Key John: Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Key John: Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:623;Page:18409] 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 If the people of New Zealand ever want to get a sense of what the Labour Government is really like then I strongly suggest that they pick up a copy of this bill. They will see to the core what this Government is really like. This Government is quite happy to mislead the public. It is so political it does not care what it has to do to get there. It has the Karl Rove philosophy of politics: do whatever it takes but do not necessarily tell the public the truth or deliver results. 
I do not want to spend any time reflecting on Rick Barker’s speech because it was just such a waste of time. I will not even dignify it with much comment except to ask why if he really believes he has the vested interests of the public at heart he sold out to the Greens and signed up to the Land Transport Management Act in 2003. Why was he so flaky on that stuff that he was prepared to have walkways put where cars go? [ 
Interruption 
] No that is absolutely germane to the debate because this Government is so flaky about this sort of legislation. 
I want to talk to the Minister. He would be shocked himself as I am sure he is not up to speed on what will actually happen under the bill. First the bill allows the Government to index increases in petrol tax whenever it likes. So year in and year out it will be indexing increases. That is very interesting. This Government is happy to pass on costs through indexation. It is more than happy to tell the people of New Zealand they will be paying year in and year out for the effects of inflation through the price of petrol. It has no problem with building in inflation. The Government wants its revenue stream inflation-proof; that is Dr Cullen’s message. 
The funny thing is though the Government is absolutely not happy with that approach when it comes to income tax. It did not want a bar of United Future’s proposal to index taxation thresholds. It wanted the support of United Future for confidence and supply but did not want a bar of indexation when it came to the revenue stream. That is why one in three New Zealand policemen pay the top rate of taxation as do one in four secondary school teachers—because they have been robbed of any benefits through inflation. But when it comes to its own income the Government has no problems at all taking money out of the pockets of pensioners and everybody else through inflation. 
The Government had the absolute gall to leave the petrol tax element out of its press release on this bill in December 2003. The Government forgot to tell the public. When it was found out the following February it made lame excuses saying that it had forgotten to mention the news—it was a mistake an oversight; not intended and not deliberate—when the Prime Minister announced the Auckland transport package. That is the way this Government wants to treat the people of New Zealand. 
Very interestingly we have an Auckland package—backed by the 5c a litre petrol tax which I will get to—for this reason and for this reason alone: the Labour Party president Mike Williams knows absolutely nothing about transport. He is on a whole bunch of flaky boards. I will have a lot more to say about Mike Williams in the months ahead and that will be a very interesting debate. Mike Williams the Labour Party president picked up Transit’s 10-year programme and happened to notice that 17 out of the 20 projects were in Auckland. He did not like that. He was going around electorates in other parts of the country saying that he did not like the fact that 17 out of the 20 projects were in Auckland. He wanted something done about it. Lo and behold he got himself on the board of Transfund as he did with many other boards—and we will come back to his remuneration in due course. He overrode everything to do with those 17 projects and Auckland ended up with three—three when Auckland had ground to a halt and people on the north-western motorway could have got out of their cars while they were listening to the Minister’s speech and walked faster than they could drive. It was an absolute disgrace. The Government could not allow that but it could not have the 17 projects. It had to come up with another plan for fixing Auckland’s roads so it decided to just send the bill to the taxpayer. 
That was all going OK until Orewa I when all of a sudden the Government lost its big lead in the polls. It started getting a lot more nervous when that happened. Then it had to come up with a very good excuse for not introducing a very unpopular petrol tax—because Mike Williams cares more about the Labour electorates than about fixing Auckland’s roading problems or fixing productivity. The Government came up with its flaky excuse. 
In response to a supplementary question to a question Peter Brown asked in the House Michael Cullen told us that—lo and behold—he was suspending the introduction of the petrol tax. Why was the Minister doing that? He said it was because of the rising price of oil and the burden that would have on the New Zealand community. I told him that it was a good answer—I respected that answer—and asked at what level the Minister would not put the petrol tax on and at what level he would put it on if the oil price dropped. He did not have an answer to that question. The problem with answering it is that any number specified could coincide with a date 3 4 or 5 weeks out from an election and the one thing Dr Cullen does not want to do is defend a flaky position set up by Mike Williams 3 or 4 weeks out from an election. So lo and behold there is no answer. That is why we cannot define whether the level would be oil at $35 a barrel $40 a barrel or $45 a barrel—because the Minister does not know. It depends not on the price of oil but on the week of the election and that detail is really hard to write into legislation. 
So in this bill the Government is giving the Minister of Finance permission without further recourse to the House to put a 5c petrol tax on whenever he wants with no time or date limit ever. He could do that in 15 years’ time if God forbid he were still in the job. I could do that when—as no doubt I will be—I am Minister of Finance in years to come. I could do it with no recourse to the House any time I wanted to. 
Hon Rick Barker 
: Dreams! 
JOHN KEY 
: Aucklanders are dreaming when they think they will get their roads fixed—that is the dreaming bit. 
That is exactly what the legislation does. It says that the Minister of Finance can put the tax on for whatever reason he or she wants whenever he or she wants at any time in the future. That is the truth of it. The Government cannot write into legislation that subject to 4 weeks before fighting an election it will put in a very unpopular petrol tax forced on it by Mike Williams because he is on a lot of flaky boards pumping out Labour Party policy. The Government is unable to write that into its legislation. [ 
Interruption 
] 
I am sorry for Lynne Pillay because that is absolutely the case. Her constituents will not be getting anywhere near to getting around their electorate because their roads are not being fixed. The roads cannot be fixed because local authorities do not have the money. They do not have the money because this Government to its core is prepared to do whatever is political. 
 When I listened to the submissions on this bill I asked the people from Treasury to tell me about the work they had undertaken for Dr Cullen in relation to what would be the appropriate price at which the petrol tax could be implemented. 
Peter Brown 
: What was the answer? 
JOHN KEY 
: Interestingly I say to Mr Brown the answer was that some work had been done on that issue for Dr Cullen. The interesting thing about that answer was that a couple of weeks earlier I had asked Dr Cullen in a question for written answer what work he had had done and whether he could supply it to me. The answer was that he did not seem to think he had had any written work done on that. Then I pushed the officials a bit further—but I do not blame the officials; they are just there as puppets for the Minister. They said really that Dr Cullen wants us to have this. Dr Cullen wants this provision. The poor officials were put up like little lamb chops for the sacrifice. There was no work done no rationale for it and no logic behind the provision. Like little lamb chops to be put on the barbecue the officials were put in front of the National finance spokesman to be rotisseried because they did not have a reasonable answer to a reasonable question. 
I started my address with one very simple statement: this bill demonstrates to the core what the Labour Government is all about—doing whatever it takes doing whatever has to be done and breaking whatever arms have to broken. But to fix the problem of fixing Auckland’s roads people should vote National. That is how Auckland’s roads will be fixed.