Cosgrove ClaytonHon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): As other colleagues on this side of the House have said we will be supporting the bill at least to the select committee. I acknowledge a number of the points that have been made in respect of it. Yes this bill does make some positive changes to address abuses in the tax system. It is true that it makes changes relating as the member Andrew Bayly said to closely held companies non-resident withholding tax related parties branch lending goods and services tax—and the list goes on and on. But I do make the point that although there are a number of positive changes in this bill this is yet another opportunity where the Government could have made a big hit or a big statement in respect of overall tax planning and tax policy. What you do have in this—which as the name reads is like a sort of motion picture—is a mishmash of issues dealt with by yet another sort of clean-up bill where a whole series of issues are thrown into a piece of legislation. We are here and it will then go to a select committee and we will you know spend a lot of time cleaning it up. But if you look at some of the big issues—Alastair Scott: Ha ha!Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: The member laughs but I have to say that if you look at the cleaning up that committee has done a lot of wet work in terms of cleaning up National Party tax bills. If you go right back—I am glad he had a bit of a giggle about it—to the brightline test and to the 2-year hold issue they were an absolute mess when they got to the select committee. I am not talking about the Chair—not you—but the committee; they had to be cleaned up by the Finance and Expenditure Committee and the member knows it. If you go back a couple of steps members will recall the tax on car-parks and the tax on computers—an utter mess that went to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. It was trumpeted by the then Minister Peter Dunne and it ended up on the cutting room floor. So I do not have a lot of faith in terms of the quality that will come out of this piece of legislation. I do know with a high degree of certainty—having sat on that committee for many years and chaired it once—that this piece of legislation will need a lot of work. No disrespect but I do have concerns about how it is when you lose people out of the department like Robin Oliver who was the former deputy commissioner of the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) and the fact that many of those examples I have given today—particularly the computer and car-park tax debacle—would have never hit the Minister's desk would never have been given 5 minutes' notice and if they had got that far they would have been cauterised at that point and the deficiencies in that legislation that were identified would not have made it into this House. It does worry me—no disrespect to officials—that that degree of knowledge and that degree of lineage within the department are not there and that we are dealing with these sorts of mishmash bills. I will pick up on one thing that Mr Bishop said that I think is worth consideration—but again I lament the fact that I suspect that the Government will not do anything about it. I think it is quite strange and bizarre and a waste of time energy and money that every time that we want to alter the charitable list—those who are entering the charitable list; there are 14 contained within this bill—we have to convene the Parliament we have to write up a piece of legislation and we have to go right through the whole palaver every time this is done. I would have thought the great minds at the IRD the Minister of Revenue and others and the great minds on the Government's side of the select committee could turn their intellectual capacity to coming up with some sort of formula that would allow us to circumvent that process. After all what you are attempting to do in respect of charities is to ascertain in effect whether they are the full quid. Are they genuine do their aims and objectives in raising money in the variety of ways they do and the utilisation and the distribution of that money meet charitable purpose" and does it fit within the legislation and the law? I would have thought you would not need to convene the Parliament and have a 2-hour debate to deal with that particular issue if you will. I would have thought that when we talk about tax simplification and we talk about the great benefits to business that the Government trumpets—what about doing something for the charitable sector and making it more efficient if we want to promote philanthropic behaviour charitable giving charitable purpose so that it does not have to jump through a whole series of hoops a whole series you know a legislative framework and the convening of this Parliament to actually get on with what it does best. But that might be a test or a barrier or a height bar that is just a wee bit too high for some of the Government members to address. I also want to address something that Mr Robertson said in his speech. It relates again to what could have been put in this bill apart from a whole lot of tinkering measures positive though they may be in terms of dealing with the big issues. It was very instructive this morning at the select committee when Mr Robertson asked the Minister "Is any work being done by the IRD on a land tax?" and the Minister—to be fair to him he is a new Minister in the role—looked sort of "possum in the headlights" and asked Mr Robertson to define what he meant by land tax. Well I am not an accountant but I would say it is a tax on land. I would have thought so. That is a reasonable definition of what a land tax—Phil Twyford: A bit of a leap of faith.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Bit of a leap of faith—a tax on land. Mr Robertson then tried a third go which was to ask why did he not define it in the same way the Prime Minister defined it—whether that would help the Minister. The Minister's reply and I summarise it was basically "Well you know I don't quite know what the Prime Minister's definition of it is." Then we got to the guts of it: the IRD commissioner looked at the Minister and the Minister looked at the IRD commissioner; both looked rather nervous. We got a sort of answer that he had not had any advice and the work plan of the IRD had not yet been produced. That was the answer. I think if you translate all that sort of gobbledegook out I would say if I was a betting man that you could probably put the house on some sort of land tax being worked on or appearing probably with a different name—bit of camouflage bit of shellac—in the IRD work programme whence it comes. But there is an issue of course: a land tax and international foreign trusts. Those are two big issues of moment of huge concern to the communities which have massive economic and fiscal implications for this country that could have been addressed in this bill. So although I say that the Opposition supports the bill the Opposition is girding its loins for the Finance and Expenditure Committee process under the chairmanship of Mr Bennett because we know that we will have to take the scrubber to this piece of legislation. There will be some massive holes in it as there always are when this sort of mishmash is presented to the House. We lament the fact that we are not sitting down trying to grapple with a piece of legislation that deals with the big issues that affect this country. There are the big issues around New Zealand's perception as a possible tax haven the big issues around housing and in respect of tax options around that and the big issues of moment to those people who tonight will again sleep in cars under bridges and under bushes and trees and other places because they cannot afford the rent for a home let alone the prospect of ever buying a home. I know that the member Alastair Scott is waving his arms and legs around. You need flags to do semaphore actually I am told not just your hands but thanks for waving—I do not know whether that was with two fingers or five. Those are the big issues that could have been dealt with in this piece of legislation not just the shopping list valid though it is: goods and services tax related party debt remission loss grouping and imputation. The member Mr Bayly said in his speech that people would be hanging on every word; they will understand every aspect of this bill. Well the man who has become the "Bear Grylls" of the Parliament with his very worthy I should say exploits and expeditions should know that I suspect most people will not be concentrating on the aspects and minutiae of this bill or even the headline issues. What they may well be looking for in a tax bill are the big issues—land issues housing issues—and how they are dealt with. Perhaps they might be looking at how the Government might propose to deal with foreign trusts. They are the sorts of headline issues that they are reading about in the paper and watching on the news every night and they are the things that the communities are talking about. So I just say to Mr Bayly that he may want to re-engage with his community have the odd clinic on a Friday or a Monday morning and maybe ask a few people what their priorities are in terms of tax framework tax planning and tax legislation. That being said we await with bated breath the officials' report at the select committee."