Lees-Galloway Iain: Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: 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:10322. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I hope that the National Party backbenchers were listening closely to their Minister of Transport in that speech and indeed he made the same comments in his first reading speech. Some of those members seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension that the money raised from these extra taxes that will be levied against low and middle income New Zealanders will be used across the transport network. That is absolutely untrue and the Minister has made that clear. This is for roads. In fact it is not even just for roads or for roads broadly; it is specifically for their uneconomic roads of national significance—roads of political significance and roads of vote-buying significance as we found out by referencingThe Hollow Men in the first reading. What is going on here is that the National Party is putting on new taxes and raising taxes on low and middle income New Zealanders.Frankly I am surprised that the Green Party and the Mana party are voting to increase taxes to increase costs for low and middle income New Zealanders. That I think is outrageous. Over here in the Labour Party we just will not wear that. We refuse to support an increase in taxes on low and middle income New Zealanders for transport infrastructure that simply does not stack up economically. There is a range of different—[Interruption] I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have a point of order which will be heard in silence.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I can barely hear myself over David Bennett. I do not mind if he wants to interject on me. He is quite fond of it. But if he could just calm down a little bit that would be helpful.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The point is well made. The noise was coming from both sides of the House. Would the member please continue.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Thank you very much Mr Speaker. The fact is that there are a number of different aspects to a growth-focused transport network in New Zealand. Local roads are important. Highways in some places where appropriate are important. Rail is important. Public transport whether it be urban rail or buses is important too and so is active transport. Cycling and walking are both important as well. We need infrastructure to support all those modes of transport but all this Government is focused on is the roads of national significance.What we know is that when a Government builds more roads in order to relieve congestion that is simply buying time. It is not a solution. It might last a few years but in time all we will get is more cars on those roads and in fact we will end up exactly where we started from with the congestion that we had before. An investment in a diverse and integrated transport network would see people moving from being single occupants in cars travelling to work and back home again to using public transport if the investment was there to make sure the public transport available was reliable regular and fitted in with people’s lives. But this Government is not interested in investing in that type of public transport.We would see freight taken off the road and relieving congestion both for freight carriers and for car drivers if we saw more freight moving on to rail and on to coastal shipping. These are appropriate methods of moving freight around the country. Sometimes freight needs to be moved on a road. Sometimes freight needs to be moved on rail. Sometimes freight needs to be moved by coastal shipping. There are different time-dependencies and there are different types of freight. What this Government is not doing is building a transport network that responds to the different needs of different users different types of freight and different time-dependencies. It is investing everything into roads. Actually what it is doing is overcapitalising in the roading network when what would be a smarter use of capital would be to have a broadertransport network so that the peak times on the roads were relieved a little bit and that we were not investing loads of capital in having empty roads most of the time.I appreciate that congestion is appalling in Auckland but most of the time those motorways are empty. So why spend billions of dollars on building roads that are going to be empty most of the time? There is a smarter more sustainable more strategic way of using transport money and investing in transport infrastructure.Simon O’Connor: What about buses and trains?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Absolutely! Buses and trains need to be used. They relieve peak congestion—they relieve peak congestion. It is a smarter use of capital. Actually I would like to hear—[Interruption] The National Party backbenchers are quite keen to interject but they are not at all keen to offer a substantive argument when they get their calls. I would be quite keen to hear a little bit more than just the one-liners that they have been provided with by their research team. I would like to hear them provide a more sensible substantive argument than what they have given so far. So if they want to argue in favour of pouring all the money into uneconomic roads they should get up and argue for that. Let us hear the case for it. But they know there is no case for it—they know there is no case for it.What this bill actually does is it continues National’s legacy of shifting the burden of tax from those who have the most ability to pay for it on to those who have the least ability to pay for it. It comes from a misguided belief that reducing taxes on those who can afford to pay tax somehow creates jobs. It is an absolute fallacy that reducing tax on the extremely wealthy creates jobs. How many jobs did the $5000-a-week tax cut given to the chief executive officer of Telecom create? None—absolutely none. On the other hand—Grant Robertson: Cut 1500 jobs.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Indeed Telecom cut 1500 jobs probably to pay for the chief executive officer’s salary. On the other hand giving tax relief to low and middle income earners is a job creation strategy because it is the consumers who create jobs—it is the consumers who create jobs. Businesses create jobs when there is demand for their products and the demand is high enough that they need to take on additional labour to meet that demand. The demand comes from people having enough money in their back pockets to be able to go to the supermarket to the shops to the computer store to wherever and purchase products. That is where job creation comes from.This Government is labouring again under a complete fallacy. That is why its taxation and economic policies are absolutely wrong and that is why we are not seeing job growth. We are not seeing the 170000 promised jobs—just another broken promise from the National Party. We are not seeing the economic growth that would get the books back into surplus without having to increase taxes and dive down the back of the couch to find every single little penny that can be found to try to get the Government’s books back into that tiniest of tiny surpluses 1/1000th of the overall Government books. That is well within anyone’s margin of error. The slightest little hiccup between now and next financial year and that surplus is completely gone. But the Government could be getting there if it had policy settings that encouraged job growth like the kind of policy settings that the Labour Party has: a capital gains tax to shift investment away from speculative investment in property towards the productive sector which creates jobs; a procurement policy that supports New Zealand businesses and New Zealand jobs; and research and development tax credits which again support the productive sector the sector that creates jobs. Those policies and others are the kinds of things that New Zealanders need to see from this Government not penny-pinching increases to their fuel excise tax just to make up for the fact that this Government has hadunaffordable tax cuts for the wealthy and has an unaffordable programme of road building for roads that are completely uneconomic.I suggest that the National Party members who reckon they represent the provinces go and speak to some of the mayors and the councillors in those provinces and talk to them about their concerns about local roads. This Government is reviewing the way it funds local roads. I suggest that the member for Wairarapa go and talk to Roly Ellis at the Tararua District Council who is deeply concerned that the productivity of the forestry that is about to come online in his region is not going to be as high as it could be because of the lack of investment in their local roads. The Government will not support them to upgrade their local roads because all the money is going to the roads of national significance. That is the truth here—that is the truth. This Government does not support the regions. This Government does not actually support roads and it does not support an integrated transport network. It supports buying votes by building uneconomic gold-plated silly roads that are significant to the National Party only and not to the hard-working people of New Zealand.