O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I said in the House I think it was last week actually addressing another bill that was being rammed through the House in urgency that you can often see the problems with rationality and inconsistency when emotion replaces reason. The member who has resumed her seat—and I appreciate her contribution of a sort. The Opposition is opposing this for valid reasons which I'm obviously happy to outline. But it's also the duty of an Opposition—triply so under urgency—to put pressure on the Government to make sure any bill is fit for purpose. But I'll also point out to the member who has resumed her seat who's so worried about opposition that she might want to look at the party sitting in front of her who actually do oppose this bill—that being the Green Party. It had to swallow as was well noted in the first reading the dead rats because we can see from their press releases and supporters that they are incredibly unhappy with that. So I encourage the Labour members to have a talk to the genuine opposition to this bill if you will from the Green Party. Look the problem with this bill is again it's being rushed. A colleague of mine a fine colleague Tim van de Molen was pointing out through brief interjections that this has been—and in fact the member who took her seat Angie Warren-Clark was saying this is urgent. Well OK let's take that prima facie: it's urgent. Well why did it not come up in Budget urgency? In fact we spent more time talking about forests and customs than we did about this so it makes no sense. Again emotional? Tick to that. Rational? Not. We're also here at a second reading speech which normally comes after a select committee stage. We haven't had it. That's a problem. We are talking almost $600 million of New Zealand spending as a consequence of this bill. I'm very happy to accept those members who say this is a fairly technical bill—it is. But what it enables is almost $600 million worth of spend from taxpayers by the way—by taxpayers. It's one of the great ironies. I've often used the phrase in this House to be bribed with your own money". That's to complete the phrase: taxpayers' money being given to taxpayers who pay the taxes. It's sort of a great giant circle. The left have never quite got their head around that. But we haven't had a second—sorry the second reading has come in without a select committee process. We haven't delved into the inconsistencies that I was pointing out in the first reading. Why an arbitrary date of 1 March? I know there was a glorious attempt by the speaker after me in the first reading to point out why 1 March was not arbitrary. We danced around a little bit. We didn't seem to note the pandemic declared on 31 January or that we closed the border to China on 3 February. Somehow 1 March just popped up. We haven't looked at those inconsistencies. We haven't looked at why a redundancy payment of $30000 is the right limit. This House has not addressed the question yet and maybe it will in the committee stage of why there are not transitional phases if you will. We haven't addressed those who have been deliberately excluded such as migrants. I'm very pleased the likes of Paulo Garcia have raised that. It's a major issue and I know the likes of Paulo have been working very very hard on behalf of their—well not only New Zealand but migrant communities. The other problem we have is that a select committee is normally where people come and speak. They share with us their views. I think the irony is that normally the people who would come on a bill like this are friends of the left. It's probably slightly naughty of me to say at one level but normally it's the friends of the left who come in and talk yet they're not allowing those people. In fact when we look again at the departmental report the only people that are being consulted with are bureaucrats. Now they do a great job—kudos to them—but you'd expect in a select committee stage and then coming to a second reading that we would have heard in a space like this from benefit advocacy groups from those who run budgetary services the Salvation Army and the churches. Of course they're not de rigueur at the moment with the left. We can keep them closed. We don't want to hear from them. But the irony of course is that you can close the churches but they don't close the multibillion-dollar services which the churches provide. But that's another debate. But we've had no external consultation whatsoever. In fact officials here say that the bill only makes consequential changes to the Social Security Act and therefore we don't have to talk to people. Well the little words put on a piece of paper are not all that consequential but I would say—particularly hearing from others on the other side just how important and urgent this is—that's pretty major. You'd want to hear from people. The fact that it's almost $600 million is pretty substantial too but they have not been heard from and my little note here against what officials are saying: "Oh no we don't need to talk to people."—my very erudite and deep thinking says "Rubbish". Fundamentally too we have a little bit of a problem that the bill is trying to say this "payment" to only a specified if not discriminatory group of people is income. So OK that's fine but it's not going to be treated as income for tax purposes. Now I'm not advocating that it should be but we have this funny contradiction beginning to develop that it is not a benefit it's not a grant; it's income. Now normally income would be taxable but we're not going to tax it. Now again it's one of those strange things which normally a select committee might just tease out look at the consequences of that but we haven't had it. Why is that? Why are we rushing it through? So on that it's my little gift to Tracey Martin I'm going to finish early for her benefit."