Wedd CatherineCATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki): Well I welcome this opportunity to be able to speak against this bill. There's been a lot of conversation and discussion tonight around the cost of living crisis because we are in a cost of living crisis. Our economy is fragile and we need to strengthen it and get it back on track. On this side of the House we do that by being good fiscal managers and managing the books properly looking at productivity and realising that in New Zealand we actually have an effective simple fair tax system that we do not need to change by removing GST from food.But there are other ways we do need to change it and that is to ensure that hard-working New Zealanders can keep more of what they earn. On that side of the House they have used hard-working New Zealanders as a bottomless ATM. Well we have stopped that. We have put a stop to that already making announcements to get rid of the ute tax the fuel tax and we're bringing back the brightline test back to two years and restoring interest deductibility because these are practical solutions practical policies that are going to get this economy back on track by focusing on less tax and more productivity to strengthen our economy.But today we have had a bill that has been introduced to this House which is once again going to treat New Zealanders like a bottomless ATM machine—we absolutely oppose this bill. Taking GST off food will cost the Crown about $2.6 billion it is estimated out there. In a cost of living crisis where there's been a lot of spending we need to bring it back; rein it in.When we look at this it's not actually the ones that are the most deprived that are going to get the most benefit out of this bill because the research has proven that the administrative costs and the complexity means that it could be that the supermarkets are going to be the ones that basically benefit from this—and not directly going into the consumers' pockets where it needs to be going. So this actually raises concerns about the effectiveness and the justification of this spending. It is not the way to reduce the cost of living. The way to do that is by directly assisting hard-working New Zealanders with tax relief which we will see more of later this year.But removing GST from food will bring a whole lot of administrative costs. I think it was interesting that the member the Hon Dr Deborah Russell earlier spoke about the Tax Working Group—I mean we don't really like to bring up those working groups; there was quite a few of them. But this particular one did make some quite interesting comments around GST. Basically they said that it was a bad idea. We should be looking at that and taking that advice because it is a bad idea where we would see more administrative costs more complexity and that money not actually going into the pockets of the people who really need it because the ones that would benefit more are the ones that are going to be spending more on groceries at the supermarket not the ones that aren't going to be spending as much. So broadly it is not a good idea.I come from a region which produces a lot of food: Tukituki Hawke's Bay. It's the food-producing region of New Zealand. But the way to bring food prices down is to get on top of inflation strengthen the economy and make it easier for the businesses to produce the food—that is less red tape less regulation so that we can actually bring the cost of food down. At the moment we are seeing inflation high but we need to bring that down. So we need to refocus our priorities on strengthening the economy. It is not removing GST off food. It is a bad idea—that is what the tax groups have recommended. So today I do not support this bill.