Shearer David: Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1658. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I just wanted once again to reiterate that the Labour Party is supporting this piece of legislation the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill because we feel it is important that we fulfil our obligations under the treaty. Rather than going on about how much this is putting on to a litre of petrol which is about 0.045c I say that it is not significant unlike what New Zealand First was saying. It means that if you have a tank of gas of about 60 or 70 litres you are going to be paying about 3c extra for that tank. Now you might say: “Well that’s another tax.” and you would be absolutely right. But I think what most people in New Zealand are most concerned about is not about this which is about fulfilling our obligations—and is effectively an insurance policy to ensure that we have and continue to have petrol available to us even if there is some world price shock or some sort of manipulation of the market—but about the fact that yesterday prices of petrol went up 4c a litre overall when the price of oil per barrel actually went down $3.I am asking the same question as all other New Zealanders. They are very thankful about the fact that petrol prices have dropped around 50c a litre over the last few months because of the abundance of oil shale oil and all the other issues surrounding what is happening out there in the global market. But really the question is why petrol prices have now gone up 20c from the low they reached a few weeks ago when actually the margins of profit that the oil companies are making are still the same or have even grown. This is something that I believe is in people’s minds and I think it will become more acutely embedded in people’s minds as prices continue to go up. People cannot understand why prices can possibly go up even taking into account the fact that there are taxes on petrol because the taxes are not changing at all. But the price is going up even though the price of oil is going down and the New Zealand dollar has not moved substantively over that time.Stuart Nash in his address this evening talked about the need for an inquiry into the price of our petrol and why it costs so much and I would like to say that as the consumer affairs spokesperson that is absolutely needed and it is what New Zealanders are looking for from this Government. They actually want to see some leadership in standing up for people who are filling up their cars every day in order to get to work. They are thankful for the prices going down but now they see those savings that put a little more money in their pockets being eroded day by day as in when the price per litre went up by 4c today without any real justification for that price increase. That is wrong and we need to have an inquiry. If nothing else that inquiry would at least satisfy people that they are getting a good deal—or not—and we can have that out and it can all be made public.I want to commend the AA—the Automobile Association not Alcoholics Anonymous—for the good work that it has done in this particular area because it has been keeping an eye on this. It is a neutral observer. Obviously it is on the side of motorists but certainly it has been watching this carefully. To paraphrase its spokesperson just the other day it cannot understand why the price of diesel has gone up when the margin that oil companies are making per litre is about 35c. How is it that that price can go up when they have already got very comfortable profit margins from diesel? That increase has an effect right across our industries and our businesses.Coming back to where we are in this bill as I said before the increase in levy that we are putting through—yes at the behest of the Minister of Energy and Resources; the Minister can determine what the price is going to be—is about 0.045c per litre. From the Labour Party’s point of view of course we do not want to see any additional burden being placed on motorists but what this burden is for is a levy that is taken out of general taxation—it would have otherwise come out of your taxes—and is being shifted across and applied to fuel so that effectively the user pays in terms of who actually pays this levy.As many of the other speakers have said tonight this is part of our international obligation. We want to have a stockpile of at least 90 days of fuel that is there in case as somebody mentioned tonight some of the oil-producing countries decide to put the price of oil up. We have at least 90 days in which to see through that shock and mitigate and do something about that shock rather than feel it in our economy. We could actually store it physically in New Zealand but the cost of doing that is actually pretty exorbitant. What we have chosen to do instead is buy tickets or promissory notes if you like that say that out there our oil in various multifarious places will be secured and if we need to draw on it we can draw down 90 days’ supply. To ensure that that is guaranteed and maintained we sign a treaty. We sign the Agreement on an International Energy Program and that ensures that the tickets that we purchased are actually able to be redeemed when we do need that oil. For that service we pay a price and it is that price that we are talking about today because up to now that bill has been met through general taxation—Vote Energy. The proposition in this bill is to ensure that that money instead is coming out of a levy that will be levied on petrol.There are a couple of issues around here that I want to mention because although we agree with the way this is occurring there are some exceptions. There are some exceptions and some anomalies that I believe need to be addressed. For example air transport—jet fuel is exempt. Fuel oil is exempt. Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is exempt. Bitumen is exempt—bitumen of course coming from tar etc. coming from oil products. What is not exempt—and I believe this is a major anomaly; it has been talked about—is biofuels and ethanol.The biofuels and ethanol industry is an industry where we have considerable added advantage in New Zealand. The great work that is being done by Scion in Rotorua with what we could do with tree waste with forestry waste in terms of generating ethanol and biofuels—just taking this levy off those products at least gives an indication that we are serious about supporting those particular industries in New Zealand. Instead we have neglected to do that. Yet we provide exceptions in fuel oil jet fuel oil LPG and bitumen. That does not seem right. Dr Megan Woods from the Labour Party put up Supplementary Order Paper 45 to rectify that to make sure that biofuels and ethanol would be exempt. It was voted down by the Government. That really reflects where this Government is going. It is a Government that looks over its shoulder at what is behind it and not forward in thinking what is going to be driving our economy in the future—and it is about those biofuels.Once again I want to come back to where I started. This is a very small amount of money to be applied to the cost of a litre of petrol. It does provide us with security and I believe that that is important but we are not seeing right now the price of petrol coming down as it should be as the price of oil falls. And the price of other products—plastics bitumen road tar etc.—is not coming down as well. We should be seeing a decrease in the price of those oil-based products running right through the economy. In fact that is not happening. There needs to be an inquiry and that is why—