Coates BarryBARRY COATES (Green): I appreciate the call. I rise to talk about the Taxation (Business Tax Exchange of Information and Remedial Matters) Bill. The Green Party is continuing to support this bill although I must confess we have severe reservations about certain parts of it. On balance we think that there are some provisions in it that are well worth supporting.We are pleased to see the tax streamlining for small business in particular. It is important; we talked about that during the second reading debate—the importance of cash flow for small business. This will benefit 110000 small businesses in New Zealand. The idea of pay-as-you-go tax which works in conjunction with cloud-based accounting software is a good move and we are happy to support that in the legislation. We are particularly happy to see some measures that would support small business rather than undermine small business as we have seen in some recent legislation for example on anti-dumping which the House has had to deal with plus other things like trade agreements that are relentlessly in favour of big business and biased against small business but will support small business in this particular case.The second aspect that we support is the follow-up to the Shewan report on greater disclosure of information about foreign trusts—the amendment to section 59 of the Tax Administration Act. This as previous speakers have said introduces some sunlight as a disinfectant into the pervasive dodginess should I say of our foreign trust systems in the past. You know we do not want to give a pat on the back for this legislation. This is legislation that has addressed we think a pretty shocking problem. It is 6 years since former leader of the Green Party Russel Norman pointed out the damage that foreign trusts were doing to New Zealand's reputation. The Inland Revenue Department acknowledged that risk to our reputation: New Zealand got listed on the websites of companies that were doing dodgy deals like Mossack Fonseca as a good place for people to park their money and avoid paying tax. However National Party members were lobbied as we know and the former Prime Minister's personal lawyer got involved and no action was taken even with the evidence of the problems. We are reminded in looking through the history of this deal of the former revenue Minister Peter Dunne who talked about legitimate tax avoidance in 2012.We are talking about 12000 companies—a litany of dodgy companies. One of those exposés about the New Zealand foreign trusts came from an Australian Financial Review article on 6 May 2016 analysing the Panama Papers. It was shocking to see the depth to which New Zealand had fallen in terms of allowing practices that were clearly tax avoidance. I must say I am extremely disappointed that Alfred Ngaro does not seem to think that there is a problem here to solve and that New Zealand's reputation has not been damaged. The particular methodology on the corruption index that he is talking about would not necessarily pick this issue up and there should be no justification—no justification at all—for this kind of allowance of New Zealand acting as if we are a tax haven.So in summary we are pleased to see the disclosure under the foreign trust disclosure rules. And just a reminder of how big a problem tax havens are—we are talking about a trillion-dollar industry. New Zealand has had billions of dollars squirreled away in foreign trusts and the issue of tax havens is not only unjust to small companies and to wage earners and salary earners who have to bear an unfair burden of the tax; I think it is offensive to most New Zealanders to realise that the wealthier you are the more places you have got to hide your money so that you do not have to pay tax.We would like to raise four issues with regard to this bill. One as mentioned by our Labour Party colleagues is a lack of action on anti - money-laundering provisions. The Shewan report recommended that phase 2 of the anti - money-laundering provisions should be addressed by the end of last year. They were not. Lawyers accountants and real estate agents are still not covered in terms of anti - money-laundering. This is extremely important because of the flood of money internationally most visibly because of impending regulation in China but also from other aspects. The OECD's international action task force shows the need for New Zealand to pass this legislation quickly otherwise we will be even further behind the actions of other countries. So that is the first issue: anti - money-laundering is not included.The second issue is that there is no public register of foreign trusts. We have public registers of companies we have public registers of other trusts but we have no sunlight we have no transparency we have no searchability of a register of foreign trusts and we do not think that is good enough. So that is a severe criticism we have of this bill: we do not think it goes nearly far enough in order to stop the kinds of practices that we have seen before.The third issue is that the Government could have taken this opportunity to also start addressing the issues of multinationals operating in this country not paying their fair share of tax. Australia and the UK have forms of deferred tax. It is a way to start taxing multinationals while also we engage in the OECD's process of base erosion and tax shifting. So we want to see rapid action on ensuring the large multinational companies who operate in New Zealand who compete with small companies are not adversely advantaged in doing so by getting away without paying tax.There is a final issue and the final issue comes from the details of the legislation itself. I was not part of the committee process. I have had reports from my colleagues who were and they said that there were severe criticisms of the legislation from submitters. I quote from an article in the National Business Review by Rob Hosking who said that the bill was slammed by almost every submitter as being sloppily written rushed and counter-productive.The article also talks about criticism from the director of the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand Peter Vial who said that he was appalled by the regulatory-making power that particularly the Supplementary Order Paper introduces. I think that this shows that as colleagues have said—as Stuart Nash previously said—this is complex regulation but it is not robust and it is not well-thought-through and it is not well consulted upon.So our recommendation for the Government would be that a review of this legislation would be planned within 2 years of its enactment and that this process rather than being accidentally finding out where it is not working and where it is causing problems actually be planned as a process to improve the legislation as it gets implemented. Thank you Mr Chairperson.