Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Mr Assistant Speaker thank you. In rising to take a call in this first reading in the first of what I'm sure will be many calls over the course of the next few days on the Families Package (Income Tax and Benefits) Bill the first matter I actually want to bring to the House's attention is that while we are debating this bill under urgency and given that with urgency we have a very limited time as the representatives in this House who have the job of holding the Government to account it matters of course even more that we have access to the relevant information. While the bill maintains that the regulatory impact statement is available on the Treasury website it is in fact not. I want to put on record that I think it is most unacceptable to be debating a piece of legislation brought in by this Government where they are spending the largest chunk of their economic plan that we've seen released today and yet they have made it impossible for members debating on this side of the House to have access to the regulatory impact statement and I think that is frankly shoddy.It is interesting that the first real piece of legislation we've seen from this new Government that isn't just a re-run of an old member's bill that's been hanging around in the ballot or isn't National Party legislation is acting to take away money from hard-working New Zealand taxpayers. That's the reality and Labour want to use all sorts of other ways of describing it but these are tax cuts that are in law. They are in law. They weren't our policy that would have happened if we were the Government; these are changes to the tax thresholds that are fundamentally necessary to maintain the fiscal relevance of those thresholds and address what's called fiscal drag. If you don't keep amending the tax thresholds you get what's known as bracket creep and you get more and more low-income families paying higher rates of tax. If this was a Government that was genuinely concerned about addressing the take-home pay and the incomes of low and middle income families they would want to do what the National Government did when it was in power which was address bracket creep and fiscal drag and address the relative reduction in buying power of those various income tax thresholds.We've heard in this debate numbers thrown around of the number of families who are going to benefit from these changes but here's what I've managed to take out of the information—scarce though it is—on the bill. Two-thirds of those who benefit from this package will be $400 a year worse off. So two-thirds of the people that Labour are claiming benefit are worse off as a consequence of this bill. Let me take you through why that is. Six hundred and twenty-five thousand people by Labour's own numbers—so if members on the opposite side read their own documents; they probably haven't—625000 families according to the Government's own information benefit from this package by $13 a week. But they are losing $1060 a year meaning they are $400 a year worse off under this package. That is two-thirds of the people that the Government claims this package helps. Now even apart from those two-thirds—that's 625000 families who they're claiming as beneficiaries who are worse off under this package—there are another 1.2 million who get nothing from this package and lose the $1060 that they would have had from 1 April next year.Now we heard the finance Minister in the general debate talk about this being the reward for workers. Well if the reward for workers is being used as an increasing cash cow an ATM for the Government on the opposite benches then I think it's a reward that those workers would refuse. Why would you take $1060 out of the pockets of every hard-working New Zealander earning low and middle income to fund this package when most of the people it claims to benefit are going to be worse off? It makes absolutely no sense.In addition they say Well the superannuitants will be compensated by the winter heating payment." Well actually no because quite apart from the superannuitants who are off travelling around the world and despite what Jenny Salesa said in the House today in speaking for the Minister of Health that they wouldn't be able to access it if they were on the Gold Coast and Hawaii patently they will. They can have repeated holidays of up to four weeks at a time each and still fully qualify. So while we're looking after those superannuitants who patently don't need it even though it's claimed to be a targeted package we've also in this bill now found that superannuitants who are in residential care will miss out on this and will miss out on their tax cut. So for those superannuitants—and I hope New Zealand First are listening to this because they are the party that claims to stand up for them—who are in residential or rest home care they lose $1060 a year and get nothing under this package. Now why a party that claims to stand up for those people would support that is patently beyond me.It seems to me very clear that this is about that old left-wing Labour Party ideology that says "We know how to spend your money better than you do. We would rather take the money out of your pocket filter it through a large bureaucracy and then if we deem it appropriate we might give you a little bit back if there's any left over." How arrogant. How arrogant to think that people are better off if Labour take money from them and then pick and choose who gets a little bit of what's left after they have filtered it.On this side of the House in National we respect people who get up and go to work and we worked hard in Government to create surpluses so that we could give some of that back so we could let people keep their own money. Straight away in the first action of this new Government what they're doing is saying "Forget that. The Government might be collecting more than it needs but we would rather keep it and spend it on our wasteful programmes which aren't well targeted than let taxpayers keep a bit of their money."So we've heard a lot today about the fact that this is a better-targeted package—it's going to go to those who need it. Well I've already highlighted the situation of the idiocy of having those who might be over 65 who are perfectly well able to care for themselves and pay for their own heating and who are travelling around the world taking repeated breaks in warmer climates being eligible for the support but not lower-income people who are on rest home care subsidy. As well within this package we have of course the baby bonus which is paid out to everyone who has a baby whether they need it or not and yet this is the targeted package for low-income earners that the Government wants to believe we're buying.There's another thing about that baby bonus that I find quite incredible. I'm glad Mr Lees-Galloway is in the House because while parents are taking his much-vaunted extension of paid parental leave for half the year—six months—they will not get the baby bonus. So straight away they've taken back half of their gift to new parents: "Have $3000 a year. Oh but actually you don't get half of it straight away." Isn't that incredible?While parents are on paid parental leave as I pointed out when we were debating paid parental leave in this House they are getting considerably less than the minimum wage. So parents on paid parental leave get almost 20 percent less than the minimum wage and yet Labour is saying that during that time they don't need the extra baby bonus. I would say that they need it more than anyone. They need it more than anyone. So straight away the Government that is talking about giving new parents—all new parents will get $3000 a year. Quite apart from the fact that that is not targeted at all—Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: So where's your policy to give them more money?Hon AMY ADAMS: Well our policy Mr Lees-Galloway is to let them keep their own money and fund it for themselves because they don't need a Government to tell them how to spend their money. Our policy would be much more sensible. So quite apart from the fact that they're not targeting it at all to those who need it—the baby bonus is not targeted and it goes to people at the top—but straight away Labour gives with one hand and takes half of it back because actually you don't get it at all if you're getting paid parental leave even though that's significantly underfunded.So it is not a well-targeted package and look at the increases to Working for Families. This change will see more high-income families getting Working for Families. So again we see that this is not a targeted package supporting the low and middle income earners. If it was they would be concerned about fiscal drag and bracket creep. If it was you wouldn't see universal free tertiary education eating up almost all of the spending. And if it was you wouldn't see the universal baby bonus going to those who don't need it and you wouldn't see a winter heating payment going to those who don't need it. This is simply Labour wanting to increase the dependency of people on the Government.Now the one thing in this package that Labour have kept from National's Budget—and I commend them for keeping it—is the accommodation supplement changes. But what I find astounding was the sitting and listening to the debates that we had after Budget '17 when member after member from the Labour caucus got up and railed against the accommodation supplement changes. It was a landlord subsidy it was giving to our rich mates—which is their standard refrain regardless of what we're debating—it was an appalling way to do it and it was absolutely wrong. And what's the one thing they keep? National's accommodation supplement changes. So I think you really have to take this with a grain of salt.Finally this package purports to take 88000 children out of poverty. Well good on them. They're only 12000 short of what National would have done."