Webb DuncanHon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): No wonder there was kind of a smattering of half-hearted applause from the members on the other side there. That was one of the—James Meager: We're waiting for the rest of the speeches.Hon Dr Megan Woods: That's why you're losing your long weekend.Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: We're very happy to be here and to debate the important issues of the day that this Government want to raise under urgency. One of those my friends is that we think we should make the local bodies pay a bit more to the Government for parking fines. We've got a parking fine tax. I don't know where that member got his numbers from saying that this was going to raise millions of dollars because the disclosure statement that I've got off the Table says that this piece of legislation next year will raise $466000.So here we are debating fiercely a 4 percent increase in—and this is what this Government does: it's so scrambling around to find money for its tax package that it's had to go right to the back of the cupboard and find a 4 percent increase. Of course the irony is that this is a 10 percent levy on collections that's done through the court system. Of course you don't need to increase it and adjust it for inflation because it's a proportionate levy. It makes perfect sense.That's the other thing. I mean David Seymour must be seething because he's got his new Ministry for Regulation thing going on and one of his big bugbears is that levies and charges need to actually relate to the costs. What work has this Government done? None. This is just a grab—this is just a grab—and this utterly cuts across the work that David Seymour wants to do.So this is just a tax—and it's not just local bodies actually; it's any number of entities if you read the legislation itself. It's any local authority or other organisation department an Office of Parliament a Crown entity a Schedule 4 organisation or a Schedule 4A company. Whenever they go to court to collect a fine then this levy will be applied. So it's just a little money grab effectively a tax on these other entities.The other thing—if the Minister had done his homework he'd know—is there's a whole lot of exceptions littered throughout legislation as well. So fines under the Dog Control Act are exempt for example. The Accident Compensation Corporation is also exempt. Fines under the Resource Management Act are also exempt. So it's a strange little piecemeal thing. But look this is the choice they've made; this is how they're going to do it. They've chosen to borrow money to increase debt. They've chosen this trivial tax package which is giving derisory amounts to our lowest-paid workers and they've got to find the money somewhere so they're going to dip into the back of the cupboard and impose an extra levy on local bodies.Of course we've got our spokesperson for local government the Hon Kieran McAnulty here and I'm sure he may have something to say because this is how they treat local bodies. They don't help them out. In fact here they are; they've got increasing rates—increasing rates—and what do they do? They just take a bit more money off them. They're hanging out our local bodies to dry. Actually the funny thing is that if there is any money to be made it's not by this bit of legislation; it's by the numerous Orders in Council that the Minister alluded to in his speech. Because what they're going to do there is they're going to actually increase significantly the costs that are imposed on people who go to court to argue about their parking fine.And let's just—and this is in the disclosure statement—remember who this will impact most. It will impact our poorest New Zealanders. In fact the disclosure statement itself says this will likely impact Māori and Pasifika disproportionately as well. So there we go again. Either—[Interruption] It's what it says. You can naysay but if you've done your homework and done your reading you can see that that's what it says. At least there is a disclosure statement in this case.This is another ridiculous trivial bill raising a few hundreds of thousands of dollars and we're doing it under urgency utterly utterly unnecessarily but you've brought it here. We're going to do our job. We'll have a good look over it and we've got a lot more to say about it. But so far from what I can see a silly little bill that the Minister's brought to the House