Taxation (Budget 2021 and Remedial Measures) Bill

Members, our final debate relates to clauses 1 and 2, the preliminary clauses. The question is that clauses 1 and 2 stand part.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to make a brief comment about the title and commencement, particularly given the conversation we’ve just had about commencement. My initial comment is I really hope we’ve got it right, because the likelihood is that we could be back here in two or three months’ time going, “Oh, clause 8 should have been clause 4, and section 134(2) was really meant to be ‘1 April 2020-whatever’.” This has been a very confusing conversation, so I implore the Government to get better at passing legislation so that we don’t have confusing commencement conversations like we’ve just had.

I’m not one, normally, to give trite speeches about what the title of a bill should be, or that it should be this bill or that bill, but I feel compelled on this occasion—

💬 Anna Lorck: Come on!

It’s all right, Anna Lorck, I’ve had my Berocca. I can go all night. Don’t worry—no magnesium near me. But I think what’s on the tin is definitely what’s not in the bill—

💬 Chris Bishop: She’s back—she’s b-b-b-b-back!

With a bounce in her step. It says it’s the Taxation (Budget 2021—

💬 Hon Member: “B-B-B-Budget”.

—and Remedial Measures) “B-B-B-Bill”, but it’s got little to do with taxation and, in fact, now what we know is that this Government really wants to throw lots of taxes at people and never ever wants to cut them. We heard unequivocally that threshold changes, lowering the top tax rate, lifting the threshold for the bottom rates, cutting that gap between 17.5 percent and 30 percent is not even something they want to have a conversation about, and that’s because all they know how to do is tax.

“Remedial Measures”—well, I don’t know how remedial they really were. Sure, it was a muck-up. It’s a fixing of the muck-up that was made, and, boy, if that’s the way legislation is written, it’s no wonder that people get confused. It went through select committee. It went through expert submissions. Generally speaking, the IRD bill writers—who are not Parliamentary Counsel Office; they’re usually IRD staff themselves—do a heck of a good job. If anybody has read or scanned the Income Tax Act, it is a massive, massive document, and how on earth tax agents can actually fight their way through it, I don’t know, but that’s what they’re paid to do. So these are muck-up measures where “Remedial” is a euphemism for fixing muck-ups, and I hope that we don’t have to waste any more of this House’s time doing just that.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. My colleague Michael Woodhouse says he’s not one to give trite speeches on the title of bills. I, on the other hand, am exactly that person. And I know that I’ll receive great support across that side of the Chamber, and no doubt from all those watching at home or perhaps both of them by this stage, and greetings to both my parents.

The title of the bill is actually quite significant in this case. It’s a taxation Act—of course it is, because that’s the whole point of most Labour Budgets or Labour-led Budgets. We’re now into Labour-led rather than Labour led by the nose by New Zealand First Government. So I suppose some things have changed even though far too much has stayed the same.

So it’s not just a bill that’s taxing. It’s actually been very taxing tonight. And I think we’ve all done our best to get our head around it, and that’s been—

💬 Hon Peeni Henare: Do us all a favour and call it quits, Chief.

I beg your pardon? No, I’ve missed the contribution from Peeni Henare, the honourable, excuse me—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: You didn’t miss much.

I didn’t miss much apparently. Well, I mean, I shouldn’t throw stones from inside a glass house, so we’ll leave it at that.

But it’s also a significant title of a bill because not only does it relate to taxation inevitably on this the day of Budget 2021 but it refers explicitly to Budget 2021, it’s giving effect to that, but I wonder if it could just about apply to any Budget that this Government passes. And the reason I say that is because no doubt in 12 months’ time we’re going to have yet another Budget from this Government that contains much of the same material because the good intentions haven’t changed, the lack of delivery hasn’t changed, and that is why we will, no doubt, be back legislating and re-legislating and unlegislating, in the case of some of these measures, and then re-unlegislating if there’s any errors compounding the errors, and maybe remedial measures may be needed for the remedial measures themselves. I think I can only conclude that by saying that—again, referencing the comments of the Hon Michael Woodhouse, he characterised that previous change as a “muck-up”. Some people at home might be watching Parliament and think that it characterises something that rhymes with muck-up, but I won’t, obviously, dwell on that, that would be—

💬 Hon Peeni Henare: Stop being a suck up—stop being a suck up.

That’s actually a very good comment. And I hope that Hansard has captured that from Peeni Henare. And I take it all back, what I endorsed before about his lack of contribution to the debate. It’s nice to have a Labour member in the Hansard on this bill other than mere closure motions.

So anyway, my final comment, and I do promise you it is my final one, is in relation to the commencement date. And it’s not that gnarly detail—[Interruption]—I’m being encouraged. I fear not in sincerity, but nevertheless. [Interruption] Oh, OK. No. I will nevertheless put us all out of our misery in relation to this contribution.

But I did want to make a serious point about the commencement, which is that it is entirely offensive to anyone who has any kinds of grammatical standards—and I expect others to cross the floor, and I’m not going to look at them but they know who they are—when I say that we should not have a phrase “come into force on 1 April 2021.” That date is in the past. It should read “Sections 5, 6, 8(1) and (3), and 9(1) came into force on 1 April 2021.” And I look to the Minister to propose or, perhaps, accept a Supplementary Order Paper that I might put to change—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: The whole Budget’s a great leap backwards, so why don’t we just go back in time?

Well, that’s right. Well actually, Michael Woodhouse points out, again very perceptively, and I’m leaning a lot on his contributions tonight in making my own, that the whole Budget is a bit of a leap back. I sort of wonder if the Budget also contained an announcement about R & D tax credits for time travel. I think we’ll shortly have an announcement about “time travel is soon to be made possible last year” or something like that. But nevertheless, we’ve been in a sort of Back to the Future kind of frame today: we’ve had compulsory unionism, the creation of railway wagon construction yards, and a huge national debt. So it’s back to the future with Labour. But as far as this bill is concerned, we’re back, we’re forward, we’re in, we’re out, and it’s hard to know whether we’re up or down.

But, in any case, if the Minister could give some thought to the title of the bill, and also that very serious point about the tense and the tension, indeed, of the coming into force on a date that is in the past as opposed to the fact that it had come into force, or we should say came into force, that would be much appreciated.

I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

The question is that clause 1 stand part.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Taxation (Budget 2021 and Remedial Measures) Bill and reports it without amendment.

The question is, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Third Reading