Parker David: Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Parker David: Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13495] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 The Labour Party most certainly does not support 35 percent of the income tax cuts going to the top 5 percent of New Zealand’s income earners. We are clear about that on the record. I ask how Mr English can think it is a good idea when he is running a deficit to give income tax cuts of which 35 percent goes to the top 5 percent of income earners. It is poor economics. It will give us a greater deficit as a consequence and a more unequal society which is also bad. 
In respect of the misrepresentation by Mr English of the Hon Annette King’s comments the record has to be set straight. Never has Annette King suggested that GST should come off all rates. All Mrs King raised was the very good idea that if we are to give some relief to the increase in GST that is coming on 1 October for people who have 5-year financial leases why do we not give some interim relief during the first year for rates? People who can afford to pay those rates for the full year before 1 October—that is wealthy people—will get that relief. They will not pay the increase in GST on this year’s rates but people who cannot afford to pay all of their rates for the full year before 1 October will not get that relief. They will pay the increased rate of GST on the balance of their rates. 
The Labour Party amendment is on the floor of the House and National members could vote for it if they had the gumption to see that this detail would give that same relief from the increase in GST for this year. It does not apply to all GST; it applies just to the increase in GST on rates for the balance of the year. That is what the amendment from the Labour Party says. It does not suggest as Mr English tried to tell the Committee in misrepresenting the amendment that all GST should be relieved from rates. Once again it shows how desperate the National Government is to misrepresent Labour Party policy. 
It is interesting that Mr English is the same man who says that National inherited a bad state of affairs from the previous Government when in fact National inherited some of the lowest rates of net Government debt in the world—it had gone down to zero—and gross Government debt had come down from 35 percent of GDP to 17 percent of GDP under the previous Government. National did not inherit a bad fiscal position; it inherited a good one. The position would have been far worse had Mr English been in charge of the Treasury benches during that period of Government because he opposed every Budget surplus that we ran. We used those surpluses to reduce Government debt and to start the savings into the Cullen fund. Instead Mr English said that there should have been unaffordable tax cuts. If New Zealand had done that we would have been closer to the position of Portugal the United Kingdom and Spain all of which have high Government debt and therefore problems that this country does not face. 
This bill is a lost opportunity in respect of big things like savings. The Government through this bill could have reinstated KiwiSaver and proper savings towards the Cullen fund. This bill does not do that. The Government has set up a Savings Working Group because at long last it has acknowledged that one of the problems in New Zealand is our savings level. That is one of the big differences between New Zealand compared with Australia. We in Labour have been saying that for years. It is why we started Government savings through the Cullen fund and the surpluses we ran. It is why we started incentivising private savings via KiwiSaver. They are both measures that the National Government has undermined just as it undermined the Kirk savings scheme and Mr Peters’ efforts in the late 1990s to introduce compulsory savings. The Government has no coherent plan to bridge the wage gap with Australia. This bill does nothing substantial to bridge that wage gap. It continues to grow ever wider despite the protestations by National to the contrary. 
Once again I reinforce the point that Annette King made. There is one small thing that can be done for Kiwis who at present are pushed on their cost of living in respect of the extra GST—not all GST—that is coming on their rates for the balance of this year. Let us give those people who cannot afford to pay all of their rates for this year by 1 October the same relief from the increase in GST that is given to those people who have already paid their rates. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Papers 156 and 157 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The amendment in the name of David Garrett has been withdrawn. The amendment in the name of Stuart Nash which seeks to insert a new clause 81B is out of order because it does not meet the 24-hour rule under Standing Order 320(1). 
Parts 1 to 5 schedules 1 and 2 and clauses 1 and 2 as amended agreed to. 
Bill reported with amendment. 
Report adopted.