Russell DeborahHon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): I wish to make a few comments on this tax bill and some of the issues that the Minister has outlined. First up I wish to speak to the annual rates. As the Minister said this is an annual bill that has to go through the House. The tax rates have to be confirmed. It's a constitutional matter. If they are not confirmed by 31 March then tax can't be charged and the Government has an issue so it's an important thing that we do.However notably this particular bill does not make any changes to the actual rates of tax although there are some very minor amendments to Schedule 1 of the Income Tax Act. So in terms of the tax rates that have been set for this current year they were actually changed in the Budget night legislation. So there's no particular debate on the tax rates themselves in this bill and the constitutional requirement is sitting there for the annual tax rates. So I just wish to make it clear that although Labour is supporting this bill at the first reading that is not to do with the tax rates themselves per se; it is just to do with the fact that by and large these are pretty sensible tax measures and the actual debate on the tax rates will come in the committee stage of this bill. We do have some issues with them just not worth debating in the context of this particular bill.I want to talk about the crypto assets legislation and in particular the way that is being incorporated into the Income Tax Act. Now in the previous year in 2023 one of the pieces of tax legislation that went through the House was the legislation incorporating the Global Anti-Base Erosion Model rules which are to do with minimum tax rates for large multinationals and so on incorporating them into our tax legislation. At the time it was chosen to do that by reference to the OECD rules rather than by incorporating those rules directly into our own legislation. It was for the reasons of the complexity of the rules. So at that time the members of the National Party had a tremendous sort of alarum around talking about how we were surrendering our sovereignty and it was terrible that we were outsourcing our tax legislation to a foreign entity and lo and behold it's happening again. So I want to examine the extent to which that is happening at the select committee stage to have a look at the exact way that these new rules for crypto assets are incorporated into our legislation. Tax legislation is a little complex. We've had this bill in front of us for just a few days so this is not going to be a reason to speak against the bill or for it or whatever; I just want to understand that particular bit of the legislation how those rules are going to be incorporated into our Income Tax Act so that will be I'm sure an exciting part of the select committee process.I also want to refer to the off-the-shelf measures that have been put in place for dealing with emergencies. This was something that was discussed under the previous Government and indeed it is a sensible thing to do. I know that as we were dealing with Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland anniversary weekend floods that around those was proposed a set of tax measures that gave sort of some short-term temporary relief to individuals and businesses that were affected by those events. At the time we said Hang on a second. We're just recreating some of the stuff we had in place during COVID-19 during the pandemic." We reached the conclusion that it would be pretty helpful to have a set of off-the-shelf measures that were pretty standard that could be put in place when emergencies occurred so it's good to see that that set of measures is sitting in this legislation. Again we'll want to look at the exact measures and whether they do achieve the end they are supposed to. I am particularly concerned about the information sharing which is put in place as a measure that the commissioner can put into place so I want to have a look at how that is going to work and whether again it is worth having that as something that can be done at the commissioner's discretion rather than say at a Minister's discretion. So again let's see how that goes.So a number of things to work through on this bill. Of course that is what the select committee process is for. I'm looking forward to working through it with my colleagues from the other side of the House and of course with the experts who will come in to advise us and we'll see where this bill goes. In the meantime as I said the Labour Party at this stage will be voting in favour of sending this bill to select committee."