Tabuteau Fletcher; Tisch LindsayTAXATION (BUSINESS TAX EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION AND REMEDIAL MATTERS) BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 13 December 2016.FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): Welcome everyone to the Chamber today. I hope it is a productive session that we now face before the election period coming up. I wish everyone the best of luck but yeah I am looking forward to a good contest.To the bill: we were speaking about business tax exchange of information and remedial matters and I thought it was an opportune time to acknowledge the new Minister of Revenue. There are certainly some possibilities there—ha ha! She does have the personality which means that people are hoping she might make some bold changes and get a few things done. If she does make some of those bold changes and if she makes the right few changes in the right direction it will be a pleasure to support her in those efforts.The business tax bill had a few hiccups and I just want to touch on them briefly because as I acknowledged in my contribution before the House rose last year New Zealand First actually supports the bill. But the few hiccups were and perhaps still are—unless something is done about it and there is still time—the fact that the IRD has asked for quite significant powers to make changes to legislation without Parliament's approval. That is quite a significant measure to ask for and it certainly does go beyond what New Zealand First would traditionally be comfortable with—and to that end actually I would like to acknowledge Mr Chris Bishop. In the select committee process he was perhaps the most efficacious and the most dogged in trying to understand on our behalf just what the motivation was behind this particular part in the bill.IRD spoke about the very fast and rapidly changing nature of technology and legislation's need to keep up with it. To a certain degree you would have to respect that constraint on legislation and the speed with which technology is moving but the reality is that the IRD is asking for something that is over above and beyond its purview. In the first instance we would suggest that it should not get it and that the legislation would need to be rewritten to take into account new technologies without trying to predict what they are—but we are clever enough to word legislation in such a way that shows we know things will change and technologies will improve or in fact change completely. Here is our chance to account for that. But if the National-dominated Finance and Expenditure Committee decides that actually it will proceed as dictated—well not dictated; that is an unfair statement—as prescribed then what we suggest is that the Minister's abilities to make those changes without Parliament's approval must be highly constrained and highly prescriptive in and of themselves.The other thing I wanted to say as a negative was that the predominance of the feedback from submitters was that the Government was trying to do too much too quickly and that what was actually happening with this particular piece of legislation was to do with the size of it and the preponderance of it. It is huge and it is trying to do a lot which in the main we do respect that a lot is trying to be done—hence our support. But the feedback was that the size is complicating it and that there are too many mistakes getting through.One of the examples which is quite frightening was from one of the very last submitters who said that if you do not change the definition of what a foreign trust is you will not actually have any of those foreign trusts in New Zealand being obliged to show detailed accounts of their transactions and who their stakeholders are etc. etc. We would have missed the point entirely and nothing substantive would have changed. To the Government's credit it took on the submission the officials listened and yes now we are in a position where the actual intent of the legislation will be actually enacted but it has taken us a long time to get there. It was a big example but there are other issues that we need to take account of and I think there will be mistakes that will need fixing as we progress through this process.I did have a lot to say about the trust programme but I think I will curtail my contribution and just reflect in the time before the dinner break and say that we still need to get to phase two. The Government has not acknowledged the fact that in this piece of legislation yes it has done so much work toward the Shewan report that New Zealand First will support it but it is a half measure that will get a lot done. The Government has still yet to acknowledge that the trusts of real estate agents lawyers and accountants are still almost literally a black hole into which money disappears in this country. We know it is legal it is being misused and it is being abused and the reputation of this country is being made the worse for it.New Zealand First does support this legislation but we are perhaps only halfway there. Shewan said it in his report which to his credit was an amazing statement not only in terms of the transparency and the requirements of foreign trusts in terms of their reporting requirements but actually that we needed to go further. He said it and the Government has completely ignored that part of the report. The reality is that we have cleaned up all these reporting requirements for foreign trusts in New Zealand but the avenues still exist and the pathways are still there for overseas interests and others—locals can abuse this system as well—to hide money in what I described as a black hole which it technically is. We need to do something about it and we need to do something about it now. Although traditionally New Zealand First would not support a bill such as this because substantively it was only a half measure or a window dressing I acknowledge that the select committee worked particularly hard. The IRD officials were very very hard-working in their contributions in terms of advice going away and coming back with improvements.So today I am pleased to say that because of the efforts of the committee in tidying up the legislation and because of the efforts of officials New Zealand First will support this legislation and hope that we can make a very rapid start that this new Government—this new Minister—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.