Cosgrove Clayton: Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCosgrove Clayton: Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 31 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11535. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour):Well that was a cracker. That was a David Bennett special.Fletcher Tabuteau: That was high-level stuff for him.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: That was high-level stuff. That was a demonstration of how transformational this bill is. You would think given the name of it that it was a sort of motion picture: the Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill 2015. I pay tribute to the Minister who has expedited this bill far faster than one of his predecessors the longest-serving revenue Minister in the history of a Commonwealth Parliament Peter Dunne. I congratulate the present Minister. But that contribution from the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC) who pored over this bill day after day week after week and who purportedly knows it backwards shows the depth and detail and the huge transformations that are going to take place in this bill. He managed in his speech to talk about everybody else’s policy and every other party’s policy—which you then ruled against Mr Assistant Speaker and quite rightly so—and then sort of ran out of puff. That was it.The one page of notes that the National Party—no actually that Chris Bishop a former researcher would have scratched down for him and said “Look here’s a couple of lines. We’ve got to pad this out until 10 o’clock so you’ve got to throw a bit of biffo around.” and he ran out of steam—he ran out of steam. He managed to get out the four main points around the bill but the depth or lack of depth of that speech shows that although we support the Minister’s efforts to be fair he inherited this bill. He was probably told as the new Minister that this is his first big hit as revenue Minister. He could kick a goal in this Parliament in his first couple of days in the job and the revenue handed him this. He said: “Hey this has got a flash name. It’s transformation so I’ll be able to spin a few lines to say this is a hugely authoritative bill heavy on gravitas and heavy on transformational detail and we’ll give it a whirl.” That was the only bit of advice. It was working. He made a good third reading speech until he handed it over to old humpty-dumpty who fell fair and square off the wall.We support this bill. I bet the next tax bill that the Minister brings in—he will not make that same mistake again. It will be Chris Bishop leading the charge on behalf of the FEC for the National Party side. I say to the Minister that I hope you can put humpty-dumpty back together again.This is as previous speakers have said a good common-sense bill. It makes a number of changes which I will not rehearse because I know the Minister quite rightly wants to get this through tonight get the press statement out and talk about transformation. It makes a number of common-sense changes but I have to say as other colleagues have said they are small steps. They will indeed as the Minister said assist business and assist many of the players in our tax system those in the provisional tax area and others to be able to file electronic signatures and for the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) to be able to send and receive emails. Although you have got to say tongue-in-cheek that in this day and age we are passing a bill giving the IRD permission to put down the rocks and stones the chalks and slate the pieces of paper and actually get on the computer and send “Joe and Josephine Taxpayer” an email saying “Hey it’s time to put your return in and by the way if you would like to you can send one back to us.”—transformational stuff. But I blame Peter Dunne. I do not blame this Minister because this should have been done a hundred years ago or whatever. This does bring the IRD back into the 21st century or sort of pulls it into the 21st century kicking and screaming.But I just raise a number of points and I am sure the Minister will recall me raising some concerns in the Committee stage. One is that he made reference to the $800 million - plus allocation in the Budget for the Business Transformation IT programme. Although I accept and it has been a fact for some time that the IRD does need to have a modern robust IT system to cope with the new technology and to make it easier for taxpayers I made reference I think by interjection on the Minister to the last time the National Party put through a big IT project pre-Novopay actually under the Bolger Government called INCIS. It went awry.The place is littered to be fair with IT projects—I am sure it is cross-party when we have been in Government—that have had some difficulties in terms of managing budgets. This is a massive amount of money and a massive business transformation IT project.Fletcher Tabuteau: Call it infrastructure.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: My colleague says that it is called infrastructure. Indeed he is right. My concern and I just seek further reassurance from other National Party members given that Chris Bishop is on top of this bill unlike his chairman that that money is going to be managed wisely and monitored very very carefully.We know with some in the Public Service that with these projects there is often a loss of specification control. You get to the end of these projects and the IT consultants turn to you and say: “You didn’t ask me to make it work. You just wanted all these things bolted on.” We want this to work. We want it to be appropriate and we want it to assist taxpayers and the IRD. But we do seek assurances that the money the huge amount of discretionary spending going to the department and senior management is being monitored carefully and we will not get to the end of this—somebody else will make a speech like this in years to come. We will find out we have got a dud and a whole lot of taxpayers’ money has gone down the drain.So I ask the Minister—I think he is a pretty diligent Minister unlike some of his predecessors who were asleep at the wheel or maybe got bored with the job after 20 years in the job as Mr Dunne was. I am sure this Minister will be counting the beans as every dollar goes through and monitoring that it is appropriate.I think the point that my colleague made about the $750 million owed by the IRD—I would say to the Minister that that is a massive amount of money. It is almost equivalent to the Budget allocation for the Business Transformation project. I hope he will ask the department to be as vigorous in trying to repatriate that money to taxpayers as the department is as vigorous at taking money off taxpayers appropriately so in terms of their tax obligations. There must be a way in this day and age to hunt down those taxpayers and say: “Actually we’ve got a cheque for you because you overpaid; you paid too much. It’s sitting there in our bank accounts and we’re going to help you.”Hon Michael Woodhouse: Direct credit in the 21st century.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Indeed. Kiwis could probably I think do a lot with the $750 million that the revenue therefore the Government owes them if that money could somehow be repatriated in part or in whole to those taxpayers.The Labour Party supports the bill as we have always supported practical tax measures. I congratulate the Minister on his diligence in powering this one through. I look forward to the transformational media statement which will come out tomorrow and I certainly look forward to Chris Bishop who will speak next. God help us; I hope it is a better effort than his chairman’s at the FEC.