Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I will start with a bit of good news: we will be supporting this bill.Hon Members: Hooray!CLAYTON MITCHELL: I thought you would all be absolutely over the moon including Mr Macindoe who is sitting there smiling away like a Cheshire cat. I have actually enjoyed the debate this evening. It has been quite robust for something that everybody agrees to to be fair but it does make sense to support it—Tim Macindoe: It's always a pleasure to listen to you Clayton.CLAYTON MITCHELL: Oh I am only just freshening the night up. I have got only about 6 minutes to go before the night is over so I thought I might try to fill it all up. I have got some very good information. You will really want to hear this so you should just tune in for a little bit. The first point of this bill which makes absolute sense to everybody is the fact that New Zealand is a very charitable country. We have got so many charities around the country and so many people willing to put their hard-earned money and more importantly much of the time their hard-earned time into supporting those charities because of course for all intents and purposes it goes to a good cause generally for those people in need—generally those people who actually need some help and some support. The first thing that this bill does is make it an offence for a person who has been charged with tax evasion to be on a charitable trust or to hold a position within a charitable organisation. Of course that makes sense. If you are a tax evader we certainly do not want you to be operating inside our charitable organisations although it is quite ironic then when we listen to the Minister of Finance when he talks about the clear difference between tax evasion which of course is illegal and the art of tax avoidance which is clearly not illegal. It is just completely immoral and it should be made illegal. So it does not address that. It just makes a step forward where if someone has been caught out fudging the system taking their opportunity to not pay taxes they are not allowed to be in a charitable organisation. But we are not addressing the bigger picture here. We do absolutely believe that a review is required and desperately needed with regard to making sure that these charitable organisations are in fact charitable organisations. When you look around the world internationally I think there is an organisation over in the United States called—oh something hairy I have got it written down here—Kids Wish Network that is right. It has worked out that only 3 cents in the dollar actually go to the charities themselves and the rest of those 97 cents is taken up in the administration and the exorbitant fees that the organisers and the offices of those organisations are taking in salaries and remunerative—flying first-class. Of course we all remember earlier on this year when we heard of a very prominent charity that was going out and buying brand-spanking-new $153000 Mercedes and flying first-class around the world. That goes against the grain of what charities are organised and designed to do and this is what we need to be spending some time on tidying up. If we talk about the tax avoidance versus the tax evasion why do we not spend some time looking at the big multinational companies that turn over tens of billions of dollars? In fact the top 20 multinational companies operating in New Zealand or out of New Zealand turn over $10 billion and collectively pay less than $1.8 million in tax—$1.8 million of tax. That is a seriously big problem. This bill is not designed to be contentious of course—it has got to get full support as it is a bit of a tidy-up of the Statutes Amendment Bill but the reality is that we have got some big problems in this country and they need to be addressed very very promptly. I am just looking at my time and making sure I do not run out—I would not want to miss anything out. Point No. 2 is giving the ability for these charitable organisations to be struck off within an 18-month period if they do not come with the information that has been requested of them by the Inland Revenue Department and such other entities and of course a very very small minor change with regard to a correction of some drafting which is taking out the words or the chief executive." To be honest it is so small that it does not really require too much time. I do not want to take up too much of the House's time this evening—I have got a couple of minutes left and I would like to sort of waffle on but I will not put people through that hardship. I think the point has been made that tax avoidance and tax evasion is something that needs to be looked at in respect of charities in this country. The people of New Zealand want to see something done. We need a review of this specifically and I think it would get full support of the House if we did come out certainly if this Government here took the lead role in that and made that happen. Thank you."