Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Mr Speaker. I just want to return to that speech from Mr Willie Jackson who implied and inferred—SPEAKER: No—he couldn't. ANDREW BAYLY: —that many of the top taxpayers in New Zealand are not pulling their weight and that people on lower tax rates indeed needed to have respite. Personally I found that speech that implication rather offensive and I just thought the rhetoric that he spoke of is the type of thing that you would find on talkback radio. But in Parliament where we have to deal in facts and actually deal with the issues at hand the interesting thing is that the top 11 percent of all tax earners pay 48 percent or half of all the personal tax paid in New Zealand—half of all the personal tax raised—and people with families earning up to $70000 basically do not pay tax because whilst they've paid tax on their income because of the reimbursement through Working for Families and other benefits effectively they pay no tax. So the assertion that top taxpayers in New Zealand were ripping off other people and therefore that's the basis for bringing in a capital gains tax is to my mind a perverse argument. The other thing I think Mr Jackson should acquaint himself with is he should actually look at the accounts of the Government. In the year just gone your Government basically racked in about $85 billion of revenue from tax—$85 billion. Now during the term of this Government even though they campaigned on not introducing new taxes they have since—over the last 16 months—implemented tax changes that will in time raise $2.6 billion a year. If you look at the forward projections Mr Jackson of the Government—you know looking at Treasury numbers and this is where I would ask you to go and devote some of your time—SPEAKER: Order!ANDREW BAYLY: —you will see—sorry Mr Speaker. You will see that the Government's intended expected revenue will grow to $100 billion over the next four years without any further changes to the tax system. So the argument that the Government members continue to roll out is that we need more money. Well actually we don't as a country need more money and certainly as a Government we don't need more money. We're going to get roughly $18 billion of more money per annum over the next four years and that is a substantial amount of money by anyone's store. But the other side of the coin which I haven't heard from the Government members is the thing called discipline—financial discipline. What we do know is that the New Zealand First Party was very successful in getting $3 billion to spend and splash around the economy on the pretence of growing the economy in regions. We had $1 billion allocated to the Deputy Prime Minister for his foreign affairs a large portion of which is going towards new curtains and cushions in Sweden but we've also seen some other very costly platforms and cost structures brought in by this Government of Labour New Zealand First and the Greens. The issue around being clear about your spending and being robust and disciplined about it is perhaps more the issue and it's not the issue of continuously wanting to tax people and grab more money because you're not being careful with it. We on this side think you should be more careful with it. At the same time we've got a Government and a Minister of Finance saying Look the debt is fine even though in monetary terms it continues to grow."—in monetary terms it continues to grow. The only issue with the debt is that they are going to allow the debt to grow in New Zealand because they're growing the economy. So when you do it on a percentage basis he is going to let the debt grow in this country. Those two aspects are the most worrying thing about the capital gains tax and this call to somehow say that people are not paying their fair share is rather offensive. I think the other aspect of it is we have a tax system that is the envy of the world because it's so simple in terms of collection. If the Government brings this in we are going to turn that upside down and introduce one of the most complicated tax arrangements on top of what is now currently a very simple system and that will be an absolute travesty. We will spend years spending time trying to fix up any legislation that may be brought to the House. The debate having concluded the motion lapsed."