Dowie SarahSARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you Madam Chair for this opportunity to take a call on Part 1 Amendments to preliminary provisions" in this Immigration (International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy) Amendment Bill otherwise known as the "Tourist Tax Bill".This is basically the clauses that come together that enable a tourism tax to be charged as part of amending the Immigration Act. I think that this comes back to the ideology and some of the matters that have been raised throughout the first and second readings in that when we look at section 4 being amended and the definition of "international visitor conservation and tourism levy" it means "a levy imposed by regulations under section 400 for the purposes of section 399A". This comes back to the very fact that this is a process that is being run under urgency that we are not going through a full process to select committee and hearing from submitters and getting to truly analyse and question the bill. Yet within this amendment bill there is a deference to regulations and that is set out obviously in Part 2. But this is the problem with the amendment bill in that Part 1 basically says that this levy is going to be set out as functioning—the way it's going to be used is going to be defined by the Minister by regulation. This side of the House has a real problem with this because that is quite arbitrary and quite frankly for a Government that says that it prides itself on fairness I have a real problem with the fact that these arbitrary decisions are going to be made by a Minister.I defer again to my colleague the Hon Jacqui Dean who raised another important point about the definition under Part 1 of "Minister". I would add to her questions about which Minister and how Ministers are going to make decisions how it would actually work in practice with respect to the number of Ministers that these portfolios transverse. I would like to know how these decisions are going to be made what priority is going to be given to the distribution of these funds how these Ministers are going to come to these conclusions to appropriately distribute—well first of all to collect; second of all to prioritise projects and then to distribute. Because quite frankly it comes back to the fact that this tax is going to be governed by a set of regulations that we have no idea as to what they are going to contain. We have no idea as to how they are going to be set and that is an absolute problem for us on this side of the House.We just simply have a real problem with the ideology that this Government is bringing another tax into play. It's a tax and spend Government and the signals that it is sending to the tourism industry and to our international visitors are appalling.This side of the House believes that infrastructure is important for tourism and on the conservation estate. We absolutely believe in that and that's why we had several initiatives such as the Tourism Infrastructure Fund where we were investing in this industry. But Part 1 here brings about the power for another tax but again with a process that is flawed. We are not going through an appropriate process to challenge officials and the Minister as to what will be in those regulations. We do not have a line of sight as to how they're going to work and quite frankly I feel that this tax could be misused could be ineffective and again if you go back to the RIS and you look at the finances it's hardly worth bringing it in at all."