O'Connor Damien: Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: 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:10318. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): This is a Government that seeps hypocrisy at every step of the move. It came in promising New Zealanders that it would reduce taxation. Well it did. It did for the wealthy and it did take off the regional petrol tax on Auckland. Now in urgency this National Government is increasing taxation on every single New Zealander. Why? To pay for the benefits of a few people living north of the Bombay Hills.Auckland is not a bad place if you visit and stay for a short period of time. But can I give a few quotes from Ministers across the other side. “New Zealanders should not be forced to pay twice for road networks given they have already forked out for excise duty on road user charges.”—that was a statement from Gerry Brownlee when he was trying to justify the removal of a regional petrol tax on Auckland. Then we had from Mr Joyce a statement that said that “regional fuel taxes are expensive and inefficient … ”.Well I will tell you what you should do. I want Mr Auchinvole to go to Fox Glacier and tell the people at Fox Glacier that this tax is efficient and beneficial to them and that it is not expensive. I have to say that everywhere outside Auckland will consider that this tax is inefficient unfair hypocritical and in fact unproductive. If we are to listen to the Government’s rhetoric around taxation that any increase in taxation causes a loss of productivity what are we getting from this? Well silence. That is exactly right. We are getting a pay-off and payment for a few infrastructural assets in Auckland and we know Aucklanders need them.But there was a consensus building group that came out with a list of recommendations one of which was a regional petrol tax—no. “No we cannot have a regional petrol tax.” said Mr Joyce. So what we have to do is spread that tax across each and every single New Zealander. What about the people in rural New Zealand? These are the people who have to travel these are the people who do not have any public transport system and these are the people whom that member from Whangarei might remember. The people up there in Whangarei will not be too happy about paying a tax to pay for the infrastructural assets of Aucklanders—I say with all due respect tomy colleagues—that should have been paid for by Aucklanders. The people in the regions the rural New Zealanders who produce the wealth in this country are being forced to pay 9c for every litre of petrol over 3 years—9c. And for what? To pay for “holiday highways” and infrastructural assets.Even a consensus group—this was a group of Aucklanders who came together to say: “How should we pay for our infrastructural assets and our roading?”—arrived at a number of options such as a regional fuel tax higher rates which are not terribly desirable or charging for motorway use. The vast majority of New Zealanders living outside Auckland would say that that is a reasonable challenge and one that should be put up. Well the Government said: “No no no we can’t have people up there paying for their own infrastructure. We will impose a petrol tax of 9c across each and every New Zealander”—the same 9c that was rejected by that Government when it came into office—“for every litre of fuel.”I know what people in Fox Glacier in Collingwood in Fairlie and in Invercargill think about this. Off the back of statements by Mr Brownlee and Mr Joyce about the inefficiency and the expense of this they understand the hypocrisy of what is going on in this House today. This Government removed the tax when it came in to satisfy its mates in Auckland and it now imposes this tax across each and every New Zealander to try to justify as my colleagues say this paper-thin so-called balance in the Crown accounts.This is an outrage and I urge New Zealanders the few who might be watching to go and tell their people—all the people the two-thirds of the population who live outside Auckland—that this National Government is increasing taxes. It is doing it on each and every New Zealander—the vast majority of whom have no alternative other than to pay it. This is unfair. It is inefficient and it is expensive and that is to use the Minister’s—