Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Thank you Mr Speaker and good evening. Given the tone of the last speech I thought I might start by attempting to restore the Hon Judith Collins' faith in democracy because she clearly started with a great complaint about the state of political discourse and the spirit of bipartisanship and so on that we are supposed to be entering into this particular piece of legislation on KiwSaver student loans and remedial matters. One of the things that the Hon Judith Collins referred to of course was the significant investment in Inland Revenue's Business Transformation programme that she kicked off as the Minister. I do want to compliment Inland Revenue on the work that they have done over the many years—which is still ongoing—for that programme. In the history of major Government IT business transformation projects there is a litany of woe and disaster vast vast sums of money poured down a drain and so on and yet this one—the one that the Hon Judith Collins did authorise as the Minister—has been a resounding success and continues to be a resounding success. It is an example to other agencies who are embarking on major multimillion-dollars'—and in fact in some cases many hundreds of millions of dollars'—worth of investment in IT systems and of course that Business Transformation programme does enable many of the things that have taken place in this bill to actually occur. Credit where it is due and so therefore I hope that Ms Collins is about to have a better evening than the one she's been having to this point. I spoke at the first reading on some of the fantastic things that this bill does and in particular for people overseas on student loans and so on. I just wanted to highlight some of the things around KiwiSaver changes and the changes that have come through in the Finance and Expenditure Committee because most of the speeches tonight were on the principles of the bill rather than on the changes that occurred during the select committee and there have been a few. But in order to speak to those I think it's worth just remembering some of the key things that the proposed law does the most significant of which is related to ensuring that with the prescribed investor rates people actually get the one that they're supposed to get and that's a really key function of this bill. Some of the changes that have come through in the select committee are actually quite significant. They may sound technical but the most significant change is the one that allows overpaid PAYE tax to be refunded in the 2020-21 tax year. One of the complaints that's come through from the Opposition has been that people aren't going to be getting those. Actually what the changes in select committee mean is that people who are overpaying from 2020-21 will get their refunds back. I mean that is pretty significant given that there's something like 1.5 million people who have the incorrect rate on their PAYE income. The bill as reported back also allows the PAYE income to be squared up—good evening Madam Speaker—at the correct rate alongside their end-of-year process for income tax and finally it gives Inland Revenue more powers to provide PAYE entities for the prescribed investor rate. Now all of that I think improves what the intention of the bill was to do which was to simplify and streamline and to make life easier for KiwiSaver members. Given the highly technical nature of the bill and the amount of work that went into it prior to its introduction into the House I just want to thank the officials in particular and the members on that select committee who have done the work around that because I think that what that collection of changes does is improve it even more. But I did also just want to highlight as a number of other speakers have done the Supplementary Order Paper in the name of Kris Faafoi—Supplementary Order Paper 293—which is to allow early withdrawal for members with congenital conditions. That I think is a fantastic amendment and it's one of those things that has only come about as a result of the select committee process. Many of the other technical changes that I was just talking about before are things that frankly probably would have been discovered by officials as the bill sort of wound its way through the House but simply as a result of the public engagement during the select committee process it highlighted that there was an opportunity here for an amendment to enable people whose lives may be shortened by congenital conditions to be able to start drawing down on their KiwiSaver early so that they can actually enjoy the use of those funds in their twilight years. That is a fantastic example of the select committee process and the parliamentary process working and the reason I'm saying that is because the Hon Judith Collins seems so down in the dumps about the process and the parliamentary process and the spirit of the debate that I thought it was worth highlighting this truly heart-warming and incredibly useful and valuable amendment that has come through in the name of Kris Faafoi—Supplementary Order Paper 293—in order to deliver that outcome for people with congenital conditions. So again I just wanted to thank the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee the officials who have worked on this and in particular the people who took the time to come in and make public submissions who created the opportunity to take what is already a good piece of legislation that makes people's lives easier and makes their interactions with Inland Revenue easier and make sure that they can actually enjoy their retirement savings more fully and to extend that to a group of people in New Zealand who otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to make use of their KiwiSaver funds. So in the spirit that Ms Collins was imploring us all to observe this evening I commend this bill to the House.