Hughes Gareth: Taxation (Residential Land Withholding Tax GST on Online Services and Student Loans) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Taxation (Residential Land Withholding Tax GST on Online Services and Student Loans) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 31 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:10131. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support this bill the Taxation (Residential Land Withholding Tax GST on Online Services and Student Loans) Bill. My colleague Julie Anne Genter spoke expertly on two of the big parts of the bill which are the Netflix tax if you want to call it that—GST on online services—and the brightline not-a-capital-gains-tax kind of capital-gains-tax tax.What I want to touch on in my short contribution is the student loan changes. There is one that is pretty uncontroversial—I think everyone in this House could agree with it even the New Zealand First Party—which is the technical clause to make it easier and quicker for the Inland Revenue Department to recognise overseas charities. But the part that I have a serious problem with and I think most New Zealanders would is the student loan information-sharing changes with Australia. Sure it sounds good—sharing information with Australia. But why is the Government trying to share information with Australia and what is the purpose and the rationale behind it? It is simply to crack down to scare New Zealanders with student loans who are coming back to New Zealand.What we know about this Government is that it is prepared to arrest New Zealanders with student loans at the border to try to crack down on them. This is a Government that this week we heard in this House does not have a clue is doing hardly anything about it and has not acted since 2012 I believe for the $500 million to almost $1 billion in corporate tax not being paid but gee if you do not start paying back your student loan straight away you might get arrested at the border. This legislation is all about trying to facilitate information so that the Government can track down people with student loans living in Australia. I think this is the wrong way to go about it because what we also know is that this was intended as a scare tactic to arrest New Zealand graduates with student loans at the border—a scare tactic. We know there are 130000 New Zealand student loan borrowers overseas—130000—and 70 percent of them according to some estimates are behind in their payments but this Government in 3 or 4 years has arrested a single person. It is a scare tactic.The risk of course is that it works and New Zealanders are scared of coming home. We have had the New Zealand University Students’ Association say that the Government risks having student loan refugees. What we see is brute scare tactics. If the Government was actually looking at sharing information with the Australian Government what it should be doing and the most effective way—unless it cares more about petty short-term politics than actually bringing back income into the New Zealand Crown from those student loan borrowers—is to ask why on earth do we not work with the Australian Government so that all those hard-working Kiwis working in Australia and paying taxes could be paying off their student loans through the Australian tax system. The Government just throws its hands up in the air and ignores it and says that it is in the too-hard basket. It would rather focus on the short-term politics of arresting New Zealanders at the border. It would rather ignore the massive elephant in the room which is the billion dollars in tax being avoided—a billion dollars that we cannot be spending on schools and hospitals or investing in an innovative economy because the Government is more focused on scaring the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders with student loans if they go through the border.When it comes to the last point which is the idea that we should be looking for more constructive and positive ways to help New Zealanders to pay back their student loans the Green Party extends its hand to the Government. Why on earth can this Parliament not work together to find ways that do not rely on just the sticks to scare New Zealanders with student loans? Why can we not find the ways the incentives—the carrots? The Green Party will always work with any party in this Parliament on ways that we can get constructive policy together.We are supporting this bill because we want to see New Zealand businesses get a fair go when it comes to the tax system. We think that we need to be looking for solutions for the growth in online services. That is why we are supporting it but we are supporting it with massive reservations because the policy intent of the student loan section is simply to continue the scare tactics which are not real solutions when it comes to the student loan problem that this country faces.