Prosser Richard: Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3913. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First):I want to pick up where my colleague Mr Shaw has left off. I was not going to wade into the debate about whether this measure is a levy or a tax because actually I think it is irrelevant and as Labour members and others have gone into in quite some detail when you look in the various dictionaries online and otherwise and google them it seems that the one is the other and the other is the one. So what it is called does not actually matter. It is significant though if we look at the departmental disclosure statement at page 9. Part 4.2 about significant legislative features asks “Does this Bill create or amend a power to impose a fee levy or charge in the nature of a tax?” and the answer given is no. The explanation is that “The levy is not proposed to be greater than cost recovery and there will be a clear relation to the costs of the functions performed. The funds collected will be held in a Trust Account to be used solely for funding the cost of the levied services. Given this officials consider the levy is not in the nature of a tax.”So whether it is regarded as a tax or a levy—and there is obviously some difference in the mind of the Government or at least in the minds of the officials who drafted this particular statement—it raises a question that goes back to a theme that I have raised in earlier stages of this debate. When we say that the funds collected will be held in a trust account if we by a little stretch presume that the consolidated account for example is a trust account—because in a manner it is—to be used solely for funding the cost of the levied services one would presume or I guess one could be forgiven for presuming that the purpose of a Government raising tax at all or raising revenue at all through whatever means would be to fund the cost of levied services. In other words the things that the Government does it has to raise money for and I do not see that there is a difference in that regard between money being raised for a purpose specific to government and money being raised by a Government specific to a purpose.What it does get back to—and this is the point I have been making and the one that Mr Shaw picked up on as well—is whether or not the $100 million that this levy tax fee or whatever is intended to raise is going to be additional to baseline funding for biosecurity as it currently exists or not. This is fundamental to our support or lack of it for this bill. If we are talking about $100 million extra going on top of what we currently spend on biosecurity we are all for that and that will swing us around. We will come in behind it and say: “Good on you Minister.” The Minister has made a point over his time as the Minister for Primary Industries of saying that biosecurity is his No. 1 priority. We absolutely support him on that and in fairness I think he is genuine in that. He may struggle at times I think to extract a sufficient degree of priority out of his Cabinet colleagues for the primary sector because their focus may be on other areas but I think he is genuine in wanting to improve the level of biosecurity. We may disagree on the methodology by which that is achieved and the processes he intends to go through but doubling the budget for biosecurity would make an enormous difference to whether or not New Zealand First could support this bill. I think it really does require some absolute clarity as to whether or not this levy—it is a new levy—is going to provide an additional stream of funding for biosecurity or whether it is going to replace the current stream of funding for biosecurity.Again I come back to the point the Minister of Customs made earlier when talking about cost recovery whereas Minister Foss and Mr McKelvie have talked about boosts. Either it is a boost or it is a cost recovery. It is one or the other. So we are talking about either another $100 million or the same $100 million coming from somewhere else. That is really quite crucial.Hon Annette King: Extra.RICHARD PROSSER: I know yes. People have said “extra” and other people have said “cost recovery”. So it is one or the other. I wonder whether perhaps then—if we want to go back to the title of the bill—we could say that it should be called the “Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Additional Levy Bill”. That would clarify it completely saying whether this is additional funding or not.I also want to ask another question and I am certainly hoping that some Government members are going to rise and take calls in this stage of the debate. Perhaps they are just leaving it for the Minister or Ministers at the end. If this measure is simply cost recovery and we look at some of the perhaps fringe pathways through which people and goods and so forth come into New Zealand we know that about 95 percent of incoming passengers are airline passengers about 4 percent are cruise ship passengers and the other 1 percent are yachts private jets military personnel and so forth—and never mind that there are diplomatic visitors and so forth guests of the Government who we already know from prior Government statements will be exempt because it is not appropriate to charge guests of the Government money to come in. But if we are talking solely about cost recovery then I cannot see that it is feasible in any way to imagine that for $16 a person it warrants sending an inspector up to say Ōpua in the Bay of Islands to inspect the crew of a yacht coming in. It cannot materially or physically be possible to adequately inspect a number of people coming in on a yacht and that yacht itself at $16 a head. So that in itself begs the question: if the levy is not sufficient for these sorts of things is it going to be topped up from general Government funding? And if that is going to be the case is that going to be across the board? Can we please have some clarification from the Minister or from one of the Government members as to whether or not that is going to be the case. Thank you.