Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Well thank you very much Madam Assistant Speaker. What an extraordinary time we are in. I just want to be clear for members in the House newer members—well they're not here but newer members from New Zealand First and from the Greens—and for the members of the public who are interested. I know in Auckland they're particularly interested in this debate. I just want to be clear for the House about what the Leader of the House has moved. What he has moved: firstly that the House will go into urgency on two taxation bills—and we'll come to that point because it's very important—but the amendment to the motion means that the debate on the committee stage of the bill will be completely cut off.This is an extraordinary abuse of Government power and frankly I am surprised that the Leader of the House has resorted to something like this. I actually am genuinely surprised because I was a staffer and an MP in Parliament when Chris Hipkins railed against the use of urgency—it was despotic it was dictatorial and it was the Government using its majority to override the minority and free and fair debate. So I am just staggered that we are in here in the House tonight debating an urgency motion essentially on the cusp of the lifting of the House at 10 o'clock at night on a Wednesday and we're going to start again tomorrow morning because the Government is so incompetent that they can't organise their Order Paper properly.I want to make three points about why my good colleague Jami-Lee Ross' motion should be supported and of course the point of the motion is to allow members who have spoken already to continue to speak on the committee stages of the regional fuel tax legislation. The first point I want to make is that these are bills dealing with taxation. I make that point very seriously. The whole structure of our constitution rests on the idea that the Government governs with the consent of Parliament and the appropriate mechanism for testing whether or not the Government enjoys the confidence of the House is confidence motions. Now obviously the Speech from the Throne—that's the very first test of whether or not a Government enjoys the confidence of the House. The Governor-General stands up and reads out what the Government's written—what the Prime Minister's written or a staffer for the Prime Minister.So that's the first test. But then the secondary test is what happens when we have the Budgets the imprest supply bills the Supplementary Estimates bills and of course the appropriation bills like we've just finished—I think we're still actually debating that at the moment—and of course those are confidence motions. What that means is the Government is able to tax money take money from New Zealanders and spend it on their behalf in the way that the Government decides to do—that's the whole point. The Government lays out the reams of documents—and members on this side have enjoyed going through those over the last few weeks—and they put it before the House and the Minister of Finance goes around and hands out the Budget documents. Then the Parliament and the select committees—and the Finance and Expenditure Committee lead this—go through and make sure that the Government is actually spending the money on the right things. They test that.So taxation is of critical constitutional importance. These are not ordinary bills. These are not bills that are just everyday run-of-the-mill legislation bills—the Military Justice Legislation Amendment Bill which I think's meant to be on the Order Paper for tomorrow which I was looking forward to debating but it turns out it'll probably be debated in a couple of weeks' time once we've finally finished the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill. But taxation bills have a special place in our constitutional and legislative framework because it is the biggest power the State enjoys—or one of the biggest powers the State enjoys. The power to lock someone up and the power to prosecute and charge is an important one but the power to with the barrel of a gun expropriate money from people in what would otherwise be theft—right? In the ordinary course of events taking money from someone is theft but we legislate to legalise that to allow that to happen—and no one's arguing taxation is theft. I'm not making that point but I'm making the point that in our constitutional framework the power to tax is exceptional and important.We are dealing—I mean it's not just the regional fuel tax. This was the Taxation (Neutralising Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Bill. Taking one look at it—there's a large number of sections to it. I remember when this was first introduced to the Finance and Expenditure Committee that I sit on. This deals with extraordinarily important matters to do with multinational companies to do with the way that they organise their financial affairs and what the Leader of the House has essentially done is said not just in relation to the regional fuel tax bill but the Taxation (Neutralising Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Bill—No more debate." In fact we haven't even started the debate on that.Hon Chris Hipkins: No that's not what the amendment was.CHRIS BISHOP: Oh you're not amending that. OK it's just the regional fuel tax. Well the point still remains that this will be going through under urgency and the first point is that taxation is extremely important for the House to pay cognisance to and therefore it's important that we have a wider debate.The second point I want to make as to why this motion should be supported is that we on this side of the House have organised ourselves around the idea of no urgency. This was never advised by the Government until now. This has been sprung on us literally on the cusp of the House rising on a Wednesday night. There are members not here and members who will be here next week who have organised themselves around speaking on this bill and they will have their opportunity to speak on the regional fuel tax bill cut off by what the Government is doing.Look frankly there are members around the country who want a chance to come down here and move amendments and speak on the bill. This is not a bill that's just limited to Auckland as has been widely canvassed. There are regional councils lining up around the country. In fact it'd be easier to completely rename it because there's not a council in the country that doesn't want the opportunity—or it seems like there's not a council in the country—to levy more taxation on the hard-working members of those regional councils. So the point is that members here have organised ourselves to give ourselves the ability to speak at a particular time and the Government by the stint of this extraordinarily arrogant and contemptuous action has turned up—Jami-Lee Ross: It's vindictive.CHRIS BISHOP: It's vindictive. My colleague Jami-Lee Ross says it's vindictive. It is completely vindictive. Through sheer ineptitude through sheer incompetence and through an arrogance that is worryingly frequent and common for this Government we find ourselves at the dead of night basically stuck into urgency. No more select committees tomorrow. We had Kelvin Davis up tomorrow morning. I mean frankly we were really looking forward to having Kelvin Davis up for the Estimates but now we will no longer. So that's the second point.The third point is that committees of the whole have traditionally had a wider scope when considering bills under urgency.Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)"