-line emergency workers our nurses our doctors our supermarket checkout operators. And that is because of the way that we have set up the system. The same allegations that the National Party and the ACT Party are making about how this is some big interrogation and some big inquest to get access to information—again God forbid so that we can create an evidence-based tax base and economy—are the same arguments that were raised when this House was debating the introduction of PAYE and income taxes. We need to have data in order to have a robust system of tax and to create as we would hope informed policy about the kinds of incentives and outcomes that we want from our economy. Because so frequently we hear the economy used as a refrain for why we can't or shouldn't do certain things not least in the tax debate. And to that effect I think it's really important that we're all just really clear about what we're talking about when we're talking about the economy because what we're talking about in the Greens is all of us all human beings and the stuff that we create and the planet that we live on and the resources that we use and the rules that we put in place to try and incentivise or disincentivise certain ways of behaving inside of that economy. Simeon Brown: And the best incentive is capitalism.CHLÖE SWARBRICK: We do not live in a game of Monopoly which by the way was invented by a woman called Lizzie Magie in the early 1900s to demonstrate precisely the problems with an economy that is premised on land speculation and the accumulation of capital in the hands of fewer and fewer people—to teach kids those things Simeon Brown.And to that effect we can change the rules when they do not work for the majority of us. That is the point of this House. We saw it in the 1930s and 1940s when we had the introduction of the welfare state the ostensible 40-hour work week massively eroded by this point in time with weekends with public holidays. Then in the 1980s and 1990s with the shredding of that social contract. And 40-odd years on in 2023 confronted with the climate change - charged weather events that are ravaging particularly the North Island at the moment we are presented with exactly those same choices those political choices as a House. What kind of society do we want to build? Because—to connect all of this to everyday people out there and I'm sure that this is a sentiment that many of us have seen when out in our electorates and talking to the average New Zealander the average Kiwi that we all like to bang on about despite being so far removed from their realities—the average New Zealander at least in terms of my interactions is exhausted. They are exhausted from fighting against the system of existing inside of a system that feels deeply inequitable. That might be why we saw that reflected in that Newshub poll that 52 percent of New Zealanders want a wealth tax to pay for the things that all of us rely on—by the way not least the wealthy who rely on public infrastructure perhaps for example our court system to uphold the contracts which enable them to do business in the first place. This is about how do we create an evidence base a data-driven conversation about the kind of tax system that we want in the first place. Unfortunately for the Nats there's not a wealth tax or a capital gains tax hidden in here. It's just about the data. It's just about the evidence. And to that point about the exhaustion that I think is out there and felt by many New Zealanders who have been confronted with so many issues whether it is the weather whether it is COVID-19 whether it is these inflationary pressures I think it's important to reflect actually on something that hits all of us quite hard and personally which is mental health in this country. The Government commissioned released and tabled the mental health and addiction inquiry He Ara Oranga just last term and it told us in essence what all of the contemporary research on mental health and addiction tells us which is that all of us are born with genetics that we've inherited from our parents and our grandparents. But effectively it is our environments the social and environmental variables which can turn the potential propensity for the manifestation of mental ill health and addiction up or down a notch. Those kinds of variables are very similar to public health determinants. They are a sense of security whether that be in one's income one's ability to plan for the future one's housing situation. And again you only need to look at the bald facts that we have the lowest rates of homeownership since the 1960s we have the highest rates of wealth inequality that we've ever had on record in this country to see precisely why we have these rates of mental ill health. People are being bombarded with these challenges. Because resilience particularly in the mental health space is not a commodity that you can buy off of the shelf. It is a social contract that says that all of us are going to look after each other and that is the role that we in this House have—to ensure that we have a framework which is reflective of how to best achieve that. That's why I just can't understand that anybody would oppose us getting evidence so that we for once can have an evidence-based discussion about taxation and where fairness sits in this economy. Because we can do a lot better and I think the majority of New Zealanders know that. The Greens support this bill.