Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Chairperson. I wasn't sure if you'd recognise me. I was looking a bit rough at midnight last night—CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I think we all were. ERICA STANFORD: —it was a long day—so was the Minister to be fair. In fact you're not looking much better this morning either to be honest. I want to pick up where I left off last night.Hon Chris Hipkins: Gerry looks that way all the time.ERICA STANFORD: That's uncalled for. I want to pick up where I left off last night. Just to remind the House I was talking about Australians. [Interruption] I know it's pretty rough for a Saturday morning on a long weekend to be talking about Australians but here we go. It is actually quite important because obviously in reading the bill—which frankly didn't take long—and all of the information surrounding the bill we realised that Australians are exempt.Now when we look at this we realise that Australians make up a huge portion of our international visitors—in fact 40 percent of our international visitors—and they are big users of our conservation estate. They walk and they partake in many tourist activities. In fact everywhere you go in New Zealand you meet an Australian when you're out touring around. They are big users of our infrastructure so to exempt 40 percent which is quite a big proportion of our international visitors is a big step. We looked at how much that would bring in if they were to be included and that was $36 million which is a sizeable chunk. We did actually think that that would have allowed the Minister to reduce the overall visitor levy had he included Australians making it a bit fairer for everybody and encouraging more people to come rather than not encouraging them.So my question to the Minister is—because I asked this question in the House last night or I made the point in my speech and Minister Kelvin Davis in his contribution told us the reason why Australians were exempt and he was quite clear. He said that Australians don't spend as much to come here they don't come for as long and so the proportion of what they would spend would be far greater than compared to someone who was coming from say America and spending more to come here and he didn't want to put at risk 40 percent of our international tourist market. You know that makes sense but I pointed out in my contribution later on in the second reading that actually he has the power under regulation to prescribe the amount of that levy in respect of different categories or classes of person. So in fact he has the ability to reduce the amount that Australians could potentially be charged for this visitor levy. It's in the regulation; he has the ability to do that to make it fairer for everybody.Now I suspect that's actually not the case for why Australians are exempt and he wasn't entirely forthcoming with the real reason. We suspect—as per James Shaw's contribution when he came down last night to ask some very pointed questions—that it's more likely to be the fact that we are unable to use the ETA system to collect the levy from the Australians; so it's actually more a difficulty around the process than it is around anything that Mr Davis was saying. But I want to come back to this particular part 399A(3)(c) where it says the Minister is allowed to change the calculation in respect of different categories or classes of person" because I want to ask him specifically what that means. Why didn't he firstly use it for Australians so that they paid a lower amount more in proportion with what they pay to get here and the shortened length of time they stay here? But I also want to know what else that might mean. Would the Minister perhaps say "Look most of our tourists from Germany are backpackers. They don't spend so much when they come here. We might actually make that calculation a bit less for them." because you know they also don't spend so much. Or perhaps he might take someone else who's relatively close to New Zealand who doesn't spend as much or come here for as long.The regulation is in here and I want to know exactly what he's using it for because the problem with this bill is that there is no explanation as to why a lot of these things are in here or how they'll be used and how they'll be applied. So I am very interested to find out exactly for whom and in what circumstances 399A(3)(c) would perhaps be used if it's not being used for Australians."