Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Mr Chair. I listened to that speech by Mr Wood and I just thought it was a bit rich when he talked about the Opposition not being prepared to put up an alternative case because I thought I had outlined what we did propose and which was overturned by the Government when it came into power with regard to changes to the personal tax rates.Just talking about tax the thing that most worries me is the lack of imagination shown by the Labour - New Zealand First Government because we've heard ongoing comments about increasing taxes—and we already know that the Government have imposed $2.6 billion of new taxes since they came into office—and the second thing is that they haven't been clear about the debt levels other than saying that they want to keep them at 20 percent even though they at one point dropped to 19.9 percent just last year. So the way that Governments get out of that sort of spending bind—and we've got a free-flowing Government spending a billion for the provincial fund and a billion dollars for Winston Peters' foreign affairs portfolio to name just two—is either to increase taxes or to increase debt and that is the travesty we're talking about.So to the personal tax rate. We have been very clear. We have already come out as an Opposition—and our leader Simon Bridges has been exceptionally clear—around the thresholds and that is a $600 million package. But we believe it's right by making sure that the thresholds at which increasing levels of tax are paid by individuals are indexed to the Consumers Price Index and that is a very clear statement from us and one very unusual for an Opposition only 14 months into Opposition but we believe it is that important at a personal level that people aren't automatically being shifted into higher income tax brackets just through inflation and that that is patently unfair and that is the imaginative thing that we've already talked about.The thing about this tax package—and this is why we don't support it—is that it is unimaginative; it's very unimaginative. For instance where is the conversation around tax on companies? There's just been nothing about tax. All we've done is continue the same debate at 28 percent and the issue about that is that companies are the driver of the economy of New Zealand. They are the employers and the future employers of young people and older people who want to work who want to have a secure lifestyle who want to be able to borrow money to buy a house and who want to have all the benefits of being able to afford to pay for their families and all those associated benefits that you get from having a secure job. And the thing that worries me most about the tax arguments that've been going on—not only the one we're having today but also in the wider context of all the tax debate that's been going on—is the inability of the Government to recognise what is the driver of economies and that is businesses.When you say the word businesses" what you are talking about are individuals who are prepared to take the risk of investing in businesses whether start-ups or buying businesses or even buying new pieces of equipment or taking on new staff and that drive around that at a personal level also comes back to personal tax rates. So you can overlay all the business risks and you can do all those sorts of things which are naturally part of the assessment of whether you're going to mortgage your house and take on debt to be able to buy businesses and employ people but the core is that the tax issue is quite important not only at a company level but at a personal level and that's the thing that worries me most about this New Zealand First - Labour - Green Government—that they seem to be oblivious of the importance of these people who take on the risks. We've got 530000 businesses in New Zealand. You'd think we might have had a conversation around company tax rates. That's been absolutely silent and unfortunately we've got a Government made up of people with probably very few members who have actually worked and owned their own business put their own money on the line gone through the process of understanding what it is like to pay wages deduct all the taxes that need to be paid to the IRD.And this is all part of what's in this bill because another part of this bill when we move on to it is all about the complications of the new PAYE system that this bill is introducing. And I'm going to return to this as part of this tax conversation because it's vitally important and I think one that's been very very much missed in the conversation to date."