Brown Peter: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Brown Peter: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 July 2008. Volume:648;Page:17080. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I take the opportunity in this part of the debate to put a few myths to rest. We have heard speaker after speaker from the National Party talk about the sale of New Zealand Rail. Officially it was sold for $400 million in 1993—I say “Officially” because that was fiction. New Zealand Rail had $72 million worth of debt so effectively it was sold for $328 million not $370 million as the Hon Maurice Williamson said earlier. That was in 1993 dollars and if we allow for inflation—which was fairly high in 1993 1994 and 1995 and has been modest ever since—the figure would be close to $600 million - plus. So $328 million in 1993 is worth over $600 million in 2008 when a reasonable amount is allowed for inflation. The Minister of Finance recognised that the Government had paid a premium for it. It was also quite correctly suggested that the rail was asset-stripped once it was sold. But I say “Fair go” to Toll; it has improved the rail. It is better now than it was when Toll bought it so there is a premium price to be paid for that. Let us compare an apple with an apple not an apple with an orange. 
The other thing is and the Hon Maurice Williamson suggested— 
John Hayes 
: What assets were stripped? 
PETER BROWN 
: The member should not show his ignorance. There is an old saying about closing one’s mouth and not showing one’s ignorance. I will not waste my time on that individual; the guy is thicker than this piece of wood. For the last 3 years the Hon Maurice Williamson has been a firm advocate for the hypothecation of all petrol tax. He has officially changed his mind about that tonight; we have not changed ours. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: No I haven’t. 
PETER BROWN 
: Well the member has changed his mind insomuch that he has voted against it. 
Hon Member 
: That’s because of all the other stuff. 
PETER BROWN 
: Well we have put a priority on hypothecation and other aspects of this bill. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: You were going to vote against the principles. 
PETER BROWN 
: We wanted to vote against the reference to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. 
The Hon Maurice Williamson said that perhaps he should have hypothecated the excise tax some years ago but he did not do so because of the economic situation. The price of not doing it then—not hypothecating all the excise tax into the road transport account—was $1 billion per year or thereabouts worth of congestion in Auckland. The price of steel and concrete has gone up by well over 30 percent and God knows what the price of bitumen has gone up by—I would say there has been a 40 or 50 percent increase. We have paid dearly for sitting on our hands in the 1990s and the early 2000s. We should have been transferring that money across years ago. 
In 1989—or early 1990; certainly it was when Labour was in power before National took the benches under Jim Bolger—I went to Winston Peters and said more money had to go into roading in order to keep pace with the freight that was going to move on our roads just as a result of port reform which was coming. As I recall the excise tax that was going into roading from petrol was 9c a litre at that time. I was a consultant involved in the port reform process. It stood out by a country mile that if we wanted this country to develop economically we had to do something about roading and we had to do it there and then. We should have hypothecated all the excise tax and been prepared to borrow against the income in order to get our roading into a fit state. In terms of the economy we have paid very dearly for not doing that with a billion dollars a year worth of congestion. Also people have lost their lives on the roads in this country because the roads have been less than satisfactory. So New Zealand First saw hypothecation as a high priority and voted for this bill. 
We are absolutely brassed off with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi clause—absolutely brassed off. We cannot find one person in this House anywhere who can tell us what that term actually means. We think we should have got—[ 
Interruption 
] Well the member can tell me; maybe she can take a call and tell me exactly what it means. We cannot work out what it means and I would be delighted to know what it means in terms of clause 5 of this bill. 
We also wanted amendments to be made to the regional fuel tax. The Rt Hon Winston Peters has tabled a letter from the Mayor of Tauranga supporting a regional fuel tax. I think the words in that letter were that it was “another tool in the tool box to address the problems of regions”. But a far better way than the regional fuel tax—and we are very disappointed that the Maori Party did not support us on this—would be to use the windfall GST that is currently being paid. 
Hon Tariana Turia 
: Sorry. 
PETER BROWN 
: The member’s party should have given serious consideration to that. We will be going around this country and telling people that that is what we should be doing.