Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): What an interesting contribution that was from Dr Webb the constitutional lawyer who I think is probably changing his positions from what he might have lectured students on in the past at a rapid rate. Let's be very very clear: this is in some terms if I may use the term a complete muddle—an absolute muddle. You have section 17B which the Minister of Revenue came into the House today and said must not be read down because of section 17GB in clause 33. Of course this all sounds like terribly technical sort of stuff. You ask yourself: what does it mean? Well we have a bill here in the House today that primarily raises the tax rate for those earning over $180000 to 39c. If that was all it was that would be simple but it's those other things that go with it that are the problem. Firstly you come to this ability for the IRD to now collect information from trust income to assess how the 39c tax rate is going. Is it working? Is it bringing in the money it should? Is it bringing in the whole $2.2 billion that it's predicted to bring in over the four years? Is it on the track to do that? Or should there be a change to the rate that includes taxable income in taxes that would potentially raise that revenue figure to about $3.7 billion? So the hard thing to understand is: why has the Government in this bill decided to forgo the $1.5 billion in difference—income that they could have got if they just put a tax rate across trusts as well as income? Why have they done that? Secondly are we being softened up for that to come in the future? I asked the question today of the Minister: what will be the threshold where he goes to Cabinet and says Look the money is not coming in at the rate it should. There's something wrong with this. We're not getting it out of trusts. Too many people are avoiding it."—not recognising of course that he's already given up $1.5 billion that won't be covered and allowing the IRD to collect that information.Dr Webb says that's OK—it's quite discrete it's quite different and it doesn't affect any other tools that the IRD have to bring cases against those who are dodging their tax responsibilities. The problem here is that the amendment says that if information is collected under section 17GB it can't be used for a prosecution. Well that's like telling the police that they can go out and look for criminals and if they find them under a particular clause of the law they can't prosecute them. That seems utterly ridiculous. Of course they're going to use that information. That information is going to lead to the use of section 17GB that they'd be collecting the information under. They will use it under 17B to form an opinion about whether or not a prosecution should be brought. It's ridiculous for anyone to stand in this House and say anything otherwise; although I did notice that Dr Webb gave it a fair go and I did also notice that it equally sounded ridiculous. I wish we were still in committee of the whole House because it would be a good question for the Minister to answer. Unfortunately the committee was curtailed by the desire of the Government to move very quickly on this bill.I accept that they did campaign on it—that they did say that they would raise the tax rate to 39c on income over $180000. That's fair enough. They come in here and they do it. That doesn't mean we have to agree to it and it doesn't mean as the Greens suggest that we're trying to push fear out there as a reason for not supporting it. If anyone's creating fear in this country it's the people who supported that ridiculous motion yesterday on the climate change emergency. That's what fear is about. Anyway where we come to on this is that too many Labour candidates went out in the last election saying this will be an answer to paying back the debt that New Zealand has had to incur as a result of COVID-19. It won't. It is at best 2 percent per annum of the total debt that's being accumulated by the current Government. No one's arguing about that debt but don't mislead people that somehow taxing the top 2 percent of the country to gather 2 percent of the revenue that's being borrowed is going to save us. That is completely ridiculous. This is not a good bill. It should have been more discrete with its two issues. We will not be supporting it."