Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): I am the sad sack who is next and I'm delighted to oppose this Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill and whoever came up with that name must have been on some spirits themselves. Mr Faafoi—I can't believe that member gave a spirited defence to increasing the cost of living on hard-working New Zealanders in the electorate of Mana. What are they going to get out of a tram set that runs from the Wellington Railway Station to Wellington Airport? Five-eighths of nothing at all Mr Faafoi. It is remarkable—here we are with a Budget that is supposed to be a wellbeing Budget.What does this Government think? How do they think you improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders? Well according to Mr Twyford you slap an extra tax on hard-working people. You raise the cost of living for New Zealand workers and in his mind that is improving wellbeing—because that is precisely what this piece of legislation does. I just took the opportunity to take a look on Gaspy. People in Wellington are already paying as of today almost $2.30 a litre for their petrol—for 91 octane petrol. If they happen to require 96 octane it's going to cost them quite a bit more. They're paying almost $2.30 a litre.What does Mr Twyford think of those people who are living their lives going to work and taking their kids to sport? What care does he have for them? He says I think that's not enough. Here's an extra 8c a litre. Go and enjoy that." That is the Labour Party's and the coalition's views on New Zealanders. The best way to make them better off in their view is to take more of their money away from them—more tax. This is an "increase tax Budget". Botched as it is it's increasing taxes—it's the first thing they're doing—and in a manner of speaking it actually is the worst of all possible taxation and I'll explain why.When we think of it it is actually taxation without representation. And the reason it is that is because the people who are being hit with this tax are the people who will get little to no benefit from it—the Government has already made that clear—and none more so than in Wellington which I will come to. They intend to take more and more tax from motorists and spend that on projects that benefit those motorists not at all. So in the Let's Get Wellington Moving programme—which is a very poorly named programme because the last thing it will actually do is get Wellington moving. If the first action of this Budget is to tax people more the first action of Let's Get Wellington Moving is to slow people down. Remarkable!It's the nature of a Labour-elected official. What they do is actually the opposite of what they claim they're going to do. But in terms of Let's Get Wellington Moving the Minister is prepared to fund $1.3 billion plus about $1.1 billion of interest on top of that to get people who currently use the bus to get from the eastern or southern suburbs into town off the bus and on to a tram. Because that's all light rail—and it is light rail. At $1.44 billion as raw capital it can only be light rail because as we know bus rapid transit would be about a quarter of that and trackless trams would be hundreds of millions of dollars less simply because they don't need steel rail in the ground. But Mr Twyford's view is "I'm going to tax motorists more with 8c a litre in this piece of legislation so that people who don't drive cars already because they're on buses can get on a tram instead."What is he going to do for those motorists that he's going to slam with this extra tax? Well they get nothing—nothing at all—because while he's prepared to spend a lot of money on trams he's ruled out an extra southbound lane from Ngauranga to Aotea Quay. He's ruled out the second Terrace tunnel. He's ruled out the undergrounding from the Terrace Tunnel to the Basin Reserve which does nothing at all for any motorist who lives in the northern or western suburbs of Wellington City or indeed in Mr Faafoi's electorate of Mana or in Hutt South in Rimutaka in Ōtaki or the Wairarapa. It does nothing for them at all. But he's going to take an extra 8c a litre from all of those people that travel to work each day in their vehicles—maybe because they have to; maybe because it's better for them. He gives them nothing but takes everything they have. That is actually a form of a lack of representation. Taxation without representation—it's a good way to describe what Mr Twyford is doing to them.Governments fund their programmes of action but Governments have to justify them. If it's about getting people off buses and into trams the Government should be justifying the overall benefit for spending that money. Well that was attempted in a Public Transport Spine Study in Wellington which compared options of mass transit from the railway station to the airport against each other and against alternative options. What that found was that light rail in Wellington would lose between 90c and 95c in every dollar spent on it—90c to 95c in every dollar would be lost and that was when it was expected to cost half a billion dollars less than they expect now.So not only is Mr Twyford proposing with this legislation to take 8c a litre off motorists all over New Zealand; he's expecting those motorists in Timaru in Whangarei in Auckland in Tauranga but also the motorists in Wellington to have that tax forcibly removed from them and spent on projects—one of which at least is going to lose 90c to 95c in every dollar of theirs that he spends on it. But it's even worse because he is shifting so much money out of the infrastructure that people need—taking $5 billion out of State highway improvements and throwing most of it into loss-making light rail—he's also setting up situations where those same motorists through their local and regional councils are getting taxed again to fund the infrastructure (1) that they need and (2) quite frankly that they have already paid for through their existing fuel taxes even without this increase. It's just a tax upon a tax.A great example is here in Wellington. Let's Get Wellington Moving is a $2.6 billion additional tax on ratepayers. That is roughly the equivalent—roughly the equivalent—of $13500 per household across the region. But for the good people of Wellington City that might be listening I've got bad news. There is no way that the mayors in Wairarapa Kāpiti or even the Hutt are going to be prepared to take a full share of this. So if a person happens to live in the Wellington City boundaries their share is going to be a great deal more than $13500—a great deal more.Anyone who stands as a representative in this city and says it's okay for our residents to get smacked with that amount of money on top of this additional tax on top of the fuel tax they already pay on top of their income taxes and on top of the GST they pay—that seeks to justify that they because of Mr Twyford playing around with the funding should have to pay more than $13500 just to get the transport they already pay for—then quite frankly that's an abject shock and shocking thing to do.Fundamentally Mr Twyford and his Government particularly his finance Minister had the ability to deliver for New Zealanders including their transportation needs including that infrastructure without raising more taxes. Instead they have chosen to take the forecast surpluses—which admittedly are a bit smaller now than when they first took office and that's due to their decisions as well—and apply them to expenditure that is not delivering any return such as Mr Jones' $3 billion fund which some call a slush fund; fees-free which is not delivering any additional students at all; $1 billion for Mr Peters in the area of foreign affairs; $1 billion now to subsidise rail that wouldn't exist without the subsidies it already gets—but that's simply another transfer of taxpayers' money into another venture that is not delivering any return for them.The result of that is that in order for those New Zealanders to get what they deserve and need because of the decisions the Government has made both in terms of its general spending but its reclassification or rejigging of funding within the National Land Transport Fund they are faced with additional tax in this form of 8c a litre on their fuel on every litre of fuel they will purchase but also because of all of those things additional taxes through other sources such as the regional transport tax that Wellingtonians will face for 30 years at least to be going nowhere at all if they happen to live on the northern parts of the city and beyond.It is a Government that has got its priorities completely wrong. Mr Twyford stop over-taxing New Zealanders."