Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support this legislation. But look I'm worried about the National Party—I really am—because what we've seen just in the last week is a party that isn't competing on leadership. It's not competing on policy it's not competing on solutions—in fact they're looking to some of the worst political actors around the world. What we're seeing is a party that's not embracing intellectual integrity. We're seeing ridiculous statements in the House. Just in the last 10 minutes we heard Judith Collins say this Government is taxing everything that moves. That's patently ridiculous. We see Amy Adams saying the Government hates landlords. That's patently ridiculous. It's a party that's dog-whistling on international migration and that's jumping the shark and avoiding a cross-party solution on medicinal cannabis by coming up with these ideas of legalisation by stealth. There is no intellectual integrity from this party. It's the fake news we decry but we're seeing it on this side of the House.When it comes to tax I wish this party just had the intellectual honesty to point to the evidence. The OECD says we are a low-tax country—in fact we're ranked 25th in terms of our tax to GDP ratio. This isn't a country that taxes everything that moves—in fact we're a low-tax country a country where the burden falls on the bulk of New Zealand workers. Now remember it was the last Government that was quite prepared to lower the tax rate for the rich. You know you look across the Ditch: a top tax rate of 45 percent. Look at the United Kingdom under a Conservative Government: a top tax rate of 45 percent. The last Government lowered it to 33 percent so the highest earners including many in this House got a tax break. But what did they do to the poorest most vulnerable Kiwis? They saw an increase in the regressive GST tax.I'm not going to be lectured here on tax from this party that doesn't have the intellectual honesty to tell the truth to point to the experts or to point to the research because what we know is that the result of their policy decision was to see rubbish running down the walls of Middlemore our schools in a funding crisis and a lack of investment in infrastructure for our country to go forward. So that's my challenge to the National Party: put aside the fake news put aside the slogans and making stuff up and let's have a debate about the actual issues.That's why I'm proud to support this legislation because there are five key highlights—five key benefits—for everyday New Zealanders and the New Zealand economy. Now the first is the GST changes for low-value items for products less than $1000. I was only five when the Goods and Services Tax Act was written back in 1986. Then Kiwis weren't importing low-value items so it made sense because the cost of compliance would have been ridiculously high for someone importing a product of you know $400 or $800. What we do know is that thanks to the internet economy that's come along since then Kiwis are importing a huge amount of products from overseas so it makes sense not to have a tax break for that. What we know is it is going to raise about $80 million to $140 million a year. That gives you a sense of the scale of how many products Kiwis are now importing under that threshold. This makes a huge amount of sense. It's going to help those 60000-plus workers in our retail sector. It's going to be great news for them.When it comes to our rental market the ring-fencing of losses for residential properties really redresses the tax benefit that those investors have. Really it's a subsidy right? It's the renters who are paying more in their income tax to make up for the tax benefits the landlords get when they do the losses. Now it's not going the whole hog—in fact it's only making sure that the losses are only up to the income for the year—but what it is going to mean is we're going to redress the uneven playing field to make sure that those first-home buyers aren't being pulled down. This is a Government focused on giving first-home buyers a leg-up so a level playing field is going to help those first-home buyers. This is so important for young New Zealanders because what we have seen after nine years of National a party that ignored the housing crisis and that said it wasn't a housing crisis—it was selling State houses in the middle of a housing crisis—is the dream of Kiwi homeownership particularly for young New Zealanders fade away. This is a Government which is acting which is making a difference and it's by doing it in a fair reasonable manner.Now the third thing—and I think this is a great step forward and I hope it acts as a precedent in other legislation and Government department practices—is it enshrines the use of Te Reo language in the Inland Revenue Department records. Now this is updating the Tax Administration Act 1994 and the Goods and Services Tax Act 1985. I think this is a wonderful step forward and I'd love to see the day where a citizen can walk into any Government department and any record the Government takes can be given in Te Reo Māori—a great legacy a taonga which exists here and nowhere else. This is a fantastic step forward.When it comes to student loans—again I don't want to keep playing politics and taking it back to the problems of the last Government but they did have nine years to sort out the problem of the IRD's antiquated old-fashioned technology. Now they spent $1.5 billion I believe it was. They absolutely mismanaged the process. It took much longer than needed and it cost lots more than was needed but what it meant was that every year the hundreds of thousands of Kiwis with student loans would get a letter in the mail saying how much interest they had to pay on their student loan. That was despite the policy of this country changing all the way back in the mid-2000s—2006 I believe—and still on every New Zealand student loan recipient's bill it had the interest. Now this was incredibly I think distressing for people who couldn't understand why on earth the interest was there. Now it was wiped subsequently but simply because of antiquated technology we were giving Kiwis confusing and frankly troubling information. So it's wonderful now that thanks to modern IT systems we can literally do what the Government's policy is which is to not apply interest on student loans—a fantastic step forward for reasonableness and common sense.Now lastly this won't affect many Kiwis but for those it does affect it affects them in a deeply personal and visceral way. What the bill does is exempt child support payments for those who had a baby and were a victim of sexual offences. Now there have only been two cases in the last 12 years because a conviction had to be levied for those exemptions to be applied by the Commissioner of Inland Revenue. What this is doing now is giving the commissioner the discretion to apply it without a conviction but where it's not reasonably in doubt. This is a tremendous step forward because we know that the scourge of sexual violence and abuse which sadly afflicts our country—often these cases don't go to the police and often they don't go to court. So this is a very positive step forward for a few people but it will be deeply felt and it will deeply benefit them.So look this is a bill which the Green Party wholeheartedly supports. What we want to do is have a fair tax system which sees New Zealand have enough money to invest in education to invest in housing and to invest in the services we have and also one that respects the first language of New Zealand Te Reo Māori and that gives students a fair go. So all in all this is a fantastic bill and I just urge the National Party to be honest to be measured. What we don't want to see is the type of politics which is afflicting other countries. Let's have a debate about the issues and the facts not about some of the made-up stuff.