Robertson Grant: Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10337. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): It is a pleasure to rise in the debate on Part 1 of this bill the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits)Amendment Bill. I just want to note before we get into the detail of Part 1 of this bill that in the explanatory note of the bill there is the suggestion that the increases in petrol tax being proposed here “are to provide additional funding to the national land transport fund”—Hon Tau Henare: They’ve all been told to stand up.GRANT ROBERTSON: Mr Henare can stand up any time he likes. Mr Henare can stand up any time he likes and give a speech in this Chamber to justify this increase in petrol tax because we have not heard that.Hon Tau Henare: OK sit down and I’ll take a call.GRANT ROBERTSON: No I am not sitting down. I am not sitting down until Mr Henare tells me that it will be a substantive call—that he will use his full 5 minutes and he will justify to this Committee—Hon Tau Henare: Right you’re on. You’re on—sit down.GRANT ROBERTSON: —why National is putting petrol tax up by 3c a litre this year 3c a litre next year—Hon Tau Henare: Yep.GRANT ROBERTSON: —when I have finished when I have finished—3c a year in the third year. Then we can hear—Mr Henare has got plenty to say now but when I sit down he will not be seeking the call because those National Government members do not want to stand up in this Chamber and justify to New Zealanders whose budgets are already squeezed why they will be paying more in petrol tax this year next year and the year after. We have already heard today that petrol tax will be 59c a litre. To the taxpayer it will be 59c a litre after this budgetary increase up from 42c a litre when National came into office. So Mr Henare and all of the rest of his National colleagues could get up and justify to this Committee why they are doing this.But to return to the point that I was making the explanatory note says that “The increases are to provide additional funding to the national land transport fund”. My concern is that that really is not the reason. Yes the money will—in the sense of the way that National likes to describe these things—be going to the roads of national significance under the National Land Transport Fund but the reason that Part 1 of this bill is here is in fact not that. The reason is in order for National to put over a hoax on the public that there is in fact a surplus—that there is in fact a surplus. Jonathan Coleman raises his eyebrow but that is the truth. That is the truth.If we go through the Budget and we look at the situation heading towards 2014-15 when the National Government says it thinks it will be in surplus it does this by a series of fixes and fiddles of which this bill including Part 1 is part. Those other fixes and fiddles include overcharging New Zealanders on their ACC levies—a magic $400 million worth of tax credit offsets that happen only in the year in which the Government says it will get into surplus. They also include an additional $1.1 billion in corporate tax that comes in only in the year in which the Government says it is going to get into surplus—Hon Trevor Mallard: How much extra?GRANT ROBERTSON: $1.1 billion.Hon Trevor Mallard: For $75 million?GRANT ROBERTSON: Yeah that is right.Hon Trevor Mallard: A bit margin of error really isn’t it?GRANT ROBERTSON: It is and this is the problem. It is giving itself a buffer Mr Mallard to make sure—for all the other things that will go wrong for this Government—that it will get there. But the truth is that this Part 1 and the explanatory note of this bill is I think actually misleading. It is misleading to the people of New Zealand because the real reason for this is to try to make the political promise thatNational made of getting into surplus somehow real. It is a marginal surplus. It is wafer-thin. It could be wiped out with one Hekia Parata stuff-up and then it will be gone like the class size—Iain Lees-Galloway: It’s probably Simon Bridges now.GRANT ROBERTSON: —or Simon Bridges. In fact the cost of coming back every month to amend the Crown Minerals Act will probably wipe that out in itself. So I think that is misleading.What Part 1 does as we have noted before is increase petrol tax—or motor spirits tax as it is written in the bill—on 1 July 2013 1 July 2014 and 1 July 2015. It is 3c a litre. That equates to around a 5 percent or nearly 6 percent increase each year in that rate. The National Party has gone to the public at the last two elections saying: “We are not about increasing taxes. We are not about increasing taxes. That terrible Labour Government—that is what it did.” except that the record of the National Government is that there is one group in society who get their taxes decreased. They are the well-off. We know that from the 2010 tax package where 40 percent of the benefit of those tax cuts went to the top 10 percent. So National fulfilled its promise for the top 10 percent but what the other 90 percent have seen are tax increases just like the ones contained in Part 1 and in addition they have seen GST going up. That GST increase we know detrimentally affects people in the lower and middle-income brackets because—[Bell rung]Hon Member: Thank you Mr Chair—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Grant Robertson. Oh sorry—I call Grant Robertson.GRANT ROBERTSON: Thank you Mr Chair—a bit slow. That detrimentally affects the 90 percent of people who do not fall in the National Party’s target market. We have also seen massive increases in ACC levies and we know that this is a classic Nick Smith trick. You bump up the levies. You push the levies up more and more and more you create the crisis and then you get the great credit in a few years’ time when the ACC levies come down. There has been a 67 percent increase in those ACC levies in the time of this Government.So this is a Government that has promised New Zealanders that their taxes would not go up but in actual fact what it has done is transferred the burden of debt away from itself as a Government on to households. It is a transfer of the debt and the problems that New Zealand has on to households so the Government can make its books look good. In the Budget of which this bill is a core part it sits alongside a transfer of wealth as well. What we have seen if we look for instance just at the asset sales programme is a transfer of wealth where half of our energy companies which were 100 percent owned by New Zealanders go to a 2.5 percent ownership. That is a massive transfer of wealth away from New Zealanders who are also at the same time having a burden of debt transferred on to them.Part 1 of this bill sits in the middle of the National Government’s budgetary strategy. That is why the Labour Party is opposing this. Not only will this bill and this part put enormous pressure on middle and low-income families who are trying to fill up their cars each week trying to make sure that they can get through the gridlock in Auckland transport that the Government has created—so it puts pressure on them—but more than that we are opposing this bill because it is part of the Government’s strategy in this Budget to pretend that it can get into surplus. That as I said is a hoax on New Zealanders because that surplus is created by burdening New Zealanders for a short-term political goal for National.The total impact on the National Land Transport Fund would actually put it $17 billion into surplus. Mr Brownlee might like to tell me whether that is true. It goes wellbeyond what is absolutely needed in order to keep the National Land Transport Fund operating. That is because its purpose is actually much wider than the one that Mr Brownlee has looked at.I think my colleague Phil Twyford made an extremely good point in the second reading about where this money is allegedly going. As I say I believe the purpose is actually a political one but the stated purpose is for the National Land Transport Fund. The National Land Transport Fund is focused on the roads of national significance. The important thing to note about the roads of national significance is that National has chosen these for its political purpose. I recommend to everybody who has not seen it to have a good look at the documentaryThe Hollow Men—it is available on DVD—and they will be able to see in that documentary how National planned it out to make political decisions about roading—political decisions about roading—which have now turned into this programme of roads of national significance. So it is not just a political matter of getting into surplus; it is a political matter of where the funding for roading goes.Phil Twyford made the point: if these decisions were being made on what is in the best interests of all New Zealanders why would you be funding a road with 9000 cars a day on it and not funding a road with 36000 cars a day on it? Why would you not fund an inner-city rail link which would actually reduce congestion and which would actually have a much higher level of benefit to New Zealand and instead decide to fund unnecessary highways in other parts of that area? It is because it is purely political. It is because this is a political statement by the National Party not a statement in terms of building a sustainable transport policy that has got investment across different modes.I reiterate what Phil Twyford has said: the Labour Party is not opposed to investment in roading projects where that makes sense. It is important that we have a good roading network right across New Zealand not just in the electorates that the National Government picks off but it is equally important that we invest in other types of transport as well. The taxation that is being generated in this bill will go into the National Land Transport Fund to fund politically motivated projects by the National Government not projects that are in the best interests of developing a sustainable transport network across New Zealand. That is a significant reason to oppose the bill.Whatever some parties in the Chamber might feel in principle about the fact that petrol tax should rise they need to look at this bill in the context of a National Budget that is not about sustainable transport solutions. If you are increasing petrol tax in order to create a more sustainable transport network all well and good. That is not what this Government is doing. This Government is putting a hoax on New Zealanders.