Joyce StevenHon STEVEN JOYCE (National): I'd like to follow on with a couple of issues and also underline Louise Upston's point about how important this debate is because I think what we're learning through this debate is a couple of things. One is that actually this is a marginal lift on the previous Government's package—if that—a marginal lift. Secondly the package is not well-thought-through at all. There are some things in here that will either get fixed now or get fixed later. This is the reality of it. I actually think the public of New Zealand deserve these things to be fixed now because they are sending some very bad signals.First I'd like to ask the Minister in the chair Iain Lees-Galloway a particular question in relation to a contribution by the Minister of Finance Grant Robertson earlier today. Mr Robertson came up with some numbers about how many children would get above the low-income measure of 50 percent of median household income. Mr Robertson suggested that the number was 71000 versus the 50000 of the previous Government's package rising to 88000 by 2020-21. Well I would like to refer the Minister in the chair to page 21 of the regulatory impact assessment which is the officials' view of the world. Table 2 of that document appears to say that the reduction in number of children in low-income households from this package additional to the Budget 2017 changes is actually 12000.Hon Louise Upston: How many?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Only 12000 more. Now we've been told it's 20000; we've been told it's 38000 and the officials are now saying 12000. Actually I do think we need a number that the officials back up in this regard in relation to Table 2 because this I do believe is the apples-to-apples comparison that the Government has been saying it's giving us and obviously hasn't been giving us. Unless I'm misreading this completely it appears to be fairly black and white and says that going above 50 percent of median household income the number is 12000. So I'd appreciate a response from the Minister in the chair on that.The more substantive issue that I was referring to is this concern that Nick Smith has raised rightly because it is again quoted in this document on page 12 about marginal tax rates and Treasury's warning that some families will face effective marginal tax rates of 100 percent. Now I actually think it's not good design if families face effective marginal tax rates above 50 percent or even 60 percent and certainly not 80 percent but we are going to have some families that effectively get less money in the hand if their income goes up. It's 100 percent effective marginal tax rate. That doesn't make sense.Now one of the reasons we've got this problem is because we've set up yet another entitlement in the spaghetti of entitlements that New Zealand is developing and we need to stop doing that. We need to stop adding more entitlements because actually we have an entitlement now if we want to provide to more parents with young children—it's called the Working for Families tax credits. So why don't we just add money to that entitlement and then you don't get this problem of abatements of different packages at different times which all add on top of each other to give these very high effective marginal tax rates.I have proposed to the committee another amendment in this regard. I have proposed that rather than introducing the Best Start payment if the Government thinks that this is the right thing to do—and we could debate the amount of money and we would continue to do so and we'll debate what should be required of people to get this money and my colleagues have put forward some excellent amendments in that regard. But I would like to propose that actually the smartest thing to do if you think this is the right amount of money to provide would be to provide it through the Working for Families package and then the abatements could apply in the normal way. Now if that was the case it would simply involve adding back in for children less than three a particular rate of payment.And again if the Government wants to proceed with the exact amount as is in the current baby bonus well then that would be providing $8734 a year to parents with children under three and then that would abate progressively as we went. I think that would be an elegant solution. It's the sort of solution this House should debate properly and I look forward to that debate as this discussion continues. Thank you Madam Chair.