Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Oh thank you Mr Speaker. Here we are speaking on the third reading of the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2019–20 GST Offshore Supplier Registration and Remedial Matters) Bill. I was just wondering whether that former speaker Michael Wood wanted to say anything more because we were missing so much. First of all we were lacking enthusiasm—enthusiasm for this.This bill just demonstrates why this Government in power right now is a problem to ordinary New Zealanders and to business people alike. That Government over there is overseeing the greatest haul of new taxes and tax revenues over the next few years than we have seen for a long long time. We're going to be seeing our tax take of this Government rise from about $84 billion to over $105 billion in four years' time—a massive increase absolute massive increase. Then we've seen the Minister of Finance also during that intervening time increasing debt by 10 billion bucks—10 billion bucks. That doesn't take into account the off-balance-sheet borrowing that the New Zealand Transport Agency and other Government entities might be entering into. This is a Government that just wants to rake money in from ordinary New Zealanders and that's why we're not going to support this bill because the main thing about this is enshrining higher than necessary tax rates for the coming year.That's why I put up a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 250 an SOP that would have meant that New Zealanders would have kept at the time they're paid money paid to them by their business owners or employers or whatever it might be. Whatever the source of that income they would have kept the money in their pockets—an extra 1060 bucks a year—1060 bucks. Most of that in my SOP was about looking after the most vulnerable and the lowest paid of all New Zealanders. That's where we want to make sure that people retain more money in their pocket—not to take it off them and then pay it back to them in the form of a benefit.Yesterday I found it fascinating. I found it fascinating because when I started talking about it subsequent speakers would get up and say Well look you know we're increasing minimum wages"—well of course the employer pays for that not the Government—"and then we're going to give back even more through Working for Families"—one of them said that yesterday—"and accommodation supplements." Well actually I think there's another way of looking at the equation. Why don't you just let people keep the money in their pocket at the time when they're paid? Why do you have to put it through that mincing machine and then pay it back in the form of a benefit? How degrading. Just let people have the money at the source. That's why my SOP was about putting in place the new revised lower tax rate for the lower paid the most vulnerable in New Zealand. I think this is what people talk about when they talk about a regressive tax. That is the one that hurts the poorest and the most vulnerable members of our society. I think if the Government could say "Right we're raising another $25 billion of tax over the next four years. We're taking on account another $10 billion of extra debt—that's $35 billion roughly—and we're going to spend it on really good stuff like roads like infrastructure and like all that sort of stuff." we'd say "Well it's not a bad proposition." But what have we got? One of the members from the Government side said—in fact it was a Minister—"You tell me how we're going to stop all that. How are you going to fund all these things like infrastructure?" Well it's a very clear proposition. All you do is stop the $3 billion fund that Mr Shane Jones has got his hands on which I know the Hon Paul Goldsmith has been honing in on in terms of the efficiency of that spend. You stop the billion dollars you gave to Winston Peters for the great new ambassadorships and spending on curtains and carpets in Sweden and all that billion dollars he got again in the latest Budget for his railway line in Northland—we all know what the purpose of all that is. That's the answer: if you're going to take in money make sure you spend it wisely. Unfortunately we're not seeing it from this Government.Now I just want to turn on to a digital tax commonly referred to as the "Amazon tax". I want to make sure that everyone is very clear: the New Zealand National Party supports this tax. As the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee—and I think the Minister on earlier occasions—has acknowledged this piece of legislation had its genesis under the Hon Judith Collins. What we want to do is make sure we support our retailers at all levels. Of course when GST was brought in all those years ago no one thought about online trading of goods and of course time has moved on. This legislation is about protecting retailers and of course it requires overseas suppliers—or offshore suppliers to use the technical term—to register for GST if they sell more than $60000 of goods to New Zealand and to account for GST for items less than $400 which previously were largely not subject to GST.The issue we have with this—and again I put in an SOP yesterday that we debated SOP 251. During the select committee stage we had a number of powerful submitters who came and said "Look we are large multinational online platforms."—eBay and Alibaba are a couple of examples—"To do the programming changes it's going to take time." There are requirements to be changed in Australia as well. They said "We do want to comply with the requirements but we need time to put it in place." We had a lot of debate in the committee. The officials said it should be 1 October. We particularly on this side of the House said it needed to be more reasonable. That was very hotly debated and ultimately at the end of the day the select committee agreed on 1 October.Suddenly at the last minute we had a Minister intervene and jump over the top of the select committee and change it to 1 December. That cut across the whole select committee process in my view. But more importantly I do not think we've actually ended up with the most appropriate date and there is a risk—there is a risk—that some of those online trading platforms will not be ready on the due date and that's what the SOP was about.The other aspect—and this is a bit that we really do have a problem with—is around the issue of ring-fencing of tax losses. I think speakers have talked about it before. In New Zealand we've got a trillion-dollar property market—40 percent of it is owned by ordinary mum and dad investors. They're not sophisticated people in many cases and—as I said yesterday in the debate—many wealthy people do not want to own lots of rental properties. These are ordinary people who choose to put their spare cash into an investment they can go and see and that they feel like they've got a better association with. In most cases they are great landlords. They look after their property which is their main investment and they look after their tenants. I'm not saying for a moment that there are not poor landlords. But again we've got a Government who keeps slicing and dicing away at those ordinary New Zealanders who have chosen of their own volition to make a large investment in a property. We've seen all the changes that have gone through—the brightline test and all those sorts of things—that will have an effect on them but this bill is a further step in that direction. What it does is that it will require tax losses when a property is sold—by those mum and dad investors—to be contained and can only be used against future losses or profits on future sales of property. Now in many cases these people only own one property and sometimes they want to exit the market. In those cases those losses will be stranded and will not be able to be utilised by investors and that goes against all the principles of taxation. This is another way of course for this Government—which has already imposed seven additional taxes since it came into power. This one's going to raise another $190 million for this rapacious Government and what it's down for—$300 extra that is going to be imposed on renters. Another $300 and we already know rents have gone up by $50 a week—$50 a week. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member's time has expired."