The recent leak of the Panama papers lift the lid on a huge cesspit of tax evasion and money laundering hosted by the world’s tax havens. It is shameful that the papers show New Zealand to be one of those tax havens.

The 11 million leaked documents show that a single law firm, Mossack Fonseca, set up 200,000 secret companies. There may be some legitimate reasons for their existence but most of these companies have been established in countries where there has been little financial disclosure and where tax is avoided.

Tax havens have become parasites on the world economy and a deeply unfair burden on the vast majority of people who pay their taxes and support public services. Tax havens should not just be reformed to allow a bit more disclosure; they should be abolished. Wealthy individuals and large corporations are required to pay their fair share of tax.

In New Zealand, it is shameful that there has been silence about the wealthy, who have avoided or evaded taxes on a massive scale while there has been public outrage levelled at a few beneficiaries who may try to claim more than their allowance or tradesmen who don’t declare cash income. Governments have allowed tax havens and other mechanisms for tax avoidance by the wealthy to continue for decades. In the case of countries such as New Zealand, the government has actively set up structures that enable it to happen, such as the secretive foreign trusts that exempt foreign income from taxation.

In a familiar pattern of behaviour, the prime minister denied there was a problem and then when this became politically impossible to defend, set up a process that would address a small part of the problem and recommend a minimal change. The prime minister’s damage control mechanism is that single tax expert will look at disclosure rules for foreign trusts.

The problem is far wider. Structures such as New Zealand foreign trusts have been used for illicit arms deals (such as the case of a New Zealand involvement in trading North Korea weapons), crime syndicates and money laundering and large-scale theft of money from developing country governments and tax evasion. These loopholes should be closed.

There is a pattern of behaviour in protecting the rich and loading the burden onto the rest of society. This is also evident in the government’s reluctance to make large multinational companies such as Apple or Google pay their fair share of taxes in New Zealand, allowing shifting of income outside New Zealand to avoid paying a fair share of tax. And the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) would give foreign corporations new rights, including the right to take the New Zealand government to an international tribunal and claim compensation for laws and regulations that reduce their profitability.

There needs to be a change. The rules need to ensure that all individuals and companies pay their fair share of taxes. There needs to be more support for local companies struggling to survive against multinational corporations that get all the rights and advantages, as well as avoiding tax. It is our small and medium enterprises that create jobs, deliver local benefits and build our economy, not the multinationals. Instead of tax havens, loopholes for multinationals and agreements like the TPPA, we need fair rules for all.

Barry Coates is next on the Green Party list to get into Parliament. He is an economist with a Masters degree from Yale School of Management and was the former CEO of Oxfam New Zealand.