Nash StuartHon STUART NASH (Minister of Revenue): Thank you very much Mr Chair. Let me answer some of the questions that have been asked and see where we end up. First of all to the Hon Judith Collins I just want to reiterate an answer I gave earlier. You were concerned that New Zealand lawyers etc. would not advise multinationals or take on multinationals as clients for fear of being hit with a $100000 fine if they did something wrong or something occurred outside of their knowledge. I'm pleased to inform the member that in fact the civil penalties apply to members of large multinational groups and it would not apply to their advisers. So hopefully that has answered that point.Lawrence Yule brought up a point around secrecy. It is not an amendment that we can consider. In clause 50 there is reference to disregarding foreign secrecy laws and this is consistent with existing information request provisions within the Tax Administration Act anyway. The other thing I would also say is that most countries are repealing their secrecy laws to meet new standards for exchange of information. Keep it in mind we're not going this alone; this is OECD-led. Everyone—every jurisdiction every tax department—wants multinationals to pay their fair share. Let me give an example—and I know the committee was briefed on this—of where we may need to do what we've done in the bill. That is for example a tax haven—not that many large multinationals use tax havens of course—may have a secrecy law that makes it illegal to provide certain information to a foreign Government. So that's the reason why we've gone down that route. Most secrecy laws relate to bank secrecy and so it would not prevent a multinational from providing IRD with information about their own tax position.There is something I would like to say to Mr Penk and that is: please do not compare New Zealand's IRD to other jurisdictions certainly those that may be considered in not the same light as New Zealand. We are known globally—we are renowned globally; we have a global reputation—for a fantastic tax system. The integrity of our tax system is very very highly valued and there are two former Ministers of Revenue here who understand that who worked hard on that. The thing I would say is that one of the reasons—it's not the only reason but one of the reasons—is obviously a broad base - low rate but also the commissioner. The commissioner—in this case the current commissioner—is a person of immense integrity even though I am well aware that this bill will transcend her time—I'm assuming; who knows how long she will be there?The thing about this bill—and I talked about this a lot when I was in Opposition—is there are the words may" and "must": when are we going to compel the commissioner to do this or when is it up to the commissioner's discretion to do this? I'm not prepared to accept an amendment that waters down the commissioner's ability to go hard against multinationals for two reasons. Yes you are dead right; the onus is always on the taxpayer to provide information to IRD. It doesn't matter if it's your money or a large multinational. If someone has that information or not that is still up to the taxpayer to find that information and furnish that to the commissioner keeping in mind the commissioner—I sort of addressed this last week—just doesn't have the time to go on fishing expeditions and that would not enhance the integrity of our tax system in any way shape or form.So what we are doing here is providing the commissioner powers to investigate or compel the taxpayer to provide information when there is evidence or when there is a very strong suspicion that in fact that taxpayer is not complying with the law. I think if we watered that down then we would open a massive big loophole for a whole lot of corporate lawyers to march right on in and say "Well the commissioner had to use their discretion. We don't know if the discretion was used appropriately." etc. etc. So I think compelling the commissioner to do this is actually the right thing to do to maintain the integrity of the Act as well as the tax system. Thank you."