Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Seven minutes—seven minutes was the commitment to this tourism sector that that mediocre Minister from a mediocre Government with a very mediocre botched Budget wants to make to the tourism sector. It's interesting that the Prime Minister should be listening to this debate because she's very soon going to be conducting a Cabinet reshuffle. If ever there was a need for a reshuffled Minister it's that very mediocre Minister.Tonight as we debate the first reading of the Immigration (International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy) Amendment Bill there will be people who will be heading to my electorate the very beautiful Coromandel. [Interruption]ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! I'd like to actually hear the Hon Scott Simpson's contribution and it is bordering on heckling in here at the moment.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. As I was saying tonight there will be—as we are debating in this Chamber under urgency some sloppy legislation some lazy legislation—tens of thousands of people making their way to my electorate for a long weekend. Some of those visitors will be domestic visitors and some of them will be international visitors. They'll all be coming to my electorate to spend time in one of the most beautiful and lovely parts of the country. When they get there they'll find a range of businesses and enterprises that are reliant on them coming and spending time and money in the beautiful Coromandel electorate. So tourism is important to people in my region to businesses in my region and this is a bill that puts some of the livelihoods of those people under threat. Because whilst they are committed to tourism and the jobs and the economic activity that tourism creates in regions like mine in the Coromandel they also understand the fragile nature of it. They understand that they need infrastructure they need support and they need the kind of funding that this Government seems not willing to provide by a sensible mechanism.So here we have tonight under urgency a debate not going to select committee not having the full and proper scrutiny of a normal piece of legislation an immigration regulatory piece of legislation slid under the guise of somehow helping tourism when in fact what should be happening is a full and proper process and a principled approach to this kind of proposal. One that enables the sector—small-business people in my electorate—to actually make submissions be part of the process and not just have the Minister come and say Well we've done a few consultations. We've talked to a few of the leaders in the sector—the big players at the top end of town—and we've decided by decree that it's going to be a $35 levy that it's going to be placed on all tourists visiting New Zealand"—except for Australians apparently and also Pacific Forum nation members apparently are going to be exempt as well. Then once it's in place the Minister is going to have the ability to change it at whim and without consultation further or that's the way it looks in terms of the bill. So future fees are going to be set by the Minister and what I want to know—and we'll be traversing this as we go through the legislation—is with whom how and who decides what the process around this will be? This is a Government that doesn't pay attention to process and we've seen that in all its naked glory this week with the botched Budget. No attention to detail. No attention to process. No attention to form and rigour. It's becoming a hallmark of this Government as they enter the second and last phase of their term in office that they want to try and do things quickly while they still can—while they still have a narrow and decreasing window of opportunity to adopt their ideological and philosophical approach—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): We are straying a little bit from the bill at hand. Come back please.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Well I want to bring this back to the bill because this bill represents the basic philosophical approach of this Government and their policy direction actually to not only tourism but to every aspect of their administration which is simply threefold. They adopt only one of three options—in fact sometimes it's all three—to make things either compulsory to ban them or to tax them and sometimes they do all three. But those are essentially their policy responses to everything. In this piece of legislation we see that they want to tax more. Well that's a known and accepted view of this Government that their solution to many things confronting us is just to tax people more. On this occasion what they want to do is bring international tourists into that tax pool.Now I don't have any fundamental objection to the State through taxation helping and assisting a sector of the economy that needs support and help from time to time. We know that in my electorate for instance there have been some very good facilities provided from the funding—not fully utilised I might add by this Government—that was put in place by the previous National administration. That's a good way to do it. But there shouldn't surely be a knee-jerk response to every situation of just tax—just impose a tax. That seems to be the cure-all for everything. After more than a year—after 18 months or so of this Government being in power—the only thing that they are tangibly doing in terms of the tourism sector is to impose a tax on the visitors who are coming to New Zealand.Now the information that we have in this bill indicates that actually tourist numbers will almost certainly be affected and not in a good way. New Zealand is already an expensive destination for international travellers to come to and this Government wants to make it more expensive. Remember this piece of legislation is focusing on New Zealand's single biggest export earner; $14.5 billion to the economy and employing more than 180000 people. So this is a Government that wants to just apply a pretty sloppy process but there's no credible plan—no credible plan no solid sense of direction or purpose or a focus on a plan. And that's what's missing. When I talk to small tourist operators in my electorate that's what they say. They've got no sense of direction about where this is going—a lazy Government that's kicking to touch and just really wanting to invent another tax.So estimates for the Crown benefit from international visitors suggests that $3.2 billion of revenue and some $600 million in expenditure is potentially on the line. What we know is that people do respond to perverse tax measures and they will make decisions about where they go and how they spend their discretionary recreational dollars. It may well be that they may decide not to come to New Zealand and head off to somewhere else.One of the difficulties that we have with this piece of legislation is the regulatory nature of it. The process that involves initially the setting up of the process through the Minister of Immigration—who we know already has significant challenges—and then somehow sort of sliding that to one side to the current Minister of Tourism. I'm not sure that many people will have much confidence in that kind of leadership at the moment.Now this international visitor's levy—well it's a tourist tax—is going to be set seemingly arbitrarily at $35 per head. Now I want to know as we go through this process what rationale was applied to creating that level? We've heard from two Ministers that some kind of consultation took place. We've got no understanding of how wide that was who was involved what the process was and it is difficult to accept that there was much consultation for instance with tourist operators in my neck of the woods. I'd like to know did the Minister bring his travelling roadshow to the beautiful Coromandel and did he talk to any of the tourist operators in my electorate?What we know is that even though there has been record tourism numbers the economy is slowing and anecdotally we know that tourists are now looking more carefully about where they want to spend their money. So what we know from this bill is that there are some very serious questions. There are some big questions about process there are some big questions about form and there are some big questions about intent and direction. What we don't know about this piece of legislation is what the impact will be on our tourism sector and what it will mean for businesses in the Coromandel and electorates like mine around the countryside. It's a bad piece of legislation and it's bad form."