Carter DavidRt Hon DAVID CARTER (National): As I said in my comments on Part 1 we'll be voting against the legislation but I mentioned there was one or two bits within the legislation that I'm relatively supportive of and Part 2—the issue of GST collection on low-value imported goods—I fully support. This work was actually initiated by the Hon Judith Collins as I recall as revenue Minister under the previous Government. It was brought about because for some time now successive Governments have recognised the huge disadvantage that some retail operators are under because of internet shopping. We're seeing now an increasing trend particularly amongst younger people where they could go on to Amazon eBay TradeMe etc. and look at bringing stuff into New Zealand and at that stage they were able to escape GST whereas a retailer offering the same or similar products in any part of New Zealand—but particularly I felt for the ones in those smaller rural towns that Mr Nash said he was interested in in his earlier contribution—was completely disadvantaged and had pressure on them. So both National and Labour have worked to find a solution which is now incorporated in this bill and it's a good solution. The part that I found particularly worrying as we went through submissions was that originally the legislation proposed that the enactment date would be 1 October this year. We had eBay we had Amazon and we had TradeMe before us saying We simply can't set up systems that quickly. We need an extension." and the National members throughout the hearings also said it was unreasonable. We suggested we should delay it until 1 April and the Government members were absolutely opposed until we went to the final stages of consideration. I've got to say it was some of the poorest chairing of a select committee I've seen in my time here where suddenly we were told as we were considering the slip "The date has been changed not from 1 October but to 1 December." So there was some gain because of the insistence of Opposition members that it was impractical to try and do it by 1 October but I would have expected a select committee that worked in a fairly diligent way and tried to bury politics to have at least had the opportunity for a discussion rather than a simple imposition of this by the Government members which of course hold a significant majority on the select committee—no discussion at all. We raised it and said "That's not the way to run a select committee." and the chair admitted that it wasn't good form but that's the way this select committee is often chaired to be honest. I still think that Andrew Bayly's amendment—which I would certainly support—of moving it to 1 April is actually more sensible. This is a big change of legislation it is significant and we've got to make sure that those larger companies that do supply goods into New Zealand via internet shopping have the ability to put up systems that work. Otherwise if they don't have the systems they have an easy response and it is—and this is to consumers here in New Zealand—"Sorry we don't supply it to New Zealand. It's simply too difficult." I still think there's a risk of that with the inception date moving from 1 October to only 1 December and therefore I think the committee stage here in the House should give full consideration to the amendment in the name of Andrew Bayly. Move it to 1 April and make sure that suppliers have the opportunity to set their computer systems in place whereby they can legitimately collect the tax so that is paid by the importing consumer here in New Zealand and it is then legitimately remitted back to IRD here in this country as it's supposed to be. But of course delaying it from 1 October to 1 December has a fiscal cost. To delay it from 1 December to 1 April would have obviously a bigger fiscal cost and as we were told by Government members sitting around the Finance and Expenditure Committee the tax revenue is so critical to this Government because of its magnanimous spending projects that they initially weren't prepared to even consider the movement from 1 October. We managed to have a small win to get it to 1 December but I still think practically the committee of the whole House should think seriously about an amendment being proposed to move it to 1 April."