Shaw James: Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3887. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Green):We seem to be starting this bill where we left off with the Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill with some rather cunning linguistics. When is a tax a tax? When is it a levy? When is a levy a tax? When is it a rate? “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet;”. That is where we started yesterday with the telecommunications legislation—was it a tax was it a levy? Actually who cares? Who cares what the language of it is. It is revenue that the Government needs to charge to cover its costs.The Green Party has never been particularly afraid of this notion. When the Government wanted to reduce and did reduce the top income tax rate and reduced the Government’s revenue by about a billion dollars a year which has led to record deficits and an inability to cover its expenses we argued against that. It is OK. Sometimes you have to raise taxes in order to cover your costs and the Government is doing that. It likes to pretend that it is not by calling it something that it is not. But actually we know it for what it is. We commend the Government for raising the revenue that it needs to raise in order to cover the costs of running the country. That is completely fine. Bill English has raised or extended any number of taxes. The Government has raised GST it has raised the petrol tax it has removed the paper boy levy and it has put a tax I think on private jets. Yesterday we extended an existing tax which is the telecommunications development tax—ah levy rate.Hon Members: Ha ha!JAMES SHAW: I am sorry. I am just pulling your ponytail. Whether it is a matter of double standards or broken promises that is OK. It is a National Government. We expect that.Let us talk about the substance of what this is about which is to raise revenue to cover the costs of biosecurity and customs. The purpose of this bill is to introduce international passenger levies which will be used to fund the costs of biosecurity and border control relating to imported pests diseases illegal drugs and contraband. The measure is expected to raise about $100 million a year. These are costs relating only to international passengers not to goods and freight which are already covered by other border levies taxes and rates.The Green Party is supporting this bill. We think that it makes sense for a number of different reasons. First of all it takes a cost of the industry essentially of the tourism industry that has previously been externalised to the New Zealand taxpayer and it internalises that cost back into the industry. That cost has been borne by the public at large through general taxation previously. The benefit of course comes back to the economy through international tourism and so on but this is a much more direct and transparent way of making that cost apparent. Also given that a significant number of the people who will be charged this tax levy and rate are foreign tourists to New Zealand we are managing to raise additional revenue from people who are visiting this country as opposed to the New Zealand taxpayers.Secondly we have and I have criticised the Government for a habit of corporate welfarism in the past which is to use general taxation to hand out to industry players in general. Both with the telecommunications development levy and this one this is a much more direct and accountable way of raising these revenues and internalising those costs that are otherwise externalised. So we think it actually increases transparency and accountability to do it this way.Another reason we are supporting it is that it ties revenue to actual numbers and actual costs. So as passenger numbers increase or decrease the amount of revenue will track directly to that and therefore costs will expand and contract based on actual passenger numbers whereas there is some inefficiency if you do it just from general taxation. The costs are borne by travellers in this case like I said many of whom are international guests to the country and all of whom are generally people who can absorb this cost. As one of the Ministers who spoke previously to the bill said this will account for less than 1 percent of the total cost. If you are paying $1000 to come and visit New Zealand another $36 on top is not actually going to make that much difference. Most other countries have airport taxes in place. I lived in the United Kingdom for most of my career most of my adult life and the airport taxes there—to go in and out of Heathrow will cost you something in the order of NZ$142 and in Australia it is about $58. So our $36 in and out charge is actually pretty reasonable.The Green Party has in the past called for the use of airport taxes to fund the Department of Conservation estate. Given that the vast majority of international travellers to New Zealand are people who are coming to look at the conservation estate and to take advantage of it that would be a direct way of helping to fund the cost of the tourism industry on the conservation estate. Also the cost of promoting essentially the conservation estate is borne in large part by a number of local authorities. There is some room to expand this in the future. Given that the levy that has been suggested here of around $36 is a pretty low rate there does seem to be some room in the future to bring that up to the median rate of airport taxes around the world which could be used for those other purposes as well. So it sets a precedent to create some other opportunities in the future.I understand that the industry has a number of concerns and again because we are sitting under urgency we are unable to have those voices represented either for or against the bill through the select committee process. That is unfortunate as with all bills under urgency. Horticulture New Zealand has said that it is for this because obviously it is deeply concerned about biosecurity incursions. Because biosecurity funding was cut some years ago by this Government there have been an increasing number of incursions. The cost to the economy of that is really substantial. So what this bill does is it restores some of the funding that was previously cut and I can understand why Horticulture New Zealand would be keen on strengthening our biosecurity.Air New Zealand Auckland Airport and New Zealand Airports Association are obviously not in favour of this bill and I can understand why. They have some concerns that it will affect our international competitiveness. It would be great if this was not an urgency debate and if we did have a select committee process where we could hear some evidence for and against that. I understand the industry concerns there. There are passengers who are price sensitive. My gut feeling is that a tax of less than 1 percent of the cost of travel is something that passengers can cope with and that it will not significantly affect our international competitiveness. Flight Centre has come out and said that it is pretty ambivalent about it. Its concern would be if the people who are being charged were not getting the benefit of this. So it has some concerns as well. I just wanted to represent those concerns in the absence of a select committee process.Having said all of that we do have a couple of concerns one of which is that the cost of this is both biosecurity and customs and some of it is revenue. It is $100 million of revenue estimated. Some of this revenue is going to go to upgrade our border security and customs including new technology X-ray machines and so on. We have some caution around the use of this money for new technologies that may invade personal privacy and we would like to hear from the Government side where that money is going and what kinds of new technologies it is looking at expanding that into. The upside is that I understand they are bringing back beagles. Everyone loves a beagle. We are going to see some puppies back at Auckland Airport which is great. Also there are some concerns about the extent to which the biosecurity money is simply topping up what was previously cut as opposed to actually extending the biosecurity regime as well. So we just want to hear a bit more of that sort of information.Having said that we do not like the fact that this bill is going through under urgency. We cannot see why it is an urgency bill. There does not seem to be anything particularly urgent about it but then there has not been anything particularly urgent about any of the bills that have come through over the last few days. We are not happy about that.We do have some concerns about privacy and about the use of the money for biosecurity. We do want the voice of industry to be represented if it has concerns that it does not feel have been adequately represented. But for all of the other reasons I stated we will be supporting this bill in the House. Thank you.