Donald Rod: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — In Committee 
Donald Rod: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:16501] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I will speak briefly on Part 1. 
John Key 
: Does Ahmed Zaoui pay tax? 
ROD DONALD 
: Poor Mr Zaoui—and I thank Mr Key for raising this as it is very kind of him to notice—is incarcerated in prison despite the fact that he has refugee status in New Zealand. I look forward to him being released and able to earn a decent income—perhaps as a university lecturer talking about clashes of cultures or one or two other things. But perhaps he will be in the difficult position that tens of thousands indeed hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders are in which is that they do not earn enough to bring up their families in decency. That is what I will talk about in this debate on Part 1 which deals with annual rates of income tax. 
I will offer some amendments to the annual rates for the acting Minister to consider. I fear however that he will either rule them out of order or veto them. But just in case he is not so callous and he gives Parliament the opportunity to vote on our amendments I would like to draw to the attention of other members of the House—especially my colleagues in National New Zealand First ACT and United Future—that the Green Party does support income tax cuts. But we want the cuts to be at the bottom not at the top. I find it extraordinary that on the same day that members of Parliament received a 3 to 4 percent wage increase the United Future party recommended that we also receive a $1155-a-year tax cut. We are the last people in this country who need a tax cut. We are the last people in this country who need more money in their pockets. 
John Key 
: Come on! 
ROD DONALD 
: I gather from what I read about Mr Key’s wealth that he is the last person in this Parliament who needs a tax cut. But I will leave him out of the debate and return to the people who really matter—the struggling families of this country and particularly the 30 percent of children who are growing up in poverty; a figure that this Government acknowledges is the case. 
 We are simply saying that the Government’s Working for Families package does not go far enough fast enough. Unlike some other parties in this Chamber we supported that package because we do want to lift families out of poverty. We do not want any children in this country growing up with unmet needs. We want them all to have a decent opportunity for an education all to have a comfortable home to live in and all to be able to experience the quality of life that most of us in this Chamber take for granted. But the Government is not bringing in its Working for Families package quickly enough. It is stretching it out over 2 years which I think is callous and is not giving enough relief at the bottom. 
Our primary amendment would make the first $5000 of income tax-free. Although that would benefit members of Parliament because we too would get an extra $750 a year the people who would benefit most are those earning under $38000. Instead of the $75 a year that Mr Copeland from United Future was offering we are proposing $750 a year. We intend to fund it not from the surplus—I will come back to that in a minute; Mr Key made some points I agree with—but from a suite of eco-taxes. The first would be a carbon tax. We would also bring in a proper tax on diesel in order to line it up with petrol. There would be other eco-taxes as well. We are endeavouring to be fiscally responsible and are putting up where the money for our proposals would come from. 
Moving beyond that to one of the valuable points that Mr Key made this Government is in an extraordinary situation in that it is paying for capital projects out of its annual surplus. Although to some extent one would have to say that is brilliant fiscal management in the short term we believe it is happening only because the Government is running its surplus off the backs of the poor people of this country. For as long as there is any poor child in New Zealand who is suffering because of inadequate family income we do not believe that any fiscal surplus this Government claims is real whether it is on paper or is cash in hand. 
We invite other parties in the Chamber to support our amendment if the Minister Michael Cullen lets us away with it. We encourage the Government to put some of that massive surplus into helping those who are struggling rather than investing it for example in the offshore sharemarket through its superannuation fund. Instead the Government should be putting more money into the sustainable infrastructure that New Zealand desperately needs.