Dean Jacqui; Swarbrick ChlöeASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The House is resumed. At the beginning of the dinner break the House was considering the Income Tax (Adjustment of Taxable Income Ranges) Amendment Bill.CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. There's been a lot of discussion about the content of this bill so far so I should probably preface this by saying that the Green Party will not be supporting this legislation. One of the many reasons for that is actually to respond to some of the points that were being heckled before by those on the front bench of National that this is somehow some ideological opposition—I would put forward the very proposition that this is actually an ideological proposal. We are all ideological because we have ideas and values and that is the reason that we ran to be in this place at Parliament: to change the laws and to share those ideas and values rally behind and campaign for them and to hopefully change the rules.So I guess to underpin some of the thematics or the reasons as to why the Green Party of Aotearoa opposes this legislation is to go into some of the thinking behind what we think of when we think of taxation because it probably isn't things like cancer treatment or treatment for broken bones or roads that we use or the pipes that deliver water to our taps or for the underpinning of the legal system that means that we all have rights when we buy things or when we contract if things go wrong. Nor do we necessarily think of the financial system that enables operation ease and security of banking because this is the stuff that taxation pays for. This is the stuff that enables us to be a collective that enables us to organise as a society as a community.Right-wing parties ideologically to raise that point have been for a very long time—for decades—trying to stitch together taxation as this bogeyman. It means that people like Andrew Bayly can stand up with a straight face and say that this is somehow about beneficiaries and pensioners when we had a breakdown of calculation by tax expert Dr Deborah Russell who stated—and I think it's really important to reiterate this—that to break down these changes as proposed would mean that somebody on an income of around $200000 per annum would receive around $23 per week. Those on an annual income around $100000 per annum would receive around $11 per week. Those on the median income of around $60000 to $70000 would get back around $8 per week. I would estimate that it's probably about half of that or even less thereof for those who are pensioners and beneficiaries once again reiterating that what we're talking about here is crumbs for those who are on the lowest incomes and another slice for the bakery for those who are at the top.This is the same guy and the same party who led a bill just earlier today to cut off more pensioners migrant pensioners from accessing superannuation in Aotearoa New Zealand. They're also the same folks who oppose increases in benefits for the lowest-income New Zealanders. So let's talk about the tax burden in this country because there was a lot of heckling from the National Party just before about exactly this. They were talking about how they when they were in Government did make those changes to the taxation system to those income taxes—and they did. They cut the top tax rates. And in order to help pay for that they increased tax on goods and services which is incredibly regressive because guess what? It hits those at the lowest incomes the hardest. If we also want to dig more into this notion of tax burden let's talk about the fact that was revealed earlier this year: 42 percent of the wealthiest New Zealanders in this country pay lower effective tax rates than the lowest taxes that are paid by people who earn their money by working or through the benefit—that is they paid an effective tax rate of less than 10 percent.This is exactly the reason that when we're talking about these things like taxation changes we need to be bringing into it some serious evidence about where it is that we are investing that revenue into the infrastructure that all of us ultimately use but also how disproportionately when we're talking about the costs of living—particularly as raised by Andrew Bayly in his contribution earlier of the likes of housing in this country—which is not an issue when it comes to for example rents that are driven by inflation. In fact again as research has shown since 1993 rents have effectively doubled whilst the quality of housing in this country has stayed relatively stagnant. The Greens could not in good conscience support this bill.