Key John: Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Key John: Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:623;Page:18595] 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the National Party to oppose Part 1. I find it quite amazing to see what the Government is proposing. For the benefit of those people who have not had an opportunity to read the bill I simply say that this is a Government that wants to index the duty on petrol and motor spirits. It wants to index its right to build inflation into its revenue stream year in and year out. The Minister does not want to come to this Parliament and say so. The Government does not want to ask to pass on to the people of New Zealand the additional costs of inflation in its revenue stream. 
I say to the Minister and to the Government that this proposal is actually quite logical. We do this in a number of areas. We do it for tobacco and alcohol and there is some quite compelling logic about doing it for motor spirits. But it gets a bit rich when this comes from a Government that when it looks on the other side of the ledger—when it looks at the income tax paid by New Zealanders—does not want a bar of this kind of approach. The Government is very happy to look after its revenue stream. It is more than happy to have the effects of inflation nullified by the Act of Parliament that will be amended by this legislation. The Government is more than happy to know that if inflation is rampant in New Zealand and we are facing ever-decreasing amounts of income in a real sense it is protected. That is absolutely fine from the Government’s perspective. But the poor old workers out there will have to pay for the inflation on petrol as a result of this legislation. They have to pay for the inflation on tobacco—on cigarettes. But those people do not get the effects of inflation on their income. 
Labour members smugly sit back in their green seats. They do not have to be out there working hard for a living all day. They do not care about the poor workers out there. They do not care about the policemen. I asked the Minister of Revenue a very interesting question a few months ago. I asked him if he could tell me how many policemen in New Zealand pay the top rate of personal taxation. Mr Hughes is giving me the fairly standard “deer in the headlights” look of the Government so let me tell him how many pay the top rate. Thirty-nine percent of all policemen in New Zealand pay the top rate of taxation. That is right—they are the elite rich according to Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. Wonderful! “Join the police force and get rich” will be the new advertising slogan under Labour. Thirty-nine percent of policemen pay the top rate of taxation which was raised under a Labour Government to 39c in the dollar. Two or 3 years ago the number of policemen paying the top rate of taxation was 13 percent. That is right—it has gone from 13 percent to 39 percent in 3 years. Why? Because the effect of inflation has pushed the wages and salaries of policemen and policewomen into a higher bracket. Their real after-tax income is not going up. Their real after-tax income is in fact stagnant. They are not getting ahead and that is why they do not feel any better off. 
On the wages and salaries side of the ledger the Government says: “We don’t care about inflation; tough luck. Just pay the higher rates of taxation. Let us have more money and we’ll go out and waste it on all sorts of things like twilight golf hip-hop tours and anything else we can dream up.” You name it; the Government will spend money on it. It does not care because it is rolling in clover. Why? It has so much money coming in because it is prepared to index its revenue. 
The Government talks a lot about its confidence and supply agreements and its coalition arrangements with various parties. It happily took the confidence and supply support of United Future. It was happy to come to this House and say: “We’ve got a strong confidence and supply motion.” We all know that when one of the Government’s tax bills was before the House late last year Gordon Copeland the finance spokesman for United Future put up a Supplementary Order Paper that would have seen the indexation of income tax. And what did the Minister of Finance do? He vetoed it. He said: “No I am not prepared to accept inflation when it is on your side of the ledger but when it comes to the Government’s revenue—when it comes to my coffers—I want the lot.” That is not fair.