Nash StuartSTUART NASH (Labour—Napier): That last member Alastair Scott talked about concentrating on those most in need. I would disagree with that from the perspective of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I would like to talk about Vote Revenue. I firmly believe that a tax system is there to provide fairness and equity and I think we have seen that a lot of the measures this Government has put in place do not address the fundamental concerns I certainly have and I know our party has around the fairness and equity of the tax system. Let me mention four points if I may over the next 5 minutes. The first one is the base erosion profit shifting. This is basically large corporates that are not paying their fair share. The Minister of Revenue actually said—and I am going to quote the Minister at our Estimates hearing—The simple fact is large organisations with a global reach will work to reduce their tax obligations. I think that is pretty rational behaviour." It might be rational behaviour and it might be the way that large corporates behave but I do not think we should accept that as normal and I do not think we should actually say: "OK we're not going to do anything about it." The fact of the matter is that experts have said that New Zealand is missing out on revenue of between $1 billion and $7 billion. That is a very wide range—I accept that—but I think what it does show is that no one actually knows how much revenue we are missing out on. On this side of the Chamber we have asked Treasury and the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) to try to quantify that. They will not do that so as a consequence we are left hanging saying: "OK how much more revenue could we have?". I do understand that in order to get this right we have to take a multilateral approach. The OECD is doing some incredibly good work around this and it is moving at quite a fast rate of knots. But the thing that is disappointing is in terms of putting the measures in place that will allow us to address this. The early adopters—i.e. those countries that are really driving this—are going to implement laws in 2017 that address that. In the signed agreement that we have signed up to we have said we will do this in 2018. That is the promise we made to the OECD. But disappointingly our IRD presented a paper and said: "We don't think we should do this until 2019." So not only are we not going to be an early adopter but we are going to be seen as global laggards in terms of addressing the problem which has significant impacts on our revenue base. I would have thought being the global citizen we are that if we were not an early adopter then we would at least try to meet our international obligations. I think we are going to try to do that now; I am not too sure. But the fact that we even considered being a laggard—and a paper went to Cabinet saying this—just shows that we are actually not taking this seriously at all. Another big issue that has come up this year has been the prevalence of the use of overseas trusts to hide tax. We have talked about this in the Chamber a lot and certainly on this side. My view is that this plays into our global brand. It does not matter whether the reality is that we are a tax haven or whether that is just the perception of the global media. The bottom line is that words "New Zealand" and "tax haven" have been used in the international financial media and what we need to do is address this incredibly quickly before it becomes damaging not just to the integrity of our tax system but to the integrity of our global brand. I would have liked to see the Minister of Revenue move even faster than he has. I would like to think this is an absolute top priority. It is good to see that the Business Transformation IT system which the IRD is spending well over a billion dollars on is coming in. But the thing is we have still got a number of measures in our tax system that are unfair. Let me give you one example: the IRD owes Kiwis $750 million in overpaid tax. We all know that if a taxpayer owes tax the IRD goes after them like a bulldog—and fair enough too. But I do not think it goes hard enough in finding taxpayers who are actually owed money themselves—$750 million. And if you have not claimed it after 4 years it drops off. We need to address that. Secondary tax—I understand the reason behind secondary tax but it is a real impost on people who are working incredibly hard. If we make an assumption which I think is true that people work two jobs not because they like working 20 hours a day but out of economic necessity then to impose secondary tax I think is quite prohibitive. I would love to have confirmation that this Business Transformation IT system is going to address that. The tax system is about promoting fairness and equity. Let us see it work that way."