Wong Pansy: Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Wong Pansy: Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:623;Page:18700] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 I would like to remind the Labour member who has just taken a call Janet Mackey that in the last financial year Transfund once again reported a surplus of unspent money of $230 million. I suggest to that member that if in all her tenure in this Parliament she has failed to secure Transfund funding for Gisborne it is too bad. 
Darren Hughes 
: How’s this member’s constituency going? 
PANSY WONG 
: It is amazing that the junior Government whip always has a lot to yell while he is sitting on his backside but does not take a call to explain matters to the public. He is just a doormat who says yes when Ministers wish him to. 
The National Party is totally opposed to this bill. The bill aims to do three things. Firstly it will put up the price of petrol by 5.625c per litre inclusive of GST. Secondly the increase is to come at a time at the discretion of the Labour minority Government in an election year. Thirdly starting from 1 January 2006 there is to be indexation of petrol price increases according to changes in the consumer price index to avoid any future Government having to explain to Parliament why the petrol tax has to be increased. 
Before I expand further on some of those three aims that we object to I must say that I found some points that were raised by various members in this debate to be quite interesting. First the Minister and Labour members once again reinforced in their speeches the Labour Party’s continuing lack of any solution to problems other than its continuous motto of expanding taxation to solve them. It was almost comical to note that in the Finance and Expenditure Committee the Minister of Finance on the one hand tried to tell us on Friday that the financial statements would once again show a surplus even a cash surplus but on the other hand he claimed poverty and said that he would not be able to spend that surplus because of his fiscal responsibility constraints. Yet at the same time he told the select committee that he was quite happy to spend up to $500 million to please the business community by announcing various tax incentives such as the depreciation regime for short-term assets. Also he announced the initiatives with regard to so-called housing ownership and the expansion of the Working for Families package which will put more New Zealand families on welfare. So it seems to us that the minority Labour Government has a lot of money to spend and that it can afford to spend it when it comes to buying votes in an election year. Yet when it comes to building roads and we are staring at a surplus of $230 million from Transfund more tax increases are to be loaded on to motorists. 
It is interesting to note that the Green Party the party that is always supportive of Labour will support the bill. The only part it is not happy about is that the bill does not go far enough. The Greens ask what is to happen with regard to diesel users and say they should be made to pay more in tax. The Greens always believe in punishing individuals because they believe that people get into a car simply for the luxury of driving and not because they need to even though we had one submission from a group that provides a volunteer service for people in hospitals and that spoke on behalf of the Meals on Wheels volunteers as well. The group complained that its members do not get paid for their good deed to the community and that although they will be out of pocket they will have to face those increases. So in future the Greens are trying to force the people who provide Meals on Wheels to provide “Meals on Bikes”. The only problem is that we do not know how secure those “Meals on Bikes” will be. I say that the Green Party instead of always believing in the worst of human nature and wanting to punish New Zealanders needs to be sympathetic to people who have to use motor transport to do some of their work. 
United Future’s position is even more interesting. United Future did put in a minority report that gave people the impression that indeed it would be morally and contractually honest to its supporters by voting against this bill. United Future has always said that it is against high taxes and believes in rewarding hard-working New Zealanders. United Future’s minority report states that it supports the petrol tax and everything and that the only reason it put in a minority report is that it believes that that increase should be offset by a reduction in personal income tax. Of course this bill itself has nothing to do with personal income tax. However when the income tax bill to confirm high tax rates came before the House last year although United Future says that it wants to bring down income tax it also supported that bill. So I am not sure where that minority report leads to. United Future says that it is against high income tax but when high-income tax legislation came before the House it also supported that. 
I come back to the issue of why Labour should continue to believe that every time there is a problem and every time projects have to be financed the only solution it can think of is to introduce another tax. Interestingly this morning the Minister of Finance shared some of his inner thoughts with the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. He said that the reason he has had to bring in the indexation of the petrol tax is that companies have invested in more environmentally friendly fuel—fuel that is more efficient. The Labour Government is actually collecting less revenue and because of that he said it has had to bring in indexation. This measure is more about increasing the Government’s revenue than it is about really giving people the incentives to invest in measures that may produce a more environmentally friendly solution. 
We all know that building roads benefits not just the current generation. After all one likes to think that roading contractors do not aim for roads to last for just 5 or 10 years. Overseas countries particularly Australia should have provided this Labour Government with a lot of inspiration about the success of involving the private sector and also of extending a vision into the future. Because the investment in building more roads benefits not just the current generation but creates a long-term benefit there is nothing wrong with borrowing in order to fund the building of roads. Also there is nothing wrong with inviting the private sector to take an active partnership role in ensuring that the congestion in Auckland is solved. Just now the junior Labour whip yelled out the fact that this Government has been in place for 6 years. I cannot believe that any Aucklander in all those 6 years has seen road congestion be resolved even a little bit. 
National is totally opposed to the passage of this bill.