Tisch Lindsay: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tisch Lindsay: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 June 2003. Volume:609;Page:6447. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
LINDSAY TISCH (NZ National—Piako) 
: 
 That was the shortest debate I have heard from someone who is trying to impress upon the country that we will have taxation increases. The member stood up and said he supported the legislation. I would have thought he would get up and pound his chest saying that this measure is good for the country and is what we should be doing. But what did he do? He stood up— 
Peter Brown 
: He convinced me. 
LINDSAY TISCH 
: He did not convince me. This issue is very serious. It is another serious attack on middle New Zealanders and on those in business. This is an attack from a Government whose members said we should read their lips when they said there would be no increases in taxation. That is what Government members said. 
Well I want to canvass some of the things that National is concerned about in this bill. We will not be supporting this bill. If we look at the number of long-term claimants for accident compensation we see that the number is reducing. It has gone down from 28000 to about 14000. But there will be a tail and that tail may well increase. That is how the Government would justify increasing the tax by 120 percent. That is what this tax is about; it is about a 120 percent increase. 
One of the issues I take great offence at is what the Minister said in the first reading debate on 10 April—and I will quote from the  
Hansard 
. She said that this bill “will enable changes to the rate of petrol levy without requiring further legislative amendments”. Do members know what that means? It means there will be an endless increase in taxes with absolutely no scrutiny by this Parliament. Under the regulations if the Accident Compensation Corporation wants to increase its levies—or its taxes which is what they are—it can do so because there will be absolutely no need to come back to Parliament for scrutiny. I find that quite unacceptable. 
The Minister also went on to say in her speech that funding the increase through a petrol levy is seen to be fairer. On whom is it fairer? What about the professional drivers? What about those people who make a living out of driving—the long-haul transport operators the courier operators and the taxi operators? Those people do not have the accidents. They have a very good safety record. Yet those people will be hit because the Minister said that that would be “fairer”. In my view it is not fair. Under the bill the more that people drive the more tax they will have to pay. People who are in business will have to carry the can on this. This legislation is absolutely anti-business. The bill does not include diesel. However the Green member said in his dissertation that diesel should be included. [ 
Interruption 
] The Government can bring diesel in at any time because under this legislation it will not have to come back to the House to discuss that. That can be done by regulation. 
This increase is more than the total of the old levy. In fact it is 2.78c per litre more than that. The levy will go from 2.3c per litre to 5.08c per litre and that is an increase of 120 percent. An increase of 3c per litre will go through because the minority Labour-led Government has done away with competition. When there was competition with regard to accident compensation the Accident Compensation Corporation had to scrutinise what it did. It had to make its investments work but under this legislation there is absolutely no competition. Of course we are the people who will carry the can for that. 
I remind this Government of its pledge at the last election about taxation increases which was that there would be no more taxation increases. Since November 1999 we have seen an income tax increase. The taxation rate for those who earn $60000 plus went from 33 percent to 39 percent. That is what happened. We saw the rate of fringe benefit tax increase from 49 percent to 64 percent and the rate of trust income tax increase from 19.5 percent to 33 percent. We saw a tobacco excise tax come in that went from $7.20 to $8.20. We have seen petrol and road-user charges go up enormously with road-user charges going up by over 30 percent. The accident compensation levy on petrol that we are debating today will put a huge compliance cost on business. 
And what about the night when we sat here until 5 to 5 in the morning because the taxes on sherry and port were being put up? Do members remember that night? Not many Government members were actually here in the House. They were not here; they had gone home to bye-byes. We were here in the House saying that that was a straight-out tax on port and sherry. The Government’s view was that it had to stop binge drinking and it had to hit those people who would be drinking port and sherry. Of course what happened? The Government put up that tax. 
We have seen accident compensation levies increase in other areas. I am the Opposition spokesperson on racing which has had a huge increase of 52 percent in the accident compensation levies on trainers. What did we see in Parliament today after yesterday’s announcement of the flatulence tax on farmers? David Carter made a very good point in Parliament today that a flatulence tax of $8 million would hit farmers. That is what this Government is about. It has a hidden agenda. It may call the increases levies or charges but then the Minister Pete Hodgson said members could call the flatulence tax what they liked and they could call it a tax if they liked. I am saying that any tax any charge or any levy—whatever members want to call it—is a burden on the community and is a compliance cost that we are opposed to. 
Finally I congratulate the Accident Compensation Corporation on having been able to maintain its investments over the last couple of years despite the very turbulent market conditions. However the point I make here is that as the climate changes as the market changes overseas and as investment strategies change we will probably see an erosion in those investments. This Government now has a situation whereby accident compensation is a monopoly and is not open to competition and it will be able to increase the charges by way of regulation without the scrutiny of this House. 
It is quite clear that National is for business. This legislation is anti-business. It will hit the small people and the people who drive cars. I would have thought that most of those people were a constituency of this Labour Government. However the Government is hitting its people our people and businesses. This legislation is anti-business; it is a tax. There is no other name for it and National is opposed to it.