Newman Muriel: Social Security (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Newman Muriel: Social Security (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:624;Page:19576] 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise to take a call on Part 2 of the Social Security (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill which deals with the consequential amendments to the Income Tax Acts. Of course whenever we have any bill that changes the way the benefit system is being dealt with then of course it does have profound implications for the tax laws. While we are thinking about those issues it does occur to me to say that the statistics report that the Minister released I think this morning about the way benefits have changed over the last while shows that the domestic purposes benefit is now costing more than ever before in New Zealand’s whole history. If we think about the cost of benefits to taxpayers and the tax implications of that we realise that is one reason of course why this country is taxed so highly. It is why the Labour Government put the top tax rate up from 33c in the dollar to 39c in the dollar and it is why increasing numbers of New Zealanders find that they are now paying the top rate of tax in spite of the Prime Minister’s assurances that it would hit only a small number of New Zealanders. 
Of course I suppose that in a roundabout way one could say that that is why Labour has introduced the Working for Families package—it has been taking so much money off working families that it feels it has to give something back to them in election year. The interesting thing is that that package which the Labour Government proclaimed with such great fanfare as being probably the best thing since the introduction of the welfare State by Michael Joseph Savage turns out to be little more than an inflation adjustment. When the Labour Party came into power it inherited a certain raft of benefits that were paid to families with children and instead of adjusting those benefits as inflation crept up over the last 5 years it left them unchanged. So families were slipping further and further behind. This great package that has had all the fanfare—including $17 million being spent on television advertising with great family-type photographs—simply puts the levels of support to families with children back to what they were in 1999 when Labour took over. I think that is just about the biggest scandal in the Labour Government given all the fanfare and all the money that has been wasted on trying to advertise a package that does not even have to be applied for. 
While we are talking about the tax implications of this bill I think taxpayers out there should be aware that the domestic purposes benefit now costs more than ever before in our history and that this bill in front of Parliament right now is meant to bring in—[ 
Interruption 
] I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. The member sitting on your right the Minister over there is yelling so loudly that I think it is the Minister who is actually preventing you from hearing the debate clearly. 
Hon Annette King 
: What’s the point of order? 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN 
: The point of order is that the Minister should pipe down.