Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Madam Chair. It's quite remarkable isn't it that here we are on Budget night and the first piece of legislation we are debating under what is supposedly the world's first wellbeing Budget is making New Zealanders worse off. In Part 1 they're worse off because most people are not in the position to claim back GST—most motorists. It's not 3.5c a litre they are worse off by but it's actually 4c or 4.025c because most New Zealanders who will get caught by this legislative change will not be able to claim back the GST they will have to pay in an inclusive amount.The real challenge I have with this is that there's no question that the clause as it's written is going to take that money off New Zealanders. No one's going to debate that it won't work—it will work. In fact it will work too well because too many New Zealanders are caught up in this. The Government is looking to impose a charge on New Zealanders that most of them cannot get away from. They can't get away from it if they are driving their own motor vehicles. They can't get away from it if they are taking the bus. They are challenged to try to avoid this tax. Any good piece of taxation should offer not only incentives to consider doing something else but should be considerate of the prospect of people having choice and they don't in many cases or at least not choices that will allow them to legally avoid paying this imposition. So I've come to help the Minister. My amendment will help him and he doesn't need to thank me but I've got some great news for him: we'll stop this. We'll can this particular increase in Part 1 because Minister—great news—your fees-free policy didn't work and the Minister of Finance has $198 million spare. The Minister has previously responded to written questions as to what this charge of 4c a litre including GST would raise over the course of a year and his answer was roughly speaking $120 million. So Minister it's great news: you want $120 million out of Part 1 each year and Mr Robertson has got a spare $197 million in cool cash just lying around because no extra students came into tertiary study. But there's even better news. There's even better news because—to be clear Madam Chair—while the excise charge must go into the National Land Transport Fund and the National Land Transport Fund must be used to fund land transport the other really good bit of news for the Minister is that land transport projects can also be funded from other sources such as general taxation surpluses. So the great news Minister is that this tax is not required because the Government has some other sources from which they can bring about the same amount of revenue to apply. The really great news is that if you're not going to have extra students in the first year of the fees-free policy you're not going to get any more in the future years. In fact if you've only got students that were going to go anyway—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Ahem.BRETT HUDSON: —you could can the whole—I'm getting to the point Madam Chair—funding of the whole thing because it's a multi-year thing. I'm not just trying to say to the Minister it's one year. I appreciate that this excise would otherwise last until otherwise stopped. So if they got rid of the complete fees-free policy he could fund it year in and year out as well. So I offer this piece of assistance to the Minister: scrap this first year of excise go to Mr Robertson and get some other cash.There's another bonus—a real added bonus—because of course we know that the Labour Party came from the workers and that they represent workers' rights and we know from looking at the regulatory impact statement that officials hold that this excise tax is regressive. So this excise tax should it go ahead will harm lower-income New Zealanders more than the well-off. It will harm the very people that the Labour members have always purported to represent but whom they are trying to sting with $120 million a year extra in excise tax. A difficult one to square that circle but none the less I'm here to help—I'm here to help Minister.We can can this excise and all of those lower-income New Zealanders are going to think that's a great thing—you'd actually help their wellbeing in this Wellbeing Budget because you won't have imposed this additional tax on them you won't have stripped $120 million out of their pockets. It'll be theirs to use in whatever pressures and circumstances they have in their lives. It's my gift to you Minister. You don't need to thank me Minister—the Minister doesn't need to thank me. But I offer you this; it's an opportunity to do what's good for New Zealanders. It would be good for the Government. I'd encourage you to take it up Minister.