McClay ToddHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Madam Assistant Speaker thank you very much. I normally like to start by saying it gives me pleasure to speak on a bill but this is very very poor legislation. It should not be in this House going through urgency. It should not be being rushed. It should be going through a full parliamentary process and a full external committee stage so that those in the sector and the tourism industry have an ability to come before the Parliament—Hon Kelvin Davis: They have Todd—the consultation process.Hon TODD McCLAY: —and talk about what's happening in this bill and so that they then get to look at it and see whether it will work. When the Minister over there says in a very deep voice that there's been consultation what they tell us is that he does not listen. That's the problem with rushed legislation. When you have a Minister who thinks he knows what's best for an industry you never get the appropriate or the right outcome. That will be the challenge we have here. It's very bad legislation and I'm going to come to the challenges of the way it's been drafted and the unprecedented responsibility it gives to the Minister of Tourism through regulation to set all aspects of tax law in so far as international visitors are concerned—a very bad precedent. The Minister who introduced this—the Minister of Immigration—actually did a very good job in outlining the importance of tourism in New Zealand. I don't know why it is an immigration bill that is enacting this tax upon international visitors to New Zealand because it's not about immigration; actually it's mixing the two. So one of the parts of course is the way they want to collect but this isn't actually about immigration; it's about attacks on international visitors coming to New Zealand and then very light in detail on how that money would be spent. There's no question that tourism is important to New Zealand. It's our biggest export earner; $16.2 billion from international tourists is pumped into the New Zealand economy every year. That's $44 million every day. Almost 400000 people are employed in and around tourism—one in seven jobs in the country. International tourists pay $1.7 billion dollars in GST every year when they visit New Zealand and they spend money. So here's the problem that we have with this international tax that the Government is rushing through without proper scrutiny in the parliamentary process: it actually doesn't do the things that the Minister introducing the bill said that it would. He's recognised the importance of tourism. He's recognised that throughout New Zealand there is a growing need for tourism infrastructure and support for the tourism industry. He's recognised the case that's been made by councils up and down the country that the growing burden can be too much for ratepayers alone to bear. That case has been made. It has been accepted. But this won't come anywhere near close to delivering the funding that they need or that this Government promised when they were in Opposition—nowhere near it. The reason for that is the suggestion that $80 million will be collected by this international tax. Well what we also know from the advice given to the Minister is that $70 million less will be spent in the New Zealand economy as a result of this. Halve that amount that will be gathered; they say $40 million is to go to tourism and tourism-related infrastructure. That's $70 million that the Minister's officials have told him won't be spent in the New Zealand economy. It won't bother the Government at all but that's $70 million less that will be spent in small tourism businesses up and down New Zealand. They are paying the price of this Government's promises and inability to deliver and actually it's not going to come anywhere near delivering what it is that they have been promising up and down the country.The Minister of Tourism says he's been through a consultation. Well frankly he just has not listened not even to his officials and that's the problem with this legislation. If the Government truly was committed to supporting the tourism industry in this Budget we would have seen more money going in there right now. Indeed we would have seen more money going into the tourism budget last year when they delivered it. But there wasn't more. There was a cut. Now I'm very proud of the record that we had over nine years of Government of creating a true partnership with the tourism industry in New Zealand; the funding commitment we made to work with them the growth of both expenditure coming into the country from additional tourists and also the commitment that we had. When we arrived in Government under Labour there was only $18 million a year spent and the tourism industry was disassociated with the Government. They were sick and tired of being told what to do. There was no partnership. Well indeed in our time in Government very quickly we increased annual spend and commitment to spend to tourism by 60 percent. So jump forward nine years. We had very important programmes that we launched that the tourism industry has benefited from. One of the more significant was a $100 million commitment that we made in the Tourism Infrastructure Fund a fund that continues today and that the current Minister continues to make announcements over. Fletcher Tabuteau: It was a $45 million dollar fund over three years.Hon TODD McCLAY: It was $100 million dollars over four years; $25 million a year—more than this Government has committed in these two Budgets. The point there is that actually when the Minister of Tourism makes announcements in a moment about Government spending in the tourism sector it's coming from the Tourism Investment Fund that remains there from the commitment we made three years ago when we were in Government. We committed funding in a partnership with the industry and put more money into tourism over nine years than any Government ever has before and has since and what did this Minister deliver for them last year after all of those election promises? He delivered a $7 million cut to the tourism budget. When questioned in the committee he said two things: he said to my colleague in a very disparaging way that she shouldn't be bothered about this and shouldn't listen—and he still owes Jacqui Dean an apology—but he said Don't worry. More tourists are going to come. It doesn't really matter."ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): We are straying a little bit away from the bill. Hon TODD McCLAY: Well Madam Assistant Speaker I'm absolutely not. The reason that I'm not is that this comes to the promises the Government gave. In this bill they're saying they're going to deliver money on top of the things that are already there but they've actually cut they haven't delivered. I would ask the House whether they think there's a single problem that this Government has seen that it doesn't think that more tax or a new tax will solve. Every year $1.6 billion is collected from international tourists—every year—and they could take some of that money and they could commit a significant amount of it and they could spend it in every part of New Zealand to lift the burden that they're saying ratepayers can't meet to make sure that actually tourism continues to be a growing part of the economy and that there continues to be social licence for it.In fact they don't even need to take the $1.6 billion that's already spent in tax alone that they get from international tourists. They could look at any other policy of theirs that is failing. The $3 billion that they've committed for students who will get the first year free—well it's a failure and we know that because fewer students are studying and they've taken $200 million out of it. That $200 million didn't go to tourism. It didn't go to Rotorua or Queenstown. It didn't go anywhere near it. What this Government has delivered in the last two Budgets—its first two Budgets after all of those promises to the tourism sector—is zip nothing and the suggestion of another tax that means that there could be $40 million that will go to tourism in New Zealand at a loss of $70 million from those tourism visitors themselves.Now the biggest problem that we have here—and we will continue this evening to traverse this and go into it in greater detail—is how bad this legislation is. All this legislation says is through the Immigration Act it gives the Minister of Tourism the ability to pass regulation to decide how much he wants to tax foreigners which foreigners he wants to tax and who he doesn't want to tax and it says he can consult whomever he wants to consult. He's not going to consult the first time out and the reason for that is he thinks he has already done this. If he's not even listening to his own officials how is it the tourism sector can have any confidence that he will listen to them and will deliver for them? That's very very bad legislation—very bad legislation and a bad precedent.Any other Minister—any other Minister—and you might consider it. Any other Minister and you might consider it. But a Minister of Tourism in whom the sector the industry wrote to the Prime Minister earlier this year and said they had no confidence—at the very least get somebody else to come and be an Associate Minister; and now they're saying to replace him—tells you how little faith the industry has in him how little he has consulted with them and absolutely how little he has listened to them.This is bad legislation. If the Government was committed to tourism they would have committed hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars more in last Budget and this Budget. They promised it before the election; we haven't seen it. We've only seen a cut. On behalf of tourism this evening we will be making the case that the Government should be doing more right now. This is a bad piece of legislation and the Minister should be ashamed."