Shaw JamesJAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): I beg your pardon Mr Assistant Speaker. I was anticipating that Mr Bishop would actually continue. It was a riveting speech.The Green Party is continuing to support this bill the Taxation (Business Tax Exchange of Information and Remedial Matters) Bill through the House—through to the next stages. I just want to say that I think there are a few times in Opposition when you can campaign on something for years and years and years you think that all that campaigning is falling on deaf ears and then suddenly it all happens. There are two considerable wins for us—things that we have been campaigning on since 2011 actually—in this bill that I just want to draw attention to. One is as referenced by Mr Bishop the tax simplification for small to medium sized enterprises. I am not going to suggest that anybody has stolen the policy that we ran on first in the year 2011 but it is clearly one of those emergent good ideas that a number of parties across the House came to over the course of a few years and that has finally made its way into legislation.As a former small-business person myself I think the idea of a pay-as-you-go system is frankly one of those things that is going to make life a whole lot easier for small businesses in New Zealand. I am really looking forward to seeing this in action because of all the things that you run up against as a small business how to handle the cash flow implications of the existing system is an absolute pain in the neck. It is a huge barrier to business. Most business people just want to get on with doing their work. They do not want to have to be handling that cash flow management system and so the pay-as-you-go option I think is a significant breakthrough. As someone who stood on a campaign platform in 2011 and then again in 2014 on that I am really delighted to see this move closer into law.In relation to that part of the bill one of the submissions did point out that there may be an incentive in relation to changes around the fringe benefit tax on motor vehicles that may produce unintended consequences for sole traders—that is you may see a great deal of investment in very valuable motor vehicles by sole traders in order to take advantage of that particular tax break in terms of larger and more recent models. I think that is something that is a concern and that we need to monitor. I notice that that submission comment has not made it through to any changes in the legislation so that is something we want to keep an eye on as it takes effect over the course of the next 12 to 24 months.The second significant win—this is really the main part of the bill and other speakers of course have talked about this tonight—is in relation to the part of the bill that is around disclosure of foreign trusts and how we manage that. Again I just want to say that for the Green Party this is a very significant part of the bill. As early as 2012 my former colleague and predecessor Dr Russel Norman had been campaigning strongly on the need to improve the disclosure regime around foreign trusts in New Zealand. He was concerned then about the potential for damage to New Zealand's international reputation and the idea that New Zealand may be being exploited as in effect a tax haven as a result of our weak disclosure rules. That was of course confirmed by the Inland Revenue Department which had approached the Government on a number of occasions in 2012 to try to get the Government to pay attention to this and was rebuffed. The department of course had another go in 2013 and again in 2014. On each occasion the Government essentially was not really interested in doing anything about that.I really want to give a shout-out to the media on this because—the fact is that the Green Party had been raising this issue in Parliament had been asking questions in the House and so on. We had been working on this. But it was not really until the media and some great investigative journalism actually managed to blow this issue open earlier this year—in April of this year—that the Government finally bent to pressure in the face of having front page headlines about then Prime Minister John Key's personal lawyer and the connections of lobbyists and the ability of industry lobbyists to have a conversation with a Minister get a meeting and have a review buried. Those stories really did lead to the Shewan review and then the Shewan review of course found that many of the proposals that we had been suggesting for several years were quite sensible changes to our foreign trust disclosure rules. Those have formed the backbone of what is in this bill. So we think it is significant.The other thing that I just wanted to draw attention to has been referenced by a couple of the earlier speakers—particularly David Clark. He mentioned that one of the things that has not made it into this bill is in relation to bringing in phase two of the anti - money-laundering regulations in relation to the housing crisis. The Government has constantly said: Look we don't need to worry about foreign investment in the New Zealand"—[Interruption] I have got 10 minutes buddy and Mr Assistant Speaker gets to wave his hand not you—not yet anyway.The problem that we have got is that the Government keeps saying that only 3 percent of transactions in the New Zealand housing market are foreign transactions—right—and we therefore do not need to worry about it as a problem. I just want to say that it is not the number of transactions; it is the amount of money behind them that makes the difference. When you have got an inflated market like our own where there is a supply problem even having a tiny number of transactions around the edge of that where the amount of money behind those—in a world where you have had a huge amount of inflationary money from quantitative easing in the United States and in Europe and the massive growth in capital in China there is a huge amount of hot money coming out of China that is looking for a safe haven to park. I think our housing market is valued at something like $70 billion or $700 billion—it is a lot of money anyway. Let us just say it is a great deal of money.When we are trading with each other there is less of a problem there but essentially if you have got a small number of transactions that have got an effectively infinite amount of cash behind them then that has a massive inflationary impact on an already overheated market. Even if it is a very small number of transactions the impact of money-laundering through the New Zealand housing market is actually significant in terms of the price effect that that can have on our market. I think we need to really support strongly any attempt to put some sunlight on to that problem through this bill.I do want to raise another concern of one of the submitters which is that the regime that has been put in place here is very complex and the burden of compliance therefore is probably going to be quite high. The concern of that submission was that if that is true there is a real danger that the low-risk clean operators if you like—the people who are entirely legitimate in terms of the nature of the business that they are doing using these trust vehicles—will simply depart because the burden of compliance is too high and their threshold for risk is low because they are clean operators. They like to keep their noses clean. That is why they have got a low burden of risk. The people who have got a higher risk threshold who are chancers and who maybe are actually using our foreign trust regime for dodgy purposes may be tempted to stay because they will say: "OK well we will try to dodge or ignore some of these regulations."So in fact the concern of that submission is that the legislation may in fact have the opposite effect from that which is intended. I think it is really incumbent upon us as this new disclosure regime comes into effect over the next 12 to 24 months that we maintain absolute vigilance and that we really watch the sector closely to see what actually happens as a result of these legislative changes. It may be that we need to revisit it and make sure that it does what it intends to do. It is a very complex piece of legislation—you do need to be a tax lawyer with some years' experience to really comprehend it—and of course that is a real concern. There may be some real opportunities for avoidance because of the complexities here. Having said all of that we do obviously think it is an important piece of legislation and we commend it to the House."