Lees-Galloway Iain: Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10375. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It has been a long day of debate but here we are in the third reading of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. We are very close to the point at which the National Government supported by the Greens and the Mana Party will be increasing taxes on hard-working low and middle income New Zealanders. That is an outrage because it is an absolute contradiction to what the National Party said it was going to do before it came into Government. John Key went up and down New Zealand. He went to every single region. He went to every single city. He stared down the barrel of every single camera he could get in front of and he told New Zealanders that he was going to bring down taxes that he was going to bring down costs for everyday hard-working New Zealanders but that is not what happened at all.What happened is that the National Party came into Government and immediately cut taxes for its mates. It immediately cut taxes for its mates. Then it realised that no it probably could not do that so then it immediately reversed the tax cuts for its mates. But then the next year the Government had another go at it and it cut taxes. It cut the top tax rate—the tax rate that its mates pay that the wealthy pay.What the Government has done subsequent to that is that it has found every single possible way of putting up taxes on low and middle income New Zealanders. It started with GST. Remember before the election—again does everybody remember before the election—Hon Trevor Mallard: No ifs no buts no maybes.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: No ifs no buts no maybes—John Key’s absolute cast-iron guaranteed promise to New Zealand was that National would not be raising GST. He said: “National is not going to be raising GST. National wants to cut taxes not raise taxes.” He said that the fastest way to eliminate deficits was to get New Zealand back into surplus and get New Zealand growing again.That surplus is of course what this is all about. So what has John Key had to do to get the Government’s books back into surplus? Well it certainly has not been anything to do with growing the economy. If the economy was growing if this Government was doing its job if it was actually working for New Zealanders—if it was not too busy working for Skycity if it was not too busy working for Warner Bros if it was not too busy working for anybody else except the New Zealand taxpayer—then this country would be growing again. The Government would not have to resort to putting up GST increasing the cost of early childhood education increasing ACC and increasing fuel excise taxes just so that it can squeak in that $75 billion Budget surplus that it is predicting. That is what this is about.Hon Trevor Mallard: $75 billion?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: It is $75 million.Hon Trevor Mallard: Only $75 million. What?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: It is $75 million. Is that 0.1 percent?Hon Trevor Mallard: No.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: No no. It is less than that. It is such a tiny insignificant proportion of the Government’s total revenue that if the Government sneezes out of turn it could lose that surplus in a moment. It takes just one cock-up from Simon Bridges and it is all over. That is all it would take. That is the real reason why this National Government has put up taxes again for hard-working New Zealanders.And of course we know that the Government is all about the surplus because it has been overcharging Kiwis for ACC for so long that it has finally accepted that it is time to reduce the ACC charges. But did the Government do it a year ago when its officials told it that it was time to do it? No. Will the Government do it this year? No. When will the Government do it? The Government will do it after it gets to that surplus. It has not even factored it in. It has sort of promised it hinted at it. Well maybe that will be another broken promise if the Government cannot get its books back into shape. If we are not quite at the surplus maybe those ACC cuts just will not happen even though New Zealanders are being overcharged for ACC just like they are now being overcharged for their fuel excise taxes.If for a moment we actually believe the Minister of Transport and say that this is about building transport infrastructure we know from his first reading speech and his second reading speech that this is all about the roads of political significance. He tried to U-turn a bit on that in the Committee stage. He tried to say it was about the whole transport network. But the Minister’s own words in his first reading and second reading speeches were that this was all about funding the roading network and that of course is what the hollow men want. They want all that money that is raised by fuel excise taxes to go into the roads of political significance.If this has got anything to do with transport infrastructure that is what it is about. The National Party does not believe in an integrated transport system—Hon Annette King: Or the provinces.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —or the provinces as my colleague Annette King says. Our national transport infrastructure involves local roads it involves railway lines like the Napier to Gisborne railway line it involves roads like State Highway 3 in Taranaki—Hon Trevor Mallard: Cycleways.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —it involves cycleways it involves active transport like walking and cycling in urban areas it involves public transport like urban rail and buses and it involves motorways. Motorways are important. Coastal shipping is highly important. Coastal shipping will never be backed by the National Party because it cannot stick coastal shipping in front of the voters and say: “Look what we did.” Most of the voters do not reside a couple of miles off the coast so they cannot see that.Hon Trevor Mallard: Protesters.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well the protesters cannot go out there either Mr Mallard because National got rid of the protesters too.What National has done is put all of it into the highways. Look sometimes highways are the answer. Sometimes you do the analysis of what the need is and what the solution is and sometimes highways are the answer. It is important to complete the roading networks in Auckland that both the Labour Party and the National Party have supported in the past but it cannot all be about highways. It is absolutely disingenuous for the Minister to stand up and say that he supports a diverse transport network—a diverse range of infrastructure for the transport network. He has said himself that this is all about the “Holiday Highway”. That is what National’s flagship transport infrastructure programme is all about. That is all it ever wants to talk about.National members said no when Len Brown came to them with a package for Auckland that included the central city rail link. I wish National members would get it through their heads that it is not a loop; it is a link. It is about opening up the entire rail network in Auckland and making it more effective and more efficient. But the National members say no because they hate rail. They will never support rail because rail might get in the way of the roads of political significance. That is what National’s modus operandi is when it comes to transport infrastructure.Voters can rely on the Labour Party to take a sensible sustainable approach to building an integrated transport network. The resources that we have in the transport budget are limited. We have to be wise about how we use them. We cannot hurl everything at projects that are purely for political gain. We have to do what is right for growth. We have to do what is right to make sure that our communities are connected. We have to do what is right to make sure that our transport infrastructure is environmentally sustainable and that we work towards reducing emissions not only to ensure that we have less of an impact on our environment but also to improve public health because that is important. It is a very important component of making sure that New Zealanders are healthy and have a good standard of life that public health considerations are taken into account when building transport infrastructure.But the Government has got rid of all of those things. We used to have legislation that said that transport infrastructure had to be affordable that it had to be effective that it had to be efficient that it had to take into account public health and that it had to take into account the environment but the Government got rid of all of that. It got rid of the legislation that gets in the way of its roads of political significance. That is what the Government has done.That was the first aspect and this bill just backs that up. It got rid of the roadblocks that might somehow get in the way of its road-building programme and now it is raising taxes on middle and low income New Zealanders to pay for a funding gap that was created by Steven Joyce. He deliberately told the New Zealand Transport Agency to overspend on roads. That is where the funding gap came from. I find it outrageous that this National Government which tells New Zealand that it is all about lowering taxes takes a tax and spend approach and a profligate approach to roading and that it is doing that off the backs of hard-working New Zealanders.