Russell DeborahHon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): Oh thank you Mr Chair. I mean I do really admire my colleague the Hon Dr Megan Woods but we are different people. I want to continue to focus on this commencement date of 31 July. Now the Minister has given as the reason for commencing this towards the end of July early August whenever—it was to do with payroll providers and whether or not they could get their systems into place and up and running in time to be able to deliver the changes to the income tax thresholds and the changes to the independent earner tax credit and the changes to all the things that get changed when you change tax rates around. But 31 July is still a really odd date.Hon Kieran McAnulty: Isn't it?Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: It's a very odd date. It's very odd because as I said before when tax threshold changes go through they normally go through from the first of a month right? That would be sort of the usual and regular thing to do. Not only that they normally go through from the start of a quarter at least—or I can recall changes that have gone through on 1 October or changes that have gone through on 1 April and so on. But 31 July is a very unusual date. So I thought well maybe it's to do with the day of the week or something like that but 31 July is a Wednesday.Hon Kieran McAnulty: Is it the Minister's birthday?Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: I can't work it out. Again you might think it might go from a standard work week or something like that—though there is really no such thing. But it seems like an odd date.Now I get the explanation that was given that was to do with finding a date that payroll providers could work to but why not 1 August? I'm serious about this. Or why not a date that corresponded with the start of a week or something like that? He has not yet explained why this very very odd date. It is unusual.So I get the lead time. I get that. That's an issue. So there is this date around this—very unusual date. I would like to hear an explanation for why 31 July as opposed to 28 July or 3 August or whatever—you know something around there. There must be a reason for it other than that someone stuffed their finger in their ear and thought that would be a good date.I want to know a little bit more about the payroll providers too because again I get that third-party payroll providers do take time and effort to get those changes through. There is a lead time associated with making tax threshold changes. There are complex systems that need to be worked through in order to get those changes in place. I know that Inland Revenue has extensive experience in working around tax threshold changes. There's a lot of knowledge around about how to do it. We kind of know what the lead times more or less are. But in terms of third-party payroll providers there's the third-party payroll providers which the Minister referred to himself but I was also wondering it's not just the third-party payroll providers; it's some of the really really big employers we have within Government all right? So if we think about some of our Government entities there's employers like the ministry of social welfare there's the Ministry of Social Development there are employers like IRD itself there is Kāinga Ora—who else has got a huge payroll? Defence.Hon Dr Megan Woods: Well not many now because they've all been cut.Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Well of course payrolls—but some of these entities actually have very very large payrolls themselves. So obviously the Minister consulted or his officials with third-party payroll providers but I wonder if the Minister could tell us about what consultation was undertaken with some of these very very large employers who do their payroll themselves because that's what they do you know within the Government themselves and what consultation was there.I just want to remind people of course for the obvious reason we haven't had a select committee stage on this so this is our chance to examine some of these sorts of issues. So I really would like us to have an answer to these and a bit of reassurance actually that they have spoken to them. I get that the Minister will be confident that the payroll providers have said they can do it by this date. What I want to know is that other large employers can also get these payments these new tax thresholds into place by that time.