Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I recall the Minister in the chair the Hon David Bennett boasting in the House back in 2009 about how a party cannot promise tax cuts before an election and then not deliver them after the election. That is quite interesting because if we refer to clause 33 of the regulatory impact statement which talks about reprioritising the independent earner tax credit it actually repeals one of the few elements of the National Government's 2009 tax cuts that actually survived. The vast bulk of the tax cuts it promised people before the election and then delivered after the election were subsequently repealed. One of the things that survived was the independent earner tax credit which they are now repealing in order to pay for a different tax cut.So it is worth looking at who is affected by the repeal of the independent earner tax credit because it is around $520 per annum that goes to around half a million New Zealanders who qualify for it. Those are individuals earning between $24000 and $48000 a year and do not receive a benefit or Working for Families or superannuation. They are the people to whom the Government is giving with one hand and taking with another.So it is worth remembering what the justification the National Government put forward in 2009 was for introducing the independent earner tax credit in the first place. Its argument at the time was that the previous Labour Government—the nanny State"—had given all of the money to families and not enough to people without children and therefore they were justified in giving money to people who did not have dependent children who were independent workers who were on relatively modest incomes and who were not benefiting from things like Working for Families or who would not be well recompensed through the Government's across-the-board tax cuts that it was introducing at the time. It used that as justification for establishing the independent earner tax credit.So we come to today and to the justification that the Government has put forward for repealing it and whether that squares up with its justification for introducing it. So let us look at the minimum-wage worker—say a hospitality worker someone waitressing in a restaurant a cleaner working overnight or a packer in a warehouse who is earning a minimum wage; they will get from the Government $11 a week in a tax cut as a result of other changes in the Budget. But then they will have $10 of that $11 taken away from them in the repeal of the independent earner tax credit. So if the Government's goal back in 2009 was to say to single people or people without families and without children that they were going to be important to the Government and that they were worthy of some financial relief and some financial reward as a result of the Government's package what has changed between now and then?What the Government is actually doing is leaving those people worse off effectively than they would have been if it had stuck with its 2009 policy. So I would like some explanation from the Government about that because I could go back into the Hansard in the corridors and I could find all of the things that it said back in 2009 about why the independent earner tax credit was the only fair way to deliver to those people who fell into that category: that across-the-board tax cuts would not target them sufficiently and that Working for Families ignored them. These were all comments made by then National Government Ministers and MPs including the Minister in the chair who is on record as saying some quite inflammatory things at the time about the need—Grant Robertson: No!CHRIS HIPKINS: No I know. It is hard to believe I know. It is also hard to believe the Government has left him in charge of passaging this legislation through the Committee but that is an issue for another day. But the Government members are on record as saying that this was the only fair way of targeting those independent earners and so why is it that they are now doing away with it?In the regulatory impact statement—I go back to that—it says here that one of the justifications that they use for removing this tax credit is that a significant number "nearly two-thirds of recipients receive the credit as a lump sum"—[Interruption] The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member will take a seat. I am now going to formally reprimand the Minister in the chair for comments that he is making to the Chair as to what the Chair should and should not be doing. If he does it again I am warning the Government it will have to find another Minister to sit in the chair.CHRIS HIPKINS: One of the justifications that the Government has put forward in the regulatory impact statement for repealing the independent earner tax credit is that nearly two-thirds of the recipients of that tax credit receive that money as a lump sum "indicating a low degree of recipient hardship". [Interruption] Mr Chair I should get my 30 seconds back—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I will run it a bit longer because—CHRIS HIPKINS: I should get my 30 seconds back. If the Government is going to apply that is it going to apply that to all of the other tax advantages that people get as a lump sum? For example for people who own rental properties who claim all of that money back as a lump sum are they going to be repealed as well? The fact that someone claims their money as a lump sum does not mean they do not need the money. So if that is the only justification the Government can come up with for repealing the independent earner tax credit why is it not going to apply that standard across the board? Why only to low income earners in a Budget which this Government says is supposed to target low and middle income earners?"