Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call on this bill. It deeply disappoints me to see the reversal of this piece of legislation. It's really been interesting over a period of time that the argument has been that people aren't going to miss what they didn't already have. But there was a piece of legislation in place designed to give people tax cuts on 1 April 2018. All the arguments that we've had to date say Well it didn't matter because they didn't see it—they didn't have it." This piece of legislation clearly says that it's going to repeal the tax threshold changes. If you've actually been and had a look at the dictionary definitions of repeal it talks about "revoke". We talk about "rescind" "cancel" "reverse". So it's the revocation the reversal and the retraction of a law or an Act of Parliament. So Grant Robertson anything that denies in the future that this is a reversal of something that already exists—I'll give you the definition afterwards. If you haven't had a chance to look it up for yourself I'll give it to you.It's also deeply ironic that the first significant act of a Government who has the stated aspiration of lifting workers' wages is to reduce what hard-working Kiwis have already received in the hand. Now I've got an uncle that says if he buys a Lotto ticket every week and he takes the $5 out of this pocket and he puts the Lotto in that pocket over time he's going to come out about the same. This is actually something working on a very similar theory. So it's actually—people earn it they put it in this pocket and then you come along and take it out of the other pocket and then they end up exactly the same.Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don't take it—I don't take it.BARBARA KURIGER: Sorry Madam Deputy Speaker. So look it's taking hard-earnt money out of people's pockets and you know Grant Robertson said before that the money could be used for other purposes. Well I'm sure that those other people could use that money for those other purposes especially those one million people—over one million people—that are missing out. Now they may not have children and it's really unfortunate that they're going to miss out by virtue of that reason because they still work just as hard for their money. But imagine if every one of those million people took that $1060 and bought two trees with it there's two million trees—so there you go. So people can actually decide with their own tax cuts what they actually do with that money.The other piece of this legislation that's really interesting is that there'll be a lot of explaining for some of the Government coalition partners to do because $676 a year will be taken from superannuitants and veterans. So actually they are going to be worse off and New Zealand First is actually going to have to go back and explain why they voted for this piece of legislation and then they decided to repeal it.Hon Chris Hipkins: Just table the research unit notes.BARBARA KURIGER: Mr Hipkins I have the intelligence to be able to find out my own research OK? I did this all in my own time. Thank you. The other things around this bill—I really resent the fact that Mr Robertson talked before about the hollow selfish individualism of those people that work particularly hard. I don't think they're going to be very impressed out there hearing us repeat that comment. Now we've talked today also—Grant Robertson and a number of other members across the other side of the House have talked about the 88000 kids that are going to come out of poverty supposedly by 2021. Now you've got to have a plan around that because giving people money doesn't necessarily get them out of poverty because there's a whole other part to that poverty story.So you can legislate for tax changes and money changes but there's an element of social dysfunction that we all as politicians have to own up to because if we don't own up to it we can't fix it. There was a great package that we had from our previous Prime Minister and now excellent leader Bill English around social investment. So there's a different view on this side of the House around how you lift those kids out of poverty. It's actually not taking money out of people's pockets; it's actually putting the right things in place in our society and in our communities so that they can actually help deal with this whole issue.The other interesting thing about this piece of legislation is it introduces a new winter energy payment. So if those people decide—they're going to get it automatically—they don't want it it's up to the person to go back and say they don't want it. Well it's like "Yeah right!" That sounds a little bit to me like an advertisement that advertises beer. It's the whole "Yeah right!" thing. Of course they're all going to come and give it back so it doesn't actually make any sense to give money and expect people are going to come and offer it back of their own accord. I was going to say I came down in the last shower but given that there's quite a lot of very dry weather going on around in the country at the moment it's not a very productive statement to use because it makes me older than I would like to think I would be.Also I really think when it comes to this taxation bill it's about people feeling that when they go to work in the day they've actually earnt their money. I was actually reading the income tax and benefits bill disclosure statement and regulatory impact statement before—doing my own research Mr Hipkins—with the material that was actually provided on the Table over here. Under the section where it talks about benefits and costs it says in number three over the page "What are the likely risks and unintended impacts …?" and under the number it talks about "Potential for reduced work incentives as a result of high effective marginal tax rates in some cases. This results in workers paying more tax for every dollar of … income earned." So it may not be that good for productivity in the long run because what you have to remember is we are talking about one type of tax here but this is not the only type of tax that people are paying.As I go through here and look at page 27 of 45 of the same document the question in here is about the problem definition and objectives and "What is the policy problem or opportunity?" It says that the "Family Incomes Package would be less likely to meet the current Government's objectives for the wider Families Package (outlined below)." And if you look at number three—and there seems to be something about number three in this statement—it talks about freeing up "fiscal resources over the next four years to contribute to further investments in housing health education and other priorities." Well that's a very commendable and laudable thing—to free that money up. The problem with that money is it's already been spent. It's been spent on what they call the fees-free package provided for by a lot of—again—hard-earning people who pay their taxes.So while you think it's laudable to send people out to work let them earn money take the money off them put it in the other pocket give it to the students and then say that you're going to contribute over the next four years to health education housing and other priorities it's not giving a very good fiscal example to the people of this country to say actually "I'm going to use the money for something one day but actually I've already spent it. Oh no what am I going to do now? The money's already gone." So it's not very good. It's not very good planning and it's not very good prioritising to actually spend the money before you promise to use it on something else.So all in all I'm not overly impressed with this repeal because I think people are going to be a whole lot better off and a whole lot more incentivised to get out and work productively for this country and earn money and pay the taxes they deserve but no more than they deserve. I'm deeply opposed to this piece of legislation. So thank you Madam Deputy Speaker."