Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e te Pīka thank you very much for the opportunity to take this call. I'm really pleased to have it because this is a bill which is about what we should be talking about in this Parliament: about bringing down the cost of living for people about our tax system and about the ways to make it fair.I have here a proposal that Labour members seek to work on with members of the Government with all parties around this House on a select committee inquiry into food pricing because every member of this House has given a speech tonight which has identified a huge problem and a weakness a structural weakness in our economy about the price of food. We need to be able to dig into those details. We need to understand why the price of food and the profits that supermarkets are making do not match up and why New Zealanders are paying more than their international counterparts for food. We need an enduring solution to the high prices that New Zealanders are paying and we need that to be cross-partisan and something we can all dig into. I welcome support of all parties to open this inquiry at a select committee level about why it is that New Zealanders are paying too much.Now I said I wanted to talk about tax and I am keen to get into that tonight because this is a bill which would seek to change our tax system in a couple of ways which my colleagues have discussed tonight. Because tax is important if you want a New Zealand where every person is living the kind of good life that they envision for themselves no matter who they are where they're from in the country and for that to happen we need high-quality public services that are accessible to everyone and that work for everyone that meet them where they are at. To be able to do that to have the kind of social welfare system which catches people and it's a genuine safety net to be able to have a healthcare system which is responsive to people's needs to have the transformative social elevator that is education in New Zealand we need to be able to raise taxes from a broad base. And in New Zealand we are not doing that in the way that we should be doing.The Māori Party's bill tonight is a great opportunity to be able to talk about whether their solution would do that. Labour members do not think it would do that in the way that we would hope to because it would result in less tax take because Labour has always believed in a progressive tax system and has been committed to a fair transparent one that promotes social equity sustainability and long-term economic growth. That kind of tax system would levy everyone fairly and progressively. It would levy more tax to pay for the kind of redistributive politics that Labour and the Māori Party champion in this House for everyone to be able to access. We should not in the kind of economic environment that the National Government is promoting be promoting a tax cut which this is. Instead we need to be talking about how we levy everyone fairly to pay for those social services that people deeply rely upon that our whaikaha families and their carers rely upon and need that Ministers need to be able to go to the Budget and say we need more money to pay for these social services that mums and dads around the country are crying out for today because they are being taken away from them. That is the kind of tax system that we need to be talking about.But we also need to have at a select committee cross-partisan agreement about the fact that yes the Māori Party have raised that our people everyone in New Zealand are paying too much for food. The answer is not that the Government shouldn't take its share of food that we should not pay our way as part of a goods and services tax that is levied very cheaply across everyone and includes people like tourists and visitors to this country who wouldn't otherwise pay tax. We need to be having a conversation around why it is possible for super-profits to be made in our grocery and food sector that New Zealand has one of the least effective markets for consumers of groceries in the world that our supermarkets—which are in fact Australian supermarkets—are 20 times more profitable than their European counterparts which exist in a much more competitive market. We need to take those issues seriously and that's why we should be debating that at select committee.It's not the solution to the problem to take tax off things like food and grocery; it's the solution to actually look at why the duopoly and luxurious market conditions that the supermarkets enjoy have been able to go on for so long. Labour began this work; if we had been able to finish that work we would be in a different situation than we are today. We need to keep going on it and it cannot be something which is treated as a political football. So I welcome every party in this House's support when Labour members present to the select committee our food pricing inquiry.