Taxation (Annual Rates for 2020-21, Feasibility Expenditure, and Remedial Matters) Bill

Members, we now come to the debate on Part 3. This is the debate on clauses 66 to 102, containing amendments to other enactments. The question is that Part 3 stand part.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It was a bit previous before the dinner break on my tabled amendment to GST on roaming charges, and so I’m very happy to take a call on it now and ask the Minister a couple of questions. But before I do, and in relation to that, I want to quote the report the Finance and Expenditure Committee received from our independent specialist tax adviser Therese Turner, someone whom I have very high regard for. She’s fiercely intelligent on these matters and she doesn’t take a backward step. In her overall comment on the bill, she said this: “I’m of the view that making significant changes at the select committee stage of a bill is fraught with the danger of unintended consequences as it’s impossible to identify and deal with every practical situation to which changes may apply.” I find that both prophetic and ironic, given what we’ve just been debating, that we’ve had for some hours, and that the finance committee wasn’t even able to consider changes to it because it never went to that.

In respect of GST on outbound mobile roaming services, the committee heard a number of very, very smart people saying this is not necessary. They were strongly opposed to it. Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand said the changes were inconsistent with the destination principle. The proposals seek to impose GST on a supply which is consumed outside of New Zealand. That’s the fundamental principle of the GST Act, which for 35 years has been lauded as the exemplar globally because of its comprehensive nature. There are very few exceptions to the tax on goods and services provided. One of them—well, it’s not even an exception; it’s zero rated—is exports, and this isn’t even an export. This is something that is not even provided in New Zealand to a person who’s in New Zealand. I mean, it breaches every principle of the Goods and Services Tax Act.

The Corporate Taxpayers Group, which successive Ministers of Revenue used to listen to, said the changes will result in costly software upgrades for the telecommunications industry. Deloitte says the revenue that may be obtained from this measure is minimal and not commensurate with the costs involved. So not only is it wrong in principle, it’s wrong practically, because an efficient tax system seeks to raise more revenue than it costs to collect. Now, this is a very interesting nuance to that principle because the costs of collection don’t fall on IRD; they actually fall on agents who are not even gaining the revenue, and so this is just wrong all round.

Ms Turner made a recommendation to the committee that the measure be withdrawn from the bill and be reconsidered at a time when international travel settles into its new normal. So I do want to hear from the Minister about whether he took advice from officials on that, because I know they were pretty firm in committee that they didn’t agree that this broke any of the principles, but also just to inform him, as he now knows, that I have tabled an amendment that deletes these clauses altogether because the sensible thing to do, and the advice that we received from our adviser, was let’s not put this through in haste. It may have significant consequences, not necessarily for IRD but for the people who are going to be charged with reporting that revenue and essentially collecting it on behalf of the Crown.

So I’m just trying to remember which of the clauses they are now. We’re now where? Part 3. I should probably find it.

We should just dispense with it. This is not necessary. It’s not good law, it’s not efficient law, and it breaches every principle of that very, very good piece of legislation, the Goods and Services Tax Act. And as I come to it—here we are—I will be able to inform the House that the relevant clauses that I seek to delete are—lost to me.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: 85.

85, is that right? Thank you, Mr Brownlee. They’re unnecessary, and my amendment, which I seek members’ support to agree with, is that those clauses be deleted.

In relation to the compliance cost point that the Hon Michael Woodhouse has made, I’m advised that the implementation cost, which is a one-off cost, is estimated to be $1 million, but the annual revenue benefit—and that’s an annual review benefit—is $7 million. In the context of GST, where we generally require people to account for GST if they’ve got $60,000 of annual turnover, which represents only around $9,000 of GST revenue, I think members can see that the scale of this is worthy of the attention of the Inland Revenue Department and that the compliance costs relative to the long-term revenue gain are substantial.

In respect of why we are doing this now, it is to adopt an OECD recommendation, because at the moment there is both double taxation and double non-taxation at times—so, under-taxation. Given that in practice, people increasingly, when they travel overseas, take their mobile device with them, the OECD recommendation—which has been adopted by a lot of other OECD countries already—is that the country that is the source country, if you like, of the person going overseas collects GST on the service that is delivered to that person when they are overseas through their New Zealand providers, and we don’t collect GST, which theoretically we could, in respect of services that are consumed by overseas people with their devices on roaming when they come and roam in New Zealand. So that’s the reason.

Point of order, Madam Chairperson. The final point I will make is a point of order, and that is that this is an amendment which has revenue consequences and it has not been filed more than 24 hours in advance of the bill being considered. Therefore, I submit that it’s out of order and shouldn’t be voted upon.

I appreciate Minister Parker’s comprehensive reply to that. The reality is just about every tax bill has income consequences. This is not material, but if he chooses to exercise that discretion, then it will rule the amendment out of order at the appropriate time. That doesn’t stop me from discussing it. I want him to check with officials whether or not the million-dollar price tag for implementing this was their own costs, because, actually, what the submitters said to us was that it was going to cost them much, much more than that and more than the total revenue that would be collected by the Crown, and that was the point I was making about the nuanced difference between these from an efficiency perspective. The income is internalised to the Crown, but the costs are externalised to the agents who are collecting the GST on their behalf.

Now, I want to go to the particular principle of this about double taxation or double non-taxation. Firstly, the Minister mentions the OECD. Well, frankly, we are the exemplar of good goods and services tax legislation, not necessarily the countries that make up the OECD. In respect of the double taxation or double non-taxation, the solution to that—if indeed there is double non-taxation, and I’m not even sure that there is that—is that if an overseas person comes to New Zealand and their roaming devices hook in to Spark or 2degrees or whoever their agent overseas’ partner is here in New Zealand, then they are consuming a service onshore in New Zealand for which the fee should have GST added to it, in the same way that when they arrive in New Zealand and they go to a cafe and they buy a meal that they would have bought at home had they been at home, there’s still GST on that.

So if we are to adopt a consistent principle of taxing once, we should tax overseas people on their telecommunications charges here, and not impose GST on global roaming charges when New Zealanders are overseas. That would be the correct way to fix this, not what IRD are recommending. I’m not sure what the two-way trade is in global roaming charges. It probably favours the overseas telecom providers, given how much they blimmin charge us when we get overseas. Actually, to the degree that there is more or less the same number of people coming and going, it’s probably revenue-neutral, but it’s in principle a much purer approach to apply GST on domestic charges used by overseas people coming here, and not on roaming charges used by New Zealanders overseas.

I’m advised that the estimate of the cost of software upgrades has actually come to the Revenue from the industry.

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Well, that’s not what they told us.

That’s what I’m advised, and they’re confident about that. In respect of the double taxation issue, I’m advised that a number of countries, such as the UK and the EU, are already adopting the OECD guidelines. So that would result in double taxation if we were to tax them for their consumption of roaming services when they were in New Zealand. It would also make it impractical for foreign telco suppliers to sell global or regional roaming packs that include New Zealand, because at the time their consumer uses the roaming services, they may be required to apportion roaming charges depending on each country’s GST or VAT, which becomes impractical for them. I think I’ve dealt with the other issues already.

There is a clause in this part, clause 88, “Section 11 amended (Zero-rating of goods)”, and in it, it talks about replacing in the principal Act, in section 11(8D)(a), the words “a supply that is” with “a supply that wholly or partly consists of”, and paragraph (b), which says, “delete paragraph (b) does not apply”. So you then go through subclauses (2), (3), (4) of that, and subclause (5), but you come to subclause (5), and it says “Subsections (1) to (4)”—that’s above—“apply to a supply made by a person on or after 30 June 2014, except for a supply for which the person takes a tax position”, and then it says, “(a) in the period beginning 30 June 2014 and ending before the date in which this Act receives the Royal assent; and (b) that is inconsistent with the amendments made by subsections (1) to (4).” Subclauses (1) to (4), of course, talk about changing the principal Act and then, of course, it all being backdated to 2014. What is the reason for that retrospectivity, or what is gained by that in this particular instance, and is it related to the previous zero rating of telecommunication services, or does it have a much broader application that might catch various activities unintended for such a broad net?

Does the Minister want to answer that, or should I keep talking on?

💬 Hon David Parker: Could I ask the member to refer me to the page and the clause number? I think we’re—

Oh, sorry—yes. Page 62 of the bill, Part 3, clause 88, “Section 11 amended (Zero-rating of goods)”.

Perhaps while the Minister looks at that, I might look at one or two other aspects of Part 3 and carry on from where Mr Woodhouse was speaking, and the sort of inexplicable decision to go after what’s estimated to be $7 million worth of GST collected on global roaming charges. Now, look, some of that global roaming charge will have been calculated at a time where there was significant international travel, where New Zealanders travelled significantly for recreational purposes. What we’re likely to see in the next few years is New Zealanders travelling more for business reconnection, more for business expansion, and for a development of business activity as we try and grow exports out of this country, and you’d have to ask: was that ever a consideration for the rapacious IRD when they made this particular piece of advice available to the Government?

💬 Further: did some Government Minister not think, “Well, we spend a lot of money through New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and through Callaghan Innovation trying to increase exports, trying to grow export markets? Is it really necessary for us to try and collect some money off those businesses as they go about their work overseas?”

Now, the Minister will probably say to me, “Well, if they are a business, this would be an expense they can collect. They can claim the GST back on it.” So that raises the question of why, then, in an environment where we are likely to have a predominance of people who can claim the GST back being required to pay it—why spend the money on it in the first place? It seems to me it’s very much at the tiny end of the scale. If the Minister perhaps is now able to think about that previous question, I’m happy to sit down and have that answered.

I’m not yet in a position to answer the very technical question that’s been raised in respect of clause 88 of the bill, although I do note that it came back from select committee unmodified. It is a very technical change and I will get the answer as soon as I can.

In respect of the other point that the member made, that would be true in respect of being able to offset that against expenditure in the GST return. That would be true in respect of businesses, but not individuals that aren’t travelling for business purposes.

But that’s unlikely to be a large number of people in the next short while.

Can I just say with regards to clause 88—where the Minister has said, “Well, it came back from the select committee unamended.”—that, as everyone in this House knows, the select committee process was ridiculously short. It was a very fast process, hurried through, and under a time frame that probably didn’t allow the full extent of coverage or scrutiny on all of these passages. It’s why we actually have a House committee session as well, and, of course, interestingly, the Government was in such a hurry to get this bill through that it failed to put in front of the select committee the 50-page Supplementary Order Paper that’s been provided today. So it’s not unreasonable to ask that simple question about what it is that makes, or appears to make, some of these provisions so retrospective.

💬 Damien Smith: Madam Chair.

Well, I’m on my feet with a few minutes to go—no, look, I’ll let someone else take a call while the answer’s being provided by the Minister.

I now have an answer to the Hon Gerry Brownlee’s earlier question. This, I am advised, is a taxpayer-friendly provision. It’s got nothing to do with GST on roaming services. It’s about the zero rating for commercial land leases, and under New Zealand’s GST system, we zero-rate sales of land between GST-registered businesses. The zero rating also applies to the transfer of lease agreements on commercial land as these are types of interest in land, and these remedial amendments are proposed to ensure that the compulsory zero rating rules that apply to leases of commercial land work as intended.

In terms of the retrospectivity, the proposed remedial amendments apply retrospectively as from 30 June 2014, as that’s the date when the provisions that are being amended first took effect. So the fix goes back to that date. There is, however, a savings provision to preserve the tax positions of any taxpayers who took tax positions based on the provisions that existed prior to the proposed remedial amendments. So my understanding is that no one will be worse off and some people will be better off.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That was a very interesting line of questioning from the Hon Michael Woodhouse, and I think it was very pertinent. I suppose it goes back to: what are you trying to achieve as a Government? We’ve already heard earlier tonight that even though the Government was quite clear it wasn’t going to increase taxes, it’s going to raise $44 billion from some of the proposals we talked about before, and here’s another example with the GST on roaming services.

The telco companies thought it was a real imposition to be able to put this in place, and for the reality of it, I think the estimate was actually $6 million to $7 million of GST revenue before, of course, COVID. Of course, we’re now in a situation where the world has changed, and actually most people are not travelling. With the advent of Zoom, or the discovery of Zoom, and other such media, it’s unlikely they’re going to have the same level of international travel. In fact, some of the predictions of international travel show a dramatic drop, not just because we don’t have people flying due to health restrictions but because of a reset of the way people will conduct their businesses. We’ve already seen that domestically, where we don’t have the same level of domestic travel in New Zealand because people are just choosing not to fly on planes, because they don’t need to.

They’ve now got just as good a mechanism with Zoom, and as to the implication around roaming services and the GST, first of all, I think we all now will recognise—unless we’re living under a stone—that the likelihood we’re going to get the $6 million to $7 million of gross revenue from GST that was estimated before COVID is one heck of an assumption that that’s going to continue. So it could easily foresee that the revenue we’re talking about may be as little as $3 million—halved, easily.

First of all, I suppose the question is: has the Minister actually sought any update on recent revenue estimates, given the changes in business practices and, certainly, the impact of COVID? But I think it gives rise to a much more principled discussion, which is: how mean will you be as a Government? How mean do you want to be as the Minister of Revenue? Do you really want to go after businesses for three million bucks when it’s going to cost the telcos to actually put in place the software, which will have an ongoing cost—I note that the Minister tried to imply it was all a one-off cost. It will be an administrative requirement to provide that advice, and so the Government can rapaciously continue to tax these people and achieve the GST returns.

But how much more do you want to impose on business people who legitimately want to go overseas so that they can actually go and create new export markets, grow the economy? Isn’t that what we need to do in a post-COVID world, particularly when we’ve lost $16 billion of international tourism and $5 billion of international students coming to New Zealand? Don’t we actually want to promote and help? Isn’t it time to actually look at a policy initiative like that and say “Oops!”?

Actually, just as the Minister can slap on the Table today Supplementary Order Paper 23 which is like 50, 60 pages long and which leads to a massive amount of people texting in concern, it’s just as easy if we just picked up the Hon Michael Woodhouse’s amendment and go, “That’s right—the world has changed.” Why don’t we just get rid of this clause, because it, basically, is not going to bring any new income? It’s just an imposition on business people and on businesses. It’s a waste of time, so why don’t we be practical? Why don’t we look at how we’re going to grow the economy, and, gee, every day we’re borrowing about $110 million on the bond markets—so that’s about a minute’s worth. In the last five minutes I’ve spoken, I’ve probably blown the three million bucks that you hoped to get as revenue, Minister. Don’t be so mean, Minister.

The member is correct that the Estimates were prepared pre-COVID, and obviously the short-term GST collected on this will be less, and, actually, the benefits to people roaming in New Zealand from overseas will also commensurately be less from this change. None the less, we expect that the short to medium term impact will be overcome as we return to international travel, which is expected to rebound after a successful COVID-19 vaccine.

💬 Andrew Bayly: Not fully.

Well, time will tell.

💬 Andrew Bayly: No one is even predicting that at the moment.

Well, we’ll see. I think the member’s probably right that in the next few years it will be less than was previously predicted. But, as I said, the compliance cost is still thought to be a one-off cost of $1 million, and we think that, overall, it’s wise to proceed.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I think we recall from the last debate that this was an area where, suddenly, COVID and its application and its effect on markets and commerce is being discounted. We clearly know that for the next couple of years, we’re not coming on stream the way we were before and that there was a simple solution to this part of the bill, which was to delay this and have more consultation with the industry to May 2024, or scrap it altogether—scrap it altogether—because the fiscal benefits and the monetised costs and the non-monetised costs don’t make any sense.

I’ll call this a stealth tax as well, because businesses—and it’ll be spread across ordinary New Zealanders as well—will not even see this or register this, but it’s our job to pick it up and make some sense out of it. So one of the proposals that I have to the IRD and the Minister and the advisers is to go down those two channels, and let’s take it back and make some sense of it. We delay the implementation date or we scrap it altogether.

I appreciate the member’s concern for the effect of this on business. There is no net effect for business, because they, of course, would be able to claim this GST back in their own GST returns as an input.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A lot of the detail sometimes is in the definitions of the bill, and I note that in Part 3—I’m looking specifically at clause 67, Minister—the definition of “tax” in subclause (4)(e) looks at “replace ‘for the purposes of sections 6, 6A,’ with ‘for the purposes of Part 10B,’ ”. Now, if you look at Part 10B of the Tax Administration Act, I understand that’s in relation to the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme. So is what the Minister’s proposing to do with this particular clause—

💬 Hon David Parker: Which clause, sorry?

So it’s clause 67, and it’s the widening of the definition of “tax”, and it’s in relation to the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme. My assumption is that, obviously, it’s a remedial. So if I look at what it’s intending to do, is it correct to say that that particular provision in Part 3 is looking to widen the definition of tax to allow a tax refund owed to a taxpayer—to allow them to directly transfer that to their outstanding Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme, or the amount that is underneath their loan?

My assumption is, understanding the tax Acts, it’s possibly for compliance reasons, because if I understand how tax refunds—well, I understand how tax refunds work. The taxpayer has to go to IRD. Unless it’s automatically offset against other tax types, then the taxpayer has to go to IRD and has to request that it be offset to a particular tax type if it’s not within the definition of tax. So if my reading is correct, this remedial, which is in clause 67, page 56 of the bill, and around widening the definition of tax in Part 10B to include the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme—I just want to clarify with the Minister: is it the intention of that particular remedial to allow the taxpayers to avoid tax compliance costs, for it to be automatically offset against their Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme amount that is due?

Yes, at the election of the taxpayer. So yes, the member is correct that a member could elect that their tax refund is applied directly to repayment of a loan of that type.

Referring again to the matters raised by the two prior speakers as to why wouldn’t we delay the provisions in relation to GST on outbound roaming services: in addition to the fact that businesses get it back, I’m advised that the proposed change doesn’t come into effect until 1 April 2022 anyway, which is over 12 months from now. A further delay of another two years, which would be a total delay of 3½ years, is in our view not justified and it would also come at a revenue cost. On that basis, I’ll also be seeking that the Chair rule that amendment out, which would delay its coming into force.

I wish to return to this issue in Part 3 around the GST treatment of mobile roaming services, because this was something that we explored in the select committee and we weren’t really able to get to the bottom of the rationale for the changes. Essentially, this imposes GST on roaming services in a way that it hasn’t been done previously. It’s a new tax, and what I want to understand from the Minister is what work, if any, he or his officials have done to judge how much revenue this new measure will bring in and how that marries up versus the additional compliance costs that will be created in chasing that revenue and, specifically, where those compliance costs will fall, because it has been my understanding that the compliance costs, in order to gather that GST will, in fact, fall particularly on telecommunications providers so that the people who are going to have to chase this revenue on behalf of the taxpayer are actually the private companies whose customers are affected by it.

I think it’s important that we have an understanding of whether or not the Minister sees there being a threshold here where the revenue being obtained would be so little as to outweigh the benefit of having this clause at all—that is, potentially having some sort of a review mechanism to allow for the fact that if the telecommunications industry has to undertake incredibly costly upgrades in order to chase what may be a small amount of revenue, the Minister or IRD would admit at that point that this is a poor idea. National Party members expressed in our minority view that we don’t believe that the existing rules are inconsistent with best practice as has been claimed, and we believe that mobile roaming charges should continue to be zero rated. They are exported services consumed by New Zealanders overseas, and applying GST to such services, we continue to believe, is inconsistent with the Goods and Services Tax Act. So it is in that context that I ask: how much revenue will this get, how much will it cost to get that revenue, and who bears the cost of gathering that revenue?

I’ve previously addressed both of those points.

Just a brief intervention following up from my earlier intervention. The Minister challenged my assessment that the costs on the telecommunication industry for the GST on roaming charges would be much higher than he thought, and he’s right in terms of the submissions that were made—at least that I can see, and I’ve got plenty of them in front of me. It was initially estimated to be $1 million. I have a recollection that the select committee did actually hear from a submitter in the telecommunication industry that suggested that was a very, very low estimate, but I cannot find the written version of that submission, so I have to accept the point. But I also add my support for the view that Mr Bayly put in that the $7 million of revenue was also significantly exaggerated in the context of COVID, and submitters did acknowledge that because of a significant reduction in the amount of people travelling to New Zealand, that revenue was likely to be heroically overstated.

Nevertheless, my substantive point is actually on the principle, not the costs, and those principles still apply. He mentioned the OECD, and, indeed, we heard quite a bit about this from submitters, particularly the EU, and the EU is different. The UK and the EU are quite different where, essentially, they are domestic providers for the purposes of roaming, where one can actually take their own telecommunications provider with them from one country to the next. That’s not the case and it’s not possible to do that in New Zealand or for New Zealanders to do that overseas. They have to hook in to a local telecommunications provider. It is still a service being provided to a person overseas by an overseas organisation, and for that reason, it should not be subject to GST.

I’ve been handed by officials the submission from Deloitte to the select committee where, on behalf of Vodafone, Spark, and 2degrees, they estimated the upfront cost of implementing the systems changes to capture GST on outbound roaming would cost approximately $1 million.

Oh, thank you, Madam Chair. I was just hoping that some of the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee from the other side were going to make a contribution, so sorry for the delay. I do acknowledge that Ms Edmonds is doing contributions. She seems to be holding up the flag for the Government in supporting this bill tonight. I’m just wondering where our good chair is tonight. I see him sitting over there, the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I’m hoping he’s going to make a contribution.

💬 Hon Member: Head down.

Head down—I don’t know what he’s doing. This is the theme today, which is how we’re going to tax more people today.

Tim van de Molen: Desperate for a call.

Desperate for a call, and hopefully he might, given he is the chair and normally plays a part in any tax bill. It’s very rare that they don’t.

I’m worried, because I think this Minister of Revenue is going to go down as a mean-spirited person. I know at a personal level he’s not, but you—and when I say “you”, I’m referring to Minister Parker, of course, not Madam Chair. She’s a lovely person. But I’m finding the Minister’s principles about the way he’s approaching tax tonight to be concerning. If we were in normality, I could probably understand the approach that he is adopting, but we are not. We are in a situation where we’ve got many thousands of businesses facing the likelihood of having to close their doors and having to fire, remove, release many employees that will be valued people that they’ve worked with over time, and I think there are times when Governments need to smell the roses, look at what’s happening around the world, and look at what’s happening in New Zealand. I’m concerned that we’re ending up with a tax bill that is one that is deeply unfair.

I’d urge the Minister to reflect on this going forward, because already today the amendments that have been discussed are quite wide ranging around housing—and I know we’re not talking about this in Part 3, and I’m going to get to that, but I think there is an issue with the approach of the Minister.

I just really want to turn to something a bit different. The unclaimed money aspects of this Part 3 are quite detailed and are quite important—

💬 David Seymour: Tell us all about it, please.

—because if you look at clause 100D—and I’m sure, fortunately, I think Mr Damien Smith has been following this very closely, actually, in finance and expenditure. But the unclaimed portion relates to money that hasn’t been captured or claimed in excess of $100, so it could be quite substantial amounts of money, and there’s a new definition of what that means. It refers to “A person, firm, body, or institution … who holds or owes an amount of money is the holder of that money under this subsection if— … the money is not unclaimed … if the money is excluded from being unclaimed [or] the elective holder chooses to be treated as the holder of the money.” My point here is there’s an element in here that I don’t understand. I wish I’d discussed it more at the select committee, but, as was alluded to before, this bill has been rushed through the select committee, and then we get dumped with this big Supplementary Order Paper 23 today, which makes this effort somewhat wasted, in many respects. But the issue—

Tim van de Molen: Chin up.

I know I’ve got to chin up, yes, but it’s the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders I’m more worried about, and I’m sure they don’t have their chin up. They will be watching this debate with much interest, thinking how much money they’ve lost tonight and what they’re going to do with their houses that they’re going to have to sell and pay a lot of tax on.

But I want to just refer to new section 4(5) in clause 100D. It says, “Money payable by a holder to an owner does not meet the requirements … if the money is payable—(a) as a dividend by the holder as a company to the owner as a shareholder”, and also the second part, paragraph (b): “as a rebate by the holder as a mutual association to the owner as a member in relation to the trading transactions of the member”.

Sorry, Minister, it is quite an important aspect, because we want to make sure that people are entitled to get their unclaimed money. I think there’s a lot of improvements in the bill—I fully accept that—but there’s an element in here that probably needs elucidating.

I move, That the question be now put.

The question is that Brooke van Velden’s tabled amendments to amendments in Supplementary Order Paper 23 relating to Part 3 be agreed to.

Point of order, Madam Chairperson. Dr Webb moved that the question be put and the question wasn’t put. I just wonder if you could clarify whether or not that was the preceding motion, which would certainly have been opposed by the National Party, and we didn’t have the opportunity to record our vote on that motion.

When Dr Webb sought the closure motion, nobody else from the Opposition side sought another call. I declined the motion, and because no one else from your side of the House asked for a call, that’s why we went on. The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 3 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 23 be agreed to.

The Hon Michael Woodhouse’s tabled amendments to clauses 85 to 89 are out of order as 24 hours’ notice was not given for amendments that may have impact on the Government’s fiscal aggregates.

Point of order, Madam Chairperson. Sorry, I may have misheard. I heard the Noes were 35 on that last amendment. Did I hear that correctly, because I understood that ACT and National both opposed it, and you should have had 45?

Apologies. I read out the sheet as it was given to me. The Ayes are 75; the Noes are 45. The Ayes have it.

The Hon Michael Woodhouse’s tabled amendments—sorry, that was what we’ve just voted on. The question is that Part 3 as amended stand part.