Jones Shane: Taxation (International Investment and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee 
Jones Shane: Taxation (International Investment and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:677;Page:460] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Chairman. I would like to acknowledge that as a consequence of my colleague David Cunliffe coming back from a great summer he can see the future. That sort of hirsute look that he brings to the Chamber is in contrast to that very handsome mop of hair that has haunted a number of us as it watched your circuitous career. I would like to say as well that I am about to eat venison as a consequence—unrelated to tax—of a hunting trip. The Minister sitting next to you can claim some credit on a completely unrelated issue.  
The Taxation (International Investment and Remedial Matters) Bill amongst the other amendments it makes—and I was chided earlier by the Minister of Revenue—in actual fact does make some improvements I presume or amendments to that marathon exercise called the fair dividend rate. The Minister and I imposed ourselves upon the swallows of Kororareka Russell a bunch of New Zealand and overseas residents who took great umbrage at the changes that Dr Cullen and the Minister at the time who is still the Minister were making. Perhaps he could enlighten us during the course of the evening as to how these amendments and how these changes are actually going to improve the functioning of not so much international business but us sourcing capital.  
We have heard a bit from the other side of the Chamber and I understand John Hayes has joined the Finance and Expenditure Committee. As he sits on that committee I just hope that there is some topic that comes across the purview of that committee to do with Persian rugs. If not Persian rugs then Persian cats. There is one thing I know about Mr Hayes and it is that he is a walking encyclopaedia on matters pertaining to Persia. Unfortunately the only person disinterested in listening to him is the current Minister of Foreign Affairs who in days gone by actually was on the Finance and Expenditure Committee. But I will not speak ill of that fellow resident at one point in time in North Auckland etc. That was Tau Henare and he does not have a perma-tan. His head has been on the sunbed for far too long. He knows that and he also knows that this is the last—[ 
Interruption 
] I actually hope that he does stand and take a call on this tax-related bill largely because it may be the most coherent thing we are going to hear from the man in this final 3-year countdown of his parliamentary career. I have no doubt he curses the day that he made fun of the “hammerhead shark” who sits here on a regular basis—otherwise known as Winston Peters. Tau Henare’s career may have gone on and on but let us come back to these tax matters.  
We support this bill. Of course we support this bill because we are incredibly supportive of turning round the fortunes of the country unlike our colleagues over there who have the rhetoric but have not given us a clear set of ideas as to how these changes to the international tax regime will apply or ensure that those players who are investing overseas are paying their fair tax. I would like to hear from the Minister on this question of the connection with the protracted experience we had in creating the fair dividend rate which I presume actually did improve the prospects of Tony Gibbs before he fell from grace but that is another matter. I was the person dispatched to try to make sense of what he was on about and that was prior to hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on the  
New Zealand Herald 
 the  
Dominion Post 
 and various other organs of the fourth estate as they sought to change the minds of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and the Government of the day. We being a responsive Government were a little bit flexible in that regard.  
But as I recall the fair dividend rate is referred to. That is one of the amendments in this bill. There was an attempt to ensure that for New Zealanders who were capturing their wealth through the capital growth of equities that they held overseas—and they were able to repatriate them back to New Zealand because it was a capital growth and it was not regarded as income—there was an opportunity for them to let me say short the New Zealand - based tax system and capture the full value of their equities overseas as they grew in terms of their capital value. When that was monetised and cashed up the rest of us were struggling here and paying PAYE as an ordinary part of our daily lives but they were able to—I would not say evade—circumvent that obligation. The fair dividend rate is contained in here so I really look forward to the Minister bringing a little erudition—but not in that usual sort of schoolboy style.