Families Package (Income Tax and Benefits) Bill

I move, That the Families Package (Income Tax and Benefits) Bill be now read a second time.

It’s my honour to once again speak in favour of this comprehensive package to lift at least 88,000 children out of poverty, when it is fully implemented—and, for the benefit of Andrew Bayly, 71,000 out of poverty in 2018-19.

It is actually, perhaps, quite useful just to reflect on—if we are looking to compare the package that the National Party put up in Budget 2017 versus this package—and to bear in mind that, at 71,000 children coming out of poverty, that’s a 44 percent reduction, and then, by the time we get to 88,000 children, that’s a 48 percent reduction, nearly halving child poverty. If we look at the package that was put forward in 2017, in 2019 it would’ve been a 34 percent reduction, and then, moving to 2021, actually, it went down, to 27 percent. So it’s not quite as good a package when it comes to actually lifting children out of poverty.

This package is one that covers at least 384,000 families. It does focus on boosting low and middle income families with children. We have never said anything else, on this side of the House, other than “We want to support children to have the best possible start in life.” We make no apology for the fact that this package targets supporting families with children. It targets supporting families with children and lifting those children out of poverty.

I am extremely proud of this bill. I have no desire to elongate my speech, other than to commend it to the House.

Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak on the second reading of this bill, a bill that just seems to unravel the more we hear about it in the House. Actually, I think it would’ve benefited hugely from going to a select committee. As a result of not going to a select committee, we’ll have to improve it here in the House.

There’s a number of things about this bill that are quite strange—many things, actually. We’ll try and deal with a few of them in the time allotted to me. One of them is why the Government talks a lot about the benefits of targeting but then does universality. I’m trying to work out how that’s consistent. They say that they don’t like universal tax threshold changes, because everybody benefits from that, but then they promote as an alternative three universal bits of support. The winter energy payment applies to everybody over the age of 65, irrespective of their income levels, irrespective of their asset base, irrespective of where they come from or what they do, irrespective of whether they work as well as receiving superannuation. Those people—everybody over the age of 65—qualify for a winter energy payment. So that’s an interesting one.

And then everybody that has a baby, irrespective of their income, qualifies for the Labour Party’s baby bonus. That’s interesting. So somebody who’s on an income of $250,000 qualifies for the Labour Party’s baby bonus. It’s hardly a targeted programme.

And then, of course, we have the other part, which is the bit that is being paid for by this package, and that’s the tertiary education, “fees-free” thing, which applies to every family, irrespective of their income. It is irrespective of their income.

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Speak to the bill, Steven.

Actually, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Speaker earlier clarified that I could refer to how the money was being spent—

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Briefly.

—and it’s quite clear, in this document from the Labour Government, that it talks about $2.84 billion for other Government priorities. The other Government priority is “fees-free” tertiary education.

So if you are to consider this package in the round, you have to consider the whole amount of money and where it’s going. And what we have is a whole amount of money taken from ordinary New Zealanders and targeted in a universal fashion to university students, superannuitants, and people having babies, and you get it irrespective of how much you earn. It would’ve been great to explore the sensibility of that at a select committee, because I think it would’ve actually fallen apart under the first examination from a submitter.

The second thing I wanted to focus on is a little bit more on this winter energy payment, because it does make very little sense at all. It is, on the one hand, universal. Everybody over 65 will get it. They’ll get an auto-enrolment, I understand. But they’re required to operate an honesty-box system. They are not allowed to receive it if they leave the country for a period of time to go on their winter “summer” holiday on the Gold Coast or in Rarotonga or, perhaps, Hawaii, if they’re wealthy superannuitants. They are supposed to write to, I suppose, a Minister—that’d be a good idea, to write to the Minister—and say to the Minister, “Dear Sir or Madam, I am leaving the country. I, therefore, have to own up with my honesty-box system on the winter energy payment.”

Or perhaps they will actually monitor people as they return to the country. Perhaps there’ll be a border assessment of when somebody is coming back into the country and how long they’ve been away. So they could actually check their passport to find out how long they’ve been overseas. Or, alternatively, they could use the IRD officials that are checking student loans to check whether somebody has actually overstayed and been claiming their winter energy payment while they’re offshore. That is, if I may put it politely, the stupidity of this proposal. I think it would’ve been significantly improved with a bit of time in select committee, if we had the opportunity to flesh that out.

Another thing I think would be really good to explore further is why the current coalition Government favours certain groups in society and the way that they lead their lives against other groups in society. Now, we’re all in support of people with young children. In fact, our package, which is largely not being unwound tonight, provides support through family tax credits to people with young kids. But what’s the limit to that? What about people who don’t have young families? What about people who, through misfortune or no choice of their own, are unable to have children? Don’t they actually have a right to keep a bit more of their own money?

You may say that they don’t, but let’s have a look. Let’s have a look at the impact of fiscal drag on some of these people in recent years. We last made the changes to the tax system in 2010. Somebody on the median wage then paid $7,325 in tax. Now those same people on the median wage, which has now gone up, pay nearly $8,000 a year in tax. Why shouldn’t they be able to get some of that back? What have they done wrong that means they’re not entitled, they’re not favoured by Grant Robertson, and they’re not able to get some money back? Don’t they have aims and goals and aspirations? Don’t they have the right to have their own dreams about their futures, that they get the opportunity to pay off their house a little bit quicker? What’s wrong with them, that the Labour Party doesn’t think they deserve anything, that they don’t think they should get anything? That, instead, the Labour Party picks out, as it has traditionally done—to be fair, they are nothing if not consistent—a small group of people like students and says they’ll have a bucket more dough?

What about the people, the ordinary Kiwi wage-workers, who aren’t going to university, who aren’t actually planning to travel overseas and get a winter energy payment, who aren’t actually, for reasons of their choosing, able to have a child at a particular point in time? Why shouldn’t they benefit a bit from the hard work of New Zealanders? That’s the problem with this proposal: the lack of fairness to those people. It is a lack of fairness to the 1.2 million New Zealanders—and we’re not talking, despite the talking points of the Labour Party, about the wealthy people. This package was across the quintiles. What happens to the ordinary people who actually are just getting on, just doing their job, just earning a bit of pay, who deserve to get a little bit of a break because of how hard New Zealand has worked over the last 10 years? Those people are invisible to the Labour Party. And many of them are the sort of people that a Labour Party would have supported in the past, would have encouraged, but these days they are not interested in those people at all.

We had Mr Webb pop up, possibly the other side’s equivalent to our dear departed friend Mr Quinn, from times gone past. He’s popping up and saying his bit. He’s putting together a class war, but the class war is actually an interesting class war because it leaves out middle-income workers. Ordinary Kiwis paying 30c on the dollar are missing out with this.

These are some of the problems that we should actually be looking into. Why are we bringing back the independent earner tax credit when it’s only actually claimed by about 30 percent of people during the year?

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: That’s because you didn’t tell anyone about it.

No. Why would you have to—why not do the sensible thing and, when you have the opportunity, shift the bottom threshold? I mean, how capitalist is that—shifting the bottom threshold from $14,000 to $22,000? What a capitalist initiative that is that we have to stop! That’s an outrageously capitalistic initiative: to lift the bottom threshold from $14,000 to $22,000!

What we could have done at the select committee is explore why lifting tax thresholds at all is completely anathema to the Labour Party. We also could’ve explored just how genuinely their fellow parties, who voted for the previous tax package, really do believe in signing up to this, because, actually, they didn’t campaign for this—neither of them did. They did not campaign for it. They did not, actually, at all, and they voted for the previous package. There’s only one party in this house that campaigned for this package, and they got 36.9-odd percent at the election—36.9 percent—which, I know, hurts them, but they wander around saying that everybody supports them, until you look at the numbers and they don’t.

It would have been good to test all of these things at a select committee, but they’ve decided to take the long way round, and we’ll have to test them all in the House. Thank you.

I call the honourable—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Iain Lees-Galloway.

Iain Lees-Galloway.

That’s the one. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Well, that contribution by the member Steven Joyce, just like many of the contributions from the Opposition benches this evening, was absolutely riddled with what I can only describe as basic stupidity, or BS.

The first piece of BS that I’ve heard from the Opposition this evening came from the mouth of none other than the Rt Hon Bill English, when he said that this bill, which will indeed put more money in the pockets of people who are on the lowest incomes and, indeed, some people who are on benefits—those people will waste that money on cigarettes and alcohol. What a patronising old Tory Bill English has proven himself to be. He is all about personal freedom and personal choice, and he wanted to try and say that this legislation tonight is part of some nanny-State agenda, but he’s sure pretty keen to tell poor people how they should spend their money. That was the opening statement from Bill English.

Then we heard—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Back on the bill.

Gerry Brownlee agrees. Well, this is part of the bill, because that is the view that your leader, Mr Brownlee, took on this bill—that it does put money into the pockets of poorer people, which is true. That’s what it’s designed to do, and Bill English thinks that’s a bad idea because poor people don’t know how to spend their money and should be dictated to by the Government.

The second piece of BS that I heard from the Opposition benches is that this money is going to—

💬 Hon Members: Point of order.

—basic stupidity—

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I think we just want a bit of decorum, thank you, with the language.

The second piece of basic stupidity that I heard from the Opposition benches is that this bill is somehow going to make—

💬 Hon Steven Joyce: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I sense that the member did not actually listen to your advice. We’re now being told about basic stupidity and all sorts of things like that. I know he is cheapening his own argument, but it would probably be better if he just sort of improved the tone and actually argued the case. [Interruption]

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don’t need any help. I thank the member for that point of order, which wasn’t really a point of order.

Look, there is so much basic stupidity on the other side that I have not got time to list it all. I will simply say this—

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I would appreciate it if you would discuss the bill.

If you cut through it, you will simply see what this bill does, and this bill does a couple of very important things. One is that it lifts 88,000 children out of poverty, something that the National Party could not achieve in nine years in Government, and this coalition Government has legislated for it in less than seven weeks.

The second thing it does—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: That’s not true. The member’s a liar.

—is it raises incomes for over 60 percent—

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Mr Brownlee, you will stand and withdraw.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I withdraw.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. You’ll understand that you’d get a little bit annoyed to hear someone misrepresenting somebody else’s—

💬 Jan Logie: Point of order.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a point of order, and you will be silent.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: So, grossly misrepresenting the bill that’s in front of us that of course it’s going to incite a degree of response. I do think that calling him back to the bill would be a good idea. What everyone knows is that this bill is a shadow of what was passed by this House last May.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s very interesting, thank you very much, but the member’s been here a long time and knows that he cannot interrupt a speech to say that someone has misrepresented him.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. With all due respect, it was the Chair who interrupted the speaker to ask me to withdraw.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, thank you, and, in making your point of order, you then claimed you had been misrepresented, to atone for your unparliamentary language. Thank you.

Over 60 percent of families are going to be better off under the Labour - New Zealand First - Greens Families Package than they would have been under the National one. That’s why people voted for this Government and that’s why this bill is going to be put through before Christmas this year.

I’ve come down to the House, of course, to take a second call in quick succession after the first reading debate on this Families Package (Income Tax and Benefits) Bill, because it is vitally important that New Zealanders who are listening to this debate, who go back to it, understand the real impact of what’s happening here tonight.

The starting point is very clearly that the bill in front of us repeals legislation that is currently on the books, which would have moved the income tax brackets from $0 to $14,000 to $0 to $22,000 for the first tier. That means that anyone earning under $22,000 a year would have, with the law as it currently stands, been paying only 10.5 percent income. Now, as a consequence of this bill, most of that income will flick up into the next tax bracket and they’ll be paying 17.5 percent. Similarly, anyone earning under $52,000, under the law as it currently stands, would pay a maximum tax rate of 17.5 percent. But the Labour Government wants to make them pay upwards of 30 percent. So what we’re doing here is targeting those on the very lowest incomes and saying, actually, they should be paying some of our highest tax rates.

Now, when National was in Government, we were very clear that over the passage of time, when the value of money changes, it is important that we continually reflect that buying power of money and the increase in the average and median wages, so that you don’t end up getting more and more of the lower-paid workforce paying the higher rates of tax. It is just crazy to have a bill that insists on lower-paid workers paying income tax rates that are targeted to and designed for those on higher incomes. So, if you want to talk about targeting support, the most sensible, basic thing that you can do is ensure that those lower tax brackets, which are designed under our incremental tax system to apply to those who earn the least, are actually relative and keep pace with the value of the money and the increase in the average wages. And yet, the first thing that we’ve seen this new Government do is move to force all of those lower-paid workers back into higher tax brackets. That is a simple, incontrovertible fact that cannot be challenged. That is the law at the moment, and this bill changes the law so lower-paid workers pay more tax than they should and that they need to.

When a Government is successful at managing the economy and we are successful at ensuring that Government spending is controlled, we get to a situation where we realise that we are taking more money from people, from their pockets, every week than we need to. In that case, the responsible thing to do is to not take it out of their pockets to begin with. You don’t take it, add a bit more, filter it through a whole lot of crazy schemes, and then dribble a bit out. When the Government is taking more than it needs from hard-working Kiwis, it is its duty to allow those workers to keep what they earn. Governments should only take what they need to run the country properly and efficiently.

Within just days of this Government taking office, we are seeing them move to not only pull more and more money out of the pockets of hard-working Kiwis, to use them like the ATM and the cash cow that they obviously see them as, but they’re doing it in ways that don’t even follow their own narrative.

We have heard speech after speech today about how this package is somehow better at getting help to those who most need it. Well, that’s a fine-sounding piece of rhetoric but, if that were true, even in the slightest, why would you have a baby bonus being paid out to millionaires? Why? If your concern was genuinely to make sure that it was targeted, you would do a couple of things. First of all, you’d make sure that the lowest tax thresholds actually were kept for those who are on the lowest incomes. They haven’t done that. And you’d make sure that the benefits that you provide are actually made available to those who need them the most, and they haven’t done that.

In fact, the biggest spending item that this Government is funding by cancelling the tax cuts, keeping more of Kiwis’ money, is providing a universal gap year in the first year of university for every single young person, whether they need it or not. We can argue the merits of free education, but let’s not kid ourselves that this is about targeting. If you wanted to target, you would do it, first and foremost, by ensuring you don’t take any more money away from low-paid workers than we need to.

I want to just spend a moment reflecting on the fact that this is being done under urgency. This doesn’t come into effect straight away. There are a number of months more in which this could have gone to a select committee. While there is no doubt we will continue to have significant principled differences between the Government and this side of the House—and they’re differences that I’m very pleased to stand up and defend in this House—I don’t think it’s sensible to suggest that there aren’t questions and improvements that could sensibly have been worked through.

I just want to highlight a couple of those. There are some very strange and inexplicable—maybe members on the opposite side would like to explain them to us—calculations and figures that have been set for which we’ve heard no explanation. I would have thought, in the select committee process, members of the public would have been very interested to know, for example, why, when you have the baby bonus in years two and three—not in year one, when it’s universal and everyone gets it, whether they need it or not; not when we’re effectively paying them to have that child, irrespective of need. In years two and three that payment does begin to abate with income, but that income threshold kicks in at the very logical and round number of $79,000. Now, why $79,000? What is the logic of the abatement rate starting from $79,000?

Even more inexplicable is that the abatement rate itself is 20.8 percent. Now, in what universe would you illogically go to starting an abatement from $79,000 and then applying it at an abatement rate of 20.8 percent? Not 28 percent—two zero point eight percent.

I’m assuming that Grant Robertson has got some genius behind that and there are very sensible reasons for it. But what he hasn’t done—

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: Of course. That goes without saying.

I’m trying to be a little bit—you know, it’s the spirit of Christmas—magnanimous to the Minister of Finance. But what he hasn’t done at any point is come up with any good reason why 20.8 percent was right; not 20.9 percent, not 20.7 percent, not 21 percent, not 20 percent. He’s very carefully, obviously, determined that 20.8 percent abatement was right. If there was a good rationale for that, perhaps we will hear it. But in the select committee process, we would have had the opportunity to go through that and examine it in some detail.

We heard, for nine years, outrage and rallying and indignation at the inappropriate use of urgency. I remember a time when we were debating something that would take effect that afternoon. In fact, it was so urgent we had to get the bill—well, actually, we worked around it, but at one stage we were going to get an air force plane to fly the bill to the Governor-General to give his assent because it was that urgent. And still, Chris Hipkins and Gareth Hughes, in particular, said it wasn’t appropriate to use urgency.

So in that case, with that sort of time frame, you shouldn’t use urgency, because even a short select committee process would help. But, here, we have a bill that no party other than Labour campaigned on, that doesn’t take effect, even in its very early stages, until 1 April next year—in fact, most of it takes effect much later than that—that has strange and inexplicable thresholds and measures and complications to it, and that has a lack of clarity around how things like the winter heating payment will apply to superannuitants. Do they have to apply? Do they get it contemporaneously? What happens if they do go overseas for four weeks and one day, not three weeks and six days because, I don’t know, there was a volcano erupting in Bali and their flight was delayed? Do they have to pay it back? How does that work? Do they have to go and re-enrol? None of that is clear. Superannuitants will be none the wiser as to what they get and how it works. We’ve got no idea what the bureaucracy required to run it is.

All of that could have been worked through in a select committee process. And yet, even with that, we have the issues of superannuitants who find themselves in residential care, as many do in the later stage of life. They will now find out tonight that not only will they not get any sort of winter heating payment but they also lose $1,060 that they were due to get on 1 April.

Where in all of the glossy material is the Labour Party saying, “By the way, all you superannuitants who are in care: sorry about that. You get nothing, because we’re going to take away the increase in your superannuation payment and you don’t get anything else. To all you other superannuitants who aren’t in care: good luck for all of those of you who don’t need it, because you’ll get it anyway; and those of you who do, well, we can’t really tell you what you’re going to have to go through to get it, what’s going to happen if you get your travel dates wrong by a couple of days, and what sort of penalty rate will apply.”

This is not only a bad bill; it is a rushed bill. It won’t achieve what it’s setting out to achieve. It could have been improved through the select committee. Worst of all, it is taking money away from the workers who earned it and who deserve to keep it.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a real joy to rise and speak after the member who has resumed her seat, Amy Adams. I can hear the questions from the National Party Opposition benches. They’re all around the winter energy payment, their extreme concern for seniors, and some confusion that they have but, I can tell you as the Minister for Seniors, seniors do not.

It is a great shame to me that this is a Government who knows more in 43 days about how seniors interact with Work and Income New Zealand than the people who were sitting on these benches for nine years. Now, I don’t know if the previous Minister for Seniors just didn’t have a working relationship with everybody else in her Cabinet, or whether those people just chose not to listen to the older people of our country. Considering that 1.2 million of our citizens are going to be our seniors in the not too distant future, it is a great shame that that party has no concept of how seniors already interact with Work and Income New Zealand. If a senior citizen—

💬 Chris Bishop: Winston knows a bit about it.

—listen up, Mr Bishop, because some senior citizen in your electorate might want to know—is already going overseas for more than 28 days, they must notify Work and Income New Zealand. This has been the situation for a large number of years, and especially for the last nine.

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: What happens if they don’t?

During that period of time—they can’t contact Work and Income New Zealand, Mr Guy, but they’re travelling to the south of France? Really? This is the question your side has asked? This is the question the Opposition has asked, and I’m answering it for you, Mr Guy.

Already, there is a method by which Work and Income New Zealand must be notified by seniors when they leave the country for more than 28 days. The winter energy payment will be attached to the existing mechanism—no more expense, no more paperwork, no more nothing for our current seniors. They can opt out in the same way that they can opt out now. The Opposition may not know, but for some period of time, seniors have been able to opt out of getting their super. They can opt out of getting the winter energy payment. But they can also opt back in, under this piece of legislation, should their circumstances change—and many a senior’s circumstances had changed over the last nine years.

It interests me, the tone of the conversation coming from the National Party Opposition benches, with regard to the rhetoric around our seniors. What the National Party does not seem to understand is that this bill positively affects babies—all New Zealanders who are under one year old. This bill positively affects children up to the age of three. This bill positively affects all families with an income from $79,000 down. This bill positively affects every senior citizen in New Zealand. A previous piece of legislation, which that Opposition could not bring themselves to do, positively affects every single citizen in New Zealand—

💬 Chris Bishop: Why are you giving millionaires free money?

—without ageism, Mr Bishop. Those of our seniors that wish to retrain or re-educate, under this Government actually have an opportunity to do so. But that Opposition stripped away any right from our seniors, stripped away any right from our older citizens, to be able to re-educate themselves to re-enter the workforce. Twenty-five percent of our seniors are still in the workforce, Mr Bishop, and this bill accepts that those seniors continue to contribute to our community. They may be asset-rich, as Mr Bishop might call it, because they might be sitting in a house that they’ve had for 50 years, but they are cash-poor. We know that 9,300-something seniors were hospitalised or diagnosed with pneumonia because they could not afford to pay their power bill. This side of the House, finally, for the senior citizens of New Zealand, is actually listening.

I have no idea what the previous Minister for Seniors was doing for the period of time she was sitting there, but what I do know is that seniors—thousands upon thousands of seniors—are contacting us, saying thank goodness that, finally, a Government has seen their need; that, finally, a Government acknowledges them as contributing members of our society and gives them an opportunity to have a standard of living. Because they’re not so individualised but they understand the concept of community, and it is our seniors that know the value of community in New Zealand.

How galling it is to be in the House tonight and receive a lecture from a New Zealand First member about how easy or hard it is to sign up to superannuation and engage with Work and Income. I’ve done it. It was easy to do. I went there as required, with my spouse—or, in my case, my wife. I filled out my forms correctly and I’ve since received my due super. It is not difficult, so why can’t the Hon Tracey Martin tell Mr Peters how easy it is to do, because it’s not difficult. It’s not difficult.

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. That is an issue in the courts. That is an issue in the courts, and members of the Government and their parliamentary servants are part of it.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: You will resume your seat. I understand the point you were trying to make, but I do not understand it is in front of the court, and therefore I will take some advice. [Seeks advice] Your point of order is not correct; it is not before the courts. However, I would refer to the Hon David Carter to be careful about the inferences that he’s making about another member’s character and to focus on the bill. [Interruption] Excuse me, I ask that member just to calm down.

Madam Deputy Speaker, the point I’m making is that the Hon Tracey Martin said it is not difficult for people to engage with Work and Income. I agree with that. All it takes is honesty, integrity, and a little bit of intelligence to fill out the forms properly, and, having engaged with Work and Income, there is no difficulty—it’s a good system. It’s a good system, but if you go in there forgetful of the information, not mindful of the correct information, or, indeed, in some cases, deliberately giving misinformation, I can understand why you could fall foul of the system.

Being in the second reading, I wanted to consider why it has been debated under urgency and why it has been done in the last few days of this Parliament when the Government’s had 43 days to do this classic character legislation. I’ve figured out what the problem’s been. There has been great difficulty getting the coalition to manage this, because there has not been a meeting of the minds at all on this particular legislation. If you look at the Green Party policy, particularly in regard to the winter energy payment, their policy going into the election was that it should be an energy supplement to all our selves that earn less than $50,000. Now, there is some merit in that. It’s about targeting those who might need it. But, obviously, the Greens—and it’s not the first time in the last 43 days they’ve been rolled by this coalition Government—have had to back down on that position and they’ve had to accept that it’s going to be universal and that winter energy payment is going to be available to somebody like myself.

If you look at the New Zealand First election position around benefits, they were requiring greater scrutiny of the benefit system, adjustment to benefits and abatement level, and better targeting. So New Zealand First have been rolled by the “genius” Grant Robertson—and I use that word only because Grant Robertson himself interjected that he indeed was a genius. I think that will surprise many of the 119 fellow members of Parliament in this House. But New Zealand First clearly campaigned on better targeting of benefits, so why have we ended up in this situation when there is, effectively, no targeting at all and the benefits that are being dished out by this package are super generous, certainly to those that need them—and so they should be; no objection to that at all—but they’re equally generous to a person like myself. Mr Robertson, through question times, argued that they were very keen to make sure the National tax cut package—$1,060—did not proceed, because it would be available to people like himself and me, and, yet, as I outlined in my first reading contribution on this legislation, I’m significantly better off—

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Opt out.

The member yells out that I should opt out. Why should I be given the responsibility of opting out of a winter energy payment when the Government is prepared to give it? It’s like asking me to opt out of superannuation payment. Why do it? It’s the Government’s job to target assistance. It’s not the citizen’s job to then go back and say, “Well, it’s a bit of a foolhardy policy, why don’t I opt out.” It’s not the way it works, I say to that member, whose name, I’m sorry, I can’t recall. That’s not the way it works, and I’ll be interested as we get—

💬 Hon Clare Curran: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The member has just told us how easy it is to go to Work and Income, so if he wants to opt out I’m sure it’s very easy—

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s not a point of order. That is not the way that this House works—to interrupt a member’s speech with what is not a point of order. That is a debating point.

No, and I was desperately trying to explain to that member why people won’t go, and that’s the question I’ll be raising in the committee stage. Presumably some budgeting has been done on this. We know, I hope, how many people are eligible to pick up the winter energy payment, and I hope, equally, the Government’s done its research on how many people it thinks might opt out of the winter energy payment. So when we get to committee stage, I give warning to the Minister in the chair that I’ll be asking those questions. I hope we get the answer, but I’m sure we’ll get assistance from Madam or Mr Chairman at the time that if we’re not getting the answers, the debate will be allowed to go on for longer, so we could be here for some time.

The other issue I wanted to take up was the claim that’s been made that people will be significantly better off with this package. I think the figure mentioned by the Minister Grant Robertson was 384,000 people.

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: Families.

Families—384,000 families, so let’s work on the average family size being 2.2 or 2.3; that’s about 750,000 people. Yet the National Government had passed tax cuts into legislation that affected 1.2 million people. How can the Government possibly argue more people are better off under this package that they’re proposing than are better off under the previous National Party tax package passed—and voted for by the Green Party, and voted for by the New Zealand First Party—at the time. So there’s another question we will ask throughout the committee stage: how do they equate these numbers, because to me they don’t make sense.

As I said in my first reading contribution, there are a lot of people in hardship in this country—far too many people. Any package that addressed that hardship and was seriously targeted, I think we’d have had a rational debate within the National caucus in an attempt to find common ground to support it. But when you come in with a package like this that spends billions of dollars, and you spray it around with universal acceptance and eligibility, that just does not make sense. I say to the Government it’s had time to do this policy work; it’s had 43 days. Labour would claim they campaigned on this through the election campaign. Why has it taken so long to bring the New Zealand First Party and the Green Party into agreement on this? Has it been part of that coalition deal that we haven’t been able to see? Why have they then brought it to Parliament today and are attempting to pass it in urgency when there’s no implementation date at all before 1 April or 1 July next year—and the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, nods his head at that. Surely, Mr Robertson—

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: It takes a bit of time to prepare.

Oh! If it had gone to a select committee and we’d had a chance to help the Government with this package, I think we’d have ended up with a far better piece of legislation than liberally spraying taxpayers’ money around.

Universality is the problem with this package. It is giving money to people that do not need it.

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: Ideology—ideology.

The Hon Tracey Martin, who interjects yet again, gave a passionate speech about the people who are cold through the winter and need assistance. National accepts that those people need assistance, but I’m not sure that she can convince me at any stage that I need that assistance. But if she thinks I’m going to opt out, I doubt it. Why should I? If the Government comes into the House tonight close to the Christmas break, when the press gallery’s party’s on and they know they won’t get scrutiny by the journalists—they come in here because they’re ashamed of this package, to get it passed. They don’t get my support, but rest assured, the Hon Tracey Martin, in three years’ time this National Opposition will be back to tidy this mess up, and we will do so very, very quickly after the election of 2020.

I call Jan Logie. [Interruption] I’m sorry, can I just ask the Minister—it’s a constant barrage. I don’t know whether it’s because of where you’re sitting, but it is a constant barrage, and my right ear is really good.

Ha, ha! It was sounding very good from here. I do just want to pick up on one of the points from the previous speaker, David Carter, when I start. I guess I’d fallen a little bit into being sucked in by the rhetoric of the National Party as the party of personal responsibility. I don’t know; I’d heard this over and over again, and I admit to being sucked into it a little bit. But then I heard that last speech—it’s like, “You shouldn’t give me this winter energy payment”—

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m not giving it to you.

Oh, sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. That member was saying he shouldn’t be given this winter energy payment, but he’s not going to opt out—why should he do that? It’s the job of the State to make sure he doesn’t get that! Where is the personal responsibility in that? I just don’t see it. I think there’s some kind of internal inconsistency coming from that side.

I do want to address some of the other arguments that I’ve heard. There’s been a lot said about the value and the importance of targeting and the problem of universalism—that’s been a constant thread. Now, I do just want to bring into this debate some of the problems with targeting, just to put that out on the table—that we have different views that we’re contesting here, and we’re being told that targeting is always better. Well, actually, there’s quite a lot of evidence and people’s experience that certain ways that targeting is done increases stigma. If you target to a group in need, then you make the provision of that thing associated with people in a bad position, and it creates stigma. There is very, very good research around that point.

The other thing around targeting is that it creates gaps. There are always going to be people who are in need who don’t meet the strict criteria that you have targeted to, and there they get no support. So there’s breakdown of our social infrastructure, and people fall between the cracks. That is what happens with targeting.

One of the other problems with targeting is that, actually, people need to know about whatever it is; the service that you’re providing. We’ve heard some debate about the independent earner tax credit as an example, and how only 30 percent of the people who were entitled ever picked it up because there was no advertising around it. While it’s a useful thing—and put the advertising into it; it’s worth bringing back—but it is a targeted thing and has flaws. If people don’t know about it, they don’t access it when they actually still fundamentally need the assistance. So to present out there as if universalism is automatically bad and targeting is automatically good is just not consistent with reality.

I also just want to challenge the view that’s come from that side of the House that by supporting this Budget legislation we are anti-worker. Ha, ha! It’s a little bit painful, when on this side of the House there’s been the commitment to increase the minimum wage to $20 an hour by 2021. Actually, that’s where we want to see people’s increase in keeping money in their pockets—by their wages and the income support, and ensuring that that system is there, not taking it out in terms of the money that we need to provide good social services. We know that when we take money out of the tax system, we have less for providing for our hospitals and our schools. So while you may say—

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don’t say it.

I’m sorry—I’m sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’ve heard from that side of the House that things will be better off and that the Government should take only as much tax as it needs to do the job. We’ve been told—it’s been suggested—that for the previous Government, that was their approach: just enough. Well, the “just enough” that we are hearing from parents is that they can’t cope with the pressure on them for donations to be able to get their kids to be able to participate in school. The kindergarten in my area was fund-raising for crayons, because that was the approach of the previous Government on what social service funding they needed.

The fact is that people were starting to go to private health insurers because the waiting list for our public health service was getting so long that they were worried they would die waiting to get a service. Now, that is what the previous Government’s definition of funding “just enough” was, and then they were introducing tax cuts. We want people to have money in their pockets and we want to have enough money to run the country decently, so that people aren’t having to take that money that you’ve given them back out to provide those basic services and protections.

I will allow what was said by one of the other members who referenced our policy, which was for a tax cut for people earning under $14,000—and, right at that end, absolutely, that is our policy. But we understand that in this time frame, to be able to make the difference for the people who need it the most, this legislation gets the ball rolling. We get to ensure that they can be warm through winter and they’re not going to end up in a hospital next winter and that those kids have got food in their bellies—those 88,000 children who are going to be brought out of poverty by this legislation. They will be able to attend the school trips and they won’t be too embarrassed to bring friends home to their house because there is no heating, there is no food in the refrigerator, and they don’t have another pair of shoes. We are committed to changing that, and in this time frame, the first 100 days, this Government is putting a stake in the ground and saying that we are prioritising those children.

I’ve heard criticism from that side of the House about the Best Start payment, which they have—rather pejoratively, I thought—started calling the baby bonus, as if it’s kind of a bonus and that babies are a function of a factory workplace activity.

💬 Hon Jacqui Dean: Oh, stop it, Jan.

Well, that is the underlying tone of “baby bonus”, is it not—rather than “Best Start tax credit”. There’s a really different world view in those two phrases, and they’re both applying to the same thing. So we’re going to refer to it as the Best Start tax credit, and the point about it being universal—and this certainly wasn’t Green Party policy, but I get that this has come out of Sir Peter Gluckman’s research about the importance of those first three years of a child’s life. [Interruption]

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but you cannot, I say to the Hon Maggie Barry, have a debate across the House, particularly interjecting when you’re on your feet and moving around the House. Please have some respect.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. So that is coming from a really solid research base about the difference and the importance of those first three years of life. The point of making that universal in the first year is to ensure that every child gets the benefit of it, that nobody falls between the cracks, and that all children are supported by us as a country so that there is a message that we actually welcome children into this country and we will support their families in that difficult time.

I also want to just touch as well on some of the things in Green Party policy that aren’t in here and that we do want to see, which are around—

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, I’m sorry, but the Speaker was quite clear that you can’t debate what isn’t in the bill. You debate the bill.

OK. I would point out one point around the baby payment—Best Start payment: it’s a positive that there is that welcoming. But I would say that it is adding to the complexity of our system and that the Greens do have a concern about that. Working for Families, as it operates at the moment, is incredibly complex and this does build more complexity into the system. It’s important in the short term, but we are absolutely looking to engage in that conversation about how to reform support for families to simplify it and to remove the discrimination that exists within the in-work tax credit as it is at the moment, to ensure that all of our families can easily access the support they need to be able to be healthy and well and to be able to properly participate in our society, because surely that is the core role of the Government.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is fascinating just watching tonight. It was only a few months ago that the Greens and New Zealand First supported the wonderful National Government’s tax bill, and, of course, there were all the good reasons why they supported it, and, of course, we are just watching everyone tonight—particularly from New Zealand First and the Greens—now backtracking on all that sort of stuff. I just think it is a fantastic opportunity to see consistency in action.

The thing I’ve just listened to from Jan Logie, the previous speaker, was that the Greens are saying their policy was that they’d like to see the bottom threshold for income tax changes to be increased, which, of course, was part of our package that was passed and is now enshrined in legislation. Then I heard a comment around targeting winter fuel payments that “Well, we don’t now believe in targeting payments.”, but as I understand it, it was actually the Greens’ policy during the election. So we’ve got all this backtracking and this lack of consistency.

Anyway, I spoke earlier about the claim around the 384,000 families that are going to benefit from this package put forward by the coalition, but I still want to reiterate the same point I made earlier. Under our bill, 1.64 million families were going to be better off. That’s 1.2 million families that are going to miss out on some form of financial advantage as a result of this bill tonight—as a result of this bill tonight. Most of those people are the hard-working people that that party over there—as we do—claim to represent. But, somehow, we protected them and looked after the 1.2 million. Somehow, these guys have forgotten.

Of course, a key part of our strategy was about reducing the income tax thresholds to deal with the fiscal drag that I spoke about before. Of course, that was about raising the minimum tax threshold from $14,000 to $22,000, at which point you pay only 10.5 percent, and then the next threshold, at 17.5 percent, was raised from $22,000 to $52,000. Again, every single taxpayer in New Zealand—anyone who paid tax—would have benefited by at least the first of those changes. But somehow, perversely, the coalition Government think that is a poor thing and a wrong thing, and I just don’t get the logic of that. These two changes made sure that everyone was going to participate in the benefits of a growing economy.

Now, I just want to turn to a couple of the key elements—new elements—of this package. Bear in mind that the Labour coalition Government has adopted broadly our family credits package changes and also the accommodation supplement changes that we had proposed. So those two parts are a substantial part of their tax bill. They’ve just—if I can use the word—borrowed it from National. The two new parts are the bits that I struggle with a little bit. The first one is the Best Start. It’s a $1.4 billion package over four years for newborns and up to the age of three, so on the face of it, it sounds a wonderful policy. But my first question to the Minister of Finance is: why use this mechanism?

It is interesting. I looked at the Australian Government’s position on this, and I think the Minister may have just borrowed a little bit from the Australian situation, as well, in developing this package. It was very interesting that this Best Start—or they talked about a baby bonus—was implemented in Australia in 2004, but it was dumped by the Labor Government in the 2013-2014 Budget. It was the Labor Government that actually dumped it. My question is: what evidence has the Minister of Finance got to support the amount of $3,000 per child? Where is the evidence for that? Secondly, where is the evidence that by paying $3,000 to everyone, rich and poor alike, that that will lead to better outcomes? What is the justification for the $3,000? Or is it just a politically motivated figure that sounds great? I would like to see the research from the Minister on it.

It was noted, actually—in the Australian scheme there was an independent review by the Henry tax review, and, again, I hope the Minister is listening to this—when they did a review of the Australian system, which they started out as A$3,000, just the similar amount that the Minister suggests in the Budget, they estimated the real cost for the first child was $2,000 and subsequent ones were $1,000, and that’s why the benefit changed over time, before it got scrapped by the Labor Government. Now, another interesting aspect is the extent of what the baby bonus actually did. There’s a review that just got completed early this year that showed that it led to a significant increase in new babies being born—and that in itself is not a bad thing. But I think the Minister just needs to be clear in what he is trying to achieve with this and to what extent that it is justifiable—the amount of $3,000—because in Australia it wasn’t justified.

The second element I’d like to just turn my mind to is the winter energy payment. Again, this is a universal payment, as we’ve heard tonight, which means that rich and poor alike share in its benefit. Of course, there’s the differentiation between a single household who gets $450 and the couple who gets $700. Again, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of logic for this, and for some reason that we haven’t heard yet heard from the Minister as to what the logic is and why there is a difference in the amount of money paid between a single and a couple, because, essentially, if you look at the stats, there is no difference.

Furthermore, the actual cost will differ depending on where you live, the type of heating system you’ve got, and the type of energy system you use. For some reason—there is no research on this issue that I’ve heard spoken about by the Minister. So one needs to question whether, in fact, this is something that has been calculated with some certainty or whether it, again, is just a politically motivated figure that’s been adopted to fill in the gap in the tax changes to make sure that superannuitants were not worse off. I think the issues that we’ve heard earlier about the wealthy having to go back and make an express claim that they don’t want to receive this benefit is just downright flabby policy—flabby policy. In terms of designing a policy, that it means that it’s reliant on people voluntarily going out and doing that is just bad flabby policy.

I just want to round off. To me this package raises some issues that I think just need to be drawn out. The first is that there are conflicting policies and they’re deeply inconsistent—deeply inconsistent. One is around a universal payment, which is the reason given for doing away with a lot of the tax cuts, and yet in two of the new ones they have adopted a universal approach. That is illogical.

The second one is just the extent of the Best Start package that abates at $79,000, which is a significantly high income level, but it starts abating at $79,000. For a single parent with one child that, under a broad calculation, will require that that family can earn up to $119,000 before it’s abated. That in itself is a very expensive and overgenerous policy by anyone’s account.

The last thing I just want to draw attention to: these two elements have made the tax system even more complicated. One of the things that we were trying to do was to simplify the tax system. What we’ve now got is a Minister who’s introduced complexity—unnecessary complexity—into this tax system.

Before I call the next member, could I just ask for the file box on the Green Party benches to be turned the other way please. Thank you. I call Paul Eagle—five minutes.

Madam Assistant Speaker, thank you. I think I’ve been given less than that, because the words I’m going to say can be said in less time, so there we are.

💬 Matt King: This is going to be good.

Thank you, Mr King. Remember, I do the big work—you are the “king”, but I do the big work.

We’re in urgency for good reason, because this is urgent—this is urgent—and I’ll tell you why. This is why I don’t need much time. I was given leave—it’s hard to get out of this prison sometimes, but I was given leave, and, I’ll tell you what, I went out to South Wellington Intermediate School, because I had to go to check on something that the former Minister of Finance said when he claimed there was no public endorsement of this legislation. Well, members, after getting nearly 52 percent of the vote in my electorate—7,000 more votes for the Labour Party in my electorate—I think that’s a mandate, I think that’s an endorsement, and there’s not an ounce of arrogance in that.

There was a chair of a board—and I won’t talk about national standards, because that’s off-topic—who talked about this legislation. They’d heard about it. They know that there are families in the school that said, “This will make the sort of difference that the people who have children at this school need.”, and there was a standing ovation. I don’t know what gets more public endorsement at a low-decile intermediate school in the heart of Wellington City. They gave that endorsement: a standing ovation.

So, members, please, if there’s any doubt that there is no public endorsement of this, there is. What it shows is that this is a Government that is in touch and that this is a party that got it right. Tax cuts were never going to wash with the people in my electorate, but they get it when the houses they live in, the payments they’ll get—because the former Government didn’t do any maintenance on the Housing New Zealand Corporation’s housing stock, all 68,000, now 64,000, of it; there are a lot of them in my electorate. They actually get this. A standing ovation, members, says it all.

So check in with the people who voted for you—check in, because there’s no better mandate, there’s no better endorsement. As the Minister of Finance proudly said, this legislation will lift 88,000 people out of poverty, and there is no better figure than that.

I call Lawrence Yule—five minutes.

I rise to take a call on this, and I say, respectfully, to the front bench, I’m only going to limit my call to something quite specific. Actually, I feel quite strongly about this: a week before Christmas, under urgency, you seek to pass a bill that will actually be majorly detrimental to 700,000 superannuitants in New Zealand, without even a mention of it. [Interruption] No, no. Let me go through, the Hon Mr Robertson.

Under National, superannuitants in New Zealand were going to benefit by $676 a year. Under your winter energy package—and that’s from 1 July next year—they will only get $265. They are now going to be $411 less well-off than they were from today. It’s in the paper here. That’s what it says. So while you talk about 388,000 families being better off, and that’s a lauded goal, actually, on the other side you are disadvantaging—[Interruption] On the other side, the Government is disadvantaging 710,000 people on superannuation, a week before Christmas—a week before Christmas.

I also note to New Zealand First, who are part of this coalition, and the Hon Tracey Martin, who is the bastion for superannuitants with the gold card, you’re actually ripping them off a week before Christmas without them knowing. So when you talk about these changes—to the Minister of Finance, when you talk about these changes I wonder why you have made it so complicated.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Can I remind the member not to bring the Speaker into the debate. Refrain from the use of the word “you”.

Thank you. The coalition arrangement has brought in a winter energy package, when actually I can see next year that about a whole heap of people will be going offshore. Companies like Air New Zealand and House of Travel will say: give me your trip to the Gold Coast funded by the winter energy package. It will become the winter holiday package for some people, because this is so untargeted, unfair, and, actually, what it will end up meaning is you’ve got a farce of a scheme. For the life of me, I cannot understand why you don’t simply put the same amount into super, because you’re calling it a winter energy package yet it is not targeted. You can spend it on anything.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Can I remind the member—

My apologies, Madam Assistant Speaker. The Government is calling this a winter energy package, but, actually, it really is a package that is available to all. It is available to people who are superannuitants and to those who are on the benefit. It is available to all. There is no guarantee it will be used for anything towards winter energy. It can be used for anything.

So whether you live in the winterless north, as the honourable member across the House does—does he need as much winter energy as somebody living in Invercargill or Otago? No. But you have made it universal across the whole country. I believe this part of the bill is very unfair on some of our most vulnerable people who are superannuitants. They have no idea this is happening. And you are bringing it out a week before Christmas—a big package for families, but, actually, for 700,000-odd people, you are taking around $400 off what they would have got from 1 July next year.

I want this coalition Government to actually own up to that. I’ve read the documentation. I’ve read it all here—[Interruption] The Hon Tracey Martin, yes, you’re getting exercised over there. Maybe I struck a nerve. Maybe I struck a nerve a week before Christmas that you are, as one of the parties that strongly supports superannuitants—you’re actually ripping them off.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. He cannot keep saying that you are ripping New Zealanders off.

That’s exactly right. Thank you very much for that intervention. I remind the member. Thank you.

Madam Assistant Speaker, I’ve been a bit worried about our friends across the House, because there is a particular number that they’ve been deeply concerned about. In fact, earlier this evening Mr Andrew Bayly memorably talked about the particular figure, and so have a number of other people on the other side of House. They’ve been deeply concerned that the average worker—they allege—is going to be $1,060 worse off because they’re not going to get something they were never going to get in the first place.

💬 Hon Members: That’s right—they were!

Now, that’s a fine philosophical point, but I have some special reassurance for our friends on the other side of the House. You see, under this Labour-led Government, year on year over the next five years the average wage is predicted to grow by 3 percent, and if you crunch the numbers on that 3 percent, what it tells you is that over the next five years the average worker will be $7,800 better off before tax, $5,400 better off after tax, and that is $1,090 a year better off under a Labour-led Government. So I offer you that reassurance. And, more than that, we are restoring the independent earner tax credit, making the less well off, better off. So you are reassured that we are looking after the average worker. We are doing our best for workers and we are making them better off.

I want to raise one further fine philosophical point, and that is the point about what we pay taxes for. We pay taxes, we contribute what we can, because taxation is the price of a civilised society—a civilised society that supports its children. Children are not consumer accessories. They’re not nuisances. They’re not things that people just have. They are citizens and they deserve our support. This is what this bill does. It supports our younger citizens. It will lift 88,000 children out of poverty over the next three years—71,000 in the next year alone. Why do we pay our taxes if not for our children? That is why I support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Look, I went through this bill before, but after listening to the speakers, the clarity with which we read stuff in this piece of legislation becomes very unclear, and I’m really looking forward to the committee stage to hear some of the explanations from the Minister of Finance to some of the questions that have been asked today. Because, to be honest, all that’s happened over that side of the House is the issue has been confused. So just a few examples here, in that we had Tracey Martin actually, when she was doing her presentation, she talked about how seniors were struggling. So then, Tracey Martin, why are we giving them less money? If the seniors are struggling, why are we giving them less money? This package does not seriously address the issue. We’ve had other speakers like Deborah Russell, who was just up, and Iain Lees-Galloway, who got up before, and talked about 88,000 people being lifted out of poverty, and that’s by 2021.

I refer back to what Grant Robertson said earlier today about it is not always the numbers that are the only thing that’s important; it’s about helping people. So you can actually give people more money, but you’ve also got to put some other tools around some of those people to help them. There’s a very well-known saying that says you can give a person a fish and you can feed them for a day, or you can teach them how to fish and you can feed them for a lifetime. So while extra money is important in people’s pockets—I had a visitor today from the budgeting service, and some of you on the other side know that person very well. Now, that budgeting service runs a good organisation that actually helps people. I think it would be quite advisable maybe for Grant Robertson to go along to the budgeting service and see if he can get some really good tips out of it.

This piece of legislation is leaving people out. It would be helpful for Duncan Webb to know that in our provincial electorates, we have truck drivers, we have plumbers, we have electricians, we have baristas, and we have coffee makers, we have all of those people, and guess what? They just lost a thousand dollars each.

The other thing I find really, really valuable in our communities—and Mr Hipkins might be interested in this when he’s finished doing his research about the repeal and revoke—is that we have a whole lot of primary schools who have 10, 12, 13 students in them. They’re very, very important geographically where they are. A lot of the people that support those schools are the grandparents. They are a three, four, five generations’ school. You’re actually whipping money off those grandparents, which actually, logically, they don’t spend that money on themselves. They donate it back to the schools. We had Jan Logie talking before about people fund-raising for crayons for school. Well, actually, those people, they take great pride in going back to their own school, and they take great pride in spending money. If you’ve ever been to an auction at any of those schools, some of those cakes that those kids make, their grandparents pay a fortune for. So you’re actually just distinctly disadvantaging the population.

Now, the other reason I would like an explanation on some of this, and I’m sure that a whole lot of people out here watching this tonight would like explanations—let me just quote you something out of an email that was sent to one of our members today about the heating allowance. It says, “Can you explain how it is calculated that two people heating their lounge get $700, and a single person heating the lounge gets $450? Something not right here. This is discrimination against a single person. This is”—

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: They’re emailing the wrong person.

Excuse me, this person’s written in and wants some answers from Mr Robertson, so maybe if you listen Mr Robertson might be able to answer these questions. “Please don’t say you cannot arrange for the discrimination to be adjusted. Surely it would have been made on a residence basis at $700. Again, what happens if three pensioners are living together? Do they claim $450 each to heat the room? Something not right here.” Again, what happens if a pensioner is living in a flat with power included in rent?

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: Tell them to email the party in Government. We’ll answer it.

Look, I am actually asking you general questions that have been sent in by members of the public, because we’re standing here and we can’t get any common sense about it.

With the heating allowance, the other thing we’ve talked about today is that people can go out of the country for a period of time, and then they’re not eligible for the heating allowance. I believe it’s four weeks, and I believe they can go out a number of times at that rate. Again, it’s another layer of red tape. How on earth are we ever going to find out—our sniffer dogs and our detector dogs at the border, they’re absolutely fantastic, but this doesn’t pass the sniff test. What are we going to do? Our customs officers are busy looking for drugs and they’re busy looking for people that shouldn’t be coming into the country, and now we’re going to ask them to actually target people who are going out of the country for a holiday in the cold and getting away with not paying back their heating allowance.

💬 Hon Kelvin Davis: Barbara, that’s stupid.

The other thing—well, it is stupid. It is stupid. So when we get to the committee stage, I want you to actually—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Excuse me, not “you”—thank you.

—explain to me—sorry, Madam Assistant Speaker; I would like the Minister to explain to me why that is so stupid.

We’ve had a number of conversations throughout this debate about targeting. We had Jan Logie stand up before, and she talked about targeting creating stigma. Now, most people, when you go to them and you offer them the opportunity for help, if they know the places to go and they know the resources they can use, they are very, very relieved by an offer of help. We have a very good example of that, and that is—I’m just using it as an example relating to stigma and targeting—in the area of mental health. We have spent a lot of time targeting—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Bill.

Yeah, no, it’s an example related to the bill. We are talking about targeting. For so long people on mental health have felt targeted, and now they’re free. Actually, they’re owning up, and it’s a great relief to them all to be able to stand up and say that—you know, bring it out in the open and get some help. So I don’t think Jan Logie’s argument stacks up.

If we use targeting, and we use it to help find people that need help, and we actually have the right services and programmes set up around those people, we have a far better chance of lifting those people out of poverty. So you can talk about 88,000 people being lifted out of poverty by a certain date, and I think most people in this country would be very thrilled if that were to happen, but everybody’s watching with interest, because you cannot do that with a policy like this alone. You have to be out there. You have to be targeting people. You have to know who they are. You ask anybody in the community who those people are—they know, and those people are quite prepared to go out and offer help to those people that need it, with the right structures around them.

The last point I want to make is about the Best Start package, and I don’t think anyone in this House would want to deny people with young families who need that money. I also need to inform Jan Logie that this side of the House doesn’t believe that babies are made in factories. We actually know where they come from, despite her comments before. I’ve just recently had a new grandchild, and they’re very precious. But we don’t need to give that money to people that are quite well off. It’s one of those things where if people don’t need it, why should we, irrespective of whether they need it or not, pay it to them? It just uses money. Why do we give it away to people that don’t need it? All it does is it uses money for things that we could use for something else.

💬 Hon Member: Something like tax cuts?

💬 Hon Member: Lack of imagination.

Yeah. It’s just a complete lack of logic and policy in putting this bill together. Despite the 43 days, there’s a lot of work to be done on this bill. I wish there was a select committee stage, because there’s a whole lot of things that are red tape from a red party.

💬 Hon Peeni Henare: Sit down and let’s move on.

Peeni, you were asking me to stand up before.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order!

I’ve got six seconds to go—three seconds to go—there we go; I’ll sit down. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

It’s with absolute delight that I get to rise and speak on the Families Package (Income Tax and Benefits) Bill. This is exactly the type of legislation that this side of the House entered into this Parliament to do. What it does is it absolutely flips on its head the last nine years and the trajectory that we’ve been going on that the last Government has led us down.

But before I turn to the substantives, I just want to make a comment on the previous speaker, Barbara Kuriger’s, speech. She said, “Now, why would we give money to people that don’t need it?” Exactly. That’s a great point, because every single one of us was going to get an extra thousand bucks a week, and we don’t need it. The reality is the people that do need it are the people up in Te Teko, the people up Te Ka’a, the people up in Tolaga. Those whānau need that cash in their back pocket.

Now, what I was just thinking about, because the last time I was in Te Ka’a—you guys probably don’t get up there except to go to your fancy holiday homes, but when I go up there I’m dealing with the nannies and the koros. I’m thinking of Haki McRoberts and the whānau up there. When I step into their homes they’re not that warm, and they don’t have a lot of cash in their back pockets. What they’re saying to me—there were almost tears when I spoke to some of them, when we talked about what the implications of this legislation would be for those nannies and those koros up the coast. And when I talked to their mokopuna, and I said, “No, you know what, Nan and Koro, they’re going to get an extra 700 bucks to help pay for the heat.”, they were stoked, because what that meant was that they could ensure that their nannies and their koros wouldn’t be sleeping on the floor in their kitchen next to the ovens, as they’re currently doing and as they’ve been currently doing under the last Government. Go and see it for yourselves, because if you haven’t seen it, then I say that you haven’t been out to provincial New Zealand.

Now, I know that the member Barbara Kuriger represents a provincial seat, but I don’t know whether that member spends a lot of time with those that aren’t in the upper echelons. I’ll tell you what: there are so many people out there in our rural provincial electorates that are getting in touch with me right now saying thank you—thank you for—

💬 Hon Member: Why didn’t they vote for you?

Well, I actually picked up a few extra votes. I was pretty surprised myself, but anyway, that’s a point for another day. But what they are saying is “Thank you—thank you to a compassionate Labour-led Government; thank you, the Hon Grant Robertson, for building on the movement that started in our previous Labour Government; thank you, the Hon Chris Hipkins, for introducing a raft of amendments that dump the prior legislation that did nothing to educate our kids.” I don’t want to go on and on this evening, but I want to wholeheartedly swing in behind and say thank you to our executive for the stunning job that you’re doing. I commend this bill to the House.