Bennett DavidDAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): It is a pleasure to speak on this taxation bill another taxation bill for our very fine committee the Finance and Expenditure Committee and I would like to thank the Minister of Revenue for his introduction to this bill. The last speaker who spoke on it Stuart Nash gave us a bit of an introduction into closely held companies and look-through companies and other parts of the tax system and the main thing that the last member talked about was a capital gains tax and the inability he sees so far in this regime for capital gains taxes to follow through—Fletcher Tabuteau: Too late you've already got one.DAVID BENNETT: —to the shareholders. I will come to the other party that is yelling out in a minute. When we look at that in New Zealand we do have a capital gains tax in the sense that if you sell with the intention—or if a company sells with the intention—within 10 years then it is taxable; and it does work. Many people find that they are taxable under that regime. In fact we have actually clarified that so that effectively there is no choice within 2 years because it is deemed to be taxable regardless of intention because of that time frame. So what Mr—the last speaker was talking about—Stuart Nash: Nash. Short-term memory.DAVID BENNETT: Whatever his name may have been from Napier—Mr Nash—is that he wants a capital gains tax obviously. And that is the clear message because to change the policy would involve having a capital gains tax. We have heard that time after time from the Opposition spokesperson on tax. We see this in this House every time we have a tax bill—they say: We want a capital gains tax." We stand up on this side and tell the public what they have just said and then they deny it. They deny deny deny. Just accept that you want a capital gains tax—that it is a policy of the Labour Party. Just be honest with the public of New Zealand. Go out there and tell them that the Labour Party intends to bring in a capital gains tax. [Interruption] And now we are getting interruptions from the despicable party in this House—after the speech of their leader this afternoon. That was a disgrace to this Parliament and we all know that. We do not need members like that in this Parliament representing—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!DAVID BENNETT: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It is good to hear that those members over there are going to be quiet now.This tax bill is important and it brings about four parts that the Minister talked about. The first is around the look-through companies and we look forward to that debate going through the select committee and to the Labour Party's intention of bringing capital gains taxes into that section of it. The second suite of measures is around the interest earned by foreign lenders. That is another part of our tax system that just needs a little bit of tightening up. And there will be changes to the non-resident withholding tax rules changes to the approved issuer levy registration process and correcting anomalies relating to branch structures. So that is the second part of the legislation. The third part has various amendments around GST rules. And the fourth part looks at some mainly technical amendments to our tax system. The other part of this legislation is that it actually brings in the tax rates for the 2016-17 income tax year. So that is important as well.So this bill is an important part of the tax process of making sure that we have strong legislation there. This is an ongoing process—that is continuous legislation; it is not a one-off piece of legislation and it really highlights the difference between the parties and the Labour Party's intention to bring in a capital gains tax at its earliest convenience. Thank you."