Smith Lockwood: Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Smith Lockwood: Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:621;Page:16612] 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) 
: 
 What this Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill reminds us is that when it comes to the Labour Party voters should be very careful of what that party does not say. The House will remember Helen Clark’s promise back in 1999 when she said that a Labour Government would not increase income tax other than the increase to 39c for she said 5 percent of the people. Of course it did not remind the public of New Zealand—the voters—that income tax is only one of dozens of taxes that people pay. This Labour Government has had a field day in lifting all the other taxes. It is gouging tax out of New Zealanders. 
 At the last count I saw of the tax increases under this Labour Government this is the 24th since it has been in office. This is the 24th tax or levy increase since Labour has been in office. Those members conned the people of New Zealand that they would put up only the top income tax rate for people on over $60000. They said they would not put the corporate tax rate up or GST. What they did not tell the voters is that there are lots of other taxes that people pay and this Labour Government just keeps wrenching them up and gouging more tax. How much more has it collected? Thirty-four billion dollars more. That is a 40 percent increase in the tax that is taken off New Zealanders. This is the 24th increase in tax. 
What will upset voters and should make them very angry is that Helen Clark’s Labour Government is going to hit them again with more expensive petrol at a time when petrol is at about the highest price it has ever been. It costs me over 80 bucks each time I fill my car up—more than $80! I am lucky; I am on a better salary than the average New Zealander. But ordinary average New Zealanders are hit hard and it hurts and Labour does not care. It will just gouge another 5c a litre out of the ever-suffering motorist. 
Pansy Wong 
: Plus GST. 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH 
: Plus GST as my good colleague Pansy Wong reminds me. What will make people angry is the fact that this Government is sitting on a surplus of $7.4 billion. 
Brian Connell 
: How much? 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH 
: It is $7.4 billion. Michael Cullen the Minister of Revenue will say that the operating balance excluding revaluations and accounting charges is not that big. It is over $6 billion and no one is denying that. It is clearly within the Government’s power to change the way we fund our roading in New Zealand. To fund roading out of cash income is like trying to buy one’s house out of one’s piggy bank. If this Labour Government has not got its economic maturity above that level it does not deserve to govern. 
Pansy Wong 
: They are still in cash-flow accounting. 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH 
: As Pansy Wong says it is still in cash-flow accounting. It is absurd to tax today’s New Zealanders to get cash to invest in assets that will be enjoyed by New Zealand 20 years hence. That is clearly absurd and it is wrong. There are several ways that the Government could be looking at refinancing roading in this country because that is what it is about. There is a desperate need. This 5c increase will raise I understand about $165 million or thereabouts. That is a laughable amount of money when we look at the investment and the financing required. What this Labour Government does not seem to understand is that the roading problem is huge and Transit’s 10-year plan does not even start to grapple with the magnitude of the problem out there. Trying to solve it by gouging more cash out of ordinary hard-working New Zealanders is not the way to finance our roading. 
If the Government cannot get its mind round a decent long-term financing system for roading it could shift across some of the petrol tax money that goes into the consolidated account. National did that in the 1990s. We shifted money across to help fund roading. The Government could do that but no I guess that would be helping our ordinary citizens and this Labour Government does not believe in doing that. 
I just want Labour members to reflect on what they are doing to this country right now. On 1 April 2005 the tax on petrol will go up an extra 5c and I suppose that by the time GST goes on top of that it will be more that that. What will that do to the price of transport in New Zealand when we are already being charged fuel levies—and members should not forget that the Government will put up road-user charges too— 
Brian Connell 
: And a carbon tax. 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH 
: —and a carbon tax is coming in as well—for freight in this country? I know that Labour members would not know that because none of them run businesses but I can tell them that when I pay my freight accounts for the transport of livestock there is a fuel levy as a separate line item. The freight rate charge is one thing but there is a fuel levy in addition to that. So at a time when businesses are already being charged fuel levies Labour wants to put the cost of transport up still further by putting petrol taxes up and increasing road-user charges. Do Labour members not care at all about what they are doing to businesses in this country? Do they not care at all about what they are doing to the average hard-working New Zealander? If one is on the average income in New Zealand—about $37000 I think—then 80 bucks to fill a tank with petrol is a huge hole in one’s pay packet for the week and Labour is about to make it more expensive. 
And Labour will increasingly make it more expensive because not only does this bill put up the petrol tax from 1 April next year but from 1 April 2006 it will be indexed to inflation. If this was a reasonable even-handed Government and it was going to do that one would think that it would also index the income tax thresholds so that the average New Zealander was not being pushed up into higher income tax brackets. But oh no not Helen Clark’s nasty Labour Government! Those members are not interested in the welfare of the ordinary New Zealander. They want to have it both ways. They want to gouge tax both ways. In the last couple of years the average New Zealand worker according to OECD data has had the second-biggest increase in income tax in the OECD largely because of the bracket creep issue. Wage and salary earners are being pushed up into higher tax brackets because although Labour wants to index petrol taxes it will not index the income tax thresholds. So average New Zealand workers are being gouged more for income tax—the second-biggest increase in the OECD for the average worker—and now the Government is going to make it more expensive for them to fill their cars up at the petrol station. 
I want the Labour Government to think about what it is doing to ordinary New Zealanders. I suppose ordinary New Zealanders would say it was OK if it was solving the problem but I come back to the fact that Minister Barker who introduced this legislation today is deluded if he thinks this measure will solve the roading problem. He is in a dream world. It will not. In the next 10 years for example north of Auckland—where I come from—there is a plan to take the motorway through to Puhoi. Many members of this House will not know where Puhoi is although it is a lovely place; it is in my electorate. This four-lane motorway will dump out into an area where there is already huge traffic congestion as Aucklanders try to get to the east coast beaches north of Auckland. There is nothing in Transit’s roading plan for the next 10 years to do anything about that and this money will not solve the problem in any way at all. 
New Zealanders will suffer from the tax gouging of the Labour Government and they will still be caught up in gridlock on our roads.