Newman Muriel: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Newman Muriel: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:609;Page:6509] 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (ACT NZ) 
: 
 This is the part of the bill that actually tells us the numbers—that is by how much the levies the rates of duty will be increased. Effectively it means that instead of paying 2.3c a litre tax on petrol everybody will be paying 5.08c a litre so this Labour Government is increasing the tax on petrol at this particular moment in time by 120 percent. Theoretically the idea is that it will go into helping to run the Accident Compensation Corporation. I say that this Labour Government has got this whole thing completely wrong. The Accident Compensation Corporation does not need the money now; the corporation has plenty of money to fund itself at the moment. The motorists of today are having to fund the tail of accident compensation in the future and that is very unfair on the families and small businesses that are struggling at the moment. 
What is worse about this particular bill is that it comes under the label of an accident compensation bill. This bill is a tax-increase bill and the Labour Government was elected on a bandwagon of saying that it would be open honest and transparent. 
Jill Pettis 
: Talk about the schedule. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN 
: I ask that member over there why the Government did not put into the title of this bill the fact that it is a tax-grab bill. That is what the bill is all about. 
The schedule tells small business that its petrol charges are going up. What we do know is that small business is finding it so hard to get by and the first thing it has to do is pass that cost onto the consumer. What it means is that the numbers in these schedules will simply be another cost on New Zealand families. Only an anti-business Government would actually consider that that makes sense when we have a downturn coming. Most of the people of New Zealand realise that a downturn is on the horizon and here we have a bill that is putting up the cost to motorists throughout the country—that is ordinary families with their ordinary cars. More important it is everybody who has anything to do with transportation so anybody who buys a loaf of bread will find the cost of bread going up because the cost of petrol is going up. That means that that cost will eventually be passed onto the consumer so we can expect price rises for bread milk cheese—for everything that consumers in New Zealand buy. 
The real problem with accident compensation is that it is a monopoly run and controlled by the Government so we get the Government in here today putting up the levies on petrol and accident compensation without any problem at all. It is one hand feeding the other hand; it is the two arms of the Government conspiring against the ordinary families and taxpayers of New Zealand. 
It is interesting to look at the issue of accident compensation. Labour has already increased levies for the self-employed by 40 percent since it has been in power. The wage-earners’ levy has increased by 10 percent motorbike levies by 57 percent and car ownership levies by 14 percent and now we have the third increase in the price of petrol. This increase is going to accident compensation and it is a 120 percent increase. I say to the members sitting opposite that that is shameful because it will hit the very families who are struggling harder than anyone else to get by and that is the group that the Labour Party tries to pretend it is representing. I say that this heavy-handed tax grab is not needed and it should not be taking place now. I think it is disgraceful that the Labour Party is once again increasing the taxes on New Zealand families. 
What did Labour say when it came into Government? It said no tax increases on anybody who earned under $60000 a year. What have we had? We have had 25 different tax increases since Labour became the Government. I say that that is an absolute disgrace because most of those tax increases have been by stealth. I wonder whether listeners realise that Labour has collected an extra $9 billion in stealth taxes since it was elected.