Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill.

SPEAKER: The legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I move, That the Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill be now read a first time.

Tonight in this House, we are going to reduce taxes paid by working people for the first time in 14 years. This tax relief is long, long overdue. It is owed to New Zealanders who work hard every day and yet have given more and more of that hard-earned wage to the Government, only to watch that Government over these past six years do less with their money than they would have done with it; deliver them poorer results; spray their money everywhere; drive up inflation; drive up interest rates; and leave them, the working people of this country, in a cost of living crisis.

I’m going to take you through how this bill delivers tax relief. But as I embark on this speech, here’s the question I think all the members here should be asking: who in this House, in their right mind, in a cost of living crisis, would oppose tax reduction for working people? The question we have to ask—because there is a party in this House that once called itself a party of the worker—is: will that party oppose working people being able to keep more of their own money? That is the question that I’m very interested to see answered tonight.

Because as members will be aware, today I delivered the coalition Government’s first Budget, and it addresses the urgent issues facing New Zealanders: the high cost of living. We are providing relief for New Zealanders and their families who have been suffering the effects of inflation; those New Zealanders who, when they’ve been standing in the supermarket checkout aisle, have watched the numbers flick on the screen and wondered if there’s enough money in the EFTPOS account this week to meet those groceries; those New Zealanders who, when they go home from work, see that petrol light on and think, “Just one day till payday; just one more day till I can fill it up.”; those New Zealanders who have said to their kids, “Sorry, no swimming lessons this year, kids. We can’t afford it anymore.” Well, this Government has heard the cries of those New Zealanders and we are going to give them what they deserve, which is tax relief.

It is prudent expenditure to give tax relief because actually you have to ask yourself this: is there anything that is a higher priority than helping people keep more of their own money while encouraging them to participate in work to contribute to our economy? Tax relief is an investment in increased productivity. The tax relief package that we are announcing today in this bill is very seriously targeted at families with children, at low and middle income people, because we know that they are the people who have suffered most through Labour’s cost of living crisis.

This bill gives effect to several measures. The first and biggest of the proposed amendments provides tax relief to individuals and families by increasing the personal income tax thresholds for the first time in 14 years. Raising the thresholds means that you get to keep more of the money you earned before you get moved into a higher tax bracket. We’ve had a situation in New Zealand where unlike many countries in the developed world who automatically adjust tax thresholds to compensate for the effects of inflation to allow for nominal wage growth, or unlike other countries in the world who, while not automatically, have stepped in to do it, our country hasn’t done it for 14 years.

So the effect is that even people on average incomes have been pushed into higher and higher tax brackets, forced to give away a higher proportion of every dollar they earn to the tax man. The effect of this has been that for a median income worker, for a typical worker, their wage now puts them in a much higher tax bracket than it once did. Even a minimum wage earner, if they work a few more hours a week, is paying 30c on the dollar in tax. So this bill that we set down tonight is addressing that.

Let’s step through how it works. So the lowest income tax rate, for example, is 10.5 percent. It currently applies to all income earned from a job up to $14,000. In an atmosphere of high inflation, people are being pushed into those higher tax brackets. Yet with reduced spending power, people are worse off and so is our economy. So we are changing that threshold to $15,600. That means from 31 July, someone on that level of income will be able to earn $1,600 more annually before they begin to pay the higher 17.5 percent tax rate. Currently, any personal income earned between $14,000 and $48,000 is taxed at 17.5 percent, and anything earned over that takes you into the next highest bracket of 30 percent. The new threshold for paying the 30 percent rate will be $53,501. That is $5,500 annually, which will be taxed more fairly at the lower rate of 17.5 percent instead of 30 percent.

Is it any wonder that even Michael Cullen’s Tax Working Group said that if you don’t adjust tax brackets for inflation, you destroy the progressivity of the tax system? That, actually—[Interruption]—well, the Tax Working Group acknowledged that if you don’t address fiscal drag, you make your tax system less progressive. This is actually about helping the low and middle income people and workers of this country. Then, as we step through, any income you earn over $70,000—and bear in mind, members, that the average wage is now $73,000; any income you earn over that is currently taxed at the higher rate of 33 percent. Well, we’re changing that threshold to $78,100 so more of your income will be taxed at the lower rate. The bottom line is this: our changes mean that people on low to middle incomes will pay less and they will be keeping more of what they earn.

Now, we have also got measures in this bill which ensure that tax relief is really targeted at those lower and middle income families. We are expanding eligibility for the independent earner tax credit to boost the wages of those earning $70,000 or less. This will boost their take-home pay. We are also increasing the in-work tax credit for working parents. This boost will ensure that those families who are really struggling with the cost of living will get more money in their after-tax pay.

Finally, this will also introduce the FamilyBoost payment. This is something that is particularly close to my heart because any of the people in this House who know people with young children will tell you that that is a really hard financial time in families’ lives. They face high housing costs as their family expands, often their working hours have been reduced as they juggle childcare, and then the childcare costs they face are often extremely high. Well, the FamilyBoost payment will ensure that working families can get up to 25 percent of a rebate of every dollar of childcare fee that they pay. The effect is up to $150 more for those families every fortnight. That is meaningful relief, and I know it will make a difference.

When I look at this tax bill and I think about what it represents, I think about the people who I have spoken to in recent months and who I talked to on the campaign trail; the people who had taken on extra jobs, Ubering at night just so they could pay the rent; the people who told me that they’d had to say no to chocolate biscuits at the supermarket because they couldn’t afford it anymore; the people who work two jobs, three jobs to put food on the table.

They watched while the last Government said that they needed every one of those dollars; they needed every one of those dollars in tax, and then they wasted it on three waters, on TVNZ-RNZ mergers, on more officials in the back office. That was an injustice, because, actually, working people deserve to keep more of their own money; they deserve a Government that will be as disciplined with its spending as they are. We have, in this Government, a Government that is committed to that; who has gone out and found the savings; found the reprioritisations, line by every line, so that we can put money where it counts: in the back pockets and bank accounts of New Zealanders.

I’ll leave you with these numbers: 727,000 households getting at least $75 more a fortnight; 187,000 households getting at least $100 more a fortnight; on average, households getting $60 a fortnight; and, on average, households with children getting $78 a fortnight. This is real relief, and the test for those who claim to represent working people is: would you really, really oppose it? Because if you do, shame on you.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Let me give you some numbers. Someone who earns $50,000 a year will end up with a tax cut of $15 a week. Someone who earns $60,000 a year, because of the interaction with the independent earner tax credit, will end up with $25 a week. Someone who earns $70,000 a year will end up with $15 a week. Someone who earns $80,000 a year will end up with $20 a week. Those are the numbers behind this type of shift in the tax thresholds, and that’s what they mean.

But there are some interesting effects of what’s going on and some interesting reactions to what’s going on with the tax cuts. For those of us who are still on Twitter, or, as it’s now known, X, there are some pretty instant reactions coming off there. Let me read some of them to you. Someone called Amazonia says, “My 90-year-old mum, facing a massive hike in rates”—

Hon Members: Thanks to you.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: —“gets a $4 per week increase.”

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Please don’t overuse the word “you” and bring the Speaker into the debate. Interjection is fine, but just be careful in your wording.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Ali says, “So grateful for my $7 a week tax cut. It was so worth gutting our public sector for it.” Darren says, “$10 billion in inflationary tax cuts no one wants, $12 billion borrowed during an inflation crisis to pay for it.” Mark says, “My tax cut is less than the increase in my kids’ bus fares—cool. My middle feels so less squeezed now.”, and that’s the reality: give with one hand, take with the other, and the taking has been greater and greater and greater from that side of the House.

The interesting thing is the way that these tax cuts have been presented in the Budget statement. The Government has set out a series of examples of what individuals or families might get, and, in an interesting move, it’s all been on a fortnight basis. That’s useful, because you can double the numbers by doing that. But the interesting one that I found fascinating was the one that went through the various adults and family combinations as to what they would earn, because they talked about a working couple—so two adults earning $150,000 each, per annum. Well, those are pretty well-off people in the first place, and they’re going to get one of the biggest tax cuts going. They’ll end up about $2,000 better off.

Andy Foster: It’s two average wages.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: No, if it’s $150,000 each—each, each, each, each—it adds up to $300,000. That’s a massive household income in this country, and they’re going to get one of the biggest tax cuts available. So there are some interesting ways of prioritising going on with these particular tax cuts.

But in this first speech, I want to direct the House’s attention to the revenue strategy set out in the Budget documents, as required by law. There’s a particular paragraph in it—it’s the second paragraph in it—that says, “The Government will operate a stable, predictable revenue system.”—that’s a good thing, of course. Then it says that the current main tax basis—personal income tax, company tax, and a broad-based GST—will continue to raise the bulk of Crown revenue, and that’s what happens at the moment. Then it says that with prudent control of spending, the Government does not see the need to seek major additional sources of revenue.

But in the briefing to the incoming Minister, in the scenarios that Treasury set out when this Government took office, it clearly pointed to a huge fiscal risk in out-years—not next year or the year after or the year after it, but there is a long-term risk where we know that Crown revenue is going to fall significantly under Crown expenditure. This is expenditure on health, on education, on welfare, and on all the things that we’d like to have in this country in order to ensure that all of our citizens are looked after—so that the pensioner who is facing a massive rates increase is looked after, so that the families who need to pay their prescription charges are looked after, so that ordinary people do well—and yet this Government is refusing to take responsibility for the long-term fiscal projections in this country.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Just to get rid of the surprise for the Government members, the Green Party will be opposing this bill today. The reason for that is that we come together as communities, as individuals, as neighbourhoods, as people in this country to form something together that we call society. The reason that we do that is so that we can achieve things together that no one individual could achieve alone. That looks like things like our hospitals and our schools. It looks like climate action, it looks like public transport, and it looks like mass State housing builds. That is the point of Government: to generate the revenue to pay for things that no one individual could pay for alone.

What we’ve heard from this Government today is their commitment to continue entrenching and deepening inequality in this country. They have pledged their allegiance to an unfair and unproductive tax system, with trickle-down tax cuts at the expense of pretty much everything else. To that effect, we saw in the financial reports from the Minister of Finance today some cherry-picked statements from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the OECD in order to justify some of the things that the Government has done. But what they have done in cherry-picking those statements is decide to intentionally neglect the point that both the IMF and the OECD, in line with market economic orthodoxy, have argued: for Aotearoa New Zealand to implement a capital gains tax—

Andy Foster: What else did they say, Chlöe?

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —in order to have a more productive and fairer tax system, where we do not simply see money funnelled into housing, Andy Foster, and we end up with a generation of more jobs and productivity.

So who are getting these tax cuts? Well, under the tax settings today as in this legislation, an average four-person family would receive approximately $126 from this Government. But under the Green Party’s tax plan, which we went to this election with, they would receive more than double that, at $288. We would also see the implementation of a tax-free threshold for those who are earning less, those with an income of less than $10,000. We would do that by implementing a wealth tax. And I know that that’s just anathema to the dogma that we hear from the Government parties, but let’s just unpack some of the facts that they have at their disposal and that they knowingly are neglecting and ignoring today.

A year ago, we had the Inland Revenue Department—and the Minister of Revenue is currently heckling me. We had a report that told us that the top 311 families in this country pay an effective tax rate of less than half of that of the average New Zealander. But, more so than that, they hold more wealth combined then the bottom 2.5 million New Zealanders. That’s not an accident. It is a consequence of a tax system that sees those at the top continue to accumulate more and more wealth and more and more power, at the expense of everyone else. That is what drives inequality and that is where poverty comes from.

We have also seen this Government knowingly make decisions to cut funding for the likes of Kāinga Ora, for the likes of rangatahi housing, in order to fund these tax cuts. And what does that say? Well, we have in the child poverty statistics, or rather the projections, released alongside this Budget today, that the Government has made no commitment to reducing child poverty in this country. It will plateau.

What all of this exposes is that we are not so much dealing with a cost of living crisis, as this Government campaigned on throughout the election last year; we are dealing with a cost of greed crisis, and we in the Greens are asking New Zealanders to connect the dots. While New Zealanders out there have paid record prices in rents, for their groceries, for their energy, guess who has made record capital gains and profits? It is the supermarket duopoly, it is the energy gentailers, and it is landlords—who this Government handed a $2.9 billion tax cut to, only to increase the cost of housing, as the Reserve Bank of this country says. Our ask, as the Greens, is to see New Zealanders not let this Government pull the wool over their eyes, because the truth is out there and the evidence is clear: this Government is knowingly increasing inequality.

I could offer that member, Chlöe Swarbrick, a woollen blanky to soften the reality that this country can’t afford to keep spending, keep taxing people. We have to have a change, and that’s what this Budget shows. We’ve heard from the Greens member her proposal for a wealth tax—it’s economic illiteracy. You can’t tax your country into prosperity. We’ve heard more slogans but no substance, no solutions. We can only grow our wealth so that we can offer better conditions for New Zealanders, so that New Zealanders can actually keep more of what they earn. We can also do that by shrinking the size of the State and making sure that the Government doesn’t have its hands deeper and deeper in people’s pockets.

We heard no solutions from Labour. They’re going to spend a lot more time in the wilderness before Kiwis look to them for salvation again. Once burned, many, many times shy. This coalition Government understands that spending money is not the measure of success, unlike the previous Government, it’s actually getting results that count.

ACT is proud to be part of a coalition Government that’s already found $7.5 billion in savings in last year’s mini-Budget, and another $1.5 billion in ongoing savings over the past few months as Ministers worked to prepare this Budget. That includes $107 million found from the Healthy School Lunches programme, while actually extending that programme to feed more children in need in early childhood education. We’ve found $486 million just knocking around in the bottom drawer at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment which we can return to the centre to provide for tax relief as one of the benefits for New Zealanders.

Now, it’s true that ACT would have preferred to go further with spending cuts and tax cuts to let Kiwis keep even more of what they earn. But it’s also true that a Government without ACT would not have gone as far. That is why ACT is proud to support this bill and we’re proud to be offering tax relief to New Zealanders in Budget 2024.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to contribute to the Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill. And I’m proud to say that we support this bill. It’s quite an honour to stand in my very first Budget and provide the very first speech. Now, why are we supporting this bill? Well, it’s been 14 long years, and it’s now time. It is now time to change the—

Hon Mark Patterson: The time has come.

TANYA UNKOVICH: What was that, my friend?

Hon Mark Patterson: The time has come.

TANYA UNKOVICH: The time has come. Now, finally, from 31 July this year, the taxation thresholds will change. And it’s going to be a significant change for many, many New Zealanders—hard-working New Zealanders who have been waiting for this change. I feel very honoured to be able to stand here and say, “Your time has come.” Not long to wait for this change. And the good thing is the money is going to be in their pockets for them to choose how they would like to spend their money. So that is why I am very pleased to commend this bill to the House on behalf of New Zealand First.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to stand and rise and speak on behalf of the National Party and our Government in support of the Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill that we are bringing to the House straight after the delivery of the Budget this afternoon. And what a fantastic job did Nicola Willis do as the Minister of Finance. What a superb job of finding a great medium, in the difficult economic times we find ourselves in, of actually delivering tax relief for New Zealanders and bringing this bill to the House straight after the delivery of the Budget.

The Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill is about increasing personal income tax thresholds from 31 July this year, just as was campaigned on in the 2023 election. This bill gives effect to our Budget’s tax measures’—announced earlier—aim to help reduce the cost of living pressures faced by hard-working New Zealanders by providing much-needed tax relief and additional support, in particular to low and middle income individuals and families. It delivers the FamilyBoost tax credit, helping with the cost of early childhood education; expands eligibility to the independent earner tax credit; and increases the in-work tax credit and the minimum family tax credit. I support this bill and I commend it to the House.

Often you hear Governments stand up in the first piece of legislation, in what will be a long haul of Budget urgency in terms of the debates that are there, fizzing with what their Budget has provided. And we’re hearing this about cost of living pressure relief for families. But it has not taken New Zealanders long to pull this apart, to understand that the poorest New Zealanders are not getting that relief, that the wealthiest New Zealanders are getting two times the relief of minimum wage workers.

So when we have the Minister of Finance standing up in this House and claiming that they are the party of workers, well, I can tell you the party of workers does not take away cheap public transport for kids. It does not take away healthy school lunches. It does not put costs back on prescription charging. And it does not do things that it knowingly knows will raise rents and insurance—the very things the Reserve Bank have been telling New Zealanders is putting a pressure on their back pocket and the money they have.

One of the important documents that accompanied the list of new initiatives—although that’s reasonably thin in this Budget, because there aren’t that many—is a very interesting document called the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU). And what the BEFU does is it does give that economic and fiscal update. This is Treasury’s, not the Government’s, forecast for the future.

One of the things that I find concerning—and I think New Zealanders do too as they’re counting their $2 and $4 a week tax cuts; it will send a chill down their spine—is that we know how these tax cuts are being paid for. They’re being paid for by cuts to public spending and funding things like the reintroduction of interest deductibility. And what does the Treasury—the economic adviser to our Government—have to say? Well, it says that “the reintroduction of rental property interest deductibility for tax purposes, and changes to the bright-line rules [are] all expected to have [an] … upward impact [on rents]. Rents are forecast to continue rising rapidly over the early years of projection”. So this is the kind of things that New Zealanders can look forward to because of the choices that this Government has made in this Budget.

This Budget is a Budget of broken promises. Nicola Willis, when delivering her Budget, started her speech talking about what she’d heard on the doorstep. I’m sure she also heard on the doorstep that people were expecting the $250 a fortnight that National went out and told them they were getting. And what are they getting? They’re getting—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Bugger all.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I cannot quote my colleague Kieran McAnulty, but “not much” would be the paraphrase of what he said.

But I think of superannuitants. When I have to go out and look them in the eye and talk about my $20 tax cut, and know that for a single superannuitant that is $2.50, how can that be seen as anything that any Government could hold its head up about? It is not even, as Chris Hipkins said, enough to buy a packet of chewing gum. This is not how you address cost of living. These are tax cuts that are at the expense of core public services—the very things that these cuts will put pressure on in New Zealanders’ household budgets and New Zealanders’ wallets. This Budget will cost Kiwis more. This is not a Budget where the tax cuts are going to deliver the relief that they thought was coming their way. They are going to pay more for their health, they are going to find that what is delivered in our schools is being cut. There is not a single cent in this Budget for supporting learning services. How are we going to ensure that those kids who we need to support the most to make sure they have educational attainment are supported?

I will, in many other contributions over the course of the next three or so days, talk about the cuts to climate funding that account to billions and billions of dollars. So this Government not only is letting down New Zealanders today, but it is letting down the next generation of New Zealanders too.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on this bill.

This is, as the finance Minister said, a clean-up Budget. It is a clean-up Budget because of the mess that has been left by the previous Government, and it actually heralds a new era. It’s an era in lowering Government spending, giving much-needed tax relief to the squeezed middle in particular, and actually getting on with the business of rebuilding this economy. It’s in huge stress because of the mismanagement by the previous Government—it’s a massive hole; we’ve heard a lot about fiscal cliffs, but they are holes because of that previous Government not spending enough time on actually getting New Zealand back working, and just employing more and more people to do less work. That’s just out of control.

But what does it actually mean? Well, for someone on an average income, they’re going to end up with $102 more a fortnight. That’s a significant amount of tax relief. That’s fantastic for those families, and if they’ve got FamilyBoost, they can have another $150 a fortnight. That’s fantastic. And a single person earning $55,000 will be better off by $51 a fortnight. It is significant tax relief that is long overdue—the first time in 14 years that we’ve got tax relief. It’s way overdue.

And the fees free—I think that’s one of my favourites. Fees free—shifting it from the first year at university to the last.

Hon Mark Patterson: You’re welcome.

STUART SMITH: Yes, it’s a New Zealand First policy and I think it’s fantastic. So, with that, I commend this wonderful bill to the House.

Thank you very much. You might think that if it was so wonderful, the Government members would like to use the entire time available to them—

Hon Member: Especially the chair.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: —especially the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I would have thought that he, of all of them, given how rowdy they were today during the Budget speech, here in the very first bill that arises from that Budget, would actually spend the time available to talk about how good it was. I think the reason that they haven’t is because, deep down, they know it’s actually not that great, and, deep down, they know that it actually doesn’t deliver what they promised. This bill doesn’t meet up to the promises that the Government has made. They clearly don’t know the numbers, because Stuart Smith has just yelled out some numbers as part of his two-minute speech that were inaccurate. They weren’t right. They did not match what the finance Minister said. When you’ve got the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, who doesn’t actually know what’s in the bill, standing up and saying the numbers—I think that says a lot.

At the end of the day, this bill takes away from New Zealanders. Because if we just actually dive into the detail, the question has to be asked: what cost is coming with the tax cuts this bill is bringing? For the many, many people in this country that are renting, the $2, the $4, the $6, or whatever they get is going to be swallowed up almost immediately by the increase in rents that the Budget, which these changes are part of, is bringing in. It’s in their own documentation. It says, very clearly, that the $2.9 billion tax cut that this Government is giving landlords by reintroducing interest deductibility, by scrapping the brightline test, and scrapping initiatives like emergency housing and transitional housing and maintenance on Kāinga Ora homes—all of which is in the Budget—and scrapping the First Home Grant—all adds up to one thing: higher rents.

We know that the growing proportion of renters amongst the over-65s, when they look at this Budget and they hear the Government members crow—and many of them have huge proportions amongst their constituents over 65—and they look at this and they see that they’re getting $2.15, if they rent they’re soon going to get a rent increase significantly higher than that. What are the—

Mike Butterick: Whatever.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: Oh, whatever. Yeah, whatever. Let’s just say “whatever” to facts. Let’s say “whatever” to their own documents. It’s in your own documents. I tell you what: go back to Hamilton and invite the over-65s to come to your electorate office. And when they come to you and they say, “I’ve only got $2 a week out of this, but my rent’s gone up 20 bucks.”, will you say “whatever” then? Will you say “whatever” to their face? I bet you don’t. I bet you don’t have the guts. He’ll say it quietly off to the side, but he won’t look his constituents in the eye and say what he’s going to say here in the hope that no one hears.

But we did hear, because that is the attitude of this Government—they don’t care. When they are presented with the damage that this bill is actually going to do to working people and to retired people, their reaction is “whatever.” They don’t care. They do not give a jot. And this is supposedly a Government made up by a party that was formed to look after old people. New Zealand First is supposed to look after old people, and with the possible exception of Mark Patterson—who is a friend of mine and so I’m not going to pick on him, but I’ll pick on the rest of them—they don’t court the old people’s votes now. It’s almost like unless they’re wearing tinfoil, Winnie don’t care. That’s their constituency now: they’re after the cookers, and they’ve forgotten about the old people. And this Budget sums it up.

It’s not just the old people, though, because, of course, the “average” wage means that there are many people in this country earning underneath that, and they don’t get the figures that the finance spokesperson talked about in this Budget. They get bugger all, and that is not fair. That is not fair, when people like me—in fact, every member of Parliament is walking away with 80 bucks a fortnight that we don’t need. I don’t need 40 bucks a week. I don’t need it. Here we are, arguing that this legislation is supposed to be helping those that need it, and yet those that don’t need it are benefiting the most. That is a choice that this Government made, and it just goes to show what their priorities are. So when New Zealanders look at this bill and they look at what they’re supposedly getting, look at what the Government’s also taking away.

Madam Speaker, thank you. I’m so eager to talk about Budget 2024, which is a Budget for hard-working New Zealanders, providing tax relief after 14 years, while on that side of the House they kept on dipping into the incomes of hard-working New Zealanders like they were a bottomless ATM. Well, we are here to turn that around and reduce the cost of living and give more back to those hard-working New Zealanders.

Our tax package targets hard-working New Zealanders and families and young people and the middle and lower income earners. It gives average-income households up to $102 a fortnight, plus FamilyBoost childcare payments of up to $150 per fortnight. We all know how tough it is with those childcare costs out there. People are doing it very tough at the moment.

Our tax relief in this Budget puts $3.7 billion a year back into the pockets of New Zealanders. This tax relief package will also be fully funded from all the savings from all the wasteful spending of that side of the House, because we are going to be more fiscally responsible with taxpayers’ money. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is set down for second reading immediately.

Second Reading