Harawira Hone: Taxation (Depreciation Payment Dates Alignment FBT and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — Second Reading 
Harawira Hone: Taxation (Depreciation Payment Dates Alignment FBT and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1897] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. Tena tatou katoa i te Whare. I actually sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee but I still come to this bill with a number of questions. Our concern is not about the best date for the subsidy for payroll agents or whether 1 April is a good day for GST due date changes but about whether this new bill will mean a good day for all citizens in Aotearoa. When I talk about a good day I am talking about a day when this Parliament gives as much time and energy to the health wealth and well-being of low-income families and workers as we do to international capital. Let us stop tinkering around with tax write-off levels and start talking about the nearly two million taxpayers getting less than $25000 year. Let us keep the talk short and get to the action. 
Most people in my electorate have a weekly wage less than my tax bill and that is a frightening thought. Why? Because we in this House live in a world no longer connected to the reality of our voters. More important and more dangerously we live in a world where hundreds of thousands of our own people no longer have a stake in the world we talk about here. If I have to fly to Whangarei when I go home I hitchhike back to Kaitaia so that I can hook up with the people I represent. When they ask how much I get and when I tell them most of them cannot even understand how much money that is. The inequities of this society are a crying shame. 
That is why so many poor people—those who cannot afford it—turn to Powerball Keno Strike Lotto and pokie machines to scramble out of the poverty trap. So I shake my head at the thought that this bill is actually going to give tax breaks not to the poor but to those who run the gambling machines. It seems that this Government is willing to reward pokie operators and loan sharks while ignoring the plight of families on benefits despite the huge impact that gambling has on the poor. In fact Lorna Dyall says that from a Maori perspective gambling is a social hazard that should be managed in the same way we manage biological and chemical hazards. 
I am not interested in tinkering with estate and gift duties tax administration and goods and services tax. Yes we support moves to simplify fringe benefit tax to enable a more simple process of book-keeping but it is still hard to understand why fringe benefit tax paranoia stops people from using their iwi vehicles to pick up kaumatua and kuia and take them down to the doctor during the weekends. It is hard to watch resource teachers of Maori up north and down the coast spending their own money on travel because of the pitiful reimbursements they get when they try to claim fringe benefit tax. It is silly it is non-productive and we need to design systems that promote community support rather than impede it. 
As a dutiful member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee I sat through 4 mind-numbing hours of hearings about tax depreciation depreciation for plant and equipment and for buildings and so on. I thank my colleagues particularly Mr Gordon Copeland for their diligence in monitoring every clause in the bill. But the biggest challenge before this Parliament is to restructure the current system of direct taxation and to consider the role of tax in our economy. Let us move away from our fixation on GDP and instead think about a genuine progress index to measure our activities. Let us use a genuine progress index to accentuate the positive in a community where the benefits including the potential for wealth creation are owned by the citizens of our nation where tax revenues and Government expenditures are targeted at positive results and where we can deal with the challenges of climate change overpopulation over-consumption wastage peak oil and the growth of GDP. Last week marked the 50th anniversary of a ground-breaking speech accurately forecasting the peaking of United States oil production. These are some of the challenges and the opportunities we need to turn our own minds to: how we maintain current roads and increase public and freight transport through a national electrified and city light rail system; how we reduce the gap between low-income taxpayers and those on the average income; and how we raise the minimum wage quickly to at least $12.50 an hour. 
Taxes have always been a huge issue for Maori both inside this House and out. Back in 1943 Rongomaiwahine MP Tiaki Omana MP for Eastern Maori noted that settlements should not be reached without full and proper investigation that independent Maori efforts to improve local economies were being frustrated by the inability to raise loans and that without access to investment capital or a sustainable economic base Maori people could not break out of the cycle of subsistence living. So these are not new issues that I raise here. 
Reducing compliance and tax costs is also an issue very relevant to movers and shakers within Maoridom. We have spoken proudly in this House on the unique contribution that Maori enterprise makes to our nation’s economy. I point out that many Maori people are dedicated to securing economic independence through business activity and this bill proposes a number of changes that will help small businesses. 
Finally I return to the bigger picture. Like many other pieces of recent legislation this bill approaches a significant issue in a piecemeal fashion. Last month we dealt with the Tariff (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership) Amendment Bill and in this bill today we see many of the same themes. Although other countries such as the USA India Brazil China Singapore and Chile protect their national interests our Government continues to travel down a road of open access. But new groups of people are challenging globalisation including the Zapatistas to whom I referred last night Subcomandante Marcos Chittaroopa Palit from the Indian Narmada valley and the Brazilian Sem Terra people. 
Similar challenges are also being made here. One made by a Pakeha academic Jane Kelsey reminds us that we are vulnerable in a grossly unequal global economy that eliminates many of our options to respond to the challenges that confront us. We all have a part to play in ensuring a fair and equitable system of gathering the revenue necessary for efficiently managing our economy. We need to think local while respecting the big picture; to encourage growth and productivity; to encourage savings; and to ensure that our tax system works to help all of our citizens and not just the rich. 
In closing I remind the House of the words of Nelson Mandela who said that political power should be the basis for the economic empowerment of the people. I urge that we exercise that power wisely.