Dowie SarahSARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker for this opportunity to take a call on the Immigration (International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy) Amendment Bill which should really be renamed as just the Tourist Tax Bill". I too rise in opposition primarily because this is an extremely poorly drafted piece of legislation. I note that Mr Tabuteau said that this was sensible legislation. Well quite frankly I agree with my colleagues on this side of the House that in fact it is lazy legislation. It is a piece of legislation that contains absolutely no detail. It will leave the detail to regulation which is incredibly bad law. It will leave it to be captured by officials and leave it for them to come up with details as to how this is going to be managed the scope of it and where the distribution of these funds will go and certainly on this side of the House that is something that we will talk about further in the committee of the whole House stage. But "sensible"? Absolute hogwash. It is lazy. It is bad law. The other thing is that we are now into the third bill of this botched Budget in urgency and this is the third tax or cost to New Zealanders that this Government is bringing about as part of its botched so-called Wellbeing Budget. We started first of all with an excise bill which increased fuel taxes to a whopping cost of $360 million being charged to Kiwis and then followed with a social services bill which removed the obligation of mothers to name fathers—the "Deadbeat Dad Bill"—which will cost Kiwis upwards of $113 million. Now we're looking at bringing in a tourist tax at $35 per person. That Government over the other side there is all about price signalling and within this urgency when talking about the other bills they were quick to point out that when you raise a tax such as the fuel tax you change the behaviours of people and they were quite keen to link the fuel tax with increased safety on our roads. Yet when we're talking about a tourist tax they don't seem to accept the facts and figures that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) officials have given us in that the fiscals don't add up and that tourists will be discouraged from coming to our shores. Not only will tourists be discouraged from coming to our shores but they will spend less in the communities that they visit. For me as a regional MP and an electorate MP many of my smaller communities that may abut the conservation estate or that are simply quite remote and that have forged a future with respect to tourism will not gain the benefit of that revenue at source and I think that that is a travesty. I think that that is not investing in tourism it's not investing in the economy it's not investing in growth and it's certainly not creating jobs and wealth for ordinary Kiwis in rural or remoter areas. It simply doesn't work. I also echo the sentiment from this side that the tourism sector is of great benefit to New Zealand—$16.2 billion in GDP is generated from the tourism sector and 180000 jobs are directly involved in the tourism sector. Brett Hudson: Well it was before their tax. SARAH DOWIE: Well that's right Mr Hudson. What we'll see is that with less tourists coming to our shores with less visitors coming here and with less revenue being spent at source for the businesses on the ground these businesses will be forced to lay people off and as I say the revenue generation will be down and when things start to bite it'll be this Government here that will have to turn around and answer the public—Brett Hudson: So it'll be the provinces that hurt. SARAH DOWIE: —and especially Mr Hudson the provinces. This particular bill is actually amending the Immigration Act. The Immigration Act is about governing the movement of people and contributing to our security with the movement of those people—of who comes in and out of our country—and all of a sudden here we're inserting a tourist tax. It's a tax that's already been mooted at $35 per person and there are going to be apparently some exemptions to the rules with respect to taxing people who come in on a temporary visa. But again it's already been signalled that Australians will be exempt from that tax. Now how does that make sense? I really can't fathom how that makes sense. I mean we've already seen in news reports and in media about how badly Kiwis are treated over in Australia and yet this Government wants to make an exemption for the 40 percent of our visitors that come to these shores from Australia. Now why would Australians be exempt from paying that $35 per person and who else is going to be exempt? I mean what sorts of categories is the Minister going to turn to for exemptions and how is that going to be monitored and how is that going to be fair? Brett Hudson: That's their plan—Chinese-sounding names. That's the plan. SARAH DOWIE: Well exactly Mr Hudson. Who knows what could come about from this Government with regards to exemptions because with it being made by regulation at the whim of the Minister there will be no checks and balances and no accountability with regard to that regulation and this tourist tax. It is very very quite frankly frightening that this bill could create arbitrary rules through regulation at the whim of the Minister and what will that do for our international reputation moving forward? The other thing that I don't like about this bill is that there's no guidance as to how the funds are going to be distributed. We've heard that there is going to be a fifty-fifty split between conservation and tourism. Well that may well be arguable but how is the Minister going to make plans as to which investments are good ones and which investments have priority? We've already heard about the fiscals and heard that MBIE have estimated that this tax is going to generate $80 million worth of revenue. However on the flip side they believe it will discourage $70 million in revenue with the discouragement of visitors to our shores and less spending. But then when you're left with those figures how are they going to prioritise that money? Allocating $40 million for tourism infrastructure is really nothing. What they could have done was to prioritise the surplus that we'd left them and use it responsibly rather than on other foolhardy policies such as the fees-free policy which has devastated the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) by the way for your information. Certainly there was no consultation with SIT with respect to that policy. Look I disagree with what the other side have said which was that National has never supported tourism. We saw it as definitely a growth industry and one that was deserving of support. That's why we had our tourism infrastructure growth fund and that's why we had our partnership fund and certainly Invercargill—my region—was well-supported by that. From an ideology point of view the growth fund certainly worked in my region and there's many examples. One in particular that comes to mind is Curioscape in the Catlins which allowed a project to create an interpretation centre to be driven by a community trust. So it was the people in the community on the ground—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): We are straying from the bill somewhat. Please come back. SARAH DOWIE: Well it's to compare and contrast about what sorts of alternatives are available. I'm addressing the fact that the Government said that we didn't invest in tourism and that is quite blatantly false. It's false because it was through that fund that we supported that project. It allowed a partnership between a trust and Government and tourism—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): That's still not part of the bill. SARAH DOWIE: —that was quite successful. This piece of legislation is bad. It's bad all round and we simply do not trust the Minister to make appropriate decisions as to how to spend this money. It will discourage visitors from our shores. It will discourage spending in the areas in which tourists do come. We live at the bottom of the world. We need to encourage visitors and encourage growth."