Copeland Gordon: Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Copeland Gordon: Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:623;Page:18697] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I want to cover a few points that have been raised in the House on the Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill particularly during the Committee stage just to confirm United Future’s final position on the bill itself. First of all we will be voting for this bill. We do so because like the great majority of New Zealanders we are appalled and alarmed that for a long time now successive Governments have consistently underspent on New Zealand’s roads with the resultant congestion that we have on a daily basis. This is particularly so in Auckland where this congestion is simply unacceptable and has been for many many years but also in places like Tauranga Wellington and parts of Christchurch and so on. 
Of course the funds raised through this excise duty of 5c a litre on petrol will go towards providing those roads and we simply need to get on with it. We can debate here in the House for some time whether it is the right strategy but at the end of the day the people of this country are saying: “Look just get on and do it please because we are sick and tired of spending hours each day trying to get from A to B.” My colleague Paul Adams who lives on the North Shore would say a big “Amen!” to all of that I am sure. He tells me that it is very very frustrating trying to get to the airport. 
However we did make an important qualification in our minority report—one that was subsequently misquoted by ACT party leader Rodney Hide. He either did not have the energy to read down to the third paragraph or decided he would quote it selectively in order to score some political points in the process and in fact to mislead people. 
However United Future said in its minority report that the increase should be accompanied by a reduction in income taxes in New Zealand in this year’s Budget. It is very very clear to me even based on his evidence before the Finance and Expenditure Committee this morning that the Minister of Finance Dr Michael Cullen has really just got into the habit—no matter what happens to our accounts essentially no matter how much more money comes in over and above his original estimates—whereby his knee-jerk reaction is either to bank the money or to spend it. That is all that seems to come into his mind. 
I want to tell the House today that over the 4 years to 2004 the Government collected $4.5 billion more than its Budget estimates. The Budget Policy Statement issued in December reworked the forecast position out to 2008 in which time it will spend—listen to this—$5.7 billion more than was projected in the Budget in May just 6 months before. 
Now that is a total of $10.1 billion more revenue than the Government’s own Budget estimates the estimates on which it originally based its expenditure—another $10.1 billion—and it simply is not credible for the Minister of Finance to say that tax cuts are not affordable. Indeed he admitted today that the fact that he will be reducing gross debt to 20 percent in 2008 rather than his original target of 2015—7 years earlier—basically will be putting the Crown balance sheet in better shape at the expense of the balance sheet of New Zealand households. In my view that is completely wrong. I do hope that if he does not address these things in the Budget New Zealanders will note those remarks and vote accordingly in the next election. 
In United Future’s view income tax cuts are definitely affordable. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. Dr Michael Cullen says they are not affordable. He says that because he seems to assume there is something divinely ordained about the decisions he makes on expenditure. In other words what he has decided to spend has to be spent and there is no alternative. Plainly that is completely wrong. 
Let me just run through a few things that could be cut in terms of expenditure. First of all there is enormous bureaucratic excess in the present Government. The number of civil servants being employed in this country has gone up alarmingly in the last 3 years and it is simply unnecessary. We should get rid of that trend. Secondly United Future would introduce public-private partnerships for health corrections and roading—yes even roading. It is in the legislation but the Government is not doing it. Just through doing those things we could save literally billions of dollars. We would bring to an end the corporate welfare machine on which the Government spends several hundreds of millions of dollars per year. 
We would review the private training establishment funding arrangements. In the House in the last few days the ACT party has been bringing to the attention of New Zealanders the scandal of $239 million being spent on one single private tertiary institution which now has 34000 students. I was interested to find out that Oxford University has 13000 students just to put the figure in some perspective. I really have no idea—and no one does in this country—whether that is money that has been properly spent. I suspect that it is obviously not—that it is money wasted. 
We could eliminate huge waste form the health budget. A paper at the Finance and Expenditure Committee this morning from the Public Health Association reinforced this. There is a lot more that we could do in terms of preventive medical strategies through well-thought-out well-researched initiatives which the Government is simply not taking. So it simply does not wash with United Future that there is no room for tax cuts. There obviously is. 
It seems increasingly lame to the people of New Zealand for the Minister of Finance just to repeat the same old mantra: if there is more money we will spend more money. Today he indicated to us that there is no end in sight to that policy even if he should remain the Minister of Finance after the next election. 
I want to turn to the attacks on United Future that have been mounted by New Zealand First and the National Party and I think the ACT party managed to get in there—Ken Shirley did as well—about why it is that United Future does not simply pull the plug on its supply and confidence agreement with the Government with the demand that it has to drop the 5c a litre tax reduction. I want to go through this in some detail. I have said it ad nauseam but it needs to be said. 
First of all United Future gave its word in 2002 that it would enter into a supply and confidence agreement until the next election. That is exactly what we intend to do; I say to Mr Brown that it may be OK morally for some parties in this House to welsh on deals but it is not OK for us. We feel morally and contractually bound to fulfil exactly what we said we would do. That is the first point. 
The second point is that it would be a futile gesture because the Green Party is also voting for this 5c a litre increase—OK? It seems to escape those parties when it suits them that the Government has alternatives to United Future. It can turn to the Greens and if it does not want to turn to them it can turn to New Zealand First as it did on the foreshore and seabed legislation. I ask Mr Brown what the answer from New Zealand First members would be. I can tell the member exactly what it would be. They would say: “How soon do you want us there guys?” because those members jumped into the foreshore and seabed legislation overnight. They were waiting for the proposal to be made and they said yes before the words were out of Helen Clark’s mouth. That is the reality of what happened on the foreshore and seabed legislation. It is simply not credible for you to keep coming along to the House and criticising us when we fulfil our word and you do not. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Please do not bring the Speaker into the debate. 
GORDON COPELAND 
: I am sorry Mr Speaker. I did not mean to bring you into the debate. I was of course referring to the New Zealand First Party and I think the listeners would probably have picked up on that. I apologise for the slip of the tongue. 
Can I also bring to the House the comment made by the OECD just before Christmas. It was quite an interesting comment. It said that New Zealanders had had 4 good economic years and it has. They said that one of the reasons for that was the political stability in this country. Who has provided political stability for this country in the last 3 years? No it was not the Labour Government; it was United Future and both the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister have been gracious enough to say that. We are the ones who have provided stability and we intend to go right on doing that through until this year’s election.