Seymour David; Parker DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. In the absence of other people seeking the call I'm quite happy to continue asking the Minister questions and I thank him for his engagement and his answers. What he appeared to be saying is that we shouldn't worry about the tax rate because people will come to New Zealand for many other reasons but we are competitive with other countries that have a higher tax rate than us because we have a lower tax rate than them which in fairness I think seems a little bit like he was picking the argument to suit him in each case.He also pointed to the effect of taxation on people in other areas of the tax spectrum or the income spectrum and I agree with him that people are motivated or at least demotivated by the taxes that they pay but that's not in debate in this bill. What's in debate in this bill is the effect of the tax rate on people earning income over $180000 or at least on the income over that level. It seems to me that the real answer to the question is that the Minister's not sure what the impacts will be on people's motivation to work but he said that he thinks not much is the answer that we actually got and that he thinks that won't affect competition for skills and talent but it wasn't clear why he doesn't think that. I noticed that the regulatory impact statement says that an additional objective of the bill is to increase the I guess progressivity of the tax system and make New Zealand a more equal place. That is sort of a secondary objective. But I have to wonder—the Treasury has said in the departmental disclosure statement that the change in the Gini coefficient is going to be 0.2 percent if there's no behavioural response. But of course the policy doesn't actually make anyone better off directly; it just takes money off some people to achieve that. So I just wonder if the Minister can explain how this policy is supposed to work. Is it that it makes people more equal by taking money off some and if so is it really worth a 0.2 percent change in the Gini coefficient?Then I guess a sort of related question—I'll give you two for one because we wouldn't want to be here all night. There are other ways to I guess reduce the Gini coefficient if that's one's goal and the other way from taking money off people that have it is to give to people that don't or at least take money off people that have more and give to those who have less. I wonder if the objective is to transfer half a billion dollars—although as we've heard it could be a lot less than that; we're not sure. Did the Minister in his discussions with his Cabinet colleagues ask if maybe somewhere in the hundred billion - odd that the Government spends rather than going down this route it might be easier to find economies and efficiencies elsewhere if the objective was to transfer cash and reduce the Gini coefficient? Could they have reduced Gini by more than 0.2 percent by finding greater efficiencies in other Government spending? Now it may be that the question was asked and the answer was No there's no inefficient spending in this Government" but it would be helpful to know if the Minister asked that question first. Then maybe if we get past that who knows? Someone else might want to ask a question but I do have some more if they don't.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Thank you Madam Chair. In respect of the progressivity issue progressivity is achieved both through transfer payments but also public services that are delivered to New Zealanders through funding that's provided by the tax system. In respect of cost-saving measures we are—as all Governments do—trying to avoid the waste of taxpayers' money. No one wants to take more money in tax than is needed to meet the proper business of Government. At the moment many Government departments have in fact suffered very large reductions in their normal fee revenue particularly as a consequence of the disruptions to the economy caused by the COVID epidemic."