Carter John: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Carter John: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:6649] 
JOHN CARTER (NZ National—Northland) 
: 
 I am delighted to take a call on the third reading of this bill. There are a number of points that the House—and indeed the many taxpayers who will be listening intently to this debate today—need to know about this legislation. The first point is that it is named the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill but it is a tax bill. Other than one reference in the commentary there is actually no reference in the bill at all—not one jot—to injury prevention. It is silent with regard to rehabilitation and it certainly does not talk about compensation. What it does talk about is a levy—this Government is imposing another levy. 
There would be people in this House particularly from the Government who would say it is not a tax; it is only a levy. The fact is that when the Minister of Finance was in Opposition and accused the then National Government of trying to skirt round taxes by calling them levies he made it very clear indeed that levies are taxes. That is on the record.What we are dealing with right now is a tax and there can be no one in New Zealand who is uncertain about the fact that this Government is imposing yet another tax. I remind the House again that this is the Government that said on its 1999 election pledge card: “No more taxes.” 
Shortly there will be a list—indeed I believe it has already been published but it is worth publishing again—of the number of levies that have been put on by this Government in the 4 years it has been in power. I think there have been 15 so far and this is another one—from a Government that said there would be none. This tax is an addition to that. We now know that a number of others are in the pipeline such as a 10 percent regional tax a “fat” tax and all those sorts of things. In relation to this bill nobody can claim that it is anything other than a tax. 
The only other thing this bill does is refer to the way a person can appeal to the High Court on a question of law. Other than referring to it I do not intend to go through the detail of what that means because it is actually quite technical—other than to make the point that late on a Thursday afternoon towards the end of the week and after the House has had quite a busy week here we are again dealing with something that is quite complex quite important and very technical. The Government serves it up on a Thursday afternoon in the hope that no one will notice because we are patching up a mistake that Helen Clark’s minority Government has made. 
When issues like this are being addressed the people of New Zealand need to know that the Government tries its best to manoeuvre the legislative programme of this House so it can avoid scrutiny. It ain’t going to happen! This Opposition and the combined opposition here will not let those sorts of things slide by without bringing them to the attention of the country. The country deserves to know. When Governments make mistakes—and Helen Clark’s minority Government has made mistakes on this issue—they must be held to account and those mistakes brought to the attention of the country. Hear this New Zealand! This Government has made a mistake and today it is trying to correct it. It will not be the first mistake and it will not be the last. It is being addressed now and the people of this country need to know. 
Let me just get back to this whole issue of the levy. The problem with these sorts of things is that constitutents and taxpayers get confused because of the language we use in this Parliament. We should be far more forthright with the language we use when we draft legislation. The public has a right to know that when the Government is going to impose a tax a tax is what it is called. Members of the public deserve to know that when they pull into the gas station in a week or two a tank of gas in an average car will cost about $1 more. That may not be much but to the average family with young children looking at the increased cost of food bills medical costs etc. etc. $1 is a $1 and it is pretty important to them. It is not just a oncer—those tanks often need filling 3 4 or 5 times a week. We are talking about a tax that is likely to cost the average family—mum dad and a couple of kids maybe three—as much as $5 a week extra out of their pockets having already paid tax. Five dollars a week is a lot of money for a lot of families. Even if it is $3 a week it is a lot of money. 
This Government should have come cleaner and made it known to the public of this country that it is looking to impose an extra tax particularly on middle New Zealanders—on mums and dads with children they are trying to educate. Those who do the shopping will know that the price of food today is significantly more than it was just 12 months ago and another cost that families have to meet. If we add things like school fees the cost of getting one’s children educated—and most people want to achieve that for their children—the doctors’ fees that have gone up quite significantly for a whole number of families and the food bill of maybe $4 or $5—sometimes $10 or even $20 extra a week depending on the size of the family—we are now talking about $30 or $40 extra a week on average and now this Government wants to slam them with another $3 $4 or $5 a week. It is not good enough from a Government that absolutely promised that when it came to power there would be no more taxes. 
The people of New Zealand should beware. This is not the first time and it certainly will not be the last that we see this Government break its promises. This bill is another in which Helen Clark her Ministers her caucus and those who support them are out there breaking promises and members of the public will hold them to account in the coming election. They expect politicians to stand by their word. This is another example of where Helen Clark is letting this country down.