SpeechHAMISH WALKER (National—Clutha-Southland): Madam Speaker thanks for the call. Very delighted to stand here on a Friday morning in urgency to speak on the Rates Rebate (Statutory Declarations) Amendment Bill.I have two concerns about this bill that I'd like to raise. First is around the commission's report that came out recently which stated that this is not well-targeted at all. And the reason for that: if you take people who own their homes they pay rates to their council; it can be anywhere from $1500 a couple of thousand a year right up to thousands of dollars a year depending where you live in New Zealand. Often the conversation especially around older people people like Ian McKelvie's vintage—Hon Nathan Guy: He's young!HAMISH WALKER: He is young. People that have mortgages often the conversation is if someone doesn't have a mortgage they don't have their income—they may have a pension—often the focus is on them. But the real focus of this bill needs to be on people that rent elderly people that rent. They can't get any relief through this because they pay their rent to the landlord and the landlord is the one that pays the rates to the local council. But the commission came out and said that this bill is not well-targeted because it needs to focus on the people who rent; often sometimes they don't have high incomes. They need assistance. They're the ones we need to be focusing on. So that's my first real point around the Rates Rebate Scheme. The commission also came up with their report stating that this is not only untargeted the whole system needs to be revamped and that system they came up with was a national rates postponement scheme which would basically better fulfil the purposes that this bill wants to do.I want to acknowledge the Minister; I can see what she's trying to do. But I also want to reflect on some of the comments from the Government members during this debate. Some of them one of them in particular mentioned the fact that we want to make it easier for people to access rates rebates. Well there are plenty of justices of the peace. They're wonderful people. Their role is a very important role and as MPs you get to know them reasonably well. To become a JP you have to go through a process you have to meet up with your electorate MP and you get a feel for which part of the communities need which type of JP. But to go and see a JP is not a huge process; it doesn't take months. You basically make an appointment—it's free it's accessible—and we heard from the Government members saying they're trying to remove cost. Well it's not that hard to go and see a JP and they perform a very important role. They basically safeguard us.Deborah Russell mentioned the comment around We don't trust Kiwis." Well Deborah Russell you're a former accountant I believe—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I'm not actually Mr Walker. I won't take offence at that though.HAMISH WALKER: I am. So that member would have heard of the fraud triangle. And the fraud triangle is basically as we know a triangle has three sides. And this is around the motivation when people want to commit fraud. So you've got opportunity on one side. The second part of that fraud triangle is pressure and then the third side is the rationale behind it. So when you lower the safeguards the likelihood of fraud being committed increases when there's more conditions present.So if we look at one condition: pressure. If you've got someone who lives or maintains a high lifestyle or they have pressure from their friends or family to live a certain lifestyle there's pressure for them to commit fraud. The second one: rationale. Often you may get someone out there that wants to "borrow" money from the Government or rip the Government off but in their head they're borrowing it because the Government can afford it. And then there's the third part which I want to touch on which is around opportunity. Removing the role of the JP—the justice of the peace—to look at the documentation to see that there's a genuine need here presents an opportunity for someone. That's what this bill does. It removes the JP from the process. The process now becomes a council issue—it's basically form-filling. You've given the opportunity for people to commit fraud on this bill.All this bill is doing—a well-intentioned bill which will give the opportunity to a lot of people out there to commit fraud and that probably goes to the heart of this Government: well-intentioned. They had the cheek to stand here this morning and say that no one will abuse this process. We only need to go back a few weeks. Look what happened with the wage subsidy scheme. How many businesses are already coughing up paying that back? A wee lesson for the Government: it's well-intentioned but there are people out there that will rip off the system and our responsibility as MPs is to ensure our taxpayer money is spent wisely. And this has hit a sore point because now they're all chipping up they're all waking up they know it. So I urge any member of the Government to explain how this system is not going to be ripped off. It's not well-targeted as the commission stated the whole system needs a complete revamp and for those reasons we do not support the bill."