Faafoi Kris: New Zealand Business Number Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: New Zealand Business Number Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:10042. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Seeing as you have a copy of the bill in your hand Mr Chair I will refer directly to it. I wanted to point out clause 3 which sets out the main purposes of the bill. I know other members have but at this stage of the debate I just want to draw together a few strands of speeches that already have been made. The main purpose in clause 3(a) is to “enable eligible entities in New Zealand to interact more easily with government;” and I do not think anyone in this Committee has a problem with that. Paragraph (ab) which is new and is from the Commerce Committee’s consideration is to “enable eligible entities in New Zealand to interact more easily with one another;”. I do not think anyone in this Committee has a problem with that. Paragraph (b) goes on to “reduce transaction costs in New Zealand;” and I think most parties in this Committee would like to reduce the amount of imposts that businesses have so that they can be more profitable—no problem with that. I could go on but I think people have got the gist.The intent of this piece of legislation no one has any problem with. I think the Government has missed a trick because we are actually trying to help it achieve these purposes in an effective and timely manner. When the Government was criticising the amendments of New Zealand First MP Ria Bond and my colleague David Clark it missed a trick. A contribution from Brett Hudson earlier on in this debate gave the game away. The Government is taking—and we have had this from its side of the Chamber—a yeah nah attitude towards this piece of legislation: “Yeah we want to do it but nah we don’t necessarily want to do it.” That is our concern on this side of the Chamber.We want to achieve all the things the Government wants to—we want to help you. We have put forward amendments to make sure that the bill is effective that it is timely and that the kinds of benefits to businesses and government that you want to achieve actually happen in a good and proper way. But as we have said the bill in its current form we feel does not change that. When we first started this process before Mr Hudson got on his feet we feared. We perceived fear. That is why we thought we would bring these amendments—because we feared that the bill as we read it would not cut the mustard. Then Mr Hudson got on his feet and admitted that this piece of legislation does not cut the mustard and the Government is quite happy that it does not cut the mustard.So I am very confused about the attitude of the Government. It says it wants to do all these things for business. It wants to make it more efficient it wants to make it more profitable—as it says in clause 3 the main purposes of this bill—but it is not backing itself to get there. So we are being helpful with these amendments and good on you Ria Bond and good on you David Clark for putting these amendments here to give this piece of legislation just a bit of guts and to make sure that it will effect what the Government actually wants to achieve. That is what this is all really about.There has been concern about the effectiveness of this piece of legislation from one part of our economy that the Government usually does not pay any attention to and that is Federated Farmers. In their submission to the select committee they expressed concern concerns that we share that the initial list of Government departments does not include agencies such as WorkSafe and Immigration New Zealand. Hold on a minute—that is what our amendment does. It is not just us playing politics; it is actually submitters like Federated Farmers who have come to the select committee and said: “Hey if you are going to do this do it properly and make sure more than just a handful of Government departments are included in this.” They also helpfully suggested that we move things forward and also include local government within the realms of this piece of legislation which we support on this side of the Chamber.Maybe the Government should listen to Federated Farmers—pick up the red phone and listen to them around this piece of legislation. We do not agree with Federated Farmers all the time on this side of the Chamber but on this occasion we do because if the Government wants to achieve the efficiencies and the benefits to businesses and Government agencies then we believe that pushing the boat forward a bit faster and giving it some guts is a good thing.Mr Hudson claimed that on this side of the Chamber we do not know much about technology. I believe he has worked in the IT sector and I have not so I am taking a rather large risk using the next analogy I am about to use and that is around the ultra-fast broadband roll-out. The analogy here is that you roll out this ultra-fast broadband cable but you do not really want people to link up to it—just a few so you do not overcrowd the market. You do not want to get too many people connected to it because it might blow the system.That is not what this Government funnily enough is doing with the ultra-fast broadband roll-out. It is rolling it out down all the streets. We hear all the time that “It’s a part of the economic development of our country. We’re rolling out this ultra-fast broadband and we want as many people as we can to connect to it because it is good for our economy.” I can see some parallels here because the Government is saying “We’re creating this New Zealand Business Number and for these reasons we think it’s good for business and we want only a few of our Government agencies to use it but not all because we think it might overload the system and they’re not ready for it.”—which is another issue in itself.So I think the Government is guilty of a slight double standard here in that it wants this piece of legislation out there it wants businesses to be able to use this Business Number but in all reality it is not ready for it to be out there and to be effective. Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand also came to us and expressed concern around that. It said in its submission “the benefits for businesses may be overstated” without the mandate for recognition of the business number contained in the original section 34 and “without significant uptake there is a risk that the identifier is not integrated and utilised widely and just becomes another number”. And that is a phrase that you will hear during this debate as we continue because that is what we fear may happen if there is not a clear sense of purpose and a clear sense of urgency for Government departments to sign up to the New Zealand Business Number.There has been talk of why we have not adopted the IRD number as a New Zealand business number. I think it was my colleague David Parker who said that that number is already in place so could that have been adopted as the identifier instead of adopting a new business number? That was one submission put up during the Commerce Committee’s considerations.The question was raised as to whether this is the most effective way to do it. It could be. The New Zealand Business Number could be the most effective way to do this but we do not believe that the Government is backing itself in this instance to make sure that it is effective and timely. That is why to finish up the amendment in the name of Ria Bond and David Clark’s amendment to her amendment should be taken seriously by the Government if it really wants this New Zealand Business Number strategy—apparently there is a strategy—to be effective. If you want to help businesses and you want to make them more profitable then do things properly.