Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you. I think I want to start off by saying I'm actually finding the debate today incredibly disrespectful to business people in Auckland the Waikato places like Queenstown Rotorua who have suffered incredibly over the last 18 months. We've got a bill that's being rammed through under urgency and yet we've got a stream of Labour members standing up and talking about the impact on how this is going to solve poverty for New Zealanders. That is certainly part of the bill but I would suggest to you that that is not why we're doing this under urgency. When I listen to Dr Duncan Webb who's the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC) and other members of the committee who stand up and speak for less than or about a minute on this bill that is being pushed through rammed through under urgency I think it is absolutely a gross misuse of this House—to callously disregard the debate about this bill which is about looking after New Zealanders going forward and particularly those people who have suffered incredibly. In total in the first reading of this bill of the members—and we think there's six—the members would have spoken for no more than a combined total of eight minutes.We've just had a fill-in Minister speak and open the second debate who couldn't even get the 10 minutes on his second reading speech. He didn't even know it was the second reading; he kept talking about the first reading right? And he stands up there delivers a speech which he reads off notes prepared by some lackey and doesn't really understand the bill. We have the original Minister who was responsible talking on this bill and unfortunately what we're missing in this debate is high quality debate around why and what the merits of this bill are and putting forward both the view from the Government side as to why we should be doing it under urgency and of course the Opposition and what our position is. What we've got is flaccid Government members sitting in the House not participating in this debate and just talking about a rote thing that someone's prepared for them just talking about the benefits of increasing Working for Families. We acknowledge that. We acknowledge that the bill—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well that's good because you've just spent three minutes telling us about that. How about talking about the bill?ANDREW BAYLY: So we acknowledge that—that the bill does increase some of the Working for Families benefits and that is fine. But to sit there and then say that's going to lift a whole lot of people out of poverty is an outrageous assumption and I'll tell you why. If you increase the benefits in line with inflation that doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help anyone; it just keeps pace with the costs of living that they face. It doesn't do any real improvement. The only improvement is the extra $5—$5!Then we heard the Minister in his opening speech say it's going to lift 6000 people out of poverty and then everyone else on the Labour side started talking about 3000. Obviously the officials who wrote their prep speeches their prep notes didn't actually listen to what the Minister said. You can't even get the figure right! So let's assume it's 3000 people. I don't believe a $5000 increase in benefits per week is going to lift anyone out of poverty particularly when you've got inflation going like this. It's 4.9 percent. Even their Reserve Bank—and I heard one of the members talking about the inflation projections—they expect it to increase further.That means every day working families are going to fall further behind. This is not going to get them out of poverty. This assumption that you're going to lift all these people out of poverty is an incorrect assumption. I listened carefully to my colleague the Hon Louise Upston who said that back in 2017 the Prime Minister proudly announced that she was going to lift 100000 people out of poverty—100000 children. And what's the result today? Fifteen hundred. Fifteen hundred—1500. And you say you're going to lift 6000 or 3000—whatever figures you want to quote—today as a result of a $5 net increase. That is wrong. You are wrong in your assumptions and it's a silly proposition to be making.But the much more important reason why we are debating this today under urgency as we have with the previous COVID bill is that this is a way of slipping through a new arrangement that is meant to support struggling businesses business owners and their employees through a most difficult time. It all comes off the back of a new traffic light system that 65 percent of New Zealanders do not understand—65 percent do not understand this system and by the way it comes into play in eight days' time. It's outrageous. It is outrageous that we've got a bill that is meant to be what's called an enabling bill" to allow these changes to take place. We've known all about this. We had Grant Robertson and the whole array of Ministers making this announcement on 22 October over a month away and then because tomorrow is the last day of Parliament before we have a recess before they have to announce something next week we have to ram this through. How incompetent can you be as a Government? That is outrageously incompetent. Outrageous.Then we've got members on the other side from the Government who don't even know what's in the bill. It is a shocker. And then Dr Duncan Webb professor of laws of taxation this is a tax bill. Speak up Dr Duncan Webb. And what about the other members of the FEC? Some of them actually know something about it. Stand up and fight for what you're putting up today because this is what you're meant to do as Government people right? This is a weird weird weird situation.So we've got this thing that's going to come into play in eight days' time and we know nothing about what is the new form of payment. Well I heard the step-in Minister in his speech just before talk about a new form of payment. Well is it based on a drop in revenue? Because all those struggling businesses in Auckland Queenstown the Waikato Rotorua—wherever right?—if the Government is going to change the arrangement and say it's not based on a drop in revenue I think that's pretty major. But of course have we got clarity on that? No! No we haven't got clarity on that. We don't even know what the new payment system is! At least the Minister could have outlined what it was what the new transitional payment arrangement was. What is it going to be based on? What is it? How are you going to pay it? Are you going to pay it weekly? Are you going to pay it fortnightly? Who are you going to apply to? What businesses? What sectors? The Minister of Finance got asked that today. He couldn't even talk about that. He couldn't even tell us which areas are going to be in red next week which are going to be in orange which are going to be in green. It is just chaos.If you own a business and you've spent the last 18 months to try and keep it alive try and retain your employees in your business and you've had to mortgage up against your house and you're in your late 50s and you've mortgaged yourself to the hilt what you're now looking at is a situation going into a bleak Christmas. Do you continue to keep that business alive or do you commit yourself to not at 65 retiring but possibly working quite late into your 70s so that when you do retire you've got some money that you can retire on. That's the type of choices we're talking about. This is what this bill is about changing that framework. And yet there is not a skerrick of detail in it and that's why the Government members can't talk on it. But you need to stand up today and give confidence to those hard-pressed business owners and their staff because they're the ones hurting. This bill is meant to be dealing with it and you're not in this bill. This bill does not provide any clarity any confidence to them. It is an outrageous bill to be pushing through in urgency."