Williams Andrew: Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Andrew: Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 05 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16384. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill. Before I actually speak on the bill I would like to bring it into context by referring to the tax cuts of 2010 that this National Government brought in giving something like $2 billion back to the 10percent who are the wealthiest people in this country. The likes of John Key got $1000 a week back in tax cuts. The likes of Paul Reynolds from Telecom got $5000 a week back in tax cuts. If we put that into context this Government then puts this report out that says that it cannot take this out of general taxation and it cannot cover this out of the general funds because it cannot afford it but it can afford to give $2 billion back to the very people who can afford not to have those tax cuts because they are the National Party’s mates.So in this respect what we are seeing with this bill is a situation where once again the low to middle income earners in New Zealand—the people who can least afford it—will be paying more for their petrol on a daily basis through the pumps to once again prop up this Government and to prop up this Government’s books. At the present time for instance we pay on average $2.20 per litre for petrol. The Government takes in the order of 64c a litre in tax—64c a litre out of $2.20. That is nearly 30 percent. So when New Zealanders are filling up just think that nearly one-third of what they are paying is tax. Of that 64c which excludes GST 53c goes to the National Land Transport Fund 9.9c goes to the ACC motor vehicle account 0.66c goes to the local authority’s fuel tax and 0.45c goes to the petroleum or engine fuels monitoring levy. So the Government is already taking significant funds.In addition GST is collected on the overall price of fuel including excise. The GST excise amounts to approximately 8c per litre. Every time of course the cost of fuel goes up the amount of GST taken goes up. In effect the Government is quite pleased when it sees the price of petrol going up because it sees its GST booty coming in at even greater levels.In addition to that and most New Zealanders would not realise this 1c per litre is taken to pay for the emissions trading scheme that this Government signed up to. So money is going offshore to be paid into this emissions trading scheme. It started out at something like $23 or $24 per unit and has now absolutely slumped down to $2 or $3 a unit. Again New Zealand was one of the first countries in the world to sign up to it. This Government wanted to be one of the leaders and all that sort of thing. Again it took all of that money to commit this country and basically the scheme is an absolute falsehood.In that particular situation of the emissions trading scheme basically New Zealanders’ hard-earned taxes and money that good hard-working New Zealanders have earned is going overseas to traders and brokers and people who are making money out of our money. I can understand why this Government wants to get involved with this as well because John Key was a money trader and a money broker. So there are many of his mates around the world who are involved in these schemes. I can see why in this legislation it says: “Meeting the stockholding obligation by building government-owned stock or by placing a mandate on industry to hold stock were considered as alternative options for meeting the stockholding obligation. These options were rejected because holding stock contracts is a more economical way of meeting the obligation.” That is a very important phrase: “These options were rejected …”. In other words it was rejected that we should keep our own stocks or put pressure on the oil companies to ensure that they had sufficient arrangements to have stocks—whether it be onshore offshore or wherever they have their stocks—because it was determined in the legislation that holding stock contracts is a more economical way of meeting the obligation.Who will be holding those stock contracts? Well it will be international brokers and it will be international agencies that are holding these contracts and they will be making money out of them. They are not doing it for the fun of it. They are not doing it for the love of New Zealand. They are doing it to make money. So once again while goodhard-working New Zealanders are paying more through the pump to fill up their cars their trucks their buses and everything else people around the world will be making money out of this. This Government prefers to do that.This Government prefers people around the world to make money out of these contracts to make money out of the emissions trading scheme internationally because the leader of the National Party comes from that background. He comes from a background of dealing in money trading in money and being a broker. So I would not be surprised if there are many many brokers and friends around the world who will do very nicely out of this arrangement.In the last year the Government has also advised that New Zealand motorists are going to have increases in the fuel tax—going up 3c a litre per year over the next 3 years. New Zealand First opposed this last year when it was brought in. We asked right then why people in Invercargill Gore on the West Coast and down in Pātea—everywhere—should be paying for the roads of national significance when the vast majority of those roads are north of Taupō. There was the odd road in Wellington there was the odd road in Christchurch but the vast bulk of them were north of Taupō and particularly north of Hamilton and into the Auckland area. Why should people in the South Island be paying for all the Auckland and Hamilton roads? Why should the fuel tax be increasing every year by 3c a litre to pay for that?Again this National Government does not care about the provinces. It does not care about the rural areas. Obviously it does not care about its own farming supporters Federated Farmers and all the farmer supporters around New Zealand because it is quite happy over the next 3 years to end up charging another 9c a litre for fuel so that the roads of national significance—or as we have heard the “roads of National Party significance”—can be built. So once again good hard-working Kiwis are going to pay through the nose and it is going to cost them more.New Zealand First has had enough of this. We have had enough of this. This Government is a Robin Hood Government. In this case it takes from the poor and the middle-income earners and it gives to the rich. It gives the tax breaks to the wealthy. It gives the deals to the wealthy. It gives the concessions to the wealthy. It thinks nothing about giving a couple of billion dollars back to the wealthy. But when it comes to making sure we have security of supply of fuel in this country it says: “No let’s go after Joe Average in New Zealand and let’s charge him. Even though he is already paying dearly at $2.20 a litre and paying 64c a litre in tax at the present time to the Government let’s go after him as well because he is the easy target.” They have got no choice in it. They have got no choice in it. Another 3c another 4c another 5c—they have got no choice in it and that has got to come to an end.New Zealand First does not support this bill. We will be following this bill closely through to the select committee and we hope there are a huge number of submissions on this because once again the Government is gouging. It is tax gouging and it is taking advantage of good average hard-working Kiwis.