Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Madam Chair. It's quite remarkable—I will be talking to my amendment here in Part 2—that it's still day one actually of the Budget. We're still on Thursday and the very first legislative action of this Government in the world's first wellbeing Budget was to make people worse off in 2019. That was Part 1 a 4c a litre impost on people to make them worse off—first action.Well that wasn't enough for this Government. It wasn't enough to make people worse off this year; they are determined under Part 2 to make sure that New Zealanders are going to be worse off next year as well. They're going to slap them with another 4c a litre just to make sure that they can't get ahead because clearly under this Government people getting ahead is not what they are about and quite frankly that is just terrible. Of course it harms most those people which the members of the Government their party have always purported to represent. It harms lower-income New Zealanders more. It's a regressive tax. It is the nature of the tax.I'll just make the point that I recognise the advisers who are in the Chamber for this debate. They have appeared before the Governance and Administration Committee. They are very good hard-working and diligent people. To hear the Minister of Transport somehow undermine or dismiss the comments they have provided in free and frank advice about the regressive nature of this tax I think is unreasonable and the Minister should have a bit more respect for the work officials do. Certainly we do in select committees and they deserve it in this committee of the whole House as well particularly because of course this legislation never saw the light of a select committee day.Just before I move on to my actual amendment and what it will do during the course of this debate on this bill the wide-ranging debate on this bill I've heard members across the other side of the Chamber talk as if they think—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Actually I hope it's not a wide-ranging debate and will you come back to the matter at hand. Thank you. OK—thank you.BRETT HUDSON: No no I'm talking about the debate that has been up until this point. I've heard members on the other side of the Chamber talk about excise tax as if it's a diminishing tax that just goes away over time when the reality is once the excise increase is set it remains there in perpetuity unless amended in legislation such as we're doing in Part 1 and now in Part 2 here. So all the tax that has been added on since excise was first introduced is still being collected. Those moneys are still being collected every year and on every litre of fuel that is sold certainly for vehicles on the road.The real question that we are looking at here in Part 2 as well as earlier in Part 1 is: do we need an incremental charge? Do we need even more tax? The tax we've been levying is still being collected. The answer we've held is no particularly when there are other sources of revenue such as are noted in the regulatory impact statement such as Crown accounts using surplus funds in a much better way than the Government has been to date.I've been reflecting also and whether it's the Minister's leader talking about kindness and the rest of that it is supposed to be a wellbeing Budget. I've reflected and thought I would like to help with some wellbeing with this amendment. The Government is determined that the wellbeing of New Zealanders is going to decrease through these taxes. Well I'm thinking of the wellbeing of the Minister. I'm offering the Minister an opportunity here to negate—to cancel—the 2020 scheduled excise increase and I will now tell the Minister why I believe it is a very good idea for his wellbeing.He has a view—and it's been articulated a number of times in this committee today but also outside in the past—that he would like to see a mode shift with more New Zealanders taking transport options other than driving their own cars particularly if they're single-occupancy vehicles. He also believes as he has stated on more than one occasion in incentives and how pricing can help to drive behaviours. So there is a clear correlation here. He's got a view that putting more excise on people's fuel consumption will lead them will give them a natural incentive to look at other options that might be available to them.He's also stated both through the Government policy statement and in his speeches that he has an intention to put more funding into these other options. So he's going to create the choices he believes for people to use. But here's the problem—here's the hole that he's digging himself and which ordinarily I might be pleased to help him step into. It is quite a deep hole and will cause him quite a bit of damage. The Minister has built a model—it's a house of cards model. His model requires fuel excise moneys to pay for transportation options that don't naturally have a fuel excise attached to them such as horrendously loss-making light rail options from Wellington Railway Station to Wellington Airport—$1.44 billion worth. He needs people in their cars driving and paying tax to help him fund that and yet he's putting in increases which his own logic says means fewer people will drive fewer kilometres therefore leaving him an enormous funding hole.Steven Joyce talked about an $11 billion hole in the Crown accounts. Well Mr Twyford is busy digging one of a similar size in his transport budget. Minister I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. I am concerned about your wellbeing. I don't want you next year to be like Phil Goff and David Cunliffe some years ago when they recommended using smoking taxes to fund taking GST off fruit and vegetables which is quite frankly ridiculous. So Minister I call on you to scrap the second round of tax excises—do yourself a bit of good.