Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's taken a smidgeon over seven hours to hear something more than Thanks to the officials" and "I move that the question be now put." from a Labour backbench MP and I'm not surprised that it's come from Barbara Edmonds. I have a high regard for her and I have had experience of the quality of her work and actually this would have fallen well below the quality that I would have expected from her—she would have done better—and she's right on one level about the process of Cabinet papers and policy documents and regulatory impact statements. But there's not a lot difficult about this bill.In Part 1 we have a cut-and-paste from the existing Act with virtually one change and that is the removal of the word "resurgence" and the letter "R". Then in just about all other respects with the exception of the comments that Mr Bayly made about the extension of who might be eligible for support payments this is already in the law. We passed it in February. It actually is an overwrite which in my experience with due deference to the excellent policy people at Inland Revenue wasn't unusual. If you could say something in 10 words or 10000 words I'd expect 10000 words from the revenue people.But this was an opportunity actually to make a much more straightforward change and Part 1 was easy. Part 2 wasn't that difficult either because the calculators were already out when the amendments to the Income Tax Act changing the calculation of family tax credits and family credit abatements were made. So we're actually spending hours and hours and hours filling the gaps that should have been filled by the select committee with the consultation with the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand advisory group in the following of a decent generic tax policy process and none of that happened.But actually what we've really been debating was not what's in the bill but what's not in the bill and what's not in the bill or in the debate as it was in February was a meaningful understanding of the level of business support that's going to be provided once it's passed. The National Party doesn't support this because it's a bad idea; we don't support this because it's a bad process. In fact it's a terrible process.Even in Part 2 despite the lauding of the generosity of the Government and the self-congratulations for lifting people out of poverty almost all of the increases to those family tax credits and supports would have happened on 1 April next year anyway as a consequence of the automatic uplift provided by the existing legislation and the best calculations are that the greatest benefit is about $5 a week. I'm not going to sniff at that but let's not have the Minister of Revenue riding into Jerusalem with palms being laid at the donkey's feet. It doesn't deserve that level of plaudits.Hon Member: That's very biblical.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Yes I am in a biblical mood today.So we do with some regret on behalf of the businesses who are dying to know and some of them are literally dying to know ask what level of support they are going to be able to get under the traffic light framework. We gave the Minister an opportunity to provide that clarity and that opportunity was not only not taken but actually we had greater confusion at least in my mind about whether or not any support might be provided from Friday next week to any business anywhere in the country.Now it may be that the Government as is their wont is going to do a big reveal. We'll have an announcement over the weekend of an announcement on Monday of an announcement the following Friday. But he didn't say that. He was much more coy about that. He clarified that we've got a framework which will provide a support at some stage in the future if some triggering event occurs or a situation is met. But we're not clear whether or not that is a situation that will exist on 3 December and businesses which rely on certainty can take bad news. They can take the ability to have to be in lockdown for a set period of time but what they can't survive is a tunnel so long with a light so dim that they don't know when they'll ever get out of it. That's how they're feeling right now and nothing we're doing today is going to alleviate that burden or reduce that stress on them their workers and their families.We had a very interesting exchange. I enjoyed my exchange—a thoughtful exchange—with Green member Jan Logie about the risks and benefits of certain policy positions. I hope that we're actually able to do more of that because my view is that we've spent 18 months talking about one thing and one thing only the impact of one thing and one thing only and the costs and benefits of COVID. But we traversed all of the non-direct COVID impacts on our health our mental health our education our relationships and our children's experiences as school-leavers and graduates that have actually been decimated by the decisions this Government has made.I'm not saying they were the wrong things to do—particularly last year—but let's not pretend that the only cost is money and the only benefit is lives saved and harm reduced because of the COVID virus. There is much much more happening. We need to be more open and have a broader conversation about cost and benefit now and into the future including the debt burden that we're going to leave and the mental health issues that are emerging and at least between two parties on this side of the House—one has got one foot in Government—we had some kind of acknowledgment that there was much more to our COVID response than just COVID.But overall it's deeply disappointing that we finish this process none the wiser than we were at the start. I predict the trumpets will bray the tantaras on Monday about some kind of announcement about some kind of support at some time in the future with some triggering event but we should have known it during the debate on this bill."