Fitzsimons Jeanette: Taxation (Budget Tax Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Taxation (Budget Tax Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3970] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The one time that urgency is often seen to be justified is when on Budget day urgent financial legislation needs to be passed overnight so that people cannot take advantage of knowing the change is coming before it is law. This is not such an occasion. In this urgent legislation we are cancelling tax cuts that take effect in April next year. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: And the year after. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: And the year after. It is very hard to see why anybody could claim that this legislation was urgent enough to bring Parliament together into the night on Thursday and again on Friday morning. The Green Party did not vote for the urgency motion. We believe urgency ought to be used quite cautiously if there is to be support across the House for urgency when it is actually justified. There are times when it is justified but this is not one of them. 
We will however vote for the Taxation (Budget Tax Measures) Bill. We are not voting for the Government’s Budget—we are not voting for this Government on confidence and supply—but we will vote for this bill because the obviously sensible thing to do in a recession is to cancel two rounds of tax cuts for which we would have to borrow billions of dollars. We are glad that the Government has chosen to do the sensible thing in that case. The Greens never supported the tax cuts in the first place. 
I have to say that when the Government took urgency to rush through tax cut legislation in December last year—some of which is already in force from 1 April this year and which is not being cancelled—it was already obvious that New Zealand was in a recession. It was already obvious in December that the tax cuts would put the Government into serious debt. But because National campaigned around the country on tax cuts I suppose National members felt obliged to put them into practice. Now National is coping with the consequences of a Budget that is very very hard to balance because so much was given in tax cuts. Tax cuts are something that we do when the economy is in surplus when we are having the good times and when we know that it is a structural surplus and that we will be able to keep on doing it. In December last year we were not in that situation economically and we are even less in that situation now. 
However it is better late than never and we are glad to support the common-sense approach of cancelling the next two slices of tax cuts. If the first slice had not gone ahead in April this year and if that December bill had not been passed the savings to the Government Budget would have funded our entire Green New Deal stimulus package which would create 43000 new jobs. Yes people like having $30 a week more in their pocket from their pay packet but I bet that if we asked most New Zealanders whether they would rather have a tax cut of $30 a week or 43000 more jobs in the economy they would choose the latter. They would know that their neighbours their kids and their friends would have employment and that there would be spin-off effects in the economy. They would know they would see all the other benefits of the Green New Deal package such as clean rivers better export returns from New Zealand being clean and green warm insulated homes better public transport more community development and 6000 new State houses to tackle homelessness. I bet that most Kiwis if they had been asked whether they wanted $30 a week or a better society for themselves and their children would opt for the Green New Deal package and all the benefits that it would bring. 
I will quote Jane Clifton whose comments in the  
Listener 
 I always enjoy. Back in April she had this to say: “But so much has changed since we first hankered after tax cuts that it’s all the most depressing let-down.” This was April when the tax cuts first came in. She continued: “Once again we can see the extra money will not compensate us for dairy product petrol power school-fee and mortgage-interest hikes. It will not supply a nest-egg for any redundancies set to hit our households.” She knew those would happen. “It will simply be sucked into the maw of our existing financial struggles and grateful as we are for it”—this is the interesting bit—“our central existential problems will continue unabated.” She is saying that tax cuts are not a recipe for happiness and greater well-being and that there are better ways that that money could have been spent. 
The part of this bill that we struggle to understand is the closure of the mortgage diversion facility in KiwiSaver. Apparently only 600 people so far have used the opportunity to divert savings from KiwiSaver to their mortgage payments. Those 600 people may well have faced mortgage foreclosures if they did not have that facility and it is very important that they were able to do that. It does not sound as if with 600 people participating this was a huge compliance cost for KiwiSaver. It is very hard to see where the problem is that this is trying to fix. So I look forward to hearing the Government explain that measure a little bit further. The Greens may well therefore not vote for Part 2 of the bill. However we will vote for Part 1 and we will vote for the bill overall. We are glad the Government has finally seen sense and realised that making tax cuts when the country is in a recession does not make sense.