Robertson Grant: Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: 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:10324. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): David Bennett is very conscious of words the importance of words that people might say and how they willcome back to haunt him. But there was one word he did not want to utter in his speech—well two words—Iain Lees-Galloway: “Tax”.GRANT ROBERTSON: —“tax” and “petrol tax”—because that is actually what this Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill is about.Hon Hekia Parata: That’s two words.GRANT ROBERTSON: I said it was two. I did correct myself. Thank goodness the Minister of Education is here to keep us on track.Hon David Cunliffe: What about the contingencies?GRANT ROBERTSON: We will come to the contingencies but the words that Mr Bennett does not want to say are “petrol tax” and “raising petrol tax”. He did not mention that once and that is exactly what this bill does. But I am not surprised that he did not mention that because he would not want to get offside with his leader John Key who of course also does not want to mention that what this bill does is put up petrol taxes to ensure that the National Government can create its wafer-thin surplus.The whole notion of what was going to happen with taxation under this Government is something that John Key does not want to talk about. In 2005 this is what he said. He was talking about taxation and he said that what we have to avoid is the indifference to the burden that taxation heaps on middle-income families. Well what does this do? What does this legislation do? What this legislation does is exactly that. It heaps the burden on middle-income families. These are the same families who missed out on a tax cut when the National Party came into office. These are the same families who looked on while the top 10 percent of taxpayers got 40 percent of the benefits. That is what happened. That is the squeeze that was put on the middle-income families that John Key suddenly said he felt for.But then when National got into Government Bill English said: “We don’t want to go down the route of raising taxes.” That is what Bill English said. What did he do? He put GST up. Who did that put the squeeze on? Low and middle income families the people who spend more of their income on the basics. Not the National Party’s mates who can take that money and go away on their overseas trips but the middle and low - income families who got squeezed by a tax increase that National said it would not do. They are the same people who are being squeezed by a 20 percent increase in early childhood education costs and by an increase in prescription charges.This Government likes to say that we are getting into surplus wafer-thin as it may be. Well it is off the backs of hard-working New Zealanders who have not had a break from this Government and it is shifting the burden. The Government is shifting the burden from its debt to New Zealanders’ bank accounts. That is what this bill does. That is why the Labour Party is strongly opposed to this bill. I am very surprised that there are parties in this House who oppose the Government’s Budget but think that they can vote for this legislation. I think it is naive to lift this bill out and say: “Oh well it puts petrol taxes up. We might think that’s a good idea in principle.” This bill is a hoax. It is not about the petrol taxes really is it Mr Brownlee? It is about the political surplus. It is about trying to make sure that a wafer-thin surplus is provided in order to meet a political commitment that this Government has made.The reality is that this bill has to be seen in the context of the rest of the Budget. It has to be seen in the context of a Budget that delivers to National’s vested interests rather than ordinary New Zealanders’. That further creates the two-speed economy where the speculators and the vested interests benefit and where the exporters and the manufacturers and the ordinary New Zealanders go in the slow lane. That is what this is about. This is about a Budget where there was an absolute failure to create policies for affordable housing—an absolute failure. The Government promised big and deliveredvery very little. This is a Budget where there was an absolute failure to address issues of poverty. Great claims were made about food in schools and nothing shows up on Budget day about that. Great claims were made about what would be done to get warrants of fitness for rental housing. The Government is considering a pilot—a consideration of a pilot. That is the context of this bill. That is what members in this House should be thinking about as to whether they vote for this bill.To focus on and accept the Government’s fiddle and fudge and to say that this is about making sure that we get money for these roads of significance to National—or roads of national significance whichever way around you want to put it—yes that is what it wants to claim of it but the reality is that this is a taxation bill that is part of this Government’s Budget. It is vital to its ability to drive its agenda through. Parties on this side of the House should think very carefully about whether they want to support National’s Budget because that is what they will be doing if they vote for this legislation. They will not be voting just to increase petrol taxes—mind you they will be doing that which will put further pressure on middle-income families—but they will be voting for a Budget that is utterly bereft of ideas to create jobs.The two-speed economy I mentioned earlier is relevant to this legislation. As has been discussed before it is the people in regional New Zealand who miss out on the transport policies of this Government. It is the people in regional New Zealand whom this Government is ignoring. And my colleague Phil Twyford when he was Labour’s transport spokesperson and Iain Lees-Galloway now have been going around the country talking to the local authorities in the regions and talking to the businesses in the regions of New Zealand and they are saying a consistent thing the same thing that I have been told when going around talking to polytechs talking to chambers of commerce and talking to businesses about skills and training—that this Government is ignoring them. This Government is ignoring the regions. It is interested only in working with its vested interest mates. Those regions also are not benefiting from this transport policy.As my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has said before a transport policy needs to be a balanced policy. Yes there needs to be some funding for roads but there needs to be support for public transport and there needs to be support for walking and cycling. That is absent from this Government’s plan. It is so limited. There is no—David Bennett: That’s not true.GRANT ROBERTSON: David Bennett says that that is not true. What is the percentage out of the transport budget that is spent on rail?Iain Lees-Galloway: Seven.GRANT ROBERTSON: Seven percent of the transport budget is spent on rail. This is not a balanced policy. The balance that is really missing here is the balance that would give ordinary middle-income and low-income families a fair go and give regional New Zealand a fair go. David Bennett for all of his bluff and bluster cannot make the case for the fact that this bill is good for his constituents. People in Hamilton and people in the Waikato are asking where this National Government is. This National Government is far more focused on deals with Skycity selling off laws to Warner Bros and selling off to international companies the right to protest as we have seen in the last few days. That is the focus of the National Government. It has ignored the regions of New Zealand and this piece of legislation is one more example of that. So I strongly urge parties in this House to oppose this legislation. This is not legislation that will deliver for New Zealanders and it cannot be isolated out from the rest of this Government’s programme and the rest of what it is doing.This Government has a record of broken promises when it comes to taxation. It has come to this House today with a bill that increases taxes on petrol this year next yearand the year after. That will result in pressure on middle-income households and there is nothing else in this Budget that New Zealanders could look at and say “OK maybe they’re putting my petrol tax up here but I’m going to see some delivery. I’m going to see some new jobs created. That means I can support a petrol tax going up.” But that is not there. On the jobs front this Budget is hilarious. If it were not so serious it would be absolutely hilarious. We have discovered in the Budget figures that the National Government will pull up 60000 jobs short of its target of 170000 new jobs. That is bad enough but then it has recommitted to a new target for 4 years with 170000 jobs again. It will not do it. It does not have the policies to create jobs. It does not have the ideas and the innovation to turn this economy around to make the changes to monetary policy or to change procurement policy so that it focuses on New Zealand jobs. It is not prepared to tax capital through the capital gains tax. All it is prepared to do is tinker around at the edges and benefit vested interests. This bill is critical to that Budget. It should be opposed because it does not deliver to ordinary New Zealanders the kinds of benefits they should expect from a Budget like this.