Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you Mr Chair and I thank the Minister in the chair David Parker for engaging and recognising the sensitivity of the issue particularly given the dual roles that he plays as I guess poacher in the form of the Minister of Revenue and gamekeeper as the Attorney-General responsible for the section 7 report.It does raise a question about whether or not it is necessary to make this change with urgency. I mean we can have a debate about whether the Part 1 provisions raising the income tax rate really necessitated urgency when the only reason that the Leader of the House has given is Well we made a political promise and we'd like to do it quickly." Now I made the argument that that's not a legitimate reason for the use of urgency in this Parliament. But quite separate from that is the question of what justifies the urgency behind section 33. I haven't heard anything from anybody on the other side of the House of why it is necessary to urgently expand the powers of the commissioner to request information from people. What I've heard from the Minister just now is "Well we have to do it because the commissioner thinks she can do it so we should let her." Well I don't think that it's doing our duty as parliamentarians to make laws for the convenience of the Crown. Actually a Parliament is supposed to be restraint on the Crown on behalf of the people standing up for their rights such as the rights that the representatives in this House have put down in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and that have been embedded into our constitutional framework over the past 30 years.When a piece of legislation rubs up against the Bill of Rights when it challenges important precepts on which this whole country and society and culture is built—freedom of expression; the right to be secure from search and seizure—these are important rights and I guess the question is: why does the Minister feel it's necessary to do this part of the legislation under urgency? He's already had to amend it on the fly with what appears to be a fairly hastily drafted and formatted amendment that he's got on the Table. People might ask the question: if only we had you know more than 24 hours to pass this legislation what other considerations might come up? What might be discovered if for example this legislation went before a select committee for six months and experts in tax law were allowed to submit on it if experts in privacy and human rights—I mean dare I say it maybe the Human Rights Commission could make a helpful submission; unlikely but I think it's worth giving them the chance. You know we should actually allow people—Greg O'Connor: Oh the irony.DAVID SEYMOUR: —to submit. Well you know this is such an important cause Greg O'Connor that I'm prepared to consider the possibility that the Human Rights Commission might do something useful in this context. Based on their track record it seems unlikely but that's how seriously we're taking this.I think it would be proper for the Minister to not only have an amendment that you know is welcome and restricts the use of information gathered under section 33 so that it can't be taken for policy reasons and used for prosecution but actually say "Look this is a step too far. Yep we've got to raise the top tax rate for political reasons but we're not going to mess with really critical stuff that rubs up against the Bill of Rights under urgency." There is at least one tax bill every year. As a long-suffering member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee I can tell you they are robust they are debated and they attract high-quality submissions. The next tax bill that goes through the Finance and Expenditure Committee would be the place to consider expanding the powers with which the commissioner of the IRD can request information. That would be the right way to do it. But if the Minister can get up on his hind legs and tell us why it is necessary to urgently expand the powers of the IRD commissioner then I think the committee will be all ears. If he doesn't have a good reason can I just suggest to him that maybe he should put up another amendment to strike out that particular part of the legislation."