O'Connor Simon; Parker DavidSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I'm going to be speaking to a tabled amendment of mine Minister on what is a very particular circumstance coming out of the Tāmaki electorate. In effect it's based on the premise of a particular consideration that I'd like you Minister to give to a particular line of businesses—particularly new business owners—being able to access the COVID support payments with the premise being that this bill is widening the scope effectively or giving you Minister great powers to discern who can and who cannot access this scheme. So I'm trying to highlight tonight on behalf of my excellent business owners of Tāmaki and I'm sure others around the country a failure in the current system. So the long and the short is you can get a COVID recovery payment at the moment if you're an existing business owner and you can demonstrate that your business is not doing well. Unfortunately if you are a new business owner—so you have gone and bought that business; you're a new owner—strangely enough you don't have a history and therefore you are ineligible to obtain the COVID payment. So this tabled amendment is going to make a suggestion in clause 5 and I'm not going to get into the technical wording but it's basically wanting to instruct the Minister to bring those new business owners to mind. I'm allowed to share an example. It's called the Mission Bay Cafe. Fortunately the tumbleweeds are not running by. It is the most popular cafe in Mission Bay if not Tāmaki. After 23 years the former owners have just sold Minister and Hassan and Eco have bought it and unfortunately as new owners they don't have a service history. Therefore they're ineligible. I think that's wrong in itself but importantly too business is hard enough at the best of times and these two have taken a punt and are just wanting some help and fairness to be honest. So this is why I've put this very particular tabled amendment out. Fundamentally it's saying we need to be able to tie these payments as much to the business as to the owner because using the Mission Bay Cafe as an example—but it's not the only one—the business has not changed. As I say for 23 years it has served the good people of Tāmaki including myself. It hasn't changed since the ownership moved. It would be different of course Minister if the business went from being a cafe to—I don't know—selling furniture and I suspect you or officials may want to consider that how one vets that. I can imagine how it could be gamed. But this is a very particular situation. New owners Eco and Hassan have taken a chance. They've bought a new business. They want it to do well. They're going to do the absolute best that they can but they can't access this payment. I want to acknowledge I have written to you Minister. It's only been in recent weeks so that's not a statement in reply but I have written to you. I have also today decided on behalf of these business owners in my electorate and on behalf of all my businesses to ask that you consider this tabled amendment. It's going to make a change to clause 5. Fundamentally it's allowing new business owners of existing businesses to claim for future support payments. So thank you Minister for your consideration.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Thank you Madam Chair. I am aware of the issue that the member raises but not the individual case that he refers to because there are a number of people in New Zealand who are in a similar situation. The terms of eligibility and comparative periods for revenue loss are set out in the orders rather than in the Act so we won't be supporting the amendment because it would sit better in an order than in the Act. That said we've already moved to reduce the period of trading that is necessary under the existing Resurgence Support Payment from a six-month trading history to a one-month trading history but the member is quite correct that that still excludes the purchaser of a business who doesn't qualify on that basis. For that to be fixed in our view if it were to be fixed it would be better fixed through an order made under the empowering legislation rather than through the empowering legislation. I would also note that when the Auditor-General looked at some of the support payments that were activated soon after the start of COVID the Auditor-General made the point that we do need to be careful to have some integrity measures to stop the system being gamed by people effectively pretending that they've got a new business or not pretending that they've got a new business but pretending that they've suffered a loss that they haven't. That means that there is some line that has to be drawn and on some occasions people are on the wrong side of that line even though we feel very sorry for them. But we're not proposing to fix that in the primary legislation and if that was to be fixed in the future for future support payments it would be done through the terms of orders rather than through the primary legislation.