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:10308. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): Well here we are. It is just after 20 past 11 on Saturday morning and—Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Just after morning tea time.GRANT ROBERTSON: Oh Jonathan Coleman is back on it again. Talk to Gerry Brownlee the man next to you Jonathan; do not talk to me. It is 20 past 11—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No full name.GRANT ROBERTSON: Sorry. Jonathan Coleman talk to the man next to you; do not talk to me. It is just after 20 past 11 on a Saturday morning and we finally get to some actual Budget legislation from this Government as opposed to its shoving bills through under urgency to make up for the mistakes it has made. Just briefly I refer members on the other side of the House to Professor Andrew Geddis’ blog which was written last night entitled “I think National just broke our constitution”. That is what we have been through over the last few nights in this House.This bill the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill is about one thing and one thing only. It is about raising taxes this year next year and the year after in order to do a fiddle and a fudge to get the Government to its wafer-thin surplus—that is it. It is nothing more than politics. It is nothing more than taking money out of the pockets of New Zealanders so that National can achieve its political goal of getting to that wafer-thin surplus. There is so much contortion in this Budget for the Government to find its way to its surplus you know that the Barnum and Bailey circus is on the phone—it wants Bill English in there. That is what the Government is doing. It is shifting the money around to make it look like there is a surplus and the reality is that it is doing that by fudging this particular bill.It is very important I think to make sure that we echo the point that has been made earlier by Iain Lees-Galloway. This bill and the other Budget legislation is about shifting the burden of debt away from the Government and on to ordinary New Zealanders. That is what this Budget is about. The Government can try to claim this surplus—a surplus I might add that will disappear into thin air with one back-down. We saw it last year with the class sizes. It had to back down and that was it—the surplus was gone. It is that wafer-thin that it could go with one Hekia Parata back-down. A brain fade from John Key and it is all over—there is no more surplus—and the Government has got there only off the backs of ordinary New Zealanders. Once again this is the pattern of this Government. It is fiddling and fudging the books to make it look like it is delivering its political goal of a surplus and in reality taking that money away from New Zealanders.This Government’s record on tax legislation deserves some analysis. Iain Lees-Galloway has already talked about the promises that were made up and down the country by John Key and other National MPs about the fact that they would not be raising taxes; they would be cutting taxes. Well National came in and it cut some taxes. That is absolutely true—40 percent of those tax cuts went to the top 10 percent of New Zealanders. That is the first fudge. That is the first broken promise. The broken promise—apparently the tax cuts John Key said were going to be all about the middle class. No they were not; they were about John Key’s mates. That was the first problem.But what followed from there—what followed from there—was a pattern of consistent tax increases that affected ordinary New Zealanders. GST—up under this Government. Who is affected the most by an increase in GST? People on low and modest incomes who spend a higher percentage of their income on the basics of life. They are the people who are affected. That was a tax increase from this Government. Then we have seen consistently overcharging on ACC. Time after time ACC has been used in classic Nick Smith fashion to manufacture a crisis ramp up the levies use that to fudge the books and then he will bring them down and say that he has saved everything—a classic Nick Smith response. Then as Iain Lees-Galloway has said we have seen a 20 percent increase in early childhood education costs prescription fees going up repayment rates on student loans—all of these are tax increases just as thisbill is today. And just as this bill does today it shifts the burden on to ordinary hard-working New Zealanders who are already stretched.But one thing that has come out of the last few days too is the way in which National is starting to manipulate this Budget around to try to shift a bit of blame. I have had people from Christchurch calling through to me disgusted by the comments they have seen from both Gerry Brownlee and John Key about shifting the burden. John Key went on television and said: “New Zealanders right across the country actually [have] to go without so that money can go into Christchurch as a priority.” That is what John Key said to New Zealanders. That is a disgraceful way to treat the people of Canterbury who have been through so much to suddenly use them as a pawn in the Government’s game about getting back to this wafer-thin surplus. And I am also told that Gerry Brownlee went on the radio in Christchurch and said that State-owned enterprise sales were needed to fund the rebuild of Christchurch. So once again Christchurch gets the blame because this Government is so bereft of ideas that all it can come up with is to sell off the assets and hike up taxes and ACC levies to get itself to its wafer-thin political surplus. That is not good enough. The people of Christchurch deserve far far better than to be used as a pawn in the National Government’s political game. Gerry Brownlee and John Key need to know that the people of Christchurch are disgusted and appalled by that kind of treatment.But if we look at this bill in the context of this overall Budget it is definitely a fudge and a fix to get into surplus. Also in the Budget are massive contingencies—contingencies in the education budget that we have not seen for a very very long time. Once again the Government is manipulating the money. I think of that actually as a failure of leadership by the Minister of Education. She should be laying out a clear plan on education spending but instead that education budget is being used along with this petrol tax hike to give the impression that this Government is doing something about getting New Zealand’s books in order. The way that this Government has gone about this Budget in my view is a hoax on New Zealanders. It is a sham of a surplus. This is not the kind of bill that should be coming to this House in this way in a Budget setting because this Government told New Zealanders time and time again that it would not be increasing their taxes and yet this year next year and the year after this bill will increase petrol taxes.It is useful to refer to the regulatory impact statement because what that tells us is that the—[Interruption] See there is a regulatory impact statement for this one. The Minister is to be credited for doing better than his colleagues in the National Government who have failed to produce a regulatory impact statement. But when you actually look at the regulatory impact statement yes it is a 3c a litre increase over those years. That represents the best part of a 6 percent increase every year in the price of petrol caused by this Government. This Government did not talk about this. When Bill English stood up he did not talk about this. He did not say: “I am acknowledging I am doing this. I am putting up taxes. I am breaking the promises that John Key has made to New Zealanders.” Instead here we are on a Saturday morning with National shoving this bill through under urgency. Well it is time New Zealanders heard the truth about this. This Government has fudged and fiddled with the numbers in this Budget to give the impression that it is getting back to surplus. That is being done off the back of hard-working New Zealanders.This bill is a continuation of this Government’s approach: to tinker with the economy to get short-term gain. We will come back in later calls to the question of the transport funding but let us not be under any illusion. This is a Government that is prepared to see a two-speed economy where vested interests and speculators get ahead and where exporters and manufacturers and ordinary New Zealanders are left behind. That is thelesson of this Budget. We will have a two-speed economy where National’s mates get ahead and ordinary New Zealanders are taxed more have to pay more and get worse services. This bill is an emblem of this Government’s failure to grow a sustainable economy and a failure to create jobs. It has to put up petrol taxes just to get to its wafer-thin surplus.