Robertson Grant; Pugh MaureenHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour): Madam Chair thank you very much for the opportunity somewhat earlier than I'd expected to speak on this bill. Mr Watts in his opening speech I think articulated a very important point about any piece of legislation that comes forward. He said that the reason why the Government wants to repeal the Taxation Principles Reporting Act is because The principles are not universally accepted by tax experts."Well I've got news for Mr Watts. His Government's programme of tax cuts is not actually "universally accepted" by tax experts. So we'll ditch that now will we as well? We'll get rid of that because it's not universally accepted. You see the thing is that Mr Watts actually doesn't have a reason for getting rid of this legislation other than who brought it in. That's it; it's the only thing. Because the reporting and the information that is provided under this Act I would have thought is exactly the thing that parties opposite would want: information in the public arena about our tax system.Now we all know that there are people in this House who know the intricate and arcane details of our taxation system—I'm thinking about tax lawyers and people who've lectured in tax policy—but most New Zealanders don't. Most New Zealanders don't have access to that kind of information and actually being able to understand our tax system being able to understand how tax is collected what basis it's collected on and how that affects core principles of how we live our lives is relevant and important information. The tax principles as listed in the Act that is being repealed by this bill are ones that I think universally—to coin Mr Watts' phrase—are ones that people would want to understand: equity efficiency integrity compliance costs certainty flexibility and adaptability. Now we will disagree across this House about tax policy and about what policy we think should be implemented at any given moment. But what I would have hoped we would not disagree about Madam Speaker is the importance of transparency and the importance of information being available to New Zealanders to be able to understand this core and critical part of our financial system.I've heard today already—and fair warning for Mr Watts; these will be questions that come up in the committee of the whole House stage. I've heard from him that there's a bureaucracy involved here. We know exactly how many people are involved. It's 2.5 full-time equivalents. That as Chlöe Swarbrick has said on multiple occasions during this debate already is 0.06 percent of the staff of Inland Revenue; less than 0.1 of 1 percent of the staff of Inland Revenue to actually help all New Zealanders understand their tax system. That is a very very small price to pay for that information to be available.But Madam Speaker do you know what makes this all so much worse? It is that the work on the first report has undoubtedly already been completed. As has already been pointed out by previous speakers we are towards the end of the working year. IRD are a very effective and efficient department and they will have completed this work. It will exist. Mr Watts should also be warned that we'll be asking about that when we come to the committee of the whole House stage.This is a Government that rails against wastage. The work's been done and they want to waste it. They want to say "You know what? Even though we oppose this legislation that the previous Government brought in we're going to make certain that the work that's been done on it is wasted." They are actively passing a piece of legislation today to ensure that the work of the Public Service is wasted. What a remarkable thing it is for the first act of the Minister of Revenue to be coming to this House to take away a piece of legislation that means more New Zealanders will understand the tax system and that will provide more transparency about our taxation system. That's the priority of the Government here.Among all of the bizarre things that they've brought in front of this House over the last couple of weeks this is the one—this piece of legislation is the one that makes the least sense to me. They don't like workers so they're going to do the legislation that we just had before. But this one's about the transparency of our taxation system. Every member across there should want to know what is in this report or at the very least give New Zealanders the opportunity to hear it. They are afraid of what's in it. We will be strongly opposing this legislation.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Just for the Green Party's reference I will swap the Labour Party call with your call and keep the order and I'll call the National Party—Stuart Smith."