Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): We really empathise with those New Zealanders who are facing a cost of living crisis because it's true that fuel is expensive. And we are actually really worried about what might happen next year in 2023 when the provisions of the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill come into effect when potentially—according to the Reserve Bank Governor that big tree Adrian Orr—we may be in a recession. And if Tāne Mahuta—the head of the Reserve Bank—says we're heading for a recession New Zealanders should be worried because if you walk in the forest and you hear trees talking you know something's really really wrong. Now I want to offer a perspective that the ACT Party has about this particular policy. This Fuel Industry Amendment Bill sounds so innocuous like so much of the awful legislation that's been passed by this Labour Government—supported by the velvet-gloved hand of the Green Party—in the last two years. And I want to offer a perspective. The Minister claimed that this would help reduce fuel prices because there would be a published price at the terminal—that's the big tank farm where all the trucks come to pick up petrol and diesel and other liquid fuels and transport them to the retail service stations or potentially to their big industrial customers. And I know when I worked in construction we would have our own on-site storage tank typically 30000 litres and a big tanker would come every few days to fill it up. We would use that diesel and petrol to fill up our big Tonka toys our big Caterpillar and Komatsu diggers and our big Volvo all-terrain vehicles. Because that's how you build things in New Zealand with really really big construction equipment that uses a lot of diesel.Now that's changing because in fact all of that equipment is far more efficient now using European technology to reduce the amount of diesel that these machines use to produce an equivalent amount of power so they can dig dirt and push rocks and build roads. But I want to offer you a perspective. This piece of legislation the Government's brought to the House will not reduce the cost of fuel at all. But this approach reminds me of a Greek myth the myth of Sisyphus. That poor soul forever condemned by the gods to push a boulder up a mountain to push it up a mountain only to see it roll down again—only to see it roll down again. And that's what it must be like for this Government. They keep bringing legislation to the House they say they're helping New Zealanders you open the newspaper the next day even the Dominion Post and they'll tell you that Wellington's not getting moving or that the cost of living is going up. Of course that great French philosopher Albert Camus observed about Sisyphus: the struggle itself appears to fill a man's heart with pleasure. Sisyphus appears to be happy just like those Labour MPs and their Green cohort. That's how it must feel for them; they continue to push this boulder of terrible legislation that doesn't make any difference in the life of everyday New Zealanders; they push this boulder up the hill they see it roll past them. Sooner or later in 2023 this boulder's going to flatten most of them and the ACT Party will be here to help restore New Zealand: our economic prosperity the dignity of our communities in places like Northland which have been so severely neglected by successive Governments over decades. Places like where my mother's been an early childhood literacy teacher where their literacy outcomes are even poorer she tells me than children in a similar cohort in outback New South Wales where she also taught. So it's not just fuel prices that this Government hasn't had any influence on; it's literacy it's numeracy it's violent crime—the list could go on. This Sisyphean boulder is coming to crush this Labour Government and its Green cohort and ACT will be there with the sucker truck to suck up and clean all the pieces up and restore New Zealand to the place it needs to be. But I just want to comment on the effect this Government's actually having on fuel prices—I want to comment on that. I use this tool: it's on the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) website and it's the weekly fuel price report. Now most New Zealanders who work in any kind of business or who study at university or who run a family budget—which is a bit more complicated—can use Microsoft Excel or some other form of spreadsheet. You can go on the MBIE website you can download the weekly fuel price monitor and this is what it will tell you—this is going to be a shock to Labour MPs who either don't know how to use Excel don't know what MBIE is or didn't realise how much influence Government has on fuel prices. I'm going to tell you about diesel. The diesel importer cost was $1.46 last week—$1.46. The price excluding tax if you just went to the petrol station and you went to buy diesel the price would be $1.90. But actually it's well over $3 at times. It's been up to $3.15 a litre recently. Can you imagine you pay your road-user charges you think you're paying for the use of the roads—actually what we expect to be good quality roads free of potholes free of congestion. I mean if you drive a big rig your customers and your boss expect you to deliver your load on time. That's become unfeasible under this Government and successive Governments which have failed to invest in infrastructure.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Back to the bill.SIMON COURT: So the diesel importer cost is $1.46. The importer's margin is 43c but the Government takes more than twice that in tax—92c in tax. If this Minister who brought this bill to the House today really believed that New Zealanders need a better deal from fuel what the Government could do is remove the tax on fuel and actually reduce the cost of fuel by in this case it would be 37c a litre. But the Government wants to keep its margin of 37c a litre while denying the importers their right for all of the effort it takes to actually organise a ship arrange a cargo pay for it in advance ship it to New Zealand offload it store it and transport it to customers. They get 43c. The Government makes nearly the same amount just for holding out their hand and passing laws—37c. And then we come to petrol. Petrol importer cost: $1.13. That's this week on the MBIE website—$1.13. Now the price at the pump if you've gone and filled up could be up to $3 you know somewhere between $2.80 and $3. It's horrific. If you're a family if you've got a people mover or you need to make trips to different places every day because your kids go to different schools and they do sports or they go to after-school numeracy and literacy classes because the education system is failing there too and you need to take them places then you know if you just had to pay for the cost of fuel excluding tax that would be a $1.32—$1.32 imagine that. But once the Government adds its 86c tax its 31c GST and of course we do pay for our emissions under the emissions trading scheme—its 20c a litre—so for people who drive petrol and diesel vehicles and diggers and trucks they're paying for their emissions. The ACT Party doesn't have a problem with that. But all of these other taxes add up to a difference in price between $1.32 excluding tax and about $3 at the pump.So again completely disingenuous approach from this Government to claim that by forcing companies to publish the price at the terminal and then establishing a commissar commissioner to investigate them if they think that they're colluding or that the price hasn't come down enough—it's the most really nonsensical approach. What they could do is what the fuel companies have suggested to me because I meet with all of the stakeholders in my policy areas: in energy transport environment climate resources—that's mining that's where you dig stuff out of the ground so you can make things like phones although it's a mystery to people in the Green Party and the Labour Party where that comes from—I meet with the stakeholders and what they tell me: we'd love to build more storage particularly in places around New Zealand where they have issues with climate resilience. You can imagine the South Island the West Coast of the South Island all kinds of minor ports and places like Whanganui. But it's next to impossible to get consents because either we run up against local council or there's a cultural veto from some iwi who say We believe that climate change is more important". Or you've got this argument from this current Government which is that anything to do with fossil fuels is evil and wrong. So why on earth would you invest in storage building infrastructure and so on in New Zealand? The ACT Party says: reform the Resource Management Act reform the way we fund and deliver infrastructure—this bill is not necessary."