Hone Harawira: Taxation Bill Speech
Taxation (international taxation, life insurance and remedial matters) Bill
Hone Harawira; Maori Party
Member of Parliament for Tai Tokerau
First Reading: Wednesday 6 August 2008
The current situation of making companies earning up to $200,000 have to file PAYE twice a month, sounds like a plan to keep bureaucrats in work, and bury business enthusiasm, beneath piles of pointless paperwork.
So this bill to change things so that companies making up to $250,000 a month will only have to file once a month, is going to come as a nice surprise for many small businesses, likeTe Röpü Pakihi in Horowhenua,Te Kupeka Umaka Maori Ki Araiteuru down south,Manaaki Solutions up in the Bay of Islands, and hundreds of small Maori businesses all over the country.
It’ll also be well received by Maori Business networks likeTe Awe Wellington Maori Business Network, here in Poneke,Te Waka Umanga o Whangarei up north, and even the new network launched up in Gisborne today to “inspire, motivate and connect Maori business people throughout Tairawhiti”.
Madam Speaker, it’s important
to note that theGlobal Entrepreneurship Monitor reckons that
73% of Maori see starting a business as a good career
choice, while only 60% of the rest of the population think
so, and that Maori have higher expectations of job creation,
than non-Maori as well – characteristics that Maori seem
to have big doses of: positive thinking, risk-taking,
pursuing an idea; and big aspirations.
All of which ties
in with a recent report of the New Zealand Institute of
Economic Research, titledTe Wa o te Ao Hurihuri ki te Ohanga
Whanaketanga Maori, which called Maori
entrepreneurs“irrationally exuberant” probably because
while Maori rate very highly in business optimism, we also
crash and burn more often than non-Maori.
And despite our
best intentions (and notwithstanding our irrational
exuberance), Maori business survival rates are so much
lower, so they’ll really appreciate the chance to only
have to go through all the PAYE rigmarole once a month,
saving time, saving money, and focussing on the
business.
Another key area in the bill is the updating of
the petroleum mining tax rules to encourage greater
investment in oil and gas exploration, but also to safeguard
our taxing rights over our own petroleum resources.
A
look back into our history tells us that right up to 1937,
Maori had legal title to petroleum here in Aotearoa, and
that as a result of the loss of that title, a number of
Taranaki iwi, took a case to the Tribunal for recognition of
their rights, and settlement of their petroleum
claims.
The Waitangi Tribunal ruled that Maori had a
Treaty interest created by loss of legal title to petroleum,
and that whenever that Treaty interest came up, Maori would
have a right to remedy, and the Crown would have an
obligation to provide compensation.
And yet, government
refused to pay up, making it very, very frustrating for
Taranaki iwi to have to watch everybody else, clicking the
ticket and maximising the bucks from the Taranaki oil and
gas fields, while the iwi got nothing.
And while we
recognise how this bill introduces changes to ensure that
New Zealand gets its fair share of the benefits from the
petroleum mining industry, we call on the government to also
recognise how those benefits derive directly from resources
stolen from tangata whenua, and to consider how full and
proper ongoing compensation might be made to iwi in the
future.
The key focus of the Bill though is changing the
rules for taxing the offshore income of Kiwi businesses, to
promote growth, and to enable them to compete more
effectively in foreign markets.
And that all sounds good,
but business growth also brings its own set of problems,
including a culture that values growth at all cost, quantity
over quality, and profit before people.
That’s why the
Maori Party thinks the time is right for a national dialogue
about theGenuine Progress Index – reforming the tax
system, and regulating growth to achieve a sustainable
economy, and to ensure that growth leads to real, and
measurable prosperity, taking into account the impact of
business activity on people’s wellbeing, people’s
health, their jobs, their lifestyles, energy use, resource
use, and their attitudes to the environment.
Like making
big polluters pay up first, rather than giving them a big
holiday, while the ordinary folk have to cough up for that
pollution in more ways than one.
Oh yeah – one final thing – we hear reports that the changes to how we tax overseas income may lead to a $50m loss of tax revenue. Well, our calculations suggest that it might be a lot more than that, so we’re looking to select committee for a more thorough analysis of what that loss might actually be.
ends