Nash Stuart: Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and Remedial Matters) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and Remedial Matters) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2681. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I would like to pick up where Mr Goff left off. What this legislation does is it actually takes a lump-sum payment that was given to a veteran upon either his or her retirement or injury or incapacitation and says that it is income. Before this bill it was not counted as income but now it is. And Mr Goff this is retrospective legislation—this is retrospective—so what this means is that there may well be veterans out there now who have banked money who have paid off mortgages who have given money to grandkids or worse still—heaven forbid—who may have died and the Government is going to go to them and say: “Sorry we got it wrong. We are going to take money out of your bank account.” That is wrong. There are some very high barriers for implementing retrospective legislation.First and foremost it is about fairness and the irony that this is being implemented in the year of the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli has not escaped a number of members on this side. But to make it worse the one member on that side of the House who knows something about the armed services Colonel Andrew Bayly stood up in this House and said: “It’s minor it’s not important it doesn’t matter.”—this does not matter. Well I would love to be a fly on a flagpole when Colonel Bayly has to face his men and explain why this does not matter. There will no doubt be a number of veterans who are due to retire and have banked the money as a lump sum because the legislation says that you do not pay tax on this—and I do not think that is a bad idea. If you have served your country overseas if you have been a member of the armed services you are not doing it for the money; you are doing it because you love your country and you are prepared to die for your country. In fact it is probably the one job where you can put your hand on your heart and say: “I am prepared to lay down my life for my country.” We are now going to tax these guys on their superannuation lump-sum payments and I think that is an absolute travesty.As Mr Goff said the Minister in the chair would not even stand up and let us know how many veterans this affected. So we cannot go to our RSAs because Mr Goff consulted with the RSA and it did not even know about this. I remember at the select committee asking the Defence Force representative: “Are you going to consult? Has there been a level of consultation?” and she said: “Yes. We’re going to make sure that the people understand this.” Well how come Mr Goff can phone the RSA and it knows nothing about this? So where was the consultation? And the thing that gets to me a little bit is that this is called the Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and—tacked on—Remedial Matters) Bill. I think that this Government has been a little bit disingenuous. I think that it has snuck this in under the radar hoping it would not get noticed and would then be able to go: “Phew it’s gone away.” Well it will not. It will not because you cannot screw our veterans in this way. The fact is that over 3 or 4 days we have been asking the same questions—how many veterans are going to be affected what sort of level of communication have you had with veterans’ organisations and does the RSA know about this—and not once has a Minister stood up and answered any of our questions. I think that is a little bit of dereliction of duty and it just makes my blood boil.The other thing of course is the stuff about the housing market and I have heard National member after National member stand up and say: “It’s about the market. Let the market decide.” In fact we had one member—a member who uses Maggie Thatcher as his idol—stand up and say: “Let the market decide.” Well I think every single Auckland MP knows that the market has failed. The market has failed in Auckland because the rate of homeownership has plummeted house prices have gone through the roof and the dream of homeownership for a whole generation of young Kiwis is fast disappearing because they simply cannot afford it. If Dr Nick Smith believes that somehow you can cobble $50000 together and buy a $500000 home and that is affordable then he needs to get in touch with reality because you need to have a household income of $175000.Just to sum up we will support this bill because Treasury said that it does no harm to anyone. But it does. It harms veterans and we have no idea of the magnitude. Thank you very much.