Boscawen John: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Boscawen John: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 20 May 2010. Volume:663;Page:11131. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) 
: 
 I congratulate Carmel Sepuloni on her speech because I think she is absolutely right. She said that we may have a honeymoon period for this Budget. Certainly the commentators are saying that it is a good Budget and I think that most New Zealanders perceive it to be a good Budget. But she said that people will eventually wake up to the increases in GST and they will eventually wake up to the increases in accident compensation levies. I have heard the words GST and accident compensation mentioned time and time again over the last 12 hours—time and time again. The tragedy for the Labour Party is that it could actually make that criticism stick if it told the truth. There is another elephant in the room and it is the emissions trading scheme. 
Hon Members 
: Oh! 
JOHN BOSCAWEN 
: Yes. Let me direct my comments particularly to National. I heard Darren Hughes having a crack at the Minister of Police Judith Collins about the proportion of people in her electorate who earn under $40000. I ask Judith Collins and the other National members to look at the 550000 people in their electorates who earn between $40000 and $85000 a year. Page 9 of the Budget 2010 Minister’s Executive Summary presented by Mr English yesterday shows that people earning between $40000 and $85000 can expect an average increase in income of 0.4 percent—0.4 percent. The Reserve Bank tells us that the emissions trading scheme will increase the cost of living by 0.4 percent from 1 July. So the people earning between $40000 and $85000 get absolutely nothing—absolutely nothing. 
People listening to this debate on the radio and people watching it on television right now will hear a constant reference to the emissions trading scheme from the ACT Party and the reason for that is that no other party in this Parliament wants to raise it. So yes there has been positive coverage of the Budget but in my view some of the most interesting coverage came this morning from Paul Henry on television’s  
Breakfast  
programme. Paul Henry seems to be the only commentator who picked up on the fact that the emissions trading scheme will add 0.4 percent to the cost of living from 1 July. That will actually reduce the net benefits to people who earn between $40000 to $85000 to zero—absolutely zero. I say to members of the National Government that they need to start challenging their Ministers and start challenging their Prime Minister. If those members look at the appropriations they will see that the allocation of New Zealand units has gone from $139 million worth of units in the last year to over $1 billion—an increase of $900 million. 
Carmel Sepuloni can talk about millionaires buying properties—and she may try to create some envy—but I say to her that her criticisms would be far more effective if she acknowledged that the money is going not to the millionaires but to the foresters not so that they can buy more buildings but so that they can buy more forests. That is it: we have $1 billion—$1 billion—going to people who plant forests. People who planted forests are in two categories. The first category consists of people who planted trees before 1990. If they chop those trees down harvest them and do not replant them they will incur a significant loss of value but only I suspect if the Kyoto Protocol is extended beyond 2012. The second category consists of those who planted forests from 1990 onwards. They will not harvest those forests until some time in the 2020s. They will be given an allocation of units—officials tell me that it will be something like $700 million worth of units—for trees planted in the early 1990s when there was no expectation of taxpayer subsidies. 
I say to Labour members that if they really want to make an impact on this Budget they should go out there and acknowledge that Labour would have had its own emissions trading scheme from 1 January and that it would have increased electricity prices by 10 percent. But the world environment has changed and National can respond to this because it can suspend the emissions trading scheme. It can leave in place the incentives to ensure that trees planted from 1982-85 are not harvested so that we can meet our Kyoto Protocol obligations.