Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. The flicking light is a metaphor for this Government falling apart—a botched Budget and a botched Government. Now they can't even get the lights to stay on properly. We've had a short and truncated debate about this increase in taxes on the car. So ultimately what we're talking about here in this legislation is about $360 million extra over the next two years for motorists to be paying at the pump and that flows through to the rest of the economy. So it's a pretty ironic thing that the first piece of legislation passed following the so-called Wellbeing Budget is a significant increase on the taxes of hard-working New Zealanders as they go about their lives and that's what it is. This Government gives with one hand so a little bit of extra saving on school fees—$150 million over four years. Well that's swamped by the significant increase that all those families will be paying in their fuel taxes. Now the Minister says it's inflation. It's much more than inflation sorry Minister. It's more than inflation; it's actually increasing the pool. People would understand that if they were getting something for it but they're not getting anything for it. What they've seen from this Government so far is the cancellation of 12 major transport projects or more: so the East-West Link gone; the road north of Tauranga to Katikati gone; the Waikato Expressway slowed down and little pieces lopped off so that you stop in the middle of just out of Cambridge and then you're back into a dangerous road; if you want to go down to Ashburton no future for you there; and the Melling Link intersection in Wellington gone delayed into the never-never land. So you're paying more but you're getting less for it. Well that's a really great deal isn't it? The people of New Zealand will be delighted at that—they get to pay more taxes on their roads and in their cars to get less for it. That sums up things perfectly. Instead the extra funds are going to go to two areas: firstly is the focus on safety. Everybody understands that we should absolutely be focused on road safety. You'll get no debate from this House on the importance of trying to reduce the road toll. What we find frustrating however is that at the same time that they're keen to increase taxes to focus on road safety they have a complete blind spot when it comes to doing anything about drug-driving for example because the Greens of course want us all to be smoking more drugs so they have a blind spot on that area. Secondly the Budget's got nothing more on road safety. SPEAKER: Order! Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Sorry I was just trying to get some context to the story Mr Speaker. SPEAKER: No the member's had too much on the second reading; we're on the third reading now. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Right. This is our last chance to make some comments on this bill before it is hastened through in the short time that we have here in this urgent debate. So the point I'm making is that we're going to get to spend all this extra money not on reducing congestion but on road safety and mode shift. Mode shift for the uninitiated is getting people out of their cars on to some other form of transport. So ultimately you're being asked to pay more tax at the petrol pump for your car in order to get you out of your car to do something that presumably you don't want to do given the fact that you might be trying to pick up something in your car pick up a child in your car on the way home from work or do something that—if you live in most parts of provincial New Zealand you don't have the opportunity to necessarily cycle long distances in the rain and the dark or catch a bus that doesn't exist along with picking up 10 bags of groceries from the supermarket and so forth. So it's a very very ideological approach to transport that we're dealing with under this Government. The previous Government of course yes indeed did increase road-user charges at a much slower rate over the nine years of Government. We did that in order to fund things that would make the lives of New Zealanders easier in getting around. You can think of the Waterview Tunnel and the Waikato Expressway—things that have made a dramatic impact on the quality of life and the speed and efficiency and safety of all Kiwi motorists. People can understand paying something to get something. What they struggle with is paying more at a much-increased tempo of increases in road taxes that we've seen from this Government—$360 million extra over two years. What they struggle with is paying all that extra fund and getting less for it and that's what we're seeing in the Government because you can't talk about an excise bill without seeing the results for it. Now we asked some other questions during the second reading debate and didn't get any answers to them unfortunately. One was: how is it right that this extra $360 million that is being collected through these duties and is supposed to be hypothecated—that's what the regulatory impact statement says and we're looking at the regulatory impact statement. It talks about this money being hypothecated for the National Land Transport Fund and it has to be spent on particular things. Here we go a footnote in the regulatory impact statement: The revenue is 'hypothecated' in the sense that there are legislative constraints (in the Land Transport Management Act 2003) that govern how this revenue can be used." Well hang on. That's fine but I never got an answer as to how an urban regeneration project which is the basis for the light rail slow tram down Dominion Road that's been proposed to be built with some of this money relates to land transport management—an urban regeneration project. I never got an answer to that. I'd be interested to hear from somebody somewhere in the Government to explain why they're going to motorists saying "We want more money from you for your motor spirits levy in order to fund the roads and transport directly." and how they've extended that into an urban regeneration project. We haven't got an answer and we won't get an answer because there is no answer. The other question that I raised was I thought there were supposed to be 42 days between the gazetting of the new rates and when they come into effect. We're less than 30 days from that happening now. I never got an answer to that basic question either. I'd be very interested to hear at some point from somebody in the Government to explain those basic details. So we've had as I've said the first piece of legislation from this Government following the much-heralded Wellbeing Budget with the glossy photos and the picture of the—SPEAKER: Order! Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —lady that's now in Australia—SPEAKER: Order! Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —and the first piece of legislation that we're debating under urgency after that Budget is a $360 million tax increase on New Zealanders. When we talk about these duties and excise duties we have to think about who pays them. The point I wanted to make—with the indulgence of the Speaker—is a simple one: who pays this levy? It's not just the person that drives into the petrol station and has to pay an extra 7c plus GST for the two years that we're talking about but we have to remember these are the second and third years of a three-year increase. So in total they're paying an extra 12c a litre. Everybody knows that the fuel prices fluctuate given international prices but the one thing that doesn't fluctuate is the tax that you have to pay which is the same and it continues to grow. So at the fuel pump they have to pay an extra 12c after GST—12.5c—and they don't like it. Why should they like it? But what we sometimes forget is that that increase in diesel and fuel prices flows through to every part of the economy—flows through to every part of the economy. It represents about a 5 percent increase in each year—so collectively over a 10 percent or 11 percent increase—in the road-user charges. So every time everybody's wanting to buy something whether it's ice cream milk bread clothes fridges—you name it—anything that is transported will cost more because of this increase in taxes. We can understand that we could put up with that if we could see that there was a clear focus on reducing congestion so that people could get their goods more efficiently and the whole system might be more efficient. We can understand that. But there is no evidence whatsoever that this Government has any interest in that. They are solely focused on other things. Their ideological pursuit of mode shift—in a couple of decades' time when most people are driving around in electric vehicles which don't have an impact on the environment people will be looking back and saying "What on earth were they trying to do? Why were they trying to get people out of cars when cars don't necessarily have a negative environmental impact?" They did it because they just loved bossing people around—that's the fundamental. Thank you Mr Speaker."