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:10348. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Part 1 of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill raises taxes on lowerand middle income New Zealanders. It is a direct contradiction of what the National Party said it was going to do before it came into Government. John Key went up and down the country telling anybody who would listen that he would bring taxes down. He would bring taxes down for everybody. He even promised that he was not going to put GST up. That is what John Key said. He promised that he was not going to put GST up and that taxes were going to come down. Well GST went up. It is one of the most regressive taxes that we have. It was put up.Then a whole range of other costs were put up such as ACC. We know that early childhood education costs have gone up. The cost of prescriptions has gone up. The cost of going to the general practitioner has gone up. And of course over time the fuel tax has gone up and once again here we have the fuel tax going up. As Trevor Mallard pointed out in his Committee stage contribution we are not absolutely certain that this increase was required under legislation. In fact the principal Act which is amended by Part 1 of this bill allows for regulations to be made by Order in Council to increase the excise tax on fuels.So why are we here on a Saturday afternoon debating this bill? Well the only logical answer can possibly be that the Government desperately needed these fuel taxes to be considered as part of the Budget to get the Government to that wafer-thin $75 million Budget surplus that we know is 0.1 percent of the total revenue. That is well within any margin of error. At any point in time that surplus could be lost by any one of the errors that could be caused by any one of the Ministers over there. Simon Bridges—Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s smaller than 0.1 percent—much much smaller.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: It is much smaller than 0.1 percent. Well maybe that will be a debating point—that we can figure out exactly how small the margin of error is for this. But that is why the Government is increasing taxes on fuel and increasing them by legislation here in Part 1 of this bill.The Government had other options. It could have done it by regulation but it needed this increase to be part of this year’s Budget so that the Government could account for it as part of its surplus which we know it will barely meet and only by searching around for every single possible little cent by increasing costs. The poor old paper boys got it last year. The Government was looking at the car-parks and it was looking at a fringe benefit tax on laptops and iPads. The Government has looked for every possible way to shake middle-income New Zealanders down for every penny they have got because of its unaffordable tax cuts. That is why the Government cannot get to surplus. One of the first things the Government did when it came in was to cut taxes like it promised it was going to but who did it cut taxes for? The Government cut taxes for its mates the people at the top. That is who the Government cut taxes for and then it loads all these extra charges on to people like the increase in the fuel excise tax which is included in Part 1 of this bill. That is what this is all about. It is about making up for those unaffordable tax cuts.Even if the Minister is right and this is genuinely about putting more money into the National Land Transport Fund the reason for that is this Government’s profligacy when it comes to the roads of significance to National—the roads of political significance. They do nothing for growth. It is not about growth. It is not about a growth agenda because a growth agenda would be about an integrated transport network. This is about roads of political significance to the National Party. As we saw fromThe Hollow Men we know that National’s internal emails have been about making sure that all the money that it raises from fuel excise taxes and road-user charges goes into super-highways. National has talked about actually making that part of its policy. Of course it has realised that it cannot quite go that far so what we get is a bill like this that the Minister himself said in his first reading speech—