Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I welcome the opportunity to add to the brouhaha—and I note all the syllables in that as rightly expressed and fully expressed by the Hon Todd McClay. I mean I know the Government is taking very short calls this morning but I thought you know whacking a syllable off the end is unnecessarily tight.So the member who's just resumed her seat Helen White has talked about the New Zealand public being able to form its own conclusions. I mean one of the things that we say on this side of the House is that the Government is taxing far too much and spending far too much but at least with taxation proper they come to the House of Parliament and at least nominally go through a process—you know the Budget process and there's tax legislation. But of course the point about regulations and levies in this case and we'll get into the detail of what actually a levy is at least to some extent for the benefit of members of the Regulations Review Committee who I know will be—Hon Member: Hey!CHRIS PENK: There we go a shout out to the Regulations Review Committee. And I note that the deputy chair of it is here today and I hope she doesn't disagree with the points that I have to make. But anyway that's her lookout or so I suppose. Anyway so tax is fine as far as it goes. I mean obviously we say it's a necessary evil and you know a certain amount is required obviously to run the country. And yes it is necessary to have a certain amount of it—and to be fair parties of the left no doubt would say much the same thing in principle albeit that they would draw the line in a different place about the extent of taxation. Of course we can argue and differ over where taxes should be raised how they should be raised and certainly how they should be spent. But of course the point about tax as I've said already before in that more particular sense of the phrase is that it's a duty of Parliament or a right of Parliament to agree or not agree to the plans of the executive to raise taxes. So they have to come here and it's appropriate that appropriations take place through this House; we call them Votes in the Budget and so forth. However in the case of a kind of taxation or at least a kind of raising of revenue that's not technically taxation but it's levying that's imposed on the people of New Zealand maybe particular users of a service and so forth by regulation—and of course that means it's the Government of the day it's Ministers it's Government agencies it's technically the Governor-General—bless her heart.By the way while I'm on the subject briefly Mr Speaker if you'll indulge me for a moment it was nice to see Her Excellency launch a book on the constitution of New Zealand yesterday. Anyway I feel bad that not all members of the House were able to get to that for reasons that we won't sort of dwell on but that was unfortunate because it was a really interesting book launch. Justice Matthew Palmer and Dr Dean Knight put forward a really good contribution to the discussion in New Zealand about our constitution. I haven't had the chance to read it; it was only last night but no doubt there would have been something about the way that Parliament as opposed to the Government of the day raises taxes and levies and so on.So in relation to this bill it's really important to note that the kind of revenue raising is being done without reference to Parliament is being done without reference to the House of Representatives and that's fine as far as it goes. Again we delegate our authority in this House to Government agencies to raise money that they need for particular purposes. And that's the key. It's the particular purpose for which the money is to be raised or levied upon the uses of those services and that's the basis on which the money should then be spent. So when we have this raising of revenue for the use of one service but applied to another purpose another bucket of money—I suppose in accounting terms not that I've used the technical term but you know what I mean—then it's a problem actually. And it's precisely because it was a problem that this practice had taken place over a number of years that a bill in the nature of a tidy-up already came to the House already was passed and yes National supported that. So Dr Duncan Webb is right to characterise the situation as a tidy-up in some sense but that's the bit that's already taken place that's the retrospective validation of the thing that had already happened in the past. But this is now a conscious policy decision by this Government to say that it's OK to levy funds for one particular purpose and apply them to another—and that's just actually constitutionally not very sound.We say that the cross subsidisation to use the phrase aptly employed by my colleague and friend the Hon Todd McClay isn't appropriate. And so naturally we resist this; naturally" we say this is a step in a direction that the country should not be taking. We know it's not fair frankly that people would be paying money you know for one particular purpose—the context is the Companies Act and of course there are lots of different types of entities that have different registers so just again without harping on to belabour the point too much these are different purposes these are different entities and these are different registers. And so we say let's keep it clean. Levy the funds for that which is needed don't levy—Hon Dr David Clark: They love their red tape over there. They love their red tape.CHRIS PENK: Oh-ho! We have the Hon David Clark saying that we love red tape. Well all I can say is there's less red tape in our approach to this than in the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act regulations as ushered in by that Minister. Goodness me I'm very surprised that he has the gall to raise the subject of red tape in this House in connection with regulations. But anyway that's for him to answer not me. It's beyond the scope of the bill so I won't go any further except to emphasise again: we can't and won't support this bill."