White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour): Thank you. It's a pleasure to speak in support of the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2022-23 Platform Economy and Remedial Matters) Bill (No 2). This is a bill that I sat in on the Finance and Expenditure Committee for and I first of all want to just reach out and congratulate the Hon Dr Deborah Russell on her promotion; she gave a good contribution on this bill. I also want to congratulate my friend the member for Tukituki who I thought gave a very entertaining contribution and I enjoyed it a lot. But my job as the final speaker for the Government is really to give you a little bit of an overview about what this bill is about.The first thing I want to do is object to the statement that was made that this Government has caused inflation. If you look around the world—if the ordinary New Zealander looks around the world they will see that that is just not correct. That is a cynical statement because the inflation that we are facing—the fact of the matter is we all really know that this is an international phenomenon and we've done damn well in the circumstances. Because we have had a pandemic and we have a war and we have all sorts of issues that caused this and actually the Government is addressing those issues by making sure that people who need support get it.That is being done because we have a healthy tax system because we actually have kept a very even keel in this time and we have taken actually no more than we've ever—we've always kept the promise about tax and this bill keeps that promise again. This bill is one where the tax rates don't go up. They stay exactly where New Zealanders expect them to be. And so we can play all sorts of games about how terrible it is that Labour is not doing an adjustment on inflation which in fact of course the National Government didn't do. So we can do this kind of thing or we can play it straight. And if New Zealanders listening to this want to play it straight they know that they're not being taxed any more than they ever were because this reinforces the same tax rates. So Labour has kept its promise.It's also managing to spend the money that's coming in in tax on things that really really matter to New Zealanders like flood relief right now—targeted flood relief. I am very very much in favour of careful spending and I am proud of the fact that when these floods have happened when the cyclone has happened we have been putting money into the right things and we are being very careful about making sure that we respond to the actual situation that is in place. Because one of the things that we have noticed is that it is not the same for everyone. The Labour Government are listening and actually people like the member for Tukituki are telling people in this Government—because they're the members that are on the ground in those places that are most affected—exactly where that money needs to be spent and it's being spent there. And it's being spent not out of magic but out of a fair tax system.Now the system hasn't been entirely without its problems and one of the problems it has had is it hasn't been a level playing field between some people and others in our system. So people who have been engaged in platforms have actually had an advantage. It has not been fair on other people and I think most New Zealanders know that. I think Dr Deborah Russell was very reassuring in her comments that she made just basically pointing out that when there is scaremongering it's probably best to look at the detail and actually the people who will be involved in incomes of under $60000 can get a refund of 57 percent. So again there's very much an eye to the detail and fairness that's coming out.One of the things I wanted to add to this debate was the issue with regard to information swap on these big digital platforms. That's actually really important. It's a swap of information between different countries in the OECD with similar rules. It means we get the tax that we need from our people who are overseas and it means they get the tax they need and we all know what's actually going on. So we don't have the development of an economy that is outside of our system and everyone gets treated fairly. We live in the big wide world. Things are changing all the time. We need to be progressive about these things and this is going to address that.Finally I want to talk about build-to-rent because it's one of those things that I'm incredibly passionate about. So what I want to talk about is the fact that we actually in this situation have targeted the interest deductibility. What a damn good idea that was because where do we want the houses built? What kind of houses do we want? Do we want people just going and buying their neighbour's house turning it into a rental kicking out a person who could actually buy it? No we don't. We want them building houses and we want international money as well. I don't think that that's off the table as was suggested by Nicola Willis. We want the big super fund. We want lots of people to come in who've got expertise in building long-term rentals. That is actually very important. That's important to our economy and this targets those people and it makes it more attractive.So this is a targeted interest deductibility; good! That means that when you are making an investment in a house and you want to do it as a rental you really will put it into one of these kinds of establishments and we'll have a lot more housing stock. I'm not actually a believer in everybody having to own their house. I would like to see different groups of people being able to rent rather than buy. And those are people like my parents who are old and it would be nice for them to have the capital from their house. It's young people who might not actually have the deposit for a house. I want them all to be in stable secure rental and this is something that will help that happen. I commend the bill to the House.