Hipkins Chris: Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3907. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):About the only impact that speech by Craig Foss made on this particular debate was to destroy James Shaw’s chances of becoming the next co-leader of the National Party—of the Green Party. He could well become the next co-leader of the National Party too.Craig Foss rants and raves about the extra $100 million to protect biosecurity that this new tax that National is introducing is going to raise. What he did not say was that the National Government cut funding from biosecurity in the first place. This new tax it is introducing is to restore cuts that it made before and to restore funding for things that were previously funded out of general taxation. Now it is introducing extra taxes to pay for something that it cut previously. That is what this Government is all about.I want to talk about this picture of course. “No new taxes” John Key and Bill English went around the country promising New Zealanders at the last election. But actually there was another part of this that is very important. Look at the little bubble above that. It says “A strong economy means no new taxes.” So which bit did they break? Which promise did they break?Rino Tirikatene: All of them.CHRIS HIPKINS: All of them probably—both of them. National is delivering a new tax so it has clearly broken that promise. “A strong economy”—it has not delivered on that one either. It has broken that promise too. This is a Government that is breaking all of its pre-election promises. “No new taxes”—that is not true. This is the third of three new taxes introduced in this Budget alone. It is National’s first Budget since the election and it is the first set of broken promises. Of course we know National Party members cannot be trusted at their word. Let us just go back to just on a year ago when John Key flew to the UK—at the taxpayers’ expense without paying this tax on the way in or the way out—to encourage them to remove the taxes that they have on Kiwi passengers going in and out of the UK.Hon Annette King: He called them taxes.CHRIS HIPKINS: He called them taxes. “Prime Minister and tourism Minister John Key has welcomed the British Government’s decision to reduce taxes for passenger flights to New Zealand. ‘I have consistently advocated for such a change’ John Key said ‘which will benefit travelling New Zealanders and encourage more tourists to come to New Zealand.’ ”So only a year ago John Key was arguing that another Government should be reducing its taxes to encourage people to come to New Zealand. And how has he responded in kind? By whacking our own taxes up on them in this year’s Budget. Of course we do not know how much that is going to be. Of course the tax changes that were made in the UK which were welcomed by the New Zealand Government reduced the cost to the travelling public of about $50. We do not know how much this levy is going to be. First we were told it was only going to be about $16. Then we were told it was only going to be about $20. Then we were told it was only going to be only about $22. That is all in the space of a couple of hours. I tell you what the longer this debate goes—it will get to fifty bucks before midnight at the rate that the Government is going on that side of the House.When the Government said that there were going to be no new taxes why did it not tell New Zealanders that there were a whole lot of riders on that? It was just going to try to call them something else and pretend they were not actually taxes. The Government can dress it up as a “levy” but it is actually a tax. As for the reassurances that “Oh this is a levy. It is going to be ring-fenced. It is going to go into a fund. It is not about ensuring that the Government gets back into surplus. There are no implications for that whatsoever.” that is of course what people in Governments have been arguing for years about ACC and yet the Government has kept ACC levies high—artificially high—in order to try to create the illusion of a Government surplus when we know that it is not going to be able to deliver one. It is certainly not going to deliver one this year and it is highly unlikely it is going to be able to deliver one next year because we know that Treasury has said that unless the price of milk rebounds the surplus next year is in doubt as well.So we get the Government saying that this is not a new tax. We know the Oxford English Dictionary describes a levy as a “tax raised by levying”—a tax raised by levying. So it is a little bit like John Key’s promise that he was not going to increase GST. He will probably argue that was not a tax either but he increased GST despite making a specific promise down the barrel of the camera that he was not going to raise GST and he did exactly that. So who is this new levy going to apply to? Is it going to apply to everybody travelling across the border in New Zealand? Will there be any exemptions? What about the people who barge their way through security without going through the appropriate channels? Will this apply to Gerry Brownlee? Gerry Brownlee bypasses security. Pick up the phone that he has broken off the desk and give him a call. Will Gerry Brownlee pay this particular levy? Will all of the people coming to New Zealand pay this levy? How can the current Government be trusted to give factual information on that?This is yet another broken promise by this National Government and it is barely beginning this term in Government. New Zealanders can expect many more broken promises from the National Government and I am sure that is what we are going to see because this Government really has no major plan or vision for the future of this country. It is tinkering around the edges. It is dealing with little bits here and there but it is not dealing with the big issues that are actually going to result in New Zealanders earning better incomes having better jobs being able to afford houses and having a higher standard of living. That is not what the Government is dealing with and trying to deliver in this Budget because it does not know how. It has not got any new ideas it does not have a vision for the brighter future that it has promised New Zealanders and even if it did have the goal of delivering its brighter future it just has no idea how to do it.