Robertson GrantGRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): It is a pleasure to follow on from the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee Chris Bishop. It is true that the committee—on taxation bills particularly—works very well together. I am surprised frankly that Mr Bishop did not mention Andrew Bayly's contribution in that regard to taxation bills so I will take the opportunity to do that.I am going to return to Vote Revenue and a couple of specific aspects of that but I want to devote most of my contribution to Vote Finance and the Fiscal Strategy Report which is covered for the chair's benefit from page 120 of the Estimates. Within that a big part of the discussion that took place at the committee centred on the fact that the Minister arrived at the committee as Ministers are wont to do and gave us a reasonably long spiel all about the importance of economic growth. Absolutely—we understood all about the wonderful achievements that the Government had by having economic growth sitting at around the 3 percent level.He was then questioned by members of the committee about per capita GDP growth. I know sometimes that even with a phrase like per capita GDP growth" people will ask what you are really talking about. Per person is New Zealand 3 percent more wealthy than it was last year? The answer is no because what has happened is we have had large population growth. As a result of that the real growth—the growth that actually is about per person wealth—has actually been below 1 percent and continues to be below 1 percent. When New Zealanders say to themselves "Why don't I really feel like we're getting ahead?" well that is because actually per person we are not. We are struggling and that is what New Zealanders are feeling.So when Steven Joyce and the Government present Vote Finance and the Fiscal Strategy Report to the select committee the reality measuring on GDP—a limited measure in and of itself but the one that the Government uses—is that per person growth is struggling. Subsequent to the Budget and the Estimates we got the latest quarter's growth and once again GDP per capita fell—two quarters in a row of GDP per capita falling. So per person—and this is where Chris Bishop is wrong—New Zealand is going backwards on that particular measure of the economy. Fletcher Tabuteau is actually right about that—on a per person basis at the moment we are going backwards.The conversation then carried on to—OK so per person growth is not going well; what is the point of growth? Why do we have growth in the economy? It is not an end in itself. It is about how we allow people to live lives of dignity to have well-being. The Minister seemed to completely ignore that fact—as the National Government has—and to celebrate somehow or other that growth is the end rather than recognising that there are still 128000 more children in poverty today than there were when National took over. That is the population of the city that I grew up in Dunedin—there are more in poverty than when National took over. How is that a good outcome of economic growth? What is the point of economic growth if that is what it delivers?But the Minister persists in saying that this is all we need. Well on this side of the House we do not believe that. We believe that actually in the future when Vote Finance comes to the House and when the Minister of Finance stands up and delivers the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update what the Government should be doing is saying to New Zealanders: "Here's how we have reduced child poverty. Here's how we have improved sustainability. Here's how we've improved the well-being of New Zealanders." That is the point of the economy. It is not an end in itself; it is the means by which we deliver a good and decent life to New Zealanders. So it was very disappointing to see that when the Minister came to the committee that was all he had. All he had was a number that actually in the end does not mean much to everyday New Zealanders going about their business.We then moved into a discussion in the select committee about productivity. I do not deny the fact that low productivity is a challenge that New Zealand has faced for many decades. The issue that we have is that in Vote Finance and the related Budget documents that were put before us there was so little to tell us how the Government would actually be lifting that productivity. There was so little to say that the Government recognised the scale of the challenge. The truth is that our productivity story is worsening—relative to Australia we are going backwards. As a result the thing that matters in productivity—how much output per hour New Zealanders manage to achieve—actually fell by 1.3 percent for the last year.So we are going backwards on wages we are going backwards on productivity and we receive in front of us a Budget that does not actually deliver a plan for how we lift productivity. When we have Mr Joyce and others who stand up in this House and say day after day that the economy is going gangbusters the questions we found ourselves asking on the select committee were: "For whom?" and "Really is that true?". The answer is that it is not for those who are hard-working wage and salary earners—it may be for those at the top. Most certainly we are going backwards.I now do want to come to Vote Revenue—I am particularly conscious of the fact that the Minister Judith Collins is in the chair. I think the first thing I will say will be positive though maybe she will not like the second thing. The first thing is that the Business Transformation programme is an important programme. It is probably the largest IT change New Zealand will actually ever see in terms of the public sector. Therefore it requires very close stewardship—the select committee is looking closely at it; $1.9 billion is a huge amount of money. Thus far we have seen and received excellent reports from the Inland Revenue Department in that regard. That is I think something that is going well.My concern is around two aspects. The first of those is the matter that has already been raised—and it was raised in the committee—about the loss of staff. At the time we did not know the exact numbers; we now know it is somewhere between 1500 and 1600 staff. The concern that we have on this side of the House is that we are in a period of time where we want Inland Revenue to be doing more to ensure that New Zealanders are paying their fair share and that ordinary taxpayers using the PAYE scheme know that they are doing their bit. But we know and we were told at the committee that avoidance particularly by multinationals is costing New Zealanders hundreds of millions of dollars to the point that the Commissioner of Inland Revenue was very specific about the fact that the Inland Revenue Department had come to the conclusion that there was $300 million a year that New Zealanders were missing out on.There are other estimates—much higher estimates—but let us just take the estimate that the Inland Revenue Department put in front of us. Mysteriously in the Budget the Government is looking to get only an extra $50 million in revenue from multinationals in 2018-19 and $100 million in the following 2 years. Well why is that? Why has the Government been so conservative in its assessment of what it thinks it can get? I would venture to suggest that it is because the Government is not prepared to put the effort in because it is cutting 1500 staff rather than saying: "We actually want more people in terms of investigation." We have been told by the IRD before at our committee that for every dollar the Government gives it in terms of tax inspection and tax follow-up and investigation it will get $7 back. But for some reason this Government does not appear to be interested in chasing down multinationals. We all acknowledge that there is a very important multilateral component to this. We need international agreements. Work has been done at the OECD. But right now New Zealanders are missing out. Ordinary taxpayers are being ripped off and as a Parliament we do not have in front of us today a Government that is ambitious enough to say: "You know what? We're going to get that $300 million." It is probably more—it is almost certainly more—but even at the Inland Revenue Department's own estimate there is $300 million being missed out.So on the Labour Party side we are very happy to say "We will get that. We will chase down the multinationals that are not paying their fair share." because what they are doing is undermining the integrity of New Zealand's tax system. And they are saying to other taxpayers who do the right thing: "We're not going to do that." Well on this side of the House we think that is a rip-off. We think that is making ordinary taxpayers into fools and we are not prepared to stand by and do that.The Government has put out a discussion paper. It has kicked the can down the road past the election so it does not actually have to do anything about this. Well we are not prepared to put up with that. New Zealanders deserve to know that the Inland Revenue Department is going after those multinationals and saying: "You will pay the right amount of tax and if you don't there will be measures and ways to make sure that you're penalised for that." That is why we have put forward the idea of a diverted profit tax because as New Zealanders we need to stand up on behalf of everybody to say: "Pay your fair share multinationals."I think the real reason the Government has been so unambitious on chasing this down is because it does not want to. It does not want to offend those multinationals. Well on this side of the House we would rather stand up for everyday New Zealanders who do pay their taxes and chase down and get that at least $300 million a year so that it can be used on things like health and housing and education."