Roche Denise: Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 13 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7170. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. As my colleague Julie Anne Genter has already said the Greens intend to support this bill’s referral to a select committee. She has already talked about how this bill fits with our vision on tax and monetary policy so I will just talk in general about the bill as well as about how it could be helping working people in New Zealand.One of the key effects of this bill is to update the tax law to place electronic communication on the same footing as paper communication and other speakers have said that it is a bit of modernisation. We support this. This is a good change that will spare lots of Kiwis from the tedious time-consuming and environmentally wasteful processes of sending in paper copies. I have to say as the only waste spokesperson in any party in Parliament I would be remiss if I did not say that in New Zealand we have the second-highest waste emissions per capita in the developed world so any little bit of effort around reducing that would certainly be appreciated and it is certainly appreciated in this bill.We support the provision that allows for easier management of the tax implications for employee share purchase agreements. We know that this applies to only a small section of working people but we support the idea of worker-led worker-owned companies in genuine economic industrial democracy. We support working people being able to save and invest so that they can create opportunities for themselves and their families. However as I mentioned these provisions in this bill apply to only a very small section of people in the workforce. What would really help most New Zealanders is secure jobs with living wages with decent working conditions so that they and their families can reap the rewards of the Kiwi dream—that is if you work hard you will get ahead in this country.And I guess what would really help most working people in this country to save and invest is a KiwiSaver kick-start payment system—but this Government has already cut that—or even maybe payments for kids. But apparently the Government’s response to KiwiSaver has actually reduced the number of KiwiSaver enrolments by more than half according to the ANZ bank.However the Greens support the provisions in this bill that will help the minority of working people to save and invest by making it easier to participate in employee share schemes. But I encourage the Government to work with us on making bigger steps to make sure that we have a balanced New Zealand economy that benefits everyone.Finally the bill’s provisions on information sharing make it easier to check for worker exploitation and we support that. Clause 117 means that the Inland Revenue Department the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and WorkSafe can communicate and share information which will make monitoring and enforcing health and safety legislation for example so much easier.I recognise that there are some restraints that we should place around the sharing of information but it will be easier to detect whether people are being unlawfully underpaid or having their wages deducted. This is a problem and I will refer to the regulatory impact statement on the Employment Standards Legislation Bill which says: “There is a high level of non-compliance with employment standards such as employees being paid less than the minimum wage not receiving annual holiday entitlements and not having employment agreements. Seventeen per cent of respondents to Statistics New Zealand’s Survey of Working Life [in 2012] reported that they were not receiving at least one of these minimum employment standards.” That is shameful.It is a shameful indictment that nearly one in five Kiwis in paid jobs are not getting the bare minimum and it is a damning indictment on the climate of fear that this Government has created through its industrial relations policies. We have seen that climate of fear supported and promoted by this Government time and time again: with its changes to the health and safety legislation with its changes to the Employment Relations Act with the changes it made for the Hobbit movie with the 90-day trials and with youth rates.It does not have to be this way. This bill proves that the Government is capable of making positive small steps forward for working people and we would certainly encourage it to work with us to make more of them.