Robertson Grant: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 07 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10316. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]6.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement “We have very strict obligations when it comes to disclosure and we meet those obligations. We’re always prepared to look and enhance those obligations and change those if there are recommendations.”?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Revenue) on behalf of thePrime Minister: Yes.Grant Robertson: What action did his Government take following the 2013 report from Transparency International that recommended major changes to trust law and criticised New Zealand’s trust law as an “overly permissive regime” that allowed “questionable activities” to take place?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I cannot say what specific actions were taken in response to that 2013 report but there have been 13 separate initiatives embarked upon to improve disclosure and comply with the OECD guidelines on the prevention of multinational tax avoidance. New Zealand takes those responsibilities very seriously.Grant Robertson: What was his Government’s response to the Integrity Plus 2013 New Zealand National Integrity System Assessment by Transparency International which recommended changes to address a lack of a trust registry weak controls on trusts that allow them to hide beneficial owners and no transparent reporting mechanism for reporting them?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I cannot be sure exactly what the response was but I reject some of the claims made in the Transparency International report around the non-registration of trusts—we do. There are very clear opportunities for the disclosure of detailed information either on request by other jurisdictions or proactively at the instance of the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) when it believes it would be in the interests of that jurisdiction.Grant Robertson: Is he at all concerned that Transparency International has said that our tax haven structures risk damage to New Zealanders’ well-being as it undermines our reputation for being corruption-free?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The biggest risk to the reputation of New Zealand is the number of Opposition members who continue to peddle the mischief that New Zealand is a tax haven. There are two attributes to a tax haven: one is a very low or no tax rate and the other is strict secrecy. If New Zealand was a tax haven we would not have implemented the 13 separate initiatives to give effect to the sharing of information.Grant Robertson: I seek leave of the House to table this graphic from the Australian Financial Review that says Mossack Fonseca operates—Mr SPEAKER: Order! No that information is freely available to members if they would find it useful.Grant Robertson: When the editorials of almost every daily newspaper in New Zealand most commentators working in the taxation area and international journals all say that New Zealand is now a tax haven does he not think that he should take this issue just a little bit more seriously or is he just that out of touch?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Clearly most of the commentators that are making those claims do not have the level of insight into what IRD is presently doing and what powers it has to share information. I would suggest that the clients of some of those firms may be very unpleasantly surprised to understand what powers IRD does have.