Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Madam Chairperson Williams I am most humbled and grateful that you've taken my call. Before I start I do want to rebut the comment from the Minister in the chair Stuart Nash who made the absurd statement that energy prices in the summer can sometimes be higher than in winter.Well I actually have some information here. It's interesting; if you just look—I'll just take Auckland because I'm from Auckland of course. January energy prices that reflect both price and usage: 138c; but if we go through to June: 207c 231c. There is huge variation between summer and winter.I think this part of the bill around the winter energy payment should be called the Dodo Bill"—the "Dodo Bill" because this is about protecting people from extinction. When I say that I mean the members from New Zealand First. We all know that this thing wrapped up in something called a "winter energy payment" is just to make up the difference in the tax calculations in the package to ensure that New Zealand First members can say to their constituents—the people that did vote for them—"We got something for you in this package." I will remind the committee that under National they would have got more if they'd voted for us—much more than this whole fallacy called the "winter energy payment".I put forward an amendment and it is of course about the winter energy payment. It is about inserting a change to adopt the quarterly survey of domestic energy prices prepared by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE). What that tells you if you go and look at this—published by one of our renowned Government departments—Hon Member: The library.ANDREW BAYLY: No no from MBIE—from MBIE quarterly. That shows that you can calculate the energy price in different regions and they do vary. I have the price in Pukekohe—right in the heart of my wonderful electorate—just the recent price and this is retail and it does break it down by lines companies and also the energy costs. Of course I'm going to quote you the retail price: about 29.6. If we go up to Kerikeri it was 30 actually. If we go down to Balclutha it's 40. So what my amendment says is that if you're going to have a winter energy payment why don't you reflect the actual price? Of course the Hon Jacqui Dean talked about usage and about temperature variation across regions so you can actually determine what the real price is for people when they incur it in their homes.What I just think about this whole winter energy package is that it is part of three new pieces of tax benefit introduced into this Families Package bill and I don't know why you need to do it. You know we've got the Best Start—which is a brand new initiative that could have easily been catered for under some of the other elements of the tax bill—we've got the introduction of this winter energy package and we've got the reintroduction of the independent earner tax credit.I just think that by introducing this raft of these new taxes all we're doing is building complexity into what is otherwise a relatively simple tax system and that's what our changes were about. The current legislated changes were about making the tax system much more simple. So if you don't what you do is you end up making hard-working New Zealanders unable to understand the entitlements that they are actually due and therefore they don't claim them.Also it increases the cost of compliance. Of course I have heard the Minister of Finance talking endlessly at the Finance and Expenditure Committee meetings about the need to reduce compliance and of course here we are we've got three new ones making it much more difficult and much more complex. Of course it leads to the likelihood of errors and of course increased fraud.So that's why I think this winter energy payment is wrong. It's wrong in principle. It is just a tax that's been put in there to be a sop for New Zealand First."