van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): It's a pleasure to take a call on the third reading here on this very exciting bill. I look around the House and I see huge interest and anticipation in the debate as we progress through the latter stages of this. I believe indeed there are people tuning in all around the country to follow the progress of this particular bill—watching online no doubt which is in part available to them of course because of the large investment by the previous Government in UFB or ultra-fast broadband. Actually before I deviate too much further I heard an interesting fact recently: the average New Zealander now uses 3.6 devices per day. I thought that's a really interesting fact—so tablets etc. computers. So they're tuning in all over the show.But what we're talking about here with the Taxation (Neutralising Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Bill in its third reading today is about ensuring that multinationals are taxed fairly and on the basis of their actual level of economic activity within the jurisdiction of New Zealand. So what we're proposing here is making some amendments to the legislative framework. It does need reviewing. There are numerous examples where some of these multinationals have been exploiting loopholes where while they're not illegal we definitely could and should be capturing more revenue through those streams. So it was great to see the previous Government's work in initiating this and bringing this bill before the House. I would like to also commend the current Government for continuing with that line of work.Actually there are a number of great pieces of legislation this current Government is putting through and the one similarity they all have is that they were put forward initially by the previous Government and I would like to encourage them to continue in that vein indeed with this bill and others.So look just coming back to that tax aspect. We've heard a number of ways in which some of these multinationals are looking to minimise their tax bill. Again as one of the latter speakers in this debate we've heard a lot of those technical aspects already. But I'd just like to touch on in particular the high interest rates that they can charge through debt levels from subsidiaries and also the artificial arrangements such as management fees consulting fees that they can charge to help to avoid their tax obligations. Indeed I just refer to a quote from Benjamin Franklin that the only certainty in life is death and taxes. Well indeed these multinationals are doing their best to disprove that particular quote. Benjamin Franklin for that fantastic quote actually and perhaps one or two other things was subsequently—Kieran McAnulty: Make your own quotes up.TIM VAN DE MOLEN: —given the honour of appearing on the US $100 note which is a fun fact for Mr McAnulty if he ever participates in a pub quiz.So moving on from that we need to focus here on what the additional revenue opportunity is and we've heard that could be anywhere—perhaps around $200 million is one figure that has been put out by the previous Government and indeed this new Government is proposing that it's an additional $200 million over the earlier $100 million additional funds that were proposed.Then we had a Government speaker Kiri Allan saying that it's hard to see any real-life impact from this piece of legislation. Well I would suggest that real-life impact comes from seeing that additional revenue of $200 million where we could perhaps reinstate the previous Government's tax cuts that were removed by this Government helping those people on lower incomes providing them with a better scope of life now that they're paying so much more in fuel taxes. Indeed they could perhaps be paying less fuel tax if we had an additional $200 million of revenue or we could be investing more in Predator Free 2050. Or indeed we could even—for Mr Patterson's party—be providing further tax cuts for good-looking race horses. So there are many areas of this bill that provide significant benefit to New Zealand and I think that we are here trying to get the balance of attracting investment into New Zealand and also maximising the benefit to New Zealanders from that investment. I'd just like to touch on one point the Hon Judith Collins mentioned earlier on around businesses like GlaxoSmithKline which had its formative roots just out of Palmerston North. Actually after that building burnt down it moved into my electorate to a small town of Mātangi—a dairy factory now derelict but it had been operating from that stage and became a global company. That same site also produced the Anchor milk brand which is now a very well-known brand around the countries that it's sold in as a Fonterra brand. So there are significant great businesses to come out of New Zealand and this bill helps to ensure multinationals pay their fair share domestically.