Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. As everyone knows tomorrow is Budget day. If there could be a perfect entrée for a National Budget I would wager this bill was it. What is it? A small innocuous non-strategic and entirely technical bill to tweak around the edges avoiding all of the big issues regarding tax in our country. That is exactly what we are going to see in tomorrow's Budget. We have seen nearly 9 years of it—a Government that is prepared to kick the fiscal the economic and the social issues down the road and ignore the big issues.Once again in this the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2017-18 Employment and Investment Income and Remedial Matters) Bill it is the same thing. What do we see? We see some small technical changes around how tax is recovered from petroleum companies Lloyds and big farmer/employee share schemes. But they are ignoring the big issues.Let us just focus on one area the petroleum changes. Currently here is an area where petroleum companies when they decommission their oil rigs have an existing tax regime where they can go backwards in terms of their losses. The Government is trying to change it.Why the Government is trying to change it is that as we recently uncovered in an Official Information Act request to Judith Collins the Minister of Energy and Resources the Government is looking at a 42 to 48 percent taxpayer liability—up to $960 million relating to their obligations to oil rig decommissioning. I was absolutely shocked and I think the Minister was too when she saw the scale of the taxpayer public liability—up to $960 million because the taxpayer has to fork out 42 to 48 percent of that liability. We are making a tiny technical change around it but avoiding some of those ginormous issues facing not only the environment from climate change but particularly the fiscal impact on taxpayers.That raises the second question. Why on earth is the taxpayer subsidising one of the most profitable industries on the planet? What I am referring to is the $46 million annual tax breaks and subsidies estimate produced by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Why on earth is the taxpayer subsidising big oil $46 million a year? We have got a wealth of clean energy resources that could be growing four times more jobs—well that is according to the official estimates. But instead we are looking back to the past.When we talk about tax we are talking about tiny technical changes on the margins and no doubt this is exactly what we will see tomorrow. Why on earth are we not using Parliament's time right now to debate the big issues like a capital gains tax on other than the family home? We saw last week that the International Monetary Fund said that the housing market and the bubble there was the biggest fiscal risk to our economy.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I have sort of waved the bill around towards the member on a number of occasions suggesting that he might want to address it. The first reading debate is a relatively narrow one. Large discourses about what is not in the bill and what should be done are not relevant.GARETH HUGHES: I did appreciate the visual prompts Mr Assistant Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well it would be good if the member took notice as well.GARETH HUGHES: There is a lot that could have been in this bill that we should have been discussing but we are not. But when we talk about the petroleum part which we will be looking at in detail in the select committee I note the regulatory impact statement produced a number of options. I think the preferred option which unfortunately was not taken into account was the idea of an environmental restoration account. That way an account could have been built up over time.As I outlined the fiscal liability for the taxpayer is significant. As I questioned the Minister in question time she referred to the fact that these companies pay taxes and there are royalties going into the Crown account. While that is true the fact is that that money has been spent. As I asked the Minister when it comes to the tax liability that the taxpayer faces none of that money has been put aside.There are a lot of really important things that have a call on the taxpayers' income—for example housing and benefits. But because none of that money has been put aside into for example an environmental restoration account the taxpayer has got to come up with it. So we will be asking lots of questions as to why the changes that are in the legislation were picked by the Government and why the environmental restoration account which was identified in the regulatory impact statement was not adopted. Why was this gigantic sum not flagged earlier to the Minister? It was never in any other briefing documents. There is a lot of detail that we want to go into. We urge the public to make submissions to the select committee. Thank you very much.