Cosgrove ClaytonHon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): I am reliably advised that the previous speaker Simon O'Connor who preceded me at the dinner break made a Commonwealth record of a speech that lasted I think less than a minute. That may be because—and I congratulate him on his recent marriage—now that he is under the influence of a higher authority shall we say he has become far more efficient and eloquent than prior to the nuptials. This is yet another tax bill brought in by the Government. I note the Minister—oh congratulations I say to Simon O'Connor. I hope you were not late for the wedding. Anyway this is yet another tax bill that the Government has put before us in respect of annual rates and other matters. I note the new Minister in charge of revenue Judith Collins is present. As we go through this bill I note that the first part is a substantial section that deals with the Business Transformation project and the technological changes within the Inland Revenue Department. We will give notice on this side of the House of one thing we will explore and we have explored as the IRD has come before us in various guises over the last few years—and the IRD commissioner in fairness has been quite forthright in respect of outlining the Business Transformation programme that the IRD is going through. But one thing that the Finance and Expenditure Committee of which I am a member has touched on and wanted to explore and gain assurances on is that such a wide-ranging and extremely expensive technological input is on time on budget and will actually work. We are mindful of Novopay. We are mindful going back to the 1990s with the then National Government of INCIS and other programmes.To be fair I acknowledge that IT programmes are particularly difficult—or they seem to be far more difficult—to manage within the Public Service than they do in the private sector. We have had many experiences of course of spec creep where at the end of the day the product you actually get has a whole series of other added bells and whistles that the consultants have persuaded the department to put on it except the difficulty is it does not work. We have seen that with Novopay. We have seen that with INCIS as I say in the 1990s. So I would be grateful—and give notice to the Minister that we will ask questions and seek assurances as to the nature of that programme.I agree it is vital. It is appropriate that—for instance the IRD I think only recently started communicating with taxpayers in respect of email. In the old days the law did not allow that and you had to communicate in writing. One of the bugbears I think—and I think perhaps some of these issues in terms of business simplification may be dealt with in part in this bill—especially that small business has is that when there is a tax difficulty 9½ times out of 10 with a small business it is a mess up; it is a mistake. It is not an issue of criminality or fraud; it is just a mistake because in respect of most small businesses often it is the partner who sits at home under the bad light doing the books.In the old days I recall with the IRD you could actually go—and it has been done away with now essentially but it was a highly efficient process—to the IRD and get in front of a human being a tax specialist with your files and sit there. Many of us have sent people and had really good responses I have to say from the Inland Revenue Department in terms of sending small-business people there to solve problems. You could get in somebody's face you could explain the difficulty without letters flying back and forth through accountants and other representatives costing an immense amount of money and you could get the problem solved. Sadly to a large extent we do not have that ability for a business to make an appointment and see a human being. It has to go through the call centre all these wonderful automated processes which are great but if you are a small-business person out there and you are a specialist in making a widget or installing a product or whatever—that is your total focus—anything that gets in your way especially trying to deal with your tax arrangements can be laborious and many small-business people would admit that they do not have the skills to do that. Equally they do not have a lot of money often to go and just take the briefcase full of receipts and bills and bits and pieces hand it to the accountant and say: Can you sort it for me?".So my hope in respect of the Business Transformation project and my plea to the Minister would be this. As we drive for wonderful technological efficiency and wonderful technical innovation often with Government agencies many of those innovations are fantastic when it comes to the productivity the efficiency and the ease of doing business for the agency. Often there is a gap between that and the practical effect and we lose touch with the practicalities of the customer the client the taxpayer the small-business person actually having to interface with the bureaucracy and interface with that technology. Not every small business is on Mind Your Own Business (MYOB). Not every small business can afford automated processes that will at some point plug into the IRD's Business Transformation programme. Many small businesses still get the ledger book out because that is what they do. As I say I hope that in this wonderful transformation that there will be some thought or has been some thought given to the practical application for that small individual called the taxpayer the client the customer. In respect of the costs of that it would be helpful I think as we go through—and as this bill is examined in the Finance and Expenditure Committee I know under Mr Bishop's sound stewardship we will be asking for justification in terms of cost. There are hundreds of millions of dollars utilised within this transformation programme. We also know about the budget for the Business Transformation programme under a number of Ministers. The longest-serving revenue Minister in the history of any Commonwealth Parliament I believe the Hon Peter Dunne presided over it at a time when there was a cost blowout. We found out about that of course only when the Hon Todd McClay got the high ball. "Mr Head-High Tackle" got the department under his portfolio and we actually found out that there were some difficulties with this programme and that the budget had blown out I think by several hundred millions of dollars. I think I debated that when I was our revenue spokesman some time ago.The torch has now been passed to the Hon Judith Collins and I know that in her own colourful diligent and snappy way—Hon Ruth Dyson: Modest. Humble.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: "Modest. Humble." Ms Dyson says—and with the ability to crack the whip I am sure the Minister will be all over the expenditures and she will be asking her officials at her weekly meeting: "Is it on time? Is it going to work? Is it on budget?". And I hope that if her officials as other Government agencies have done—i.e. Novopay—come to her and say "Oops sorry Minister. We have given you a series of assurances but now we have got a problem and we need a few more pingers a couple of hundred million bucks more perhaps." or whatever she may go back to them and say: "No. This is the commitment you made. Take it out of your baseline."Perhaps a bit of fiscal discipline around those sorts of projects—particularly Novopay—may have focused the minds of those who administer them because there is another difficulty I think. I have never been able to understand why certain Government agencies unlike the private sector can contract—particularly for IT projects—can procure them but somehow lose control of them. When they do not work again unlike the private sector which would go and either sue or have a very tight contract so it could gain recompense or compensation and pursue the supplier for some reason our procurement standards or our procurement policies—Defence I would say is another one that has had an interesting and colourful set of experiences over the last 20 years particularly around boats and other things—are such that the taxpayer cannot get recompense. The contract is too fuzzy too muddled too complicated and we cannot actually nail down who is responsible.The average person looks at these sorts of arrangements and says: "Well if I buy a car and the car does not work I am entitled to a new car or my money back and perhaps some compensation for my time and suffering." It is a very simple principle. It actually works in the private sector reasonably well but for some reason we get into such a tangle with these sorts of transformation and technology projects that often the poor old taxpayer is left holding the bill but of course then there is a question of accountability.We will support this through as we always do in respect of tax bills. I look forward to a robust examination of the features therein.Bill read a first time. Bill referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee."