Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. When I was speaking last night in my contribution on the motion moved by Mr Jami-Lee Ross to, essentially, reset the counter to zero for members speaking in the committee stage of the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill, I’d made three remarks—or I was coming to the third remark. The first point I want to just quickly recapitulate for the House is the very important point—

💬 SPEAKER: I’m just going to warn the member—we had a slight problem with the clocks, so he hasn’t got quite as long as it appears.

OK. The first very important point I made was around taxation, and I talked about the constitutional importance of taxation in this House as a means of testing the confidence of the House in the Government and the paramount importance of taxation bills because of the power the State gives to itself in regard to its citizens. What we’re dealing with here are two bills to do with taxation: regional fuel tax, apparently only to Auckland but potentially further around the country, but also very important rules around multinational tax, base erosion and profit shifting—something that has concerned many members of the House on both sides of it. I think that means we need to debate the bills thoroughly, particularly because we are in a very unusual situation of urgency having been moved at 9.35 p.m., right on the cusp of the House lifting.

The second point I made was in relation to that unusual use of the urgency. Usually, urgency is advertised in advance. There’s a couple of days’ notice given, every member knows exactly what bill is about to be debated, arrangements are made so have that question time can happen and maybe Estimates can happen, and select committees can sit—

The member’s time has expired.

There were certainly a number of things that I had expected to be doing this Thursday morning; speaking in the House on this motion certainly wasn’t one of them—and, certainly, not under urgency. This is a robust House, a debating chamber where there are decisions made on the fly, in the heat of the moment, trusting one’s instincts, and a decision was made last night that meant I expected to come to the House and decry this day as a day where there may be the birth of the Prime Minister’s baby but the death of democracy. Without wanting to overly broaden the debate back into a decision that’s already been made—

💬 SPEAKER: Can I just warn the member the Chamber clocks are going up, not down. It might feel the other way.

That’s fine, thank you very much. I want to acknowledge the importance of reflection and the considered decisions that can be made by this House. We are the architects of our own destiny, and we shouldn’t be above recognising, looking back in the cool light of the morning, that sometimes we may make decisions that don’t do this House justice. I think it’s a credit to this place that we are robustly but respectfully able to reflect on and change our positions, and I certainly want to acknowledge that.

There has been comment, though, about this motion as somehow analogous to the one that is no longer before us, the amendment. There is a compare and contrast situation, I think, between an attempt to broaden free speech with an attempt to curtail it, and I don’t agree that this motion has any of the elements of curtailment that others previously considered would have. Indeed, the circumstances that led Mr Ross to move this motion on instructing the committee to have more time to consider were for those colleagues—particularly, of mine—who feel passionately about the taxation representation principle that underpins a working democracy and the ability to be able to stand and represent one’s constituents and say, “We need to scrutinise this.”

We have a set time limit for the first, second, and third readings, and we have a robust select committee process, but the committee of the whole House is the machine in which we are able to deconstruct and analyse a bill, part by part, clause by clause. It is true that some of that analysis in this House has, by any measure, not been that intelligent, and I want to acknowledge the significant improvements that have taken place in the last couple of years to require Ministers to answer good technical questions but also the quid pro quo—that is, it is incumbent on members to technically analyse a bill. I think that is a significant improvement on the committee process.

What Mr Ross is doing, though, which I think has merit, and the House should really consider this, is being proposed against the backdrop of something that may also be unprecedented. That is the taking of urgency in the middle of the committee of the whole House, where there was an honest belief—it may well not be but it’s certainly unusual, Mr Hipkins, I think you’ll agree—and where there is a lot of work that is required to deconstruct and analyse the bill and a number of members who may not have been in the position at the time that the committee stage started to be able to do that.

We found ourselves in a situation last night where that opportunity was curtailed and rushed, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the House to consider this instruction so that those who are—and there are many of them—passionate about the provisions of this bill and how it can be improved for their constituents are able to re-state, re-litigate, re-suggest, and suggest new Supplementary Order Papers that will enhance this bill.

Now, it’s a value judgment whether or not members on the other side or other members of the House, and the Chair, value the merit of that, but I’m long enough in this House to remember the Auckland super-city legislation. Never again will we, as a committee of the whole House, descend to the situation that we came to where 30,000 tabled amendments were set. That is not the brand of this House any more. But it is incumbent on all of us to make sure that regardless of the merits or the perceptions of the merits or otherwise of these amendments and the suggested changes that can be made to this bill, this is a tax bill. This is a bill that will, by far, lift the hand of the State into the pockets of the people of, firstly, Auckland, and then, certainly, the rest of New Zealand. It behoves this House to give every consideration and give every member the opportunity to be able to represent those people in this place, so that we can give that bill every scrutiny.

So it’s not an affront. I don’t believe that for a moment. We’re a unicameral House. We’re the only place legislation goes before the Governor-General gives her assent. We have a very scripted first, second, and third reading process, and we have, for administrative efficiency, structured the passage of legislation in a way that does reduce the ability for a bill to get scrutiny. This is the place to do it. Yes, it is a novel instruction; it may not in itself be unique. In fact, by agreement and by leave there have been other arrangements made where calls can be distributed to subject matter experts. That’s certainly been the case. It’s been a very efficient way to do it.

On this bill, I would consider all of the members who have put amendments on the Table to be experts in the representation of their constituents, and it is very, very important to me that we are able to go back to our constituencies and say “We did our best for those people.”, because this is a significant impost on them financially. The Government has laid out its reasons. It has tried to downplay the fact that in three short years, every single region in the country is going to be faced with the possibility of getting a fuel tax coming to a region near them, and I think it is appropriate that those members have every opportunity. If they have already made their points and they have more to make, who are we to say that is not a valid position? Well, actually, we are. This is the reason we’re debating that.

The Government, by a majority, may defeat this motion, but at least let’s have this conversation. They thought it urgent enough to go into the House at 9 o’clock this morning, setting aside every single select committee, every other piece of business that we would be doing, Ministers appearing before committees to explain the Budget that they hold in such high regard. But in higher regard is the need to tax Aucklanders and, in a few short years, the rest of New Zealand, so the Government has said this is important enough to set aside that business, and now it’s for us to decide whether it’s important enough to allow every member of this House to have the best opportunity to be able to represent their constituencies, and I urge all members to think very carefully before they cast their vote on this instruction motion. We will go back into committee and we will robustly scrutinise it, but we should not be rushed. This is the committee of the whole House. This is the engine room where good bills are scrutinised—sometimes bad bills get scrutinised as well, and they even get through.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: What role will the Greens play?

Well, we may well hear about that, Mr Simpson. But we hold ourselves up as one of the world’s great democracies, and I want to see us demonstrate it.

I move, That the question be now put.

Well, we have had a very simple question before us, we’ve had two eloquent speeches explaining the reasons for it, and I think the House is in a position to make a decision as to whether or not. If members feel that it’s not, they can vote against it.

Before I declare the House in committee again, I just want to make one comment to the House, and it is that there are a lot of amendments before the committee. I’ve had a quick look at some of them and have received advice on them. It has become clear that a significant number of those are not in order. The general practice has been, recently, to allow debate until such time as they are ruled out of order and to curtail debate at that point in time. My encouragement to the officers of the House is to rule out out-of-order amendments quickly in order for the House not to be misled or waste time having arguments about things on which it cannot have votes. It used to be the practice for them to be ruled out more or less immediately and for debate not to be held on it.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You have just made a very significant ruling, and I just want to clarify, if I may, whether or not this is a formal Speaker’s ruling that will be tabled in the documents, because we did have a situation, with an omnibus bill last year, where there were whole new parts put in, in the committee stage, that were, arguably, not within the scope of the bill. And, at that point, the question of whether they were in scope was very clearly indicated to the committee; that, regardless of that decision, they were, in fact, debatable, and the debate was prolonged. So I am seeking your ruling that that is now a new process, because that is quite a significant change.

I’m going to make it very clear. From the point that a Chair of the committee rules that a particular amendment is out of scope or otherwise not allowed—and there can be a number of reasons why amendments can be ruled out—from that point on, it is not debatable.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Just a small clarification: that means then that, at that point, the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) is not voted on?

It never is. If an SOP is ruled out of order, it is never voted on.

In Committee

Debate resumed.

Part 2 Amendments to other Acts (continued)