Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a short call on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023-24 Multinational Tax and Remedial Matters) Bill.This is a very good bill and I want to begin my contribution by thanking the three Ministers that have worked across this bill and also to put on record my thanks to the Finance and Expenditure Committee—of which I'm not a member so I haven't been part of the select committee process. My thanks to both the former committee and the current committee and all of the officials—particularly Therese Turner—who have worked in providing advice to Ministers and also to the committee.It is a very good bill. Unfortunately as other members have noted during their contributions—and I'll just speak briefly to it—we have seen some of the proposed amendments from the Government that will come forward at the committee stage. Unfortunately it's the opinion on this side of the House that the bill will no longer be as good as it is today. So I wanted to take some time today to talk to two particular matters in the bill that are relevant to the work that I do as a parliamentarian. The first is around my role as spokesperson for ACC and secondly there is some improvement here in the bill that will affect some of our homeowners who were affected by the Nelson floods nearly two years ago and I'll talk to that briefly also.So I'll begin by just speaking around the changes that the bill makes to the taxation of backdated lump-sum payments. As ACC spokesperson but also as a constituent MP I have spoken to people who have received these lump-sum payments and I'm sure nearly every electorate MP and many other MPs would have spoken to people in those situations. I want to talk specifically around ACC lump-sum payments given to those who have had sensitive claims. Sensitive claims are an important part of the ACC system—so people who may have been subjected to often quite horrific examples of sexual abuse often when they were younger who later in life have been able to take a claim from ACC and receive both support through things like counselling but also a lump-sum payment that allows them to have access to some income. I want to speak particularly to a constituent who I've gotten to know very well over the last couple of years who came to me about this very issue. What she's told me is that the impact of that abuse when she was a little girl has robbed her of her opportunities. It has robbed her of the income that she could have earned if she'd been able to go to work like others who haven't had such significant offences committed against them. One of the things that I think this bill addresses so very well is that people who receive these payments would often end up receiving a large payment that would pop them up sometimes into the highest tax bracket. Even if you looked at it only over a year often it would be significantly more income than a person would earn in previous years. So it is a very good change in the bill that people will be able to have that lump-sum payment assessed across a four-year period. I think it's one of those issues where all of us across the House would have met with people who have been subject to these particular circumstances.I think the only message I would want to send to my constituent—who I've met with on many occasions and who has lobbied for this type of change—is just how unfortunate it is that we can't make these changes retrospective. That is the nature of our lawmaking. Unfortunately we can't go back in time across all of those lump-sum payments that have occurred. But what I do want to be able to say to my constituent is that she and others like her have been heard—you have been heard by the House—and this is one of those changes that does make this bill a very good bill.Just in the final few seconds of my contribution I want to acknowledge the change here for the small number of people who were impacted by the Nelson floods nearly two years ago and I'd just like to put on record before he gives his final speech tomorrow my thanks to the Hon Grant Robertson who made this happen. It was a couple of phone calls—after we'd been having real challenges to be honest with officials both at the council and departmental level—that actually got this buy-out across the line. My thanks specifically to Grant Robertson for making that happen. What this bill would have meant was that again those affected by Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland floods would have had the benefit of this bill but not my constituents in Nelson. So it's a very good change and I do want to thank the committee from the bottom of my heart that once again my constituents in Nelson have been treated fairly as they needed to be.It's a great bill at this stage—might not be so great in a few weeks' time—so I commend it at this stage to the House.