Tremain Chris: Taxation (Personal Tax Cuts Annual Rates and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Tremain Chris: Taxation (Personal Tax Cuts Annual Rates and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16305] 
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) 
: 
 I rise to speak to Part 1 of the Taxation (Personal Tax Cuts Annual Rates and Remedial Matters) Bill 2008. The bill is part of a Budget that Dr Cullen is keen to take on to the hustings and to fight in the 2008 election. I say today that those words are small in that he had the opportunity to genuinely take that fight on to the hustings. In 2007 I challenged Dr Cullen to stand on the hustings against me in the seat of Napier and to take his tax policies to the hard-working people of New Zealand. I challenged him to stand on the hustings in Napier and to take up that challenge to genuinely get out there amongst hard-working people. 
Nathan Guy 
: What did he say? 
CHRIS TREMAIN 
: When I put that challenge to him he said that no he would not take it on. He had a clear opportunity to stand in Napier and to take up the challenge but he did not. 
We are sitting here today under urgency to take this bill through the House and to write it into law. The people of New Zealand may be asking why we are doing this under urgency. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs) 
: Can I have people out of the corridors and into their seats please. Thank you. 
CHRIS TREMAIN 
: New Zealanders will be interested to know that that was the future leader of the Labour Government in the corridors taking up time by discussing his own future tax policy. 
I come back to the debate. I ask why we are here under urgency to pass this bill. We are here to ensure that it becomes law. We need to make sure that it becomes law. And why is that? It is because we cannot trust Dr Cullen to actually put tax cuts into place. 
One might ask why anyone would take that line of attack. Well the proof is in the Cabinet papers. In the 2005 election Dr Cullen promised that there would be tax threshold cuts which is what we are now seeing in Part 1. He promised there would be those cuts. But very quickly the reality of that got washed down the tube. I have here a Cabinet paper from 2007. Rick Barker would have been at that Cabinet meeting and I guess the potential new leader of the Labour Party would have been there too and would have agreed to this Cabinet paper. Dr Cullen’s Cabinet paper recommends that “we do not adjust tax thresholds in the medium term thereby retaining fiscal drag and potentially allowing tax to GDP ratios to rise slightly. Accordingly this paper seeks Cabinet’s agreement to rescind our previous decision to adjust income tax thresholds on a three-yearly basis. Within the projection period … we will adjust the tax thresholds for inflation but some portion of fiscal drag might need to be retained to finance our decisions.” 
That was the paper that rescinded the initial decision to change the tax thresholds and that is why we are rushing this bill through under urgency. Those members and the potential leader of the Labour Party Mr Phil Goff do not trust Dr Cullen on the tax threshold issue because he said tax thresholds would not be adjusted in the medium term. The medium term here would have been 2008 2009 2010 so that is why we are under urgency making these adjustments to the tax threshold levels. In that regard it is a good bill and National is supporting it today because it is taking us forward and starting to deliver some of the money of hard-working Kiwi taxpayers back into their pockets. On this side of the Chamber we believe funnily enough that hard-working taxpayers know how to spend their money best. They know how to make decisions about where to educate their children; they do not need this Government to tell them that. They know how to make decisions about their health; they do not need this Government to tell them that. They know how to make their own decisions and that is why we are supporting the changes to the tax threshold levels. Thank you Madam Chairperson.