Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you very much. I think this is very important that we debate this properly because obviously we don't have proper full parliamentary scrutiny due to the use of the urgency process to kind of sneak this in before the Christmas break. So I'd encourage the Minister of Revenue to buckle up because this is his first piece of legislation that he's presenting to the House and clearly the removal of transparency and openness as the very first act of the new Minister of Revenue I find kind of remarkable.I actually just wanted to respond to some of the points that I've heard in the debate just now. So the member for New Zealand First Andy Foster was just talking about trust and confidence and how important it is for New Zealanders to have trust and confidence in their Government and in their Parliament. I think the idea that you would take away transparency take away evidence take away data take away that information take away openness about the nature of our tax system is not a very good way of building trust and confidence. Trust and confidence actually come from having public information that is objective and publicly available having information that is open and transparent being able to form opinions about what is going on here. In fact this Government is doing the exact opposite of building trust and confidence by removing data and information which is directly contrary to their own coalition agreement principles that say that decisions will be based on data and information—except apparently data and information that they don't like such as information about the tax system.The other thing that I wanted to respond to that Andy Foster had talked about was he said that he thought that New Zealanders would be exercised about the transparency of expenditure of the Government. And that is fair—that is fair. They are exercised about that. But it is inconsistent to say that they will not also be exercised about transparency around revenue because revenue is how you are able to get expenditure. The two are inextricably linked. The idea that you would actually take away transparency and openness around revenue because you think that they're more exercised about transparency around expenditure is an incoherent argument. It is not an argument for the bill.One of the points that David Seymour raised in his intervention earlier was he raised a point that some of the tax policies that some of the parties took to the election campaign were inconsistent with the principles in the Act. I would agree with him on that point. That is an argument for the Act because if nobody disagrees with the principles in the Act itself having some information in the public domain about how the country is doing in relation to those principles you would think would over time start to encourage political parties to develop policies that are coherent with those policies.In fact I would argue—and if David Parker were able to be here I suspect he would argue—that the point of the existing Act is to ensure that Parliament is better informed about the state of our tax system in relation to those principles and that therefore that transparency and that openness about the tax system would start to inform Parliament and start to inform political parties and non-Government actors outside of the system who are informing us about the policies that we adopt here in order to encourage them to start to develop policies that are more aligned with those principles.If you say actually we don't disagree with the principles but we are going to remove information and data from the public domain about how the country is doing in relation to those principles it means that we continue to operate in the dark. Now that is inconsistent with for example the Fiscal Responsibility Act that was brought in by a National Government in the 1990s the very point of which was to raise transparency and openness about the state of Government finances right? That was the point of that legislation. And now the same political parties that brought in legislation in relation to a structure around transparent information are now taking it away when it comes to the tax system. It is an utterly incoherent argument to make. They say that the reason that they're doing that is because it's bureaucracy. We've already heard a number of times in this House that there are 1½ fulltime-equivalent people in the entire country whose job it is to execute this law so it will make zero difference—zero difference at all—to the ability of the Government to give tax cuts. It will make zero difference in the pockets of working New Zealanders of middle and low income New Zealanders at all which is why I raised in the first reading speech: in whose interests is the repeal of this Act being taken?In terms of the kind of spurious argument that the Act causes bureaucracy and waste it does not. It creates transparency. It creates accountability. It highlights the inconsistencies that various political parties might have in their tax policies in relation to it. It runs entirely contrary to the coalition Government's own agreements between its parties around making their decisions on the basis of facts and evidence because they are saying that they do not want facts and evidence in relation to the tax system. That would be inconvenient to them. That would be inconvenient to the people that they get their money from at the election campaign.I'm yet to hear an argument from the other side that says that if they—I mean I've heard a number of times that they say that they actually do agree with the principles. I have yet to hear an argument that says why less transparency makes more sense than more transparency. In fact yesterday the new Minister of Finance the Hon Nicola Willis got up and issued her mini-mini-mini-Budget and in that was complaining about the lack of transparency in the Government accounts even though those accounts are under legislation that requires a Government to report on the state of the books and it is all there. And now what they're saying is they want more transparency on that side of the ledger but they don't want it on the revenue side of the ledger. Why is that? Why would they not want that transparency? In whose interest is it to obfuscate that information? In whose interests is it? [Interruption] This is working Simon. Keep it up. This is really getting the House going. In whose interest is it that we take away that information from the public domain? I think the answers to that are obvious but they will never admit to it and so they give us these spurious arguments about how the Act is some kind of massive bureaucratic boondoggle because it requires 1½ people to do some work about the state of the Government's revenue strategies and where we get our money from in order to be able to afford the things that New Zealanders expect their Government to pay for.So I would like to hear from the Government at some point how repealing this Act is consistent with their coalition agreements for decisions based on facts and evidence. I want to hear an argument on that line. I want to hear an argument from the political parties that complained about the openness and transparency of the last Government about how repealing this Act increases openness and transparency. We have yet to hear an argument that relates to that. I want to hear an argument from the Government side about why they think if they agree with the principles that are in the Act it is so important to repeal the Act. If they do not disagree if they agree with those principles then they have yet to lay out an argument why reporting on those principles is a bad thing.I have yet to hear a coherent argument about the exact line between if they think that this is bureaucracy if they think it's waste if they think it's—how much money will be delivered into the pockets of New Zealanders as a result of this bill? If that is the argument that they are making how much money will New Zealanders get in their pockets by the repeal of this Act? Because they fought an election campaign on the basis of cost of living and they have yet to make that argument.