SpeechIngrid Leary: Mr Speaker.Damien Smith: Mr Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Damien Smith.DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Thank you.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Smith you could do with some more spring in getting to your feet because—DAMIEN SMITH: I was respecting the member across the way.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well of course if the other member had taken the call yours could've been lost. So I just would—DAMIEN SMITH: No.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Smith I could just suggest to you keep an eye. So you have the call.Matt Doocey: He's a respectful man.DAMIEN SMITH: No room for respect in Parliament. The Labour and Green parties continue their mind-set and tradition of believing that taxing us into prosperity is going to work.Hon Julie Anne Genter: It does. Look at Denmark.DAMIEN SMITH: And they're going to use countries and comparisons that are not even relevant. The spending in this the taxation bill is showing that the Government is short on cash and tax ultimately is politics. Tax is politics because this is bill No. 2. When the public backlashed against the GST treatment of KiwiSaver even though it was complicatedly explained and was misinterpreted and people did get the wrong end of the stick it ultimately did say something though that there's something wrong at the IRD where they can just slip something into the Government's Minister and it's included—the same thing on the bleeding-edge stuff around this platform economy which is that they just want gold stars from the Ministers and the Ministers aren't really checking the detail. That was a highly embarrassing setback for the Government in terms of having to take that last bill off the Table and replace it with this one.Doing my numbers there might be enough money here with GSTs on GSTs to claw back the cost of living payment and that's probably been one of the objectives. You know there was a time in life when Benjamin Franklin said in 1789 that there's only two things certain in life death and taxes but now you can be dead and get a payment. So I think the Labour Government has redefined Benjamin Franklin's statement. Mr Smith will say that there's three things certain in life: death and taxes and in New Zealand you can get a bonus back if you want to if you want to stick your hand up and pull it out.This bill I have to say though would've been the perfect set-up for a capital gains tax to be introduced by the Labour Party. But unfortunately as Jacinda Ardern said it won't happen while she's still here. But it's no doubt that the ambition of the Green Party is to bring in a capital gains tax. Also they have this misconception that our tax policy at the ACT Party is just about rich people. It's not. Anybody under $70000 will get a flat rate 17.5 percent tax rebate and anybody above that will get 28 percent and we will kill the 39 percent envy tax rate because it doesn't actually contribute much revenue at all. It's just an ideology that they have produced.So also the brightline test and interest rate deductibility will be scrapped. On cross-border workers we thought that the non-resident contractors' tax should've been abolished completely. So there's a halfway house there.The bill clarifies that any changes that are payable because of law changes or regulations will go to the Government coffers. The one thing that does seem to have slipped away is that—maybe Mr Robertson wants this to happen—we're all due refunds of GST on earnings through ACC but nobody's really talking about that. It's something I hope in the next stage of this process that is addressed by the committee in question.So you know the IRD gold star sticker system we think needs to be addressed. There's stuff coming from there that even other countries around the world aren't doing which you know makes us embarrassingly early in terms of just putting cost and burden on our systems and not on anybody else's.The build-to-rent GST benefits to developers—that is very questionable and the councils should've been involved with that. Dual resident companies and dual residency—there still is a lot of issues to work out with the Australians in this bill and that'll be the next stage.So in the digital economy aspects even though we're at the cutting edge of this the next paper that will come through will be Pillar One and Pillar Two OECD rules. So it looks like everything the OECD wants we're not going to just accept as a given here in New Zealand. Well that is strange because last night I got my bill rejected working with the OECD. You know I'm not feeling bad about it but it looks like that's the pan-organisation plus the World Bank which will affect our taxation philosophy.So the sooner we have a look at how the Government spent its money on COVID and advertising and initiatives around the green space and get a royal inquiry into COVID which I know my colleague Miss Swarbrick is very keen on we will begin to understand the stress that the tax base is under. Even though people have a perception that GDP is rising if you strip out the costs of agricultural price increases in the last quarter all the underlying factors are deteriorating. So it's not as rosy as people make out and we have to accept that we've got a lot of work to do with the economy.So at ACT's side of the fence we believe in giving the money to New Zealanders to spend themselves and not by this Government. Inflation has assisted this Government in terms of its tax take. It's actually incredulous that some of that hasn't been passed back to the citizens of this country. On the last point we believe that the tax bill at 39 percent as the top rate just showed that there was no thought or thinking going on here. The cost of living payment at the eleventh hour the withdrawal of this bill around GST and KiwiSaver and the presentation of bill No. 2 shows that you know things are just getting made up on the hoof and this should've been settled down into something really really steady and strong. So if the Government is short on cash we can expect to see more taxes. If the Greens want their agenda fulfilled we will have the spectre of a capital gains tax going into the next election and that may prove unpalatable for the people of New Zealand.So the bill cleans up several aspects of the GST code which I'm sure the accountants will be happy about. But on the macro picture we believe that it hasn't addressed the dynamics of a post-COVID scenario. Within the COVID scenario it has led and shown that the inefficiencies around Government spending have caused us problems in balancing the books and there isn't much more left to take in the tax take.So we oppose this bill and we will look to the committee for refinements certainly around ACC levels and we will watch that closely. The cross-border regulations are another aspect that need to be looked at immediately and we hope there's some work done in that area. ACT opposes the bill.