Boyack Rachel; Watts SimonRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you Mr Chair; thank you for the opportunity to take a call on this bill. I want to pick up on a new line of questioning for the Minister of Revenue which specifically looks at what the legislation and the Finance and Expenditure Committee report has called the North Island weather events rollover relief". The reason why I'm raising these questions with the Minister is partly in my capacity as chair of the Governance and Administration Committee—a very fine committee—this is an area of work that we have been exercised with since the Auckland floods Minister and I'm quite interested in finding out some more information about these particular changes.Further to that as the MP for Nelson what I do want to just understand further is the advice that the Minister received from officials to take that application for landowners and property owners in the North Island and then apply that to the Nelson floods. We have had some property owners affected in a similar way through the Nelson floods so I am interested in asking the Minister a couple of the questions that I have.So the first is what I would quite like to understand in a bit more detail because as the Minister and members of the House will know I do enjoy my plain language so I'm interested in what "rollover relief" actually means because it does sound just a little bit jargon-esque. I think for those who are listening in to the debate tonight I would be interested in what that "rollover relief" actually means. And I'm particularly keen just to find out more around what the cost of this will be for Government if Government has had the opportunity to assess what the cost will be to add further relief to homeowners. Because what it talks about in the select committee commentary is to look at both insurance payout components but also the brightline test and the implications of brightline-test changes potentially not being applied to homeowners in the East Coast who were affected through the floods but also to my constituents and Nelson.I'm also interested in whether this has also been considered for property owners in Auckland. I think it's important to note we had the two events. Sometimes there is a conflation of the two events that occurred last year but we just want to be really clear that we've got the Auckland floods and then we've got Cyclone Gabrielle. So just looking at the commentary in the select committee report and just wanting to understand a little bit further from the Minister around the advice that he received just to ensure that we're covering off property owners both within that Auckland area who had the Auckland flood event but also those from the East Coast.What it does seem to—you know just my observation is it does seem that we have a range of ad hoc measures for each big event both in terms of how the financial support component comes through—but specifically tonight we're talking about tax and the tax treatment. So I'm interested in whether the Minister believes that we should be looking at a more robust framework that we can imply in terms of the tax treatment because there is a significant amount of change within this bill that is around the tax treatment—so things like the brightline test. I do note here that there's a proposed new section CZ 26B of the Income Tax Act which is to be inserted by new clause 18C which would ensure that the brightline and other time-related tests don't apply to properties that have been affected by one of the North Island adverse weather events and I do just want to seek that certainty that that is both of those North Island events.I see from the select committee commentary with regards to Nelson that it talks about 14 properties but as the local MP I have been made aware there could be more than that. So again I'm just interested from the Minister about the advice that he's received around the extent of that application to the Nelson floods event. But furthermore there will be a cost to the taxpayer in addressing this through this bill so I'm interested if there has been some specific advice given to the Minister and what that advice may mean in terms of the actual cost to the taxpayer by including these components within this clauseof the bill. So a number of questions there for the Minister that I'm looking forward to hearing from him on.Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I appreciate the enthusiasm across the committee on this bill to take another question. But in regards to the points raised by the member there is no fiscal cost to the rollover relief in the context that these aspects have already been considered as part of the broader baselines and therefore there's no additional appropriation required. So that covers that. I think there was a question also from the member in regards to the definition of "rollover relief". This was also covered quite extensively by the Finance and Expenditure Committee but in effect it is the deferral the recognition of the income—and this relates to where there are rebuilds or replacements of assets that have been destroyed. And I obviously acknowledge that the members within your community and those members in other parts of New Zealand that are still dealing with the implications of those events that occurred in the past—but that's what it is the definition and effect of the rollover relief in this context. Again it was heavily canvassed by the select committee process and the commentary in the report as such."