Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. Well there's been a lot of heat but very little light from the other side of the House. I have listened as carefully as I can imagine doing to understand what the point of this legislation is. It doesn't actually do anything. The best thing that can be said for it as we have heard from the other side is it doesn't raise any taxes. Well thank goodness for that—finally something with the word tax" in it that doesn't increase the burden of taxation on the average hard-working New Zealander. It also doesn't lower taxes mind you so there's no relief in sight for the long-suffering taxpayer either.So the only thing that it does do if anything is enable reporting we've heard or perhaps require reporting. Well it's not necessary to enable reporting because reporting is a thing that can take place anyway. We've heard from the other side about this great information-gathering exercise.Chlöe Swarbrick: Come on Chris—you're smarter than that.CHRIS PENK: I'm not smarter than this Chlöe Swarbrick so there—gotcha! We can make light of this but the point is that enabling reporting is not needed. A witch hunt or a fishing expedition or an information-gathering exercise can take place. It already has taken place quite recently as that; we've heard that as part of the justification for this legislation. So do we need it to require reporting? Well no because a Minister of the Crown be it the revenue Minister or anyone else can require Government agencies to do it. That's the point of their being.Chlöe Swarbrick: That's not for ever though.CHRIS PENK: That's the point of having elections. It's not for ever no; we have elections and people can stand for election and they can say that they stand for certain things. As the member of the House is very fond of saying—and she's right in this—everyone's got an ideology there's politics in everything and so there should be. We can all be judged on that. We can turn up to the New Zealand people every three years we can say this is our tax policy we can say "Vote for us or don't vote for us on that basis." We don't need a law that says it's going to be enabled or required that we're going to have a measuring against these principles. By the way earlier in the debate—Chlöe Swarbrick: Which one don't you like?CHRIS PENK: Which one don't I like? My argument is that there's no need for this legislation. As it happens there has been a good discussion when—I'll choose my words carefully—we're not allowed to refer to the absence of members in the House. Earlier this evening there was a good discussion about certain principles that were less favoured by Andrew Bayly our spokesperson in that regard—I'll defer to him; I don't know these things quite so well myself but I mean it seems obvious that we can have these debates in a rational environment in a political setting such as this and if we have an election and there's nothing to stop us getting the data.Anyway I'm wasting my time being heckled by Chlöe Swarbrick because the general public have got a pretty good understanding. I don't buy the argument that we need this to somehow educate the public. They've got a good instinctive feel for tax policy. They know what they like; they know what they don't like. The Government doesn't even agree with itself and it certainly doesn't agree with its so-called coalition partners or support or whatever—some support they provide. They're all at sixes and sevens—in this inflationary environment it's more like thirteens and fourteens but after tax it's probably eights and nines.The New Zealand public understand tax well. They're going to make sure that the current Government is the former Government very soon and then they will understand tax a bit better themselves."