Hughes Darren: Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Hughes Darren: Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:223] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 I appreciate the chance to take a call on Part 3 of the Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill. It is very important that the Opposition gets a chance to speak and to scrutinise this bill and particularly this part because throughout the debate on the items in the urgency motion the Opposition has not been given the chance to see the legislation until we start debating it. It is an absolute outrage that that is happening. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Oh that never happened under you lot—outrageous! 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: The Hon Maurice Williamson says that that never happened under Labour and he is right. I want the Minister Maurice Williamson to tell me how often the previous Labour Government put the House into urgency and all the legislation in the urgency motion was not available to the House. How often was the legislation to be debated not available? How often was it made available bill by bill only even though the Leader of the House had said at 2 o’clock that he would make it available now? That was a quarter of a day ago which for Gerry Brownlee is pretty fast progress I concede but for most ordinary people a quarter of a day is quite a long time. If the Opposition is not given the chance to read a bill before we start debating it it is important that we are able to give our part by part analysis in the Committee stage. 
Clause 29 sets the tax rates for the financial year 2009-10. It is part of Part 3. Clause 29 has done that; it makes the whole thing quite clear. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Surely the rest of this contribution cannot be even slightly relevant if the man is not even aware of what he is debating. Quite clearly judging by his embarrassed look he has not read this particular part. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: That is not a point of order. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Thank you very much Mr Chair. I assure the member that I always look this way regardless of whether I am in an embarrassed state. I was born looking this way and I have learnt to love myself in this shape unlike Mr Brownlee who always seems resentful and bitter about the way that mother Nature has him appear in the House of Representatives today. [ 
Interruption 
] That is right; he had to work very hard to look that way. I started off looking like this and that is the way it has to be. 
We have debated the tax rates for the coming year and as Ruth Dyson has already said for some people—particularly those on low incomes—their taxes go up quite substantially. Now we come to the independent earner tax credit which the Government is putting up as its major centrepiece to make sure that people get close to the $50 a week they were promised. But there is a problem with that because the $50 a week they were promised includes the tax cuts that were part of the Labour Government’s legislative programme in Budget 2008. But we have to take the argument even further because when we put that to Bill English the Minister of Finance he said we cannot say that there is a tax increase for people on low incomes because National is not counting Labour’s tax cuts—even though we know that when the legislation comes in it will be adverse for people—but when it comes to making up the $50 it cannot wait to get out the abacus and count Labour’s tax cuts as part of the programme that National is putting forward. 
The bridging policy is the independent earner tax credit but when one looks at it one sees how unfair it is. I ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman a question. Is any single worker worse off as a result of the tax changes proposed in this part of the bill? The Minister’s colleagues are talking while he is trying to hear. He is now paid a quarter of a million dollars. He gets quite a good tax cut under this part of the bill. He does quite well out of it despite the fact that he is not an independent earner in that respect—he relies on nanny State to pay his wages. He can now tell us whether any workers will be worse off as a result of this part being passed by Parliament. The rising star of the National Cabinet cannot answer that question. We have to keep on debating this bill until we have a Government Minister in the chair who understands National’s policy. 
I ask Jonathan Coleman another question. What was the range of the independent earner tax credit that he campaigned on in the election? He does not know. He shakes his head. He does not know. He has no idea what the independent earner tax credit was that those members campaigned on. I ask him what range it has now that it is in the bill. Oh he does not know that either. To be fair to the man I tell him that it is on the piece of paper in front of him. I know what it is I tell Mr Coleman; it is on the page in front of me. He will find it on page 15. I will give him a few seconds to find it. It is a different figure from the figure quoted during the campaign when National members went around the country saying that they would put in an independent earner tax credit. They said that it would range from $24000 to $50000. That is not what the bill before Parliament right now states. Thank goodness we have the chance to go through the bill carefully in the Committee stage because under the bold brighter inclusive future that National MPs have been programmed to tell us about we did not get to see the bill before we started debating it. 
What it means is that there are people who get only $10 a week which is a pretty pathetic amount considering that Dr Cullen’s tax cuts were larger. One of the great ironies of this debate is that the largest tax cuts in this 3-year programme are Michael Cullen’s tax cuts not Bill English’s tax cuts. Oh the big man is now on the move towards the papers on the Table so we might learn what the non-independent earner has to say about it. Maybe he could sit in the chair and tell us what the range was. I know that he has pored over every detail of the legislation before the Committee. I know that the Leader of the House has not let a single page go unmarked as he makes sure that workers in this country get the best deal. I cannot believe that he allowed this $6000 figure to escape from the National Party manifesto. Gerry Brownlee was all over the detail so I cannot believe that there is a $6000 hole for working people in the bill before the Committee of the whole House this evening. 
I ask him to get into the chair now and relieve Jonathan Coleman because he will be able to tell us why people who get a benefit do not get the independent earner tax credit if they are earning money. We were told by Mrs Collins before her demotion that National wanted to raise the amount that beneficiaries could earn to $100 immediately on becoming Government because work was so important. Work would set people free. Katrina Shanks yawns at the mention of the word “work”; she is working at 7.50 in the evening on the third day of this Parliament. That is what those members are going to have to put up with. This Government which has barely taken office cannot tell us why it campaigned on beneficiaries being able to earn more money—because apparently that is an important philosophy that people have to learn—but if they get a job and earn money they are not entitled to the independent earner tax credit. I want the Minister in the chair to explain to me how he can reconcile that social policy with that economic policy. I think it is quite an important point which the Committee of the whole House does want to know about. It seems to me to be quite crucial. 
Dr Cullen talked about veterans pensions for people who have served our country in war. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: He would talk about veterans pensions. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Well Tau Henare knows about being in a few battles and a few wars. None of them were official ones but in every single one he was a victim. He is the walking wounded without ever having put on a uniform. He may well want to line up for the independent earner tax credit before he joins the Maori Party having been shunned and made to feel whakama by the National Party. That is what has happened there. 
For people on New Zealand superannuation I see the new member of Parliament for Otaki over there. I know that seat has the highest number of people over the age of 65 and I know that a lot of them still work. He is going to vote to make sure they do not get the independent earner tax credit. They will be worse off as a result of the bill being passed by Parliament tonight. Those people would have got a tax cut under Labour. I want to know what these bold new members of Parliament are going to do about the fact that they campaigned all around the country on letting people keep more of their money—that is what they said—yet when the legislation comes to Parliament they cannot wait to take money out of the pockets of pensioners and put it in their own back pockets. One of the first announcements from this Government was an increase in the pay of members of Parliament but those members cannot wait to take money out of the back pockets of pensioners which is what they are doing in clause 31. Very many people are going to be affected negatively by the independent earner tax credit particularly those who earn under $40000. 
I see the new member of Parliament for Te Tai Tonga over there. I congratulate Rahui Katene on her election to Parliament but 73 percent of her constituents earn less than $40000 a year which is way worse than the average for a lot of other electorates in the country—although for Otaki it is 60 percent. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: And what did you do about it for 9 years? 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: We increased the minimum wage every single year so that it went up by $5 over the 9 years that we were in Government. It went up by 70c in the 9 years that Tau Henare was part of a Government. So these figures are better than what they would have been if Labour had not been in Government. When 73 percent of a member’s constituents earn less than $40000 a year that member needs to read Part 3 of this bill really carefully because those people cannot by definition benefit from the changes that the National Government is introducing. This bill unpicks law that is already on the statute book and replaces it and that means they are worse off a second time because they will not get the benefit of what Parliament legislated for earlier on. That is the key point. 
When the Minister of Finance was in the chair before he tried to gloss over this point by not counting Labour’s legislated tax cuts but he has to count it in order to get to the $50 he promised. The $10 amount that he is putting in is an absolute sham. It is a disgraceful amount that will not make a difference for ordinary people. We have tried in the debate on this part to ameliorate the concerns we have as an Opposition party. We believe that National Party members were not up front with the public about this matter when they were campaigning. They said they were in favour of tax cuts. Tens of thousands of people right across the country will now find that their taxes are going up under National; they are not going down as they were meant to do. Craig Foss will not be too worried about that because Craig Foss is in Parliament for Craig Foss but those of us who are interested in making sure that New Zealanders do well say there is a problem with this part. Michael Cullen has a solution. His Supplementary Order Paper fixes this problem.