Brownlee Gerry; Parker DavidHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Your ruling is of course absolutely accepted but in his rebuttal the honourable Minister managed to open up quite a lot of other issues that clearly can't just stand without some response. The first thing I would say is that much as he might want to criticise the last National Government he should recognise what a huge mess a Government that he was part of left in 2008. It took years to straighten it all up. We finally got there. Somehow these guys have ended up with another opportunity to mess it all up again and we're looking at some of the most extraordinary debt the country has ever seen being piled up by these guys at the moment with absolutely no plan for where they go from here. My simple question on this part is: the Minister pointed us to page 128 in the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update and said the answer to my question about what the increases would be—what was the progression between now and that three-month period April through to July and then July on right through the whole twelve months. Well all that we've got here is actual figures from 2016 2017 2018 2019 and 2020 a forecast for 2021 which is actually a drop on what was paid out last year so less going to the people who are supposedly going to benefit from this particular bill. It drops even further next year and then in the year 2023 suddenly bounces way up. It drops again in 2024 and then massively up again—or considerably up again in 2025. So what are we to make of these figures? Why is there a trumpeting of this being great for New Zealand families when in fact there is—let me just have a quick look here—about a $50 million $60 million drop in actual payments expected to be made in the current year?Now it seems to me that there could be something wrong here. I'd ask a simple question: a family two incomes $70000 three kids what do each of those blocks of calculation—that initial period we've got now the period that takes us through to 1 July from April and then from April through to the end of next year—actually mean for that family? I would have thought that that would be something the officials would have had on a spreadsheet somewhere and could have at least said Well we haven't got it for $70000. We've got it for $75000. We've got it for $60000. We've got it for $80000 and $90000." and so on so that we could actually get an understanding of what's being done here.It seems to me that a simple movement of some $520 in the two thresholds is not going to make a huge amount of difference at all. There is no indication in the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update of what it actually means for families. I can't help thinking that this is the usual story with the Government going out trumpeting something as being absolutely fantastic amazing and very good for people and finding out that actually it's very little means nothing and probably won't happen.So can the Minister tell us what was so persuasive about the information that was put to him by those who were wanting this increase that he was able to get Treasury to agree to it—not that that matters actually. Treasury agreeing to something is of no great consequence at all; in fact it's probably a badge of honour if they disagree. But we just would very much like to know what that spreadsheet said.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): The effect of the minimum tax credit is to guarantee a minimum income to a single person that works 20 hours a week or if it is a two-person family between them 30 hours per week and if they work either 20 hours or between them 30 hours the minimum tax credit tops up their pay if it is under the threshold to the threshold. So the amount that any one person gets depends on how much they earn. If working for 20 hours they earned say—to pick a figure—$30000 then they would get a top-up of $1096 so that their total income would be $31096 which is the new amount."