Clark David: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clark David: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8134. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 We have had some very brief contributions from National members in this debate and one hopes that that does not reflect a view that this is not something that should be worthy of a full debate. It certainly suggests that it may be the way they lean and certainly with the changes in the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill aiming to take similar debates out of Parliament in future and to limit them to the executive one fears that may be the case. I am sure that that will not be a decision that Mr Auchinvole has led for he is a member who is very keen to contribute to the debates in an appropriate and full way but I would be very very saddened if I heard he had been instructed to keep the debate short on this matter because his— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Well that’d be a breach of Standing Orders. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: —party does not want this matter openly debated in the House too often. As Mr Mallard points out that would be a breach of the Standing Orders so we certainly hope that is not the case. 
We have covered a wide range of things in this third reading. The Hon Shane Jones managed to get us on to bike riding and we have covered a debate about the IMF with Mr Norman and we have had some interesting contributions with Mr Bennett trying to suggest that we needed to take the same approach as Australia in respect of the implementation of macro-prudential tools—something of an own goal given that its purposes are indeed broader than ours I understand in its equivalent legislation for the Reserve Bank. It has had a more successful export sector and so Mr Bennett’s gesture and his advice that we should follow the Australian model and keep ours the same sits in an odd way because those two things are different—very different. 
In earlier readings I have placed on record my thanks to the officials who advised the Finance and Expenditure Committee because they certainly did do a sterling job. They answered the members’ many questions. Certainly on the Opposition side of the debate we had some questions that were penetrating and interesting and they came back with fulsome records about when decisions were taken around the rules and the way in which they had been debated in previous Parliaments. The National members of the committee were less fulsome in their questions but they allowed us to pursue those questions and I am grateful to them for that. We certainly did get some excellent advice and a full picture of how decisions around changes at the IMF have worked over the decades. 
One of the interesting things about the changes that have been made to New Zealand’s IMF rules is that they have not happened very often. The last time we had a debate about these matters in this Parliament was actually 15 years ago and I suspect that many members were not here then. Some were—Mr Deputy Speaker you I think would have been contributing to debates fully in that time and other members sitting in close proximity to me also will have contributed to those debates—but there are other members here who are newer and who will have brought different ideas and new ideas and I hazard to suggest that some of the older members may have changed their minds too. So it is good to have this debate. It seems wrong and a shame that much of this debate will now be transferred to the executive and the executive will in future be able to change the way in which New Zealand relates to the IMF so we will not have this debate here in the House. We in the Labour Party think that means that it is not subject to full parliamentary scrutiny and we think that is a loss to New Zealand over time. We are in a way limiting future Parliaments’ ability to contribute to decision making around New Zealand’s contribution to and relationship with the IMF. 
If I can provide the wider context for this bill over time the shareholding—the quota share—of many IMF members has not kept pace with the members’ relative positions in the world economy and many fast-growing emerging market countries have substantially become under-represented. For this reason the IMF has introduced reforms to realign members’ quota share with their relative economic weight in the world and enhance the voting power and representation of low-income countries. This is what this legislation actually achieves here and now and I want to place on record that the Labour Party thinks that is a good thing. We think it is a good thing that there is representation by those countries and that that representation is updated. We agree with the general thrust of what is happening now and that is why we will be supporting the legislation but we are disappointed at the future lack of transparency that the Government is achieving at the same time. That is why in the Committee stage we argued for the removal of clause 4 of the legislation. That argument was defeated in this Chamber as the Government members decided that they would indeed prefer such decisions to in future be taken in the executive. We as an internationalist party I guess—the Labour Party—do believe that it is important to honour the international obligations and agreements we have entered into and we believe in a multi-country approach to issues of world development. That is why the overall picture for us is of something that we want to support. 
I wanted also to just comment on a suggestion of a colleague from the Greens that the Labour Party had attacked the Green Party for its particular stance on this bill. I think our main quibble was the way in which the Green Party had not entered the debate so it was impossible to know what its stance was given that the last time this debate happened was 15 years ago and the Green Party members in Parliament then were newly defected from another party. We did not really know whether that was its established position or whether there was going to be a future position. It was outlined much more clearly today by Russel Norman. The Green Party indeed agrees with us that decisions should not be taken by the executive but it feels so strongly about it we were told that it is not going to support the international development efforts that this bill promotes. We obviously take a different position to that. 
But the point of principle on the issue of transparency is one that we will stick with and we will argue over again in this House as we have today around the Skycity deal. We certainly heard questions in the House today asked of Mr Joyce that he looked distinctly uncomfortable answering. That is what the Labour Party believes is important. We need to hold this Government to account for decisions that are taken behind closed doors or in ways in which the normal scrutiny of Parliament might be avoided or seem to be avoided. That is something we want to challenge. We want to make sure that the normal approaches in this Parliament the normal processes are adhered to so that the public of New Zealand can be confident that things are being done transparently that they are being done properly. 
I personally also have raised concerns about the way in which the Inland Revenue Department is letting its contracts in respect of its business transformation project and the way in which that has been done. I myself have put in some Official Information Act requests and requests for information about the process which have been turned down in the first instance. I think it is important for the public that we can see that transparent processes are operating in the Inland Revenue Department when it is letting out a contract that may be worth $1 billion; in terms of Skycity when we know that that may affect problem gamblers and also goes to the heart of whether the Prime Minister believes in fair process; and here where we are talking about our relationship with the IMF and the way Parliament takes decisions around it. That is why we have argued in this legislation for greater transparency. Transparency is an important thing for Parliament. It is important that we have transparent processes. It is important that we have these debates that we see that we have an up-to-date position in Parliament and that we make the best decisions on behalf of New Zealanders. 
The IMF—it has been briefly touched on in the debate—has many recommendations for us. We have also seen in the debate the irony of the fact that this Government chooses when it will comply and when it will not and that its arguments—for example against pro-growth tax policies in the form of a capital gains tax or a research and development tax credit—are looking like pretty thin arguments now. In light of world evidence and in light of all OECD countries having a capital gains tax except for Switzerland—something of a tax haven—Turkey and New Zealand we are certainly dragging the chain there. The Labour Party believes it is high time we took that piece of IMF advice to heart introduced a capital gains tax in New Zealand and began to actually make sure that the wealthiest New Zealanders are paying their fair share of tax rather than avoiding paying their fair share.