Brownlee Gerry; Parker DavidHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): That was an interesting contribution from the Minister. With regards to the Auditor-General's concerns I would have thought that GST records would have pretty quickly shown whether or not a business was making it up or not and other Government compliances similarly along with the requirements for accountants to be appropriate in their dealings with tax agencies etc. So I think that in response to Mr Simon O'Connor's request that last part is not so good. I hope the form of it talking about an order to perhaps help some of these people would be a good thing.But I want to just take the committee back for a minute to the response that the Minister gave to Nicola Grigg's question about people in the South Island who have had to put up with the level 2 restrictions but who as a consequence of level 2 have not been able to access some of the supports that might be there had it been level 3 or level 4. The response that came from the Minister was Well look of course we care about these people. Naturally we care about them. But look we're moving forward and we're coming down in line with this traffic light system." but that doesn't for a minute explain where the support that this bill would allow would kick in under a traffic light system. No one's got any idea whatsoever. Is the Minister telling us that the same conditions for the four levels under the alert system would be the same for the three levels under their traffic light system and can he tell us where the differentiating line would be? Earlier I asked if the Government had received any advice from Treasury or any other agency of Government—perhaps the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—about the expectation for the call on this sort of support once the traffic light system was put in place and there's just silence on that. There must be something somewhere. Mr Court asked a similar sort of question but no answer was forthcoming. So did the Government just decide to put this bill through to line it all up a little bit without knowing exactly what was being lined up? If there are New Zealanders out there tonight concerned about what's going to happen when the new announcement is made about the traffic light system and they're living in Auckland and they've already been told it's going to be red what's it going to mean for the assistance that they might now be getting given that the Prime Minister has come in and said "No the big difference will be that even though they'll be at red under the traffic light system they'll still be able to operate."? So does that mean that if they're down by the 30 percent even though they're operating under the traffic light system or the application applied here according to the traffic light system they can make an application for a continued grant? It's not unreasonable that those questions are answered when there is no select committee process that might tease out all of that sort of information. There would be an expectation that in a select committee there'd be a departmental report. So a departmental report will generally cover off all the questions that are raised at a committee by submitters or by committee members and things like this lack of clarity that's here tonight would be sorted out. But the Government has said "No it's not important enough to send it to a select committee. We don't need to hear from the general public don't need to hear from any of the various ranges of experts out there in tax matters etc. We're just going to put it through because it just lines up one system with another." but there is no clear alignment. So Minister is it possible to tell the committee what advice the Government got about expectation for calls upon assistance once we go into this traffic light system given that there are so many businesses out there who want to open and who want to succeed so many business operators and owners who have put their own capital in to their business over the last 12 to 18 months to keep it afloat and so many businesses that don't like having to call on the Government support but know that without it they shut the door and the people they employ go down the road. So I wonder can the Minister please answer that question because for so many people hoping that this bill tonight is some sort of indication of ongoing support it will be necessary to know how it kicks in and where it links in with existing systems.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): What I can confirm is what I've previously said and that is that there are many imponderables that have arisen from COVID. The consequences for business have in part been alleviated through the Resurgence Support Payment and if this amendment does not pass there is no way that a Government in the future can do similar things under the traffic light system because the current system relies upon alert level changes under the alert level system which is replaced with the COVID protection framework."