That is because this Bill is an annual event, albeit it has a variety of names: last year we got the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023-24, Multinational Tax and Remedial Matters) Bill and the year before was the equally as thrilling Taxation (Annual Rates for 2022-23, Platform Economy and Remedial Matters) Bill.
The more things change (and they don’t change very much where this legislation is concerned) the more they stay the same. Each year the government is obliged to set out what it will tax its citizens, and each year it invariably leaves it until the last minute so the whole thing has to be passed under urgency.
The Opposition loves this sort of Bill because despite it being almost entirely a dull piece of pro forma regulating, it is long, complex and being to do with government revenue and expenditure can be used to debate almost anything which falls under that wide ambit.
Hence our southern MPs got their magnifying glasses out and combed through the fine print looking for things to nitpick about. Here is a fine example of that from Dunedin Labour MP Rachel Brooking: "So I’m interested in why this Bill includes ‘and exclusively’ and if that means that the word ‘wholly’ in other pieces of legislation — and I’ve not reviewed all the other legislative references to ‘wholly’, but if there is now an indication that when something applies to something ‘wholly’ that that means that there can be other things that somehow are not part of the ‘wholly’, which is why we need the ‘and exclusively’. Thank you."
And thank you too for taking up a few minutes of our lives that we’re never getting back.
Dunedin Green list MP Francisco Hernandez is new to this sport of delaying the government’s legislative agenda but he showed precocious ability by taking several calls during the many, many hours-long debate ... although he does lose points for actually trying to engage with some of the few genuinely contentious issues in the Bill rather than just waffling on.
Mr Hernandez also, somewhat disconcertingly, seemed to have read not just the Bill (which is hardly going to be taking up shelf space in airport bookshops) but also the supporting material, going by his question about the impact of reversing the operation of the Fees Free scheme to cover the last year in a tertiary institute rather than the first.
"There’s been some stated policy rationale for the changes to this legislation that they articulated here, which was to, ‘incentivise learners, particularly disadvantaged learners, to progress through and finish their programme of study’," he said.
"The problem with that statement is that when you go through the cost-benefit analysis table — which is on pages 18-19 on the supplementary analysis report — they stated that the impact of that on rewarding successful completion of tertiary education was estimated to be low, and the evidence certainty that it would have a low impact at best was high."
Given the number of papers and post-it notes on Mr Hernandez’s desk, the hearts of government MPs scheduled to be in the chair for the committee stages may well have started sinking at this point.
And if they were not already deep in despair — and Revenue Minister Simon Watts, for one, looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole — Ms Brooking was back for more.
"I want to thank the Minister for Revenue for his history lesson about ‘wholly and exclusively’," she trilled, before asking why the Goods and Services Tax (Grants and Subsidies) Order 1992 was going to be revoked ... a question destined not to be answered, despite being asked twice.
A refreshed Mr Hernandez firstly baited Labour about capital gains taxation, before grudgingly giving credit where it was due for one key thing this Bill does do — create a generic response to emergency events.
The last thing anyone is focusing on when their house is under water is filling out an IR5 or a GST return and the law changes, sensibly, allow an Order in Council to be made to immediately put into effect tax changes during times of trouble rather than wait for an Act of Parliament to lumber to the rescue.
"That is one aspect of the legislation we do support. It should be easier to provide tax relief and we should enable the extension of emergency end dates much better," Mr Hernandez said.
Last but not least, and not wishing to miss out on all the fun, Taieri Labour MP Ingrid Leary took advantage of a Te Pati Maori call which was about to lapse to offer her a wide-ranging five minutes during the third-reading debate. Given that she had all of three minutes’ notice, Ms Leary could be forgiven for her speech bearing little resemblance to the preceding debate, but it also made for a breath of fresh air in a long stagnant argument.
"The reason that we reject this Bill is that even though it has a technical sounding name and it has many, many technical elements to it — as we have heard through the seven and a-half hours of committee of the whole House stage — actually, the substantive part in the Bill that would have afforded this government to show that it cared for New Zealand is contained in part 1. And they did nothing to make sure that they had enough money to look after the needs of New Zealanders."
From there she tackled allegedly inadequate funding of infrastructure, housing and social services, before letting loose on an issue close to home, the new Dunedin hospital.
"Months and months of waiting to get a half-decent response on the hospital because there was not enough money from the tax take to be able to simply go ahead and give the southern region the hospital that it needed. And still today there is no solution for pathology in the Dunedin Hospital."
And with that, the government finally got its tax take approved. Now all they have to do is spend it. —
