Whaitiri MekaMEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. E ngā mema o Te Whare nei tēnā tātou katoa. I am happy to take a call on this the first reading of the Taxation (Business Tax Exchange of Information and Remedial Matters) Bill. Just by observation I say that when this bill is introduced it will no doubt have amendments or impacts on the Income Tax Act 2007 the Tax Administration Act 1994 and the Student Loan Scheme Act 2011. As previous speakers have made mention of in this House there are three main policy proposals in this bill: firstly changes to business taxation to make tax simpler; secondly it implements the G20 OECD standard for automatic exchange of financial account information tax matters; and thirdly it makes changes to implement the disclosure requirements for foreign trusts recommended by the Government inquiry into foreign trust disclosure rules. The aim of the bill is to amend several tax statutes for various purposes including to simplify processes to reduce compliance costs for smaller businesses and to tighten foreign trust disclosure rules. Labour stands for a simpler fair and transparent tax system in our country and therefore we are supporting this bill. The Minister mentioned that included in this bill are what he has termed business-friendly measures which are about simplifying the provisional tax rules by providing a new pay-as-you-go option for small businesses to pay their provisional taxes by 1 April 2018 and that needs to be commended. But in terms of simplifying tax the particular part of this policy that I want to particularly make mention of in my contribution is the removal of the 1 percent monthly incremental late-payment penalty on new GST income tax and the Working for Families tax credit debts from 1 April 2017. As we know many families out there are struggling. The wages do not meet up with the costs of living and so any removal of penalties particularly in the family tax credit must be commended. For the time that I have left in this contribution I want to talk about the third policy proposal in this bill which has come about as a result of the government inquiry into foreign trust disclosure rules. The previous speaker Stuart Smith made mention of so-called scaremongering. I just want to draw the House's attention to the Panama Papers. It was the largest data leak in history released by journalists back in April. The largest cross-border journalism collaboration ever uncovered a giant leak of documents from Mossack Fonseca the global law firm based in Panama. It consisted of more than 11.5 million files. You cannot call that scaremongering—11.5 million files showing the practices of the wealthy and powerful around the world and their use of tax havens. It was reported that New Zealand's involvement in the scandal—we were mentioned in 60000 of those documents. I would challenge the member who said that the whole Panama Papers scandal and what it caused this Government to do was scaremongering because clearly that type of leak and the implication of us being one of the many countries that are supposedly tax havens for those wealthy people definitely challenged our reputation internationally.When this bill is put to the Finance and Expenditure Committee of course we would get people delving into and probably examining aspects of the bill to ensure that we are going to end up with a simpler and transparent and just tax system particularly for the small businesses but also as others have mentioned for the international reputation of our nation—our great nation—that we are not the haven for people to park in. I want to also hope that the select committee that is examining this bill and those submitters out there who may be submitting do ask the select committee to look at making the registration more publicly available and not just available to the Inland Revenue Department and the New Zealand Police so that the scrutiny to ensure that we have a fair and transparent tax system is actually scrutinised by all the public. Like I said this bill is something that Labour will be supporting and we will no doubt with vigour look forward to those who submit so that we can make sure it is robust and it meets the intention that both the Minister and the Government have said it has and so that we do have a simple tax system in this country that is fair and we clearly refute the slight on our reputation that we are a tax haven. Therefore I commend this bill to the House.