Genter Julie AnneJULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe. The Green Party is supporting this bill. I think it is useful that aspects of the bill are actually quite aligned with what the Green Party has proposed in the past—notably the changes to business taxation for small businesses to make it simpler. That is something the Green Party campaigned on before the 2014 general election. I am surprised it has taken this National Government 8 years to come up with the idea and implement it. It has certainly had plenty of time. But I am glad that it is going to make progress on that and I look forward to examining the changes in more detail in the select committee process. The other big change of course in this bill is the changes to the disclosure requirements for New Zealand foreign trusts. Although it is very complicated I will try to make it simple for those who are watching at home. I know it seems very very arcane and boring but yeah well. Back when the Panama Papers came out the Prime Minister and the National Government said: We have full disclosure with regard to New Zealand foreign trusts. We already have full disclosure. Nothing to see here. New Zealand is not being used as a tax haven. We don't need to change anything." Of course our co-leader James Shaw colleagues from the other Opposition parties and I all pointed out that there were a huge number of professionals in the tax world—tax law academics—who were saying that actually this is not the case. New Zealand does not have anything like near full disclosure. In fact there is a huge amount of secrecy around New Zealand foreign trusts and this needs to be fixed in order to protect our international reputation. Of course although the Prime Minister and the Minister claimed in the House that that was not the case they had been told this by their own officials several years previously. I think what New Zealand voters should be very concerned about is the fact that they cannot trust the National Government to do the right thing—to listen to the advice of officials and do the right thing in the world and ensure that our laws are fair and are supporting fairness and transparency in respect of taxation and international tax avoidance. It took the Panama Papers and sustained scrutiny and questioning from journalists and Opposition parties for the National Government to do the right thing and make these changes. I congratulate those members on doing it but we have to point out that they denied there was a problem. They chose not to pursue it when nobody knew about it. The Prime Minister's personal lawyer and other representatives of the foreign trusts industry who are making huge amounts of money off very wealthy foreigners exploiting the lack of transparency in our foreign trust regime wanted to keep being able to facilitate that secrecy in order to make money for themselves. The National Government responded to that lobbying and buried the changes. This is why it is so important to have an Opposition and why it is so important to have investigative journalism because they shine the light on this cosy relationship between the Government of the day and vested interests. The Green Party wants to stand up for greater transparency and we are constantly proposing positive practical solutions. I note that the member's bill that the Green Party proposed several years ago in 2012 which we reworked and proposed again just a few months ago is very similar to the changes that are being made in this bill following the Shewan inquiry. So if we look at clause 10 the changes to sections 59B 59C 59D and 59E are all very very similar to what the Green Party was proposing to increase transparency around New Zealand foreign trusts. Of course the National members ever the masters of spin characterised those proposed changes when I asked about them in the House as "barking mad".There is one important difference in what is being proposed in this bill from what the Green Party proposed and that is that what is in this bill does not include a publicly searchable register which may be necessary for foreign Governments to be able to ascertain whether their taxpayers do have a foreign trust in New Zealand. It is probably quite a critically important aspect of making the regime more transparent and ensuring that we do have compliance. Aside from that virtually all the recommendations from the Shewan inquiry were in line with the bill that was proposed by the New Zealand Green Party and which I on multiple occasions tried to raise and propose as parts of debates on other taxation bills but of course was quickly shut down. So yes the Green Party is happy to support this bill. We want a fairer simpler tax system for small businesses. We want a fairer and more transparent tax system that does not facilitate tax avoidance by wealthy foreigners because most New Zealanders I think agree—perhaps some of the National members are not in agreement with this but I think that most New Zealanders agree—that tax avoidance and evasion is not right it should not be happening here in New Zealand and we should have maximum disclosure. But it is simply not possible for the Prime Minister to have been honest and correct when he said that New Zealand had full disclosure and for us to be debating this bill which obviously changes right here—it implements the changes to the disclosure requirements for a foreign trust that were recommended by the Government inquiry into foreign trust disclosure rules. Obviously we did not have full disclosure. We needed full disclosure and it took sustained media scrutiny and Opposition scrutiny for this Government to do it. I say to the voters of New Zealand that you do not need to have to rely so much on Opposition parties. Elect us into Government and we will ensure that there is a fairer simpler tax system for New Zealand."