Brown Simeon; Parker DavidSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Madam Chair for the opportunity to take another call on Part 1 of this bill. The question I have is in regards to clause 5 new section 7AAA which effectively ensures that the Commissioner of the IRD has the role to administer the cost of living payments on behalf of the Crown. And I just want to note in the supplementary analysis report which we have here the advice which says that the Treasury has advised that strong aggregate demand combined with constrained supply and a tight labour market will result in inflation staying above target in the near term.And then I wanted to turn back a couple of pages where it mentions that this particular policy is going to require around 750 staff to operate—750 staff to operate. So my question to the Minister is: we have a tight labour market and you're going to find 750 people in a very tight labour market and make the tight labour market tighter? Have you considered whether this actual policy is inflationary and whether it's actually going to put more pressure on the tight labour market and if so what is the impact that this is actually going to have? Because the reality is this seems to be a policy looking for some sort of solution dreamt up on the back of an envelope at about 11 o'clock at night two weeks ago without actually thinking through the consequences. And the reality is: has the Minister had some advice from the IRD as to whether they're confident they'll be able to find 750 people to be able to actually administer the particular policy?I already note that in the supplementary analysis it says that up to a quarter of the people receiving payments may not be able to receive them within the time frames due to the fact that the IRD might not have sufficient information about their particular tax details. So we may have a situation where a quarter of the people aren't going to be able to actually get their payments in the time frame because the IRD doesn't necessary have all the information to be able to process it. And then you've got the problem of 750 staff being required to come on board in a very short period of time before August to assess millions of applications to actually see whether they're—Simon Watts: 2 million.SIMEON BROWN: How many times did you say?Simon Watts: 2 million.SIMEON BROWN: Two million—2 million applications and then make a number of assessments for every application to make sure that they are eligible for every one of those three payments. This is a bureaucratic nightmare—it's an absolute bureaucratic nightmare.I just wonder: did the Minister potentially ask for some advice as to whether maybe adjusting the tax thresholds might have been slightly more efficient? And actually not only efficient for the IRD—maybe they might not have had to hire as many people—but also maybe actually that would have given taxpayers the ability to decide how they spent their own money rather than taxes being taken off people and then people having to apply for a complicated process to get three payments of $117 over three months to then come back once they'd filled out the appropriate tax documents and proved that they were residents and that they'd been earning under a certain threshold and that they weren't in prison or dead and all of the other things which are required by the rules in this process and then get some money back. That is the definition of socialism and the definition of a Government which believes that they have control they want control It's our money"—it's the Government's money. They are the ones who have the money. They are the ones who own the money.Well actually it's taxpayer's money. They worked hard for this money. They worked hard to earn it. They worked hard so that they could try and get ahead and they give money to the Government through the tax system because they believe it will be for the benefit of all New Zealanders so that they can get the services that they need not for this Government to use it like a play thing and just build bureaucracies. I ask the Minister to answer some of those questions around the implementation of that policy.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): To the extent that I could ascertain questions in that contribution there was an assertion there that people eligible for the payment have to make an application—that's not the case. The payment is made administratively by the department for those who are entitled to it; they don't have to apply. In respect of the administrative functions that we need people to carry out one of the main functions is to gather bank account numbers. We're anticipating that people who want this payment will want to give us their bank account number because they will want the payment. So we don't think that's going to be onerous except that the number is about—there's a large number of people for whom we need bank accounts.In respect of the question as to whether this is inflationary and did we give consideration to that of course we did. And on our analysis we realised that this would not be nearly as inflationary as policies that would give CEOs earning large amounts tax cuts every year of $270000 per annum. Not an income tax policy that we would favour but we know that the National Party would. So we find their concerns about the inflationary effects of what we're doing for low and middle income earners to be crocodile tears."