Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I just wanted to continue in the vein of the Hon Dr Deborah Russell and say that it's gutting that this is where we end the year in the House. Merry Christmas to the workers who have had their opportunity to engage in sector-based bargaining stripped away from them again under urgency oftentimes in the dead of night without the opportunity for meaningful consultation or engagement at select committee. Merry Christmas to the workers who will now be going into their new jobs with the opportunity to be fired at will under the first 90 days. Merry Christmas to the climate which will be you know facing more oil and gas poured on the climate crisis. Merry Christmas to the climate with the Clean Car Discount being repealed one of the most successful climate change policies that Governments have seen in decades without any commensurate policy put forward to replace it.Merry Christmas as well to renters who under this Government will potentially see their rent skyrocket between 15 to 20 percent based on estimations from the likes of economist Bernard Hickey based on this Government's work programme to remove and roll back interest deductibility rules and otherwise.It is abundantly clear that the Government currently bollocking at me has absolutely no vision because what we have seen over the past two weeks is that they have instead simply fired up the shredder. There is no creativity no meaningful policy pathway that we have seen to build an Aotearoa New Zealand that is inclusive that is equitable and that ultimately provides that pathway for the upholding of people and the planet.So to the bill which we haven't had any real meaningful opportunity to talk about given that the Government actually engaged no external submitters no external stakeholders despite accusing the former Government of undertaking no meaningful engagement. And then obviously it completely bypassed the select committee process by which we may have had a more meaningful and informed opportunity to shape up this legislation into something that any of us could be proud of.This bill as has oftentimes been said throughout all stages actually doesn't change our tax system. It doesn't fix the inequities that have been long baked in as well elucidated in the high-wealth individuals report from IRD with subsidiary papers from Treasury at the beginning of this year.This is a really important and fundamental point because it leaves us with the state of the economy as we presently have it. And I'll bring it back to this graph from Max Rashbrooke [Holds up document] which obviously members of the Opposition would prefer I put down in the same way that they'd like to bin the report which officials have largely worked on. Just for those following along at home this is really really important to outline here. This is based on substantive survey data—the distribution of wealth that New Zealanders believe would be ideal. It looks equitable. It looks as though everybody has the opportunity to start at the same point in the starting line. The second bar is what New Zealanders think that the distribution of wealth in Aotearoa New Zealand is. And you can see a substantive divergence there. New Zealanders actually do assume that right now we do have an unfair and inequitable distribution of wealth that is far from what they think that it is or rather what they believe it is ideal to be. But then we get to the third point of the graph around what it actually is and it's there you can see where the disproportionate wealth and power in Aotearoa New Zealand is held. And that is the core point that we are debating today because that wealth aggregation doesn't occur in a vacuum; it occurs as a result of a tax system which many New Zealanders per that graph assume is unfair—and as the high-wealth individuals report from the Inland Revenue Department told us was unfair. Because we see that the top 311 families in this country pay an effective tax rate less than half of that of the average New Zealander.Hon Member: They worked hard and they succeeded.CHLÖE SWARBRICK: I dare members of the ACT Party who are presently heckling about how those 311 families worked hard to tell us that the bottom 2.5 million New Zealanders who hold less wealth than those 311 families combined—I dare you to tell those New Zealanders that they did not work hard. Because in fact what we see is that our tax system as again borne out in those subsidiary papers from Treasury on that IRD report—those New Zealanders do work hard but we have a tax system that disproportionately taxes work over wealth and that puts us as an outlier in the OECD. We are one of the only countries that we compare ourselves to that does not have a capital gains tax a stamp duty tax a wealth tax or any form of taxation that is meaningfully targeted to address those inequities.The other point on this bill is that this report is already done and this was largely canvassed throughout other parts and debates in this bill. Because we know that under the law as it currently sits on our statute book—as it currently sits actually until we get to the point of this bill being passed under urgency in the next hour or so—IRD are required to publish a report on 31 December. And as I've said during the first reading and the second reading and committee of the whole House—and it bears out putting on the Hansard once again—that is 10 days from now. In those 10 days we have two public holidays in the form of Christmas and Boxing Day. We also have two weekend days. That takes away four days. That gives us ostensibly six working days. But we know that IRD officials as with most public servants and white collar workers across this country are probably on holiday from tomorrow. And the inevitable logical conclusion that that brings us to is that this report is done. And that then begs the question of why the Government is keen to bin it. Because we've been told that the reason that we are rushing this through under urgency today and through midnight last night is because they need to get it done before 31 December when that bill is due to be published.My question to members of the Government is: what are you so scared of? Because we heard from the Minister during committee of the whole House and actually as reflected in the regulatory impact statement from his officials that there is an intention to actually increase the level of reporting within IRD on the efficacy of our tax system. So there is still an intention to do some form of ambiguous reporting and we're not quite sure what it is going to look like yet we're repealing this principles-based legislation based on again—and I take here from our independent adviser on the bill who said and I quote and this is from Sir Rob McLeod not somebody who I don't think anybody in this House could allege of being ideologically drivenI would omit the descriptors because the meaning of each design principle is sufficiently well understood on their own."So we're left with a situation with a report which is due to come out in 10 days under the law as it currently sits on our books and a Minister who says that we're doing this in order to reduce waste of resources but those resources are already spent. Again it bears worth putting on the record that those resources are 2.5 fulltime-equivalent (FTE)—i.e. 0.06 percent of all of the FTE that operate within the Inland Revenue Department—and a Minister that is saying that he intends to continue doing some form of reporting which we have no meaningful clarity over.So we should have and we could have had a process if the Government had decided to let this report come out—as it again still to this point is due to in the next 10 days—where they could have said "Hey look New Zealand here's the issues that we have with the format of this reporting as it has been put out." But we're not going to be able to have that meaningful debate because in the dark of the night this Government has decided to shred that legislation pushing through midnight and urgency last night.And it really bears pointing out again that this is a Government who has utilised rhetoric such as the importance of data and evidence but is deciding to shred a framework which would have enabled us to have precisely that. We don't live in a game of Monopoly; we live in a democracy where when we are informed by evidence and data we have the opportunity to make informed decisions about the economy that we want to live in. Because the question for the Government and for the Opposition and indeed for our Parliament should be: what kind of economy do we want to build? Because it isn't handed down to us on concrete tablets from a deity in the sky; it is a man-made concept with structures rules and regulations that we put in place to try and achieve outcomes that we put down on paper in these laws.And I have just got to say having heard the inconsistencies logically in the Speech from the Throne a few weeks ago where this Government was talking about the wants to have more affordable housing while doing policies and putting forward policy prescriptions that they know demonstrably will do the opposite of that; saying that they want to have a higher-wage economy while doing the opposite of what Australia does with a fairer tax system a capital gains tax and sector-based bargaining which they repealed under urgency this Government really has us all questioning what their priorities are and who they serve. We oppose this bill.Mark Cameron: Mr Speaker well I don't know how I compete with the theatricality—SPEAKER: I haven't called the member—just a little bit of order would be good. I call Mark Cameron."