Ardern Jacinda: New Zealand Business Number Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: New Zealand Business Number Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9053. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It has been an absolute education to sit in on the tail end of that last debate and learn what causes on that side of the House a mild cardiac infarction from its various members. It is one of two things—either mention of Labour’s positive economic record or mention of the dire state of the Crown books by virtue of that Government being in power. The fact that we have $78 billion worth of debt—as my colleague rightly pointed out debt that would make Muldoon blush—is obviously the cause of great embarrassment for members like Chris Bishop who seemed to be very animated at any mention of the fact that Labour has a proud record of getting net Crown debt down to almost zero when we were in Government.I might add on that given that we are now talking about the positive record of working alongside small businesses that Labour has an excellent record of starting progress towards making sure that Government was more aligned to the needs of small businesses in New Zealand.But one thing that we as a Government at that time would acknowledge was that there was always more that could be done—there was always more that could be done. In this case if the best job of the Government on that bench in identifying what more could be done for small businesses is the small business number then we are in a pretty poor space.As I talked about in an earlier speech getting the right people having access to capital and making sure that businesses have time to build business plans and work on their own business are some of the three biggest challenges that small businesses face.Yet this business number which we are supporting with heavy concerns does very little to address some of those key concerns. As I want to point out—it has been pointed out by some of my members already—the New Zealand Business Number Bill itself has a number of exclusions in it. One of those important exclusions one of those areas of Government that will not be covered by the number is local government. If you ask any small business which department or interface with government they struggle with the most local government will be raised and yet there is an exclusion for local government here.There are also concerns around the level of uptake. If we do not get a good level of uptake among small businesses to this number early on then there is the chance that we will just have an extra identifier that is not properly integrated into existing Government systems. And finally the view from the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand that the benefits for business may be overstated is not something that is lost on this side of the House. The Better Public Services target that the Government has set for itself around small business is what? It is reducing the cost of compliance and by compliance it simply means form-filling when it comes to small businesses’ interface with Government. If you look for instance at the cost of a business registering in New Zealand that is a pretty nominal cost—it is pretty small. The Government has not set itself an ambitious target when it comes to genuinely helping small business. It could start by improving provisional tax it could follow the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants’ policy—there is so much more that it could have done.