Joyce StevenHon STEVEN JOYCE (National): Madam Deputy Speaker thank you for the opportunity to speak on the second reading of this bill a bill that just seems to unravel the more we hear about it in the House. Actually I think it would've benefited hugely from going to a select committee. As a result of not going to a select committee we'll have to improve it here in the House.There's a number of things about this bill that are quite strange—many things actually. We'll try and deal with a few of them in the time allotted to me. One of them is why the Government talks a lot about the benefits of targeting but then does universality. I'm trying to work out how that's consistent. They say that they don't like universal tax threshold changes because everybody benefits from that but then they promote as an alternative three universal bits of support. The winter energy payment applies to everybody over the age of 65 irrespective of their income levels irrespective of their asset base irrespective of where they come from or what they do irrespective of whether they work as well as receiving superannuation. Those people—everybody over the age of 65—qualify for a winter energy payment. So that's an interesting one.And then everybody that has a baby irrespective of their income qualifies for the Labour Party's baby bonus. That's interesting. So somebody who's on an income of $250000 qualifies for the Labour Party's baby bonus. It's hardly a targeted programme.And then of course we have the other part which is the bit that is being paid for by this package and that's the tertiary education fees-free" thing which applies to every family irrespective of their income. It is irrespective of their income.Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Speak to the bill Steven.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Actually Madam Deputy Speaker the Speaker earlier clarified that I could refer to how the money was being spent—Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Briefly.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —and it's quite clear in this document from the Labour Government that it talks about $2.84 billion for other Government priorities. The other Government priority is "fees-free" tertiary education.So if you are to consider this package in the round you have to consider the whole amount of money and where it's going. And what we have is a whole amount of money taken from ordinary New Zealanders and targeted in a universal fashion to university students superannuitants and people having babies and you get it irrespective of how much you earn. It would've been great to explore the sensibility of that at a select committee because I think it would've actually fallen apart under the first examination from a submitter.The second thing I wanted to focus on is a little bit more on this winter energy payment because it does make very little sense at all. It is on the one hand universal. Everybody over 65 will get it. They'll get an auto-enrolment I understand. But they're required to operate an honesty-box system. They are not allowed to receive it if they leave the country for a period of time to go on their winter "summer" holiday on the Gold Coast or in Rarotonga or perhaps Hawaii if they're wealthy superannuitants. They are supposed to write to I suppose a Minister—that'd be a good idea to write to the Minister—and say to the Minister "Dear Sir or Madam I am leaving the country. I therefore have to own up with my honesty-box system on the winter energy payment."Or perhaps they will actually monitor people as they return to the country. Perhaps there'll be a border assessment of when somebody is coming back into the country and how long they've been away. So they could actually check their passport to find out how long they've been overseas. Or alternatively they could use the IRD officials that are checking student loans to check whether somebody has actually overstayed and been claiming their winter energy payment while they're offshore. That is if I may put it politely the stupidity of this proposal. I think it would've been significantly improved with a bit of time in select committee if we had the opportunity to flesh that out.Another thing I think would be really good to explore further is why the current coalition Government favours certain groups in society and the way that they lead their lives against other groups in society. Now we're all in support of people with young children. In fact our package which is largely not being unwound tonight provides support through family tax credits to people with young kids. But what's the limit to that? What about people who don't have young families? What about people who through misfortune or no choice of their own are unable to have children? Don't they actually have a right to keep a bit more of their own money?You may say that they don't but let's have a look. Let's have a look at the impact of fiscal drag on some of these people in recent years. We last made the changes to the tax system in 2010. Somebody on the median wage then paid $7325 in tax. Now those same people on the median wage which has now gone up pay nearly $8000 a year in tax. Why shouldn't they be able to get some of that back? What have they done wrong that means they're not entitled they're not favoured by Grant Robertson and they're not able to get some money back? Don't they have aims and goals and aspirations? Don't they have the right to have their own dreams about their futures that they get the opportunity to pay off their house a little bit quicker? What's wrong with them that the Labour Party doesn't think they deserve anything that they don't think they should get anything? That instead the Labour Party picks out as it has traditionally done—to be fair they are nothing if not consistent—a small group of people like students and says they'll have a bucket more dough?What about the people the ordinary Kiwi wage-workers who aren't going to university who aren't actually planning to travel overseas and get a winter energy payment who aren't actually for reasons of their choosing able to have a child at a particular point in time? Why shouldn't they benefit a bit from the hard work of New Zealanders? That's the problem with this proposal: the lack of fairness to those people. It is a lack of fairness to the 1.2 million New Zealanders—and we're not talking despite the talking points of the Labour Party about the wealthy people. This package was across the quintiles. What happens to the ordinary people who actually are just getting on just doing their job just earning a bit of pay who deserve to get a little bit of a break because of how hard New Zealand has worked over the last 10 years? Those people are invisible to the Labour Party. And many of them are the sort of people that a Labour Party would have supported in the past would have encouraged but these days they are not interested in those people at all.We had Mr Webb pop up possibly the other side's equivalent to our dear departed friend Mr Quinn from times gone past. He's popping up and saying his bit. He's putting together a class war but the class war is actually an interesting class war because it leaves out middle-income workers. Ordinary Kiwis paying 30c on the dollar are missing out with this.These are some of the problems that we should actually be looking into. Why are we bringing back the independent earner tax credit when it's only actually claimed by about 30 percent of people during the year?Hon Grant Robertson: That's because you didn't tell anyone about it.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No. Why would you have to—why not do the sensible thing and when you have the opportunity shift the bottom threshold? I mean how capitalist is that—shifting the bottom threshold from $14000 to $22000? What a capitalist initiative that is that we have to stop! That's an outrageously capitalistic initiative: to lift the bottom threshold from $14000 to $22000!What we could have done at the select committee is explore why lifting tax thresholds at all is completely anathema to the Labour Party. We also could've explored just how genuinely their fellow parties who voted for the previous tax package really do believe in signing up to this because actually they didn't campaign for this—neither of them did. They did not campaign for it. They did not actually at all and they voted for the previous package. There's only one party in this house that campaigned for this package and they got 36.9-odd percent at the election—36.9 percent—which I know hurts them but they wander around saying that everybody supports them until you look at the numbers and they don't.It would have been good to test all of these things at a select committee but they've decided to take the long way round and we'll have to test them all in the House. Thank you.Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the honourable—Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Iain Lees-Galloway.Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Iain Lees-Galloway."