Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Well thanks for the contributions that we've heard so far. I think the member who has just resumed his seat referred to my colleague Andrew Bayly MP for Hunua as a Scotch terrier and I would say this to Mr Michael Wood in that pre-ministerial speech that he just gave now Better a Scotch terrier than a weasel!"Michael Wood: I support you too Mrs Collins.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Ha ha! So now we've got that out of the way let's get back to business. We do actually have mostly a very good time on our Finance and Expenditure Committee and Michael Wood MP no doubt soon to have the housing portfolio is someone who does—we do enjoy quite a good relationship across the aisle and the desks there.The main reason that we are not supporting this bill is not because of so much of the excellent work that we did in Government and which has now been continued on—for instance around what's called the "Amazon tax" which basically means GST on low-value or under-$400 goods coming into the country. Of course when GST was first set up—in 1986 I think—by the then Labour Government not many people would have bought anything from overseas except for possibly cars and big items like that and machinery but certainly not clothing; not to the extent that we do now. We have over the years—I certainly did as Minister of Revenue for about 10 months at the end of our term of Government—heard from retailers that this was actually causing them great distress and New Zealand economically and there were certainly a lot of submissions from and lobbying from the members of Parliament from the National Party for this to be brought in because of provincial towns that were finding that they were missing out on work and goods and money and it was something that we needed to address.The issue that Inland Revenue certainly told us about was that the system that they had was not something that could cope with that. There were also issues regarding customs as well and the collection of the GST and I well remember meetings that we had at that time with the then Minister of Finance Hon Steven Joyce myself and the Minister of Customs working on how we could make all this happen. Obviously the officials were there to make sure that something actually did happen. What we found was a way through and it's great that this is now coming through in this bill.The other point that we needed to do to actually allow the systems to work well was to invest in things like the Business Transformation project through Inland Revenue which has actually given Inland Revenue an opportunity to expand out how they do things and to look at a more electronic way of dealing with issues. That cost about a billion dollars—I mean only a third as much as what Shane Jones has got to go and spray around the country. But it certainly was a big amount for us for something that was never going to get everybody in the country saying "Yay let's give Inland Revenue another billion dollars." Strangely enough people don't vote for Inland Revenue to get money but the point of it was to make a system that was going to actually be better at collecting the money but also in a more fair manner.Mr Wood also made a comment about how it should all be equal and it's all about equalising tax or equalising things. I think it's actually really more about equity isn't it? I think it's more about equity rather than equality because even though everyone is equal under the law the fact is that some people are older some people are younger some people have more earning capacity than others and so it is important that there be a degree of equity under the law and under the tax law in particular.We are opposing this bill primarily because it is another increase. It's yet another increase in taxes and that is particularly around the ring-fencing of rental losses. The reason for that is actually that increases rents. What we've seen in the 18 months of this Government is that according to the TradeMe rental site which seems to be one of the best records of what's happening in the rental market rentals have increased by $50 a week on average. That is a lot of money. That's a lot of money for people who have to rent because they can't afford their own house. It does not help them to get their deposit together to have to pay an extra $50 a week. It's a lot of money for people who don't have it.I think one of the things that we've seen over the last 18 months is quite a Grinch-type attitude towards mum and dad investors. So many New Zealanders who are coming up to retirement may have one or two properties that they rent out and they do that because they understand that a house is a house—it's a property. They don't trust always the sharemarkets. Maybe they got caught in 1986 under a Labour Government in the great collapse of the share markets in New Zealand? Maybe—Hon David Bennett: That's right. And Labour caused it.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I don't think they actually did cause it but they probably had a lot to do with it Mr Bennett—probably did! It was probably them! Anyway the stars were definitely aligned badly and a lot of people lost a lot of money. They also learnt pretty quickly that they couldn't trust everything that they were being told by some of the companies and the wide sort of behaviour that some of them had. So what they do is having lost once they don't want to lose again.What this does is this is actually going to make it harder for those people those New Zealanders who have saved up a deposit for a house that they want to rent out because they want an investment property and they want to see their money when they go past it every day. For those people it's going to make it harder for them to buy that house. I've heard Mr Wood say who's resumed his seat that this is because they're competing with first-home buyers. Well on that basis let's let nobody buy anything because they'll be competing with somebody else or we should go down the path of just having the State own everything because then nobody will be competing. It's not just about competing. On the one hand we've had house prices drop and on the other hand we've got rents going up. So it just doesn't make sense. In the last 18 months house prices in say Auckland—an area that used to be in quite high demand—have gone down. Yet rents have gone up. What there is now are fewer rental properties now available for people to rent because if there were more places to rent then the rents couldn't go up because they wouldn't be sustainable in terms of getting tenants into them.This is actually quite a serious issue and with so many of this Government's policies when they bring them in—it's often all with good fluffy cotton-woolly candyflossy type ideas around them about how they're going to stop some evil—we end up with the unintended consequence of more people sleeping in cars this winter with more people needing emergency housing with a waiting list for State houses that has gone up by 70 percent.Hon David Bennett: No!Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Now that's not 17 percent Mr Bennett; it is 70 percent for State waiting lists and yet every message has gone out to mum and dad investors: "Get out of the market. We don't want you." Phil Twyford has said to these people words to the effect of "If you don't like it get out of the market." And he's said that to them in their association meetings. My message is that actually these are the people who provide most of the rental properties that are needed by New Zealanders. It is really important in our housing market and in our rental market in particular that we have a good combination of community housing of State housing and of privately owned housing. We need more people providing rental accommodation not fewer people providing rental accommodation and we don't need great big overseas corporates with enormous capital to come in and shove mum and dad out of that market and instead take away a rental property."