Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

This Government is committed to tackling the long-term challenges facing New Zealand, challenges both across society and the economy. To do this, we are prioritising initiatives that improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders. This bill will provide funding for transport projects that meet the needs of New Zealanders now and into the future. We are focused on delivering transport projects that provide real benefits to New Zealanders.

The previous Government’s policy prioritised travel times, often saving a few minutes on a few kilometres of road on a few hand-picked motorways. Meanwhile, deaths and serious injuries blew out, and congestion in our major cities got worse every year. Our Government is taking a balanced approach to transport policy. We’re investing in road, rail, public transport, walking and cycling, and motorways, rather than just focusing on eye-wateringly expensive motorways that carried 4 percent only of vehicle journeys.

The Government’s transport agenda is set out in the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport 2018, and under the Government policy statement released in 2018, the purpose of transport policy is to give New Zealanders access to the things that they need, like work, education and community, a safer transport system free of death and serious injury, reduced carbon emissions, and, of course, value for money. To achieve this agenda, this bill implements increases to excise duty set out in the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport. The bill increases the rate for petrol by 3.5c a litre, with effect from 1 July 2019 and again on 1 July 2020. These increases to excise duty, along with the equivalent increases in road user charges, were announced on 28 June 2018 in the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport. This bill gives effect to that announcement.

Our Government inherited a mess in the transport sector. Despite cars getting safer, the number of deaths and serious injuries increased by 55 percent between 2013 and 2018. The rail network was in a state of managed decline, but as the Deputy Prime Minister said in the debate we’ve just had, rail is back on track under this Government. Forty percent of the transport budget was being spent on a few hand-picked motorways that carried only 4 percent of vehicle journeys. Our cities were getting congested every year. Our biggest city’s transport plan had a $5.9 billion hole in it with no plan on how to fix it, and the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) was not carrying out its regulatory function, which meant that cowboy operators were signing off on unsafe vehicles.

Well, our Government has already started tackling the long-term issues and fixing up that mess. We’ve rebalanced investment away from a handful of expensive motorway projects and put it towards saving lives and getting our cities moving. Last year, 377 people died on our roads. Why should we accept neglected and dangerous roads? Unlike the last Government, we’ve committed to improving thousands of kilometres of dangerous roads with interventions that are proven to prevent deaths and serious injuries, like side and median barriers and wider shoulders and intersection upgrades. I make no apology in this policy for putting safety first. New Zealanders are sick and tired of seeing their loved ones die on the roads.

We’ve recognised the benefits that investing in rail can have. Rail makes a major contribution to national and regional economic growth, reduces emissions and congestion, reduces road deaths and injuries, and connects communities. One of the first things that I did as transport Minister was allow KiwiRail to publicly release the report they had had commissioned in the last term of the former National Government, that that Government suppressed and refused to allow them to release, a report—

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: Who did that—who did that?

Oh, it was Simon Bridges, the former transport Minister, who suppressed a report that showed that the rail system in New Zealand delivers $1.5 billion of economic value to this country every single year.

Since we’ve been in Government, we’ve instigated the Future of Rail project to make sure that we are taking a long-term, joined-up approach, and today we have started making funding available for rail projects on a huge scale—$1 billion committed in the Budget today to get rail back on track—but we have also committed to bringing rail into the National Land Transport Programme. There are a number of significant rail projects—$200 million upgrading the Wellington and Wairarapa rail lines, a commitment to do the third main in Auckland, and electrification to Pukekohe—under the National Land Transport Programme and funded, as it should be, alongside road and all other transport projects.

We’ve also reopened the Napier to Wairoa line, and I want to acknowledge the leadership of Shane Jones, responsible for rail and regional economic development. We’ve made huge steps forward with New Zealand First championing the role of rail as a driver of economic development in our regions. We have futureproofed the City Rail Link in Auckland, and we’ve invested in upgrading the Wellington and Wairarapa regional commuter line.

We’re making a record investment in public transport across New Zealand over the next three years to get Kiwis out of the traffic jams and get our cities moving again. This Government understands that if you don’t invest in modern transport systems that allow people to move around our major cities to get to work, to get education, then you get a drag on productivity that drags down that city, that drags down the prosperity of the people who live in it, and drags down the rest of the country. That is why, fundamentally, we are committed to building modern transport systems in our major cities. It’s not going to happen overnight, but we are committed to unclogging our roads and making public transport quicker, cheaper, and more reliable.

Improved public transport and rapid transit are vital parts of the Let’s Get Wellington Moving indicative package that our Government released only a couple of weeks ago. I’m looking forward to the councils in the greater Wellington region signing up to that package, that will see them commit 40 percent of the funding of that programme—40 percent of the programme—because they know, they understand, that Let’s Get Wellington Moving is about investing in the economic powerhouse that is Wellington City. That’s why the mayors of this region have all committed, including Ray Wallace in the Hutt—including Ray Wallace—to supporting this project.

Together, we have worked alongside Auckland Council to close the $5.9 billion funding gap that Simon Bridges left when he was the transport Minister. We’ve committed to a 10-year $28 billion funding programme to rescue the country’s biggest city from the mire of gridlock and falling productivity that the National Government left, that we’ve inherited. We will build vital projects, including the light rail project, Penlink and Mill Road, heavy rail, bus upgrades, safety improvements, and more dedicated cycle lanes. The only way that we can do that is by Auckland Council paying their share—one third of the programme—and by increasing the fuel tax, as we are doing with this bill.

The systemic failures at NZTA have been uncovered and addressed. This Government was not prepared to allow our country’s transport agency to fall down on the job, to fail in its job as a safety regulator, like that party did for nine years. We put safety first, and that’s why we have turned around NZTA’s performance, and they are back on the road to doing their job properly as a safety regulator.

Parts 1 and 2 of this bill amend the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table, made under the Customs and Excise Act. The bill makes a number of consequential amendments to regulations to increase the rate at which duties are refunded, to allow people who use the motor spirits for off-road, commercial, and other purposes. Every year, we invest around $4 billion in transport, with about two-thirds of that from the National Land Transport Fund. Because of inflation, if we don’t periodically raise the excise, we will be making real cuts to our transport spend. That would be bad for the economy and bad for the country.

Governments of both stripes have used the excise to fund our transport system since 1927. This increase will deliver $120 million extra a year and allow us to make the investments this country needs.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Well, here we are: the first piece of legislation from the Budget and it’s putting up taxes—road taxes. People will be welcoming today. They’ll be scratching their heads, thinking what’s in it for them in this Budget, and we’re immediately talking about paying more at the pump. Kiwis who are struggling with the cost of living rising in this country at the moment will be not very excited to be focusing on these increases in petrol excises—more increases in petrol excises—this year, and again next year.

Where does the money go? Well, it’s supposed to go into trying to reduce congestion across our cities and our roads and to provide better roads. That’s the idea, but, of course, that’s not what this Government is focused on. Most people would assume that the purpose of transport policy and transport investment is to enable Kiwis to get around quickly, efficiently, and safely. That’s what transport policy should be about: to enable Kiwis to get around. But that’s not what the focus of this Government is through its Government policy statement on transport. Actually, they’ve removed all references to removing congestion. They’re not interested in removing congestion—they’ve taken that out of the priorities. So this extra money going into the fuel is not going to be focused on reducing congestion.

The two priorities of this Government are safety and mode shift. Now, of course, everybody agrees that we should be focused on safety, but you’ve got to have more ideas than just reducing speed limits when you’re dealing with safety. And getting people out of their cars and into public transport? Well, OK, that’s a useful goal to focus on, but if that’s your sole focus in transport policy, well, you know, when you look at nobody going anywhere in a massive traffic jam on the Southern Motorway in Auckland—hang on a moment; that achieves both of your priorities, doesn’t it? People are safe because they’re not going anywhere, and, secondly, they’re highly motivated to get out of their cars because they’re not going anywhere as well. This absolute lack of focus on congestion is how the transport policy works.

So what have they done? We pay all these extra fuel taxes that we’re discussing in this bill, and it goes into the big fund to be spent on transport, and the Government then decides how to spend it. This Government has, through the changes that it’s signalled in its Government policy statement, resulted in around a dozen major road transport projects being cancelled or delayed into the never-never land. So if you live in Tauranga today, you know that instead of getting on with a decent road going north of Tauranga up to Katikati, you’re not getting anything like that. You might get a single-lane road with a couple of sticks in the middle of the road, and everybody in Tauranga, in that whole area, is frustrated as anything. We talk about Let’s Get Wellington Moving—well, “Let’s Get Wellington Moving in about 30 years” is the correct title for it.

While they’ve talked about all the stuff they may do in the never-never, what they have said today is that they’re not doing the Melling interchange, which needs to be done, for a long, long time. So if you live in the Hutt Valley, you know that all this money that you’re paying in fuel taxes ain’t going to get you anywhere in terms of reducing congestion. Likewise, if you’re in Christchurch going to Ashburton, no help is on the way, I’m afraid. If you’re on the Southern Motorway in Auckland, there’s no help on the way. Mill Road—that was supposed to be a second route south—has been put off into the never-never land, way, way down the line. If you want to go up north through Wellsford, sorry—no help on the way. If you want to go—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Oh, yes, there is: catch the train.

—up through Ōtaki—oh, Shane Jones. He’s wandering around the countryside in Northland, handing out his money, trying to talk about regional development, but the single thing that everybody in Northland wants is a decent road to Whangarei. We had a process to get there, and we were making progress on it, and we committed to making progress on it. This Government’s not doing it, and instead they have this obsession with rail. So it was amazing to look at the Budget today. There is a whole section of this Budget, “Transforming the economy”—transforming the economy—and the number one project to transform the economy is to increase the subsidies for rail. Wow, that is amazing! What an amazing Government! Increased subsidies for rail is the number one policy to transform the economy.

Now, look, we all love trains—we all love trains. I love going on a train. I caught a train last week into Britomart Place. They’re wonderful things, and the previous National Government invested enormously in the electrification of the Auckland rail transport network, and we agreed to do the central rail loop, which will be transformational for people on rail in Auckland. I love going on trains, but to suggest that you should spend $1.4 billion on rail and then, at the same time, stop a whole lot of projects on the roads that would relieve congestion for frustrated motorists around this country is, I think, an unbalanced approach to transport policy.

We had the Minister of Transport standing up there and saying, “Oh, we’re focused on doing all sorts of other things to help relieve congestion, such as the light rail project.” Well, remember the first thing that Jacinda Ardern said when she became leader of the Labour Party was that we were going to have a game-changer. We were going to have light rail from west Auckland to the Auckland CBD, and then from the Auckland CBD out to the airport. Well, what’s happened? We’re 18 months on: nothing. Nothing has happened. We were asking Phil Twyford just a couple of days ago, “Have any decisions been made?” No. Have they got anywhere near putting a business case together? No. Have they even talked to Watercare and Vector and all those things to understand what’s underneath Dominion Road before they’re going to rip it up, in order to have any idea, to come up with anything like a business case? No. They’re months away from getting anywhere near even coming up with a business plan, and when they do, of course, it won’t stack up.

Only a very strange individual would think that the number one priority for transport in Auckland is a slight improvement to the public transport offering down Dominion Road, because, don’t forget, right now the people have been slicing off their verandahs down Dominion Road so that double-decker buses can go down Dominion Road. That’s very well served by public transport. This Government thinks the number one priority for this sort of money that they’re collecting in these taxes is a slight improvement on the public transport down Dominion Road, when north, south, east, and western Auckland are grinding to a halt.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: What about the North Shore?

Around the rest of the country—oh, North Shore? Well, don’t even think about the North Shore. No help is on the way for the congestion on the North Shore, apart from a heavily subsidised taxi scheme, I think, somewhere—but that’s an Auckland Transport thing.

This Government is bereft of ideas. So this money that’s collected is increased fuel taxes. So when petrol is going up through the roof at the moment, the Government is adding to that through the extra petrol taxes. It goes to NZTA—the New Zealand Transport Agency. Everybody knows that it is in total chaos and dysfunction, the NZTA, and that’s contributing to the fact that no new roads have been built, because nobody can find the same person to answer the phone every second time in the NZTA. If you talk to local mayors, they can’t find anybody to deal with, because it’s just a complete state of chaos. There are hundreds of people leaving all the time. The entire board has been cleaned out—they brought in a new chair and he was gone within a year.

So the agency that’s in charge of actually delivering the projects in order to make the lives of New Zealanders easier to get around is in chaos and dysfunction, and the Minister needs to take some responsibility for that. Instead, all the money that’s being collected is going to these fanciful projects that these Ministers are based on. When you think about where they come from, the priorities, the whole point of a good transport policy is to take a dispassionate view and look out over the next 30 years and ask ourselves, “Well, what are the biggest priorities and what are the things that we need to do in order to help the country move, so that we can actually get around, enjoy a good quality of life, and do the things that we want to do—pick up the people that we want to pick up, take the things that we want to take, in a quick fashion, collect the kids from netball on the way home from work, and have the flexibility to live the lives that we want to live?”

So we work out what the priorities are. We did that in Auckland for the first time ever, in conjunction with the council, and we agreed on a set of priorities of major projects. What happened? This Government came in, threw that all out and said, “No, we’re not doing the east-west thing. We don’t like it. We don’t like all these other projects, like a second route south. We’re going to delay them for 15 years and we’re going to do our pet project—light rail, a slow tram—halfway down Dominion Road.” The other focus is the basis of the horse-trading in the coalition deal between New Zealand First and Labour, and they are absolutely focused on spending on rail. Like I say, we all like our trains, but we struggle to understand why massively more subsidisation for rail should be the number one focus of transport policy and priority.

So for the motorist who’s going along to the petrol station and is going to be paying yet more tax for their petrol, I’m afraid to say that under this Government, help is not on the way. We’ll be enjoying the debate over the next few weeks and months over how this Government can defend what is indefensible in its transport policy. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

It is a privilege to speak to the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill—a very catchy phrase indeed, but not such a catchy policy from the Opposition. Whenever there is an issue in transport, the only thing the National Party ever wanted to do was build a road. If there’s congestion, build a road; if there’s an issue, build a road.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Build a road.

That’s right—and not fund it. So I have a challenge for the Opposition, who are obviously bitterly disappointed with something we’ve been signalling for some time, to make sure that there is some action on some of the fundamental transport issues that face the country—like congestion, like safety. This measure will bring in, as the Minister said, $120 million extra to help address these issues which went unaddressed for nine years, and my challenge is: which of the projects that we’ll be able to undertake via the collection of this excise—which, as the Minister said, has been the way we’ve funded these transport projects—will you go around and campaign on next year and say you’re going to get rid of? If you fundamentally disagree with the increase in excise to fund these projects, I would like to know—from whoever’s going to stand up next—which of the projects which this Government will undertake will you go around the country and say this about: “The Government wants to increase safety or invest in more roads or invest in rail, but we don’t believe that so these are exactly the kinds of things we’re going to cut as a result.”?

I really look forward to this. I think this is a wonderful piece of legislation that deals to some of the major infrastructure issues that transport is facing and will give this Government the ability to address some of them. There are other infrastructure issues that the Government is dealing with in the Budget—1.9 on mental health, more capital investment in education—but transport is one place where we think that extra investment is needed. I do note also the concern from the other side of the House about the increase in excise. It’s been an issue for some time but something that the previous Government actually did nothing about. It tried to but it didn’t quite get there, and at least on this side of the House we have given the Commerce Commission the ability to look at some of the underlying issues around the pricing of fuel, and we’ll get to the bottom of whether or not New Zealanders are getting a fair deal.

But regardless of that, this piece of legislation will allow the right kind of investment. If we want to deal with congestion, then, again, the National Party will just build a road. We will look at investing more in public transport, because getting people out of their cars and into public transport, like light rail or buses, is actually the way to reduce congestion—newsflash for the National Party. Also, if we’re talking about safety on our roads, getting more heavy-fleet vehicles off the roads and investing in—

💬 Brett Hudson: How’s a tram going to help the people of Porirua?

—wait for it—rail is also another way to make New Zealanders feel safer. So again, my challenge to whoever is the sad sack who’s going to have to stand up and defend their position is: tell us what you’re going to cut. Tell us which projects, as a result of this, will the National Party go around and campaign on next year and say, “We are not for this. We didn’t want it and we’re going to cut it.” I’d like to see how that goes down in all the areas they live in. Let’s see who’s next. Good luck.

I am the sad sack who is next, and I’m delighted to oppose this Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, and whoever came up with that name must have been on some spirits themselves. Mr Faafoi—I can’t believe that member gave a spirited defence to increasing the cost of living on hard-working New Zealanders in the electorate of Mana. What are they going to get out of a tram set that runs from the Wellington Railway Station to Wellington Airport? Five-eighths of nothing at all, Mr Faafoi. It is remarkable—here we are with a Budget that is supposed to be a wellbeing Budget.

What does this Government think? How do they think you improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders? Well, according to Mr Twyford, you slap an extra tax on hard-working people. You raise the cost of living for New Zealand workers, and in his mind that is improving wellbeing—because that is precisely what this piece of legislation does. I just took the opportunity to take a look on Gaspy. People in Wellington are already paying, as of today, almost $2.30 a litre for their petrol—for 91 octane petrol. If they happen to require 96 octane, it’s going to cost them quite a bit more. They’re paying almost $2.30 a litre.

What does Mr Twyford think of those people who are living their lives, going to work, and taking their kids to sport? What care does he have for them? He says, “I think that’s not enough. Here’s an extra 8c a litre. Go and enjoy that.” That is the Labour Party’s and the coalition’s views on New Zealanders. The best way to make them better off, in their view, is to take more of their money away from them—more tax. This is an “increase tax Budget”. Botched as it is, it’s increasing taxes—it’s the first thing they’re doing—and in a manner of speaking, it actually is the worst of all possible taxation, and I’ll explain why.

When we think of it, it is actually taxation without representation. And the reason it is that is because the people who are being hit with this tax are the people who will get little to no benefit from it—the Government has already made that clear—and none more so than in Wellington, which I will come to. They intend to take more and more tax from motorists and spend that on projects that benefit those motorists not at all. So in the Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme—which is a very poorly named programme, because the last thing it will actually do is get Wellington moving. If the first action of this Budget is to tax people more, the first action of Let’s Get Wellington Moving is to slow people down. Remarkable!

It’s the nature of a Labour-elected official. What they do is actually the opposite of what they claim they’re going to do. But in terms of Let’s Get Wellington Moving, the Minister is prepared to fund $1.3 billion, plus about $1.1 billion of interest on top of that, to get people who currently use the bus to get from the eastern or southern suburbs into town, off the bus and on to a tram. Because that’s all light rail—and it is light rail. At $1.44 billion as raw capital, it can only be light rail, because as we know, bus rapid transit would be about a quarter of that and trackless trams would be hundreds of millions of dollars less simply because they don’t need steel rail in the ground. But Mr Twyford’s view is “I’m going to tax motorists more with 8c a litre in this piece of legislation so that people who don’t drive cars already, because they’re on buses, can get on a tram instead.”

What is he going to do for those motorists that he’s going to slam with this extra tax? Well, they get nothing—nothing at all—because while he’s prepared to spend a lot of money on trams, he’s ruled out an extra southbound lane from Ngauranga to Aotea Quay. He’s ruled out the second Terrace tunnel. He’s ruled out the undergrounding from the Terrace Tunnel to the Basin Reserve, which does nothing at all for any motorist who lives in the northern or western suburbs of Wellington City, or, indeed, in Mr Faafoi’s electorate of Mana, or in Hutt South, in Rimutaka, in Ōtaki, or the Wairarapa. It does nothing for them at all. But he’s going to take an extra 8c a litre from all of those people that travel to work each day in their vehicles—maybe because they have to; maybe because it’s better for them. He gives them nothing but takes everything they have. That is actually a form of a lack of representation. Taxation without representation—it’s a good way to describe what Mr Twyford is doing to them.

Governments fund their programmes of action, but Governments have to justify them. If it’s about getting people off buses and into trams, the Government should be justifying the overall benefit for spending that money. Well, that was attempted in a Public Transport Spine Study in Wellington, which compared options of mass transit from the railway station to the airport against each other and against alternative options. What that found was that light rail in Wellington would lose between 90c and 95c in every dollar spent on it—90c to 95c in every dollar would be lost, and that was when it was expected to cost half a billion dollars less than they expect now.

So not only is Mr Twyford proposing with this legislation to take 8c a litre off motorists all over New Zealand; he’s expecting those motorists in Timaru, in Whangarei, in Auckland, in Tauranga, but also the motorists in Wellington to have that tax forcibly removed from them and spent on projects—one of which, at least, is going to lose 90c to 95c in every dollar of theirs that he spends on it. But it’s even worse, because he is shifting so much money out of the infrastructure that people need—taking $5 billion out of State highway improvements and throwing most of it into loss-making light rail—he’s also setting up situations where those same motorists, through their local and regional councils, are getting taxed again to fund the infrastructure (1) that they need and (2), quite frankly, that they have already paid for through their existing fuel taxes, even without this increase. It’s just a tax upon a tax.

A great example is here in Wellington. Let’s Get Wellington Moving is a $2.6 billion additional tax on ratepayers. That is roughly the equivalent—roughly the equivalent—of $13,500 per household across the region. But, for the good people of Wellington City that might be listening, I’ve got bad news. There is no way that the mayors in Wairarapa, Kāpiti, or even the Hutt are going to be prepared to take a full share of this. So if a person happens to live in the Wellington City boundaries, their share is going to be a great deal more than $13,500—a great deal more.

Anyone who stands as a representative in this city and says it’s okay for our residents to get smacked with that amount of money on top of this additional tax, on top of the fuel tax they already pay, on top of their income taxes, and on top of the GST they pay—that seeks to justify that they, because of Mr Twyford playing around with the funding, should have to pay more than $13,500 just to get the transport they already pay for—then, quite frankly, that’s an abject shock and shocking thing to do.

Fundamentally, Mr Twyford and his Government, particularly his finance Minister, had the ability to deliver for New Zealanders, including their transportation needs, including that infrastructure, without raising more taxes. Instead, they have chosen to take the forecast surpluses—which, admittedly, are a bit smaller now than when they first took office, and that’s due to their decisions as well—and apply them to expenditure that is not delivering any return, such as Mr Jones’ $3 billion fund, which some call a slush fund; fees-free, which is not delivering any additional students at all; $1 billion for Mr Peters in the area of foreign affairs; $1 billion now to subsidise rail that wouldn’t exist without the subsidies it already gets—but that’s simply another transfer of taxpayers’ money into another venture that is not delivering any return for them.

The result of that is that in order for those New Zealanders to get what they deserve and need, because of the decisions the Government has made, both in terms of its general spending but its reclassification or rejigging of funding within the National Land Transport Fund, they are faced with additional tax in this form of 8c a litre on their fuel, on every litre of fuel they will purchase, but also, because of all of those things, additional taxes through other sources such as the regional transport tax that Wellingtonians will face for 30 years at least to be going nowhere at all if they happen to live on the northern parts of the city and beyond.

It is a Government that has got its priorities completely wrong. Mr Twyford, stop over-taxing New Zealanders.

A day of National histrionics. A day where the man’s voice is hoarse. A day where his leader, rather than talk about the critical issues, thought he would score petty political points. A demonstration of cynicism. A demonstration of an absence of trust—an absence of trust. I predict there’ll be more discussions about illegality in relation to that man’s behaviour. I have absolutely no doubt that once minds more attuned than “Mātua” are on these technical legal matters, not unlike Mr Little, sitting in front of me, there’ll be more said about that petty, cynical sensationalism. But once the partisan dust has settled, it will show the man’s on treacherous ground. He’s in a legal quagmire. Unfortunately, he has fallen. He has fallen.

However, let me talk about what Kiwis mandated this side of the House to deliver on. They delivered to us the privilege to visit wellbeing into their households, and, through transportation policy, wellbeing is coming to the provinces and to the regions. Now, it does require me to put a certain level of my own moko or moniker on those efforts. The Minister of Transport has introduced not only the need for us to improve the imposts and increase the impost but he’s laid out a transport plan, and a key part of it includes rail. The key part includes rail because it’s an asset that was deliberately neglected, run down, and ignored. But, just as we’re increasing the ability of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) to move transport more efficiently, to address the long, sad history of Auckland’s transport debacles, this—not only this tax but the broader package—today will allow this side of the House to pay for a project that they started but never ever funded.

Now, we’ve had some epithets thrown across from that side of the House for this that they were going to build a road not unlike the one in Cambridge from Pūhoi to Whangarei to Tai Tokerau. They may have had—not on Facebook but on “Fakebook”—that particular dream, but they did not fund it. They did not budget for it. They did not allocate the funding. NZTA have confirmed. Sure, there was florid language—something I’m a stranger to myself. There were all sorts of promises made in the election. Nothing was funded. So what the Minister of Transport has done is ensured, with these small increases, a sum of $45 billion for the next 10 years will be there.

Now, the obligation falls upon us to ration it. We will ration it in such a way we don’t have political monuments in the form of four-laning and tarmacking our way to climate extinction. We don’t believe in that over here—we don’t believe in that over here. We think a far more nuanced and moderate approach is needed—not only roads but rail.

Now, as I understand, my rangatira, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, is in Whangarei tomorrow. He’s going to demonstrate that the falsehood of building a four-lane highway, promising all the way to Whangarei without a penny in the purse, was a falsehood. However, he’s going to remind them that under the NZTA proposals that our side has endorsed, there is substantial amounts of dough to fix up our regional roads. One of those roads that no doubt he’ll talk about will be the need to improve the road from Whangarei to Ruakākā.

But he’s really going to talk about rail, because when you win political power, you have the opportunity to serve the public and to dedicate capital. In the dedication of that capital, you can actually fulfil people’s dreams. We’re establishing, over a two-year period, well over a billion dollars for KiwiRail, whereas, over the last 10 years, they hardly even spent $300 million or $400 million per year. No wonder the thing was run down.

So I say to Kiwis, I say to the media: “Haere ki Whangarei āpōpō.”—go up to Whangarei tomorrow. There’s a rail rally. And, conveniently, my rangatira—leaving the next generation, not unlike myself, to hold the fort here—will be up in Tai Tokerau. In fact, I will be talking to accountants tomorrow, but that will be in Auckland. I will remind them that wellbeing is beyond monetisation. It’s beyond the harsh quantification exercise, where the full kaupapa of mauri and mana and wellbeing is not captured. I will give that largely Pākehā audience—friends of the National Party—a lesson. The fact that they’re from Auckland—I will introduce them to the concept that Auckland has to do not only the barracking for its own interests, but bear in mind that its port cannot stay where it is. That is why rail is such a handsome beneficiary. Lay down the track and the infrastructure and the cargo will follow.

But I don’t want to be diverted. I want to come back to more important matters. Other than the ability for me to deliver on an overdue promise, actually, what I’ll talk about is safety. Now, my colleague from the Green Party, Julie Anne Genter, has convinced me that there is a place for the various wire ropes and other safety measures. Now, I, of course, have insisted that as we roll out those safety measures, we bear in mind the road needs of agricultural people. That’s why in Ashburton I said we won’t be indiscriminately putting those safety barriers in place until such time as the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA)—an unusual organisation. An unusual organisation, but soon to see greater sunlight once our senior colleague brings forward the names that will provide a more focused level of governance, because there have been people on the board of NZTA who forgot about their statutory mission. They were only there as vessels to pour out the rhetoric of the last regime. The last regime is history. The last regime is haere ki Hawaiki nui, political Hawaiki roa, and electoral Hawaiki pāmamao, which means they are a distant memory. That is a distant memory.

So once our colleague works with us—the Cabinet Ministers—there will be a new body of people dealing with governance. Then what we will see is that they will roll out safety, and the safety will be better funded by these overdue price increases. If you want a quality, global-leading infrastructure, you have to contribute, you have to buy it, and that’s what these imposts represent.

So let me finish on reminding us that the kaupapa of this Government is safety as a feature of wellbeing. Rail is a hedge against excessive reliance on roads. Rail is an opportunity for boosting tourism. Rail is an opportunity for opening up new industrial zones. Now, it doesn’t actually take a lot of money, but it needs a lot of political will. Soon I will going to Heretaunga. I will be going, as the regional champion, to watch the train go from Napier up to Wairoa. When it goes there, I will have the Rātana band—they’ll be playing the brass band when I arrive. And then we will be making statements that show we practise what we preach. We promised to reopen that line and, indeed, the opportunity might arise—with suitable lobbying from my colleague on the right, Kiritapu Allan—that the line go up to Gisborne. But that, however, is for another day. There are at least 500 more days before that decision needs to be announced. Well, actually, when I see the future, there are probably 3,000 days of this regime when we can have those decisions made.

Now, look, I don’t want to sound excessive. I don’t want to sound too extravagant, because it’s been a day of shouting and rhetoric and pettiness and cynicism from the other side of the House, where they thought they would deface the heart of wellbeing by displays of cynicism, which I predict the Leader of the Opposition is going to be held legally accountable for. There are laws to be upheld in relation to the privacy of information. My leader was right, and once legal beagles get hold of that, we may very well have not heard—as Boris Johnson is currently experiencing—the last shot in that regard.

Look, I just wanted to respond to the last speaker, Shane Jones. He’s an impressive guy. He talks a big game though—he talks a big game. He talks about election promises and us not keeping election promises. I was on the election campaign against his great leader, and man did I hear some election promises, and none of them were kept—none of them were kept. So I have the terminology: “Pot, come in kettle.”—that’s what I say. These guys talk fantasy over reality. We had Māori seats—they were going to abolish them; Mangawhai rates; they were going to move the Auckland port to Northland. Now, Northland is OK. We’re in a growth area. We’ve had growth for the last five years, but we could do with more. The offer: they came north and said that they were going to relocate the Auckland port to Northland. That was music to the ears of Northlanders, but, I tell you what, you’re not going to move the Auckland port to Northland by taxing motorists.

So what we had was we had Jacinda Ardern saying, “No more new taxes.” That was the first line. This is a tax and spend Government. How are we going to support the motorists by taxing the motorists and spending it on rail? So let’s talk about rail. Let’s talk about all the money that they’ve just promised in the Budget to pour into rail. Rail doesn’t work in Northland, and Shane Jones is going to find that out. We’ve had rail up there for decades—decades we’ve had it, and guess what? No one uses rail up there. To compete with the roads, you’ve got to have distance and you’ve got to have bulk, and up north, we don’t have either.

So some people might say—this classic argument—you’re going to get the trucks off the road. Well, you’re not going to get the trucks off the road. You’re not going to get those trucks off the road, because the reality is we’ve got forests scattered all over Northland, and they’ve got to go by road. They’ve got to be loaded on the trucks—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: They’re being moved by Semenoffs.

On the Semenoff trucks. They’ve got to be loaded on the trucks in the forest, and with the distance from there to Northport—where all the logs go out—rail cannot compete with trucks. So the reality is—and I’m specifically talking Northland here—they’re going to pour millions of dollars of motorists’ money into upgrading the rail up there. It sounds really good. The punters up north, they’re thinking, “Oh, this is great. We’re going to get all this money spent on rail.”, but it’s going to be a dead duck, it’s going to be a waste of time. We all know why they’re pouring money into Northland: to buy the Northland seat—that’s a fact.

Now, in everywhere else around the world, they’re building four-lane highways. I actually happen to know that Shane Jones’ great leader has been advised by people in the know, people up high, that rail is not going to work in Northland—you’re wasting your time with rail. You know what? I have it on good advice that he was given this advice and he said, “Well, National’s got the roads tied up. We’re going with rail; it’s a vote winner.” So that’s a fact. So they’re pig-headedly pushing ahead with rail.

In Australia, they build four-lane highways, and everywhere they build four-lane highways, they get growth. In Northland, our economic action plan identified the four-lane highway in Northland as the single biggest driver of growth in Northland. These guys are going to funnel money away from the highway to put it into rail. Now, we promised in the 2017 campaign that we would start building the road from Whangarei South, which is the busiest and most heavily used road in Northland. So from Whangarei city out to Northport, we were going to build that road. Yes, that was a 2017 campaign, and, yes, it hadn’t been allowed for in the Budget, because we were going to do it in 2019, so that’s two Budgets later. The same thing was said by Winston Peters—that we weren’t building the actual highway from Pūhoi north, and it was under construction during the campaign. I said, “You can actually see drone footage of it being built.”, and he was standing up in an election campaign and saying that we weren’t building it.

The other thing is the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA). Now, I don’t know if they’re being politically interfered with or not, but we have requested meetings to talk about the roads—this excise tax that’s supposedly meant to be going into roads. We, our National MPs, have requested meetings with the NZTA staff all over the country, and for some reason we can’t get them. The guy that represents Northland, I’ve requested twice in writing and several times on phone calls to get meetings with them, just to understand what their plan is for Northland, and they won’t meet with us.

The biggest piece of infrastructure built with excise tax money in Northland was the Matakohe bridges, a $26 million 2.5 kilometre major piece of infrastructure for Northland, in the southern end of my electorate.

💬 Hon Shane Jones: New Zealand First policy.

No, that was the second of the 10 bridges promised. We built it with our funding, our design. And you know what? There were two bridges there, and you know what they’ve done? They haven’t even had an opening ceremony. They just moved the cones aside and let the traffic go through. Yet, we’ve got blessings and openings and sod turnings for tiny little jobs in Northland that Shane Jones likes to attend, all over Northland. I’m expecting an invite to the opening of an envelope, with Shane Jones.

But this $26 million project—not a bean. There was a lady that campaigned up north for these bridges. She’s been campaigning since 2012. She was involved in an accident with her daughter on the Matakohe Bridges, so she’s been campaigning; she’s been working away. She hasn’t had the respect to be invited to an opening of this major, major project. So they just moved the cones to one side and opened the whole thing. That’s the way we get treated.

So what do the people get with this excise tax? They get a cost of living increase, on top of the regional fuel tax. In Northland, out the southern end of my electorate, they get hit with this regional fuel tax on top of this excise tax we’re getting now, and they get nothing for it. They’re getting nothing for it on the roads. They’re getting the money poured into trains in Auckland, or so-called public transport infrastructure in Auckland. But they’re paying for it—the whole southern end of my electorate are paying for it.

They cancelled the Northland road. They’ve cancelled the Warkworth to Wellsford section of the road that we were going to build. They’ve cancelled that. Well, the rest of the world, Andrew Little, is building four-lane highways. That’s the reality. Your Government is pouring money into rail and boo-hooing roads. Well, I’ll tell you what: they don’t want to go with our four-lane because they know that’s a winner. So they’ve proposed in Whangarei to build—well, they’re building a roundabout there. You know, that’s Shane Jones’ special wee roundabout. That’s well overdue. I can accept that roundabout, but that was going to be part of the four-lane highway that we were going to build. They’re just going to do the roundabout. So they’ve proposed running a double-lane row next to the existing State highway instead of running into a four-lane, and this is going to cost two-thirds of the cost of a proper four-lane highway. So it’s not going to be half the cost; it’s going to be two-thirds. They’re still pushing ahead with it.

So, northerners, we’re getting ripped off. New Zealanders are getting ripped off. And this represents politics—this represents politics of the very worst kind. It really does. So we oppose this. We oppose this excise duty. We oppose this tax and spend Government. We oppose their rail over road, rail at all costs over road. And you know what? I can tell you this: the New Zealand First Party will be pushing up daisies before that Auckland port gets moved to Northland. They will be pushing up daisies. They’re proposing this now to try and win the Northland seat, but they will never deliver on it. We know it. It’s just a pipedream like most of the other promises that come out of the mouths of those across the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I am so proud of this Government today. I’m proud to stand here and speak on behalf of the Green Party, supporting the Labour-led coalition with New Zealand First Government. We are making real progress for New Zealanders on the issues that they very much care about, because I know that most New Zealanders know that we have an infrastructure deficit. Most New Zealanders know that we have a lack of reliable, frequent public transport options for getting around our towns and cities. We had over decades—successive Governments had let the rail network fall to pieces, and that had significant consequences on the functioning of our road network as well as consequences for our economy.

It’s funny; I never thought I’d be a politician. I was a transport planner just working on positive solutions to various long-term challenges like climate change, like inequality, and transport provides an absolute opportunity that actually benefits every part of society in New Zealand. I was very naive back in 2009. I thought, well, surely the National Party will want to support a transport policy that’s fiscally responsible, that reduces congestion, that’s better for moving people and goods, because that’s good for business, that’s good for our economy. So I wrote to the then transport Minister, Steven Joyce, and let him know that, actually, all of his objectives aligned with transport investment that would also be better for people, for our towns and cities, and for the climate. So it’s one of those rare areas where it’s a win-win, because nobody in New Zealand benefits from a transport policy that is spending most of the money on a few minor but very expensive expansions to the highway network outside our major cities. Why? Because it doesn’t do anything to help people get around at peak time. It actually makes congestion worse. It does nothing to reduce the cost of moving goods around our country. It does nothing to improve road safety. So surely they wouldn’t want to keep doing this.

But listening to the debate here in the House from members of the Opposition, I see, sadly, that they don’t really understand what a transport network is, and that when we invest in rail, whether that’s for passengers or goods, that benefits the rest of our transport network—that benefits the roads. I know it’s a hard concept for those members over there for some reason, but, luckily, on this side of the House, we embrace science, we embrace evidence and reality, and the reality is that the greatest benefits to our transport network are now achieved through investing in the complements to our road network in maintaining our road network and making our road network safer, and that is exactly what we are doing.

I do remember, it must have been five or six years ago, speaking in a speech on Budget legislation under urgency that was very similar to this legislation—oh, yes, that’s right. The National Party, while they were in office, increased fuel taxes. They increased fuel taxes by about 24c a litre, during their time, and the difference—and I’m fully supportive of that, as long as the revenue is used to actually improve our transport network. Sadly, under the National Party, a few mega-projects were selected for political reasons so they could cut some ribbons, and all of the money went into that.

So you know what happened during that time? I see the members of the National Party are so gullible. They actually believe their rhetoric and their lines. They actually believe that the projects that were prioritised under that last National Government were going to somehow benefit the economy, even though there was not a single shred of economic evidence to support that position. They had to invent a whole new category of roads—called roads of national significance—because those projects never would have passed a basic cost-benefit analysis that had been prioritised under the New Zealand Transport Agency and their policy.

So what the National Party did was tax all New Zealanders in Southland, in Northland—the ones who are the most dependent on the roads. They raised their petrol taxes and they reduced their road maintenance spending. They reduced the spending on road police by over 10 percent, and that is why, of course, we started to see a dramatic increase in deaths and serious injuries on our roads. From 2013 to 2018, under the National Government, road deaths increased 55 percent—deaths and serious injuries—and that’s not acceptable.

So our Government has made safety a top priority for the transport budget, and this very minor, modest increase to fuel tax and road user charges will benefit our roads right across the country, not just in Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch, and Hamilton, which are the only places where the National Party spent any money on roads—and, unfortunately, they weren’t even projects that reduced congestion, because adding additional motorway lanes in an urban area never reduces congestion, and the speed of our road network in an urban area is determined by the speed of the rapid transit. Did they have any investment in rapid transit?

💬 Hon Members: None.

None—none. So we were able, with our very modest increases in fuel taxes, which are the same as what happened under National, to spread that money right around the country. I’ve spoken to local authorities and they tell me they are so relieved and so happy that there’s going to be more money going into road maintenance in Southland, in Otago, in Northland, because—oh, let’s see. OK, so the National Party announced seven highway projects. Most of the money was going on seven—just seven—highway projects over nine years. Two of those projects had already been funded by the last Labour Government—Victoria Park Tunnel and Waterview Connection—and two of those projects, 10 years later, had barely started construction.

So that previous speaker, Matt King, who was talking about four lanes to Whangarei—now, that was a pipe dream. That was never funded under the last Government. In fact, they had barely started construction on the Pūhoi to Warkworth—

💬 Kiritapu Allan: But what about the 10 bridges?

The bridges? Three of them have been done, I think. I think three out of 10. So let’s be rational. I do plead with the Opposition members: we should have a bipartisan, across the House approach on transport, because this is what New Zealanders want. Eighty-seven percent of Automobile Association members say they want investment in protected cycleways in our cities, because they agree with the idea that kids should be able to walk and cycle safely to school. That is good for the kids’ health, that’s good for their learning, and it’s good for congestion. It makes life easier for mums and dads.

So the motorists in New Zealand overwhelmingly support a balanced approach to transport, which is exactly what this Government is delivering, because they know that it doesn’t matter if you drive a car or if you take a bus, you take the train, or you take your bike; everybody benefits by having more choices available to people. But I have to say, this fuel tax increase that we’re doing today is primarily going to benefit the roads that were sorely neglected under the National Government.

💬 Hon David Bennett: No, it’s for trains—ha, ha!

💬 Simeon Brown: It’s all going to trains.

Oh, I think Opposition members are a little bit confused. Yes, this Government made a huge commitment to rail in today’s Budget. Does that come from the National Land Transport Fund? No, it’s Crown funding and Provincial Growth Fund funding, so you actually have no—sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker. You know what you’re talking about, but those members in the National Party have no idea what they’re talking about. They can’t read a Budget statement. They actually have no idea how the National Land Transport Fund works and they certainly have no idea about what is actually going to benefit our transport network.

That is why congestion did not get better after 10 years under National. The state of our local roads has degraded to a horrific state, and that’s why it’s going to take years to make up for it. But we have increased road maintenance for local roads and State highways by over 20 percent. We’ve increased the number of road police. We’ve increased funding for regional improvements, for local road improvements, for walking and cycling improvements. We were even able to invest in rapid transit, which is going to benefit the people of Auckland and Wellington and Christchurch, Tauranga, and Hamilton, because this Government believes in a balanced transport investment that’s going to benefit our towns and cities, benefit freight, benefit the climate, and, most importantly, benefit our children and their children.

I wish that the members opposite were able to engage in an informed and rational debate. But, sadly, they’re stuck with their talking points, which are absolutely wrong. I think the former president of Local Government New Zealand would know there was significant criticism of the National Party’s transport policy.

💬 Lawrence Yule: Not under my watch.

In fact, I think I even heard criticism from that member. But, for whatever reason, he chose team blue—going to be sitting on the Opposition benches for years and years to come, sadly. But, hopefully, we could have some constructive dialogue and debate, because those members should realise that the investment this Government is making in our transport system for New Zealand is one that is going to benefit the country at a far, far greater rate and is going to benefit generations to come.

Well, I just wish I was an expert in transport matters. I just wish I had that expertise and was able to draw on that wealth of experience I must have had before I came into Parliament!

That speech I’ve just listened to was very confused, unfortunately. I’ll come back to some of the stuff that was raised in that speech, but here we are: we’re talking about a wellbeing Budget. I think that the term “wellbeing” is going to be like one of those words that—you know, we all heard them in years gone by—everyone picked up on: “unique selling point”, “strategic stuff”; you know, all those words that everyone loves to use. And the Wellbeing Budget that everyone talks about—of course, no one really understands, except for this, sort of, glow of happiness that we’re all meant to have. But, unfortunately, this Budget doesn’t achieve that. It does provide some stuff that will progress certain aspects, but, unfortunately, on the balance of it, I don’t think it achieves what it should be, and what it would have been, and what it could have done, actually, given the situation where we are currently.

I think the first thing is that here we are talking about the “Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (blah blah blah) Amendment Bill”. It’s the first tax to be introduced, the first piece of legislation after this Wellbeing Budget that they’re introducing—the very first thing, out of everything that was raised in that Budget. So it’s all about increasing the petrol levies, basically.

💬 Hon David Bennett: Plus GST.

That’s right—and GST, Mr Bennett. The fascinating thing is why would you be introducing a first bill which is about raising tax, when you’re trying to achieve better outcomes for New Zealanders? The first thing everyone knows about these types of petrol taxes is that they’re regressive. That means the poorer people are the worst ones off. That is Economics 101, and yet this is the first bill that that Government puts up. That I cannot understand.

But also let’s just talk about the context of tax. So this is a tax—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: He’s a howler—wait for it, a howl’s coming.

Mr Jones, this is a piece of tax—that additional tax you want to put in. So I was just running through the numbers. Interestingly, personal tax in the Budget, in your lovely Wellbeing Budget you put forward, has gone from $36 billion in 2018, and under your glowing Wellbeing Budget, New Zealanders—ordinary people in New Zealand, not people sitting in Parliament—are going to end up paying $13 billion of additional tax over the next four years. That Government over there is going to take another $12 billion of additional tax off ordinary New Zealanders in the form of personal tax. We also know that GST is going up. So, of course, that’s—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): The member needs to come to the bill.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. That is going to go up, and company tax is going to go up. So what I’m saying to you is that you have a tax take that is going from $72 billion—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Look, I know that the term “spirit” is in the bill, but the taxation and company tax—that’s another bill. We’re talking about motor spirits. So can the member come back to it, or we’ll begin to think that it’s a different spirit that’s guiding him.

Tim van de Molen: Speaking to the point of order—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No, I don’t need any help, thank you. Yes, it’s a serious matter to interrupt a member while they’re speaking. It’s the role of the Speaker to make those decisions around relevance. Even the unkindest person might say that a number of speeches in this debate have been vaguely relevant, but that’s my decision. We are under urgency. I did interrupt the member. I felt that he was beginning to have more of a Budget debate speech rather than speaking to the first reading of this bill. So if members could speak to Part 1 and Part 2 of the bill while they are having other conversations—or contributions, I should say—to this bill, that would be a good thing.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. So the context for this is that under this Government, tax is going to go from $72 billion to $100 billion, so why do you need to now introduce another tax bill as the first bill up? That’s my point. You have already—“you”, as in the Government, Mr Assistant Speaker. The Government is already raking in heaps of money under current settings, and the very first thing that they do is introduce a bill trying to impose more tax on wellbeing and New Zealanders, unfortunately, and I just do not get that logic.

The other thing about this bill is that it still doesn’t address the issue around what it’s going to do for our horticulture growers or those people who are paying diesel tax, and how those arrangements are doing. So not only is this bad for motorists; it’s also bad for the productive sectors of our economy.

I just want to refer back to this issue around what this Government is trying to do in terms of transport. Of course, we’ve heard Julie Anne Genter, the previous speaker, talk about safety, and I know that about $800 million has been assigned to safety improvements—this move to mode changes. But, as the Hon Paul Goldsmith, my colleague, mentioned earlier, the congestion is the issue now. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be putting money into rail. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be looking at other modes of transport. But the thing about this is it’s fine to upgrade what you’ve got, but what you haven’t got, you can’t upgrade, because it hasn’t been built. That’s the issue. We’ve got a deficiency. That is the issue about how we need to make sure that New Zealand has the transport infrastructure, and that means, principally, roads, but it doesn’t mean it exclusively.

I think that with the Auckland Transport Alignment Programme, it was a big programme—28 billion bucks—that was agreed between the National Government and the Auckland Council, as an example—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! Sorry, I walked in on something earlier and I wasn’t quite sure what the acting Speaker was saying, but what I want to indicate to the member is that it’s a very narrow bill. It’s a revenue bill and it’s not a spending bill, and, therefore, the debate on it, as this stage go on, gets narrow. It gets slightly wider at the second reading. I think he’s making a speech which could well fit at the second reading, but it’s not a first reading speech, which is on this bill.

Tim van de Molen: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I appreciate that ruling. What we’ve seen throughout this debate has been quite a straying from speakers on both sides of the House—I’ll admit it—in terms of the breadth with which they’ve covered this topic. So to now close that down on a very narrow focus for the last few remaining speakers presents a slightly different profile of what they’re able to enact on, and I would ask whether we can have consistency through the remaining stages of this bill.

💬 SPEAKER: The short answer is that we will have consistent rulings going forward on this, and I would like to remind the member that when I have made a ruling, he shouldn’t then be questioning it. The rulings will be consistent for the rest of this debate and the other first readings.

OK. So the relevance of this bill is directly related to the issue of the Auckland Transport Alignment Programme because it’s an element in its funding. That is why getting agreement around that Auckland Transport Alignment Programme is very, very important, and this is part of making sure that that can occur. But the issue we’ve got is how this money is funded and, as I’ve said before, it’s the regressive nature of this, and the most pernicious thing about this is how it disadvantages the poor and the people who are the most vulnerable in New Zealand.

I think the issue about this is that I heard the Minister of Transport, in his opening speech, talk about what he’s doing with the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), and he talked about “We’ve sorted NZTA out.” I’ve just got to say that I totally disagree with his opening comments on this bill, because we’ve got the Southern Motorway, which is already a year behind schedule, and one of the reasons why it’s a year behind schedule is that there’s been an incredible focus on building a cycleway down the left-hand side of that motorway—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Second warning.

So this cycleway is part of what this bill is being funded for, and the Associate Minister of Transport referred to it directly in her speech before. So if that was a big part of the funding of this excise tax, I’d have to say the purpose of this bill and the purpose of this funding is very, very susceptible to elements of the funding network for the transport to actually not deal with the issue of what the needs of people are in terms of meeting their transport needs.

The Minister also spoke in his opening speech about the electrification to Pukekohe. Again, that is an issue that has not been progressed under this Government. It is a piece of action that is missing significantly in the entire mix that the Minister referred to.

Also, Mill Road is another example that he referred to. I’d have to remind the Minister that the money that comes out of this exercise is not actually being—

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: “Exercise tax”.

It’s exercised as part of the Auckland project. It’s the start of the funding that comes out of this excise tax. The Minister suggested before in his speech that it’s being applied to Mill Road, but, actually, that is not correct. Only part of Mill Road is being built, and that is the most disappointing thing.

So if you’re going to introduce a bill to increase the price of petrol and diesel for all motorists in New Zealand, please—and I’d just say this—make sure it’s going to projects that benefit all New Zealanders. Pet projects like that are not the ones that will help reduce congestion, which is the main part of this.

I think this issue of non-delivery around these major projects, which this excise tax is meant to be directed to, is one of the most disappointing things. I just find it absolutely absurd that this is the first bill that the Government would put up after this so-called Wellbeing Budget.

Before I call Aupito William Sio, I just want to warn all members speaking from now on that we will be talking to this revenue bill, not to any expenditure matters which might be better dealt with in other legislation, and there’ll be some balancing up in the second reading.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m just puzzled. Is your ruling that if you have a revenue-raising bill, we cannot talk about what the money that we are raising is to be spent on?

You can have passing reference to it, and if it can be absolutely drawn to it, the answer is yes. But there is a lot of expenditure that is occurring as a result of excise duty or taxation generally, and this is a narrow bill.

Mr Speaker, you are absolutely correct. It is a—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I don’t want the member—I do not want any members—referring to my ruling.

It’s a proud day today to be part of a Government that’s delivering the first wellbeing Budget. That Wellbeing Budget has five key priorities. One of those priorities is transforming this nation, giving ample opportunity to business—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is an excise bill, and the member’s talking about the Wellbeing Budget.

💬 SPEAKER: Yes, and I was just about to interrupt him when I got involved in a discussion with the leader’s whip, who wanted to know how long this particular call was.

💬 Hon David Bennett: How long is it?

💬 SPEAKER: Who said that? Stand, withdraw, and apologise.

💬 Hon David Bennett: I withdraw and apologise.

At a time like this, when you smell the pork, I’ll keep it short. I’ve got food in my office. There are two fundamental reasons for this bill. One is that this Government is taking the safety of the country very, very seriously. Two, when we’re talking about establishing a transportation system for the whole of the country, we’re talking about lifting economic opportunities for the regions. If that side there is wanting to oppose this bill, they are opposing community safety on our roads and they are opposing economic development in the regions. I have to ask that side there: how do you put, how do you fix—

💬 Jonathan Young: What clause?

Petrol excise duty; clause 1—how do you pay for safety measures on our transportation system? How do you ensure that we have a system that will increase economic development in the regions? Somebody’s got to pay for it, and that’s the reason for this. That’s all that needs to be said about this bill. I recommend that that side move this bill. Otherwise, if you’re opposing it, then you better be ready to go out to the community and say to them that you don’t want to fix up safety on our roads—

All right. That’s enough, thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call on the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill—quite the mouthful. Now, this is concerning for me because we’re looking here at imposing an additional 3.5c per litre, plus GST. Whilst the intent here is to raise revenue for the National Land Transport Fund, the concern is the impact that has, and we have to consider that on our motorists and on our communities. In the Government policy statement in 2018, the Government’s key priority, after they’d reshuffled and reprioritised that Government policy statement, was on safety, we were told. So this bill, looking to raise additional excise revenue to stream through into that National Land Transport Fund, should therefore be focused around safety considerations.

What we’re seeing, and how this is actually playing out, the implementation of the National Land Transport Fund off the back of the Government policy statement 2018, is that there are allegedly a raft of safety improvements that are looking to be rolled out in numerous locations, such as in the Waikato, and yet they’re not being delivered. So the question is: if we’re looking to raise additional revenue through a bill such as this, and clause 3 is looking to amend that, specifically increasing the rate by 3.5c per litre on 1 July—only now a matter of some weeks away—then how do we have confidence that the Government is going to utilise that in the most appropriate way, which they have said is safety? Safety concerns are absolutely important on the roads, and we need to make sure that we are doing what we can in that space.

An additional 3.5c, coming in on 1 July this year, is a significant impact for Kiwis all around the country—and that’s going straight out of their back pockets. So we’re hearing in the Budget, at large, about a number of other different areas where spending has been allocated, but directly in relation to this revenue raising under the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, this is going to have a significant and detrimental impact.

As if that weren’t enough, then we have clause 5, which amends the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table to further increase the rate of excise duty and excise-equivalent duty on motor spirits by an additional 3.5c, plus GST, on 1 July next year. So not only are our motorists and our communities going to be hit by 4c a litre from 1 July this year, they’ll see the same again next year. The revenue that’s going to be raised through that, as I mentioned, is looking to try and achieve what the Government wants under their Government policy statement, which they have reiterated on numerous occasions as being safety-focused at the expense of commuter times—that’s no longer a priority, we heard from New Zealand Transport Agency. But the bulk of that funding already comes through petrol excise duty—some $1.9 billion on recent figures. So the question then is: how do we have confidence that this additional revenue raising will be utilised in that safety component? When people are looking to fill up at the pumps, they will rightly be questioning “Where is this going? How can we see direct benefits from this extra expense, this extra revenue, that we are giving to the Government to allegedly invest on our behalf in areas of concern for us?” Depending on the locations around the country—in the Waikato, there will be question marks around that because we’re not seeing significant investment. The Government has already indicated that they’re no longer carrying out projects which have significant safety benefits in our region; they’ve scrapped them altogether. There are some safety upgrades that are being planned, but they’re fiddling around the edges and not really hitting the heart of the issue.

So raising this extra 4c a litre, once we add the GST on this year, and an additional 4c per litre next year—8c per litre for motorists is a significant cost that most families—

💬 Andrew Bayly: On top of the last year’s.

—will be impacted by. And, of course, for anyone, as Mr Bayly says, who’s in the Auckland region, well, they had the regional fuel tax as well. The amount of revenue this Government is now seeking to raise through the excise duty on fuel is going through the roof. They’re covering up lack of funding in other areas, shifting funding to address this—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

I want to start this conversation just by acknowledging some of the fatalities that we’ve had in the southern end of my electorate over the last month. I guess it dovetails, really, right into—[Interruption] There’s a lot of opposition coming from there at the moment, but, actually, this is a really serious topic. Seven people from the same family died in a collision south of Taupō, and you want to make fun of that—

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

Sorry, Mr Speaker. One died in a head-on smash at Ātiamuri. Five of them died from the same family in Kinleith in the last month. Three people died in a crash between a truck and a van, also in the Taupō region.

When we’re talking about fatalities on the road, as the local member of Parliament for the Waiariki I feel it when we have these fatalities. When families are involved, which we’ve seen in the last month, it sends a really strong message to me that we need to make our roads safer and that if we can do that by a petrol excise of 3.5c per litre, with the money to be reinvested into making our roads safer, into ensuring that we’ve got different modes of transport so that we, actually, don’t have such a strong reliance on our roads for the trucks, then I’m really supportive of that. This is a really serious issue, and while some members of the House can, kind of, rubbish it, actually, this is something that needs to be done.

The Government’s policy statement, when it comes to transport, really does focus on safety as a priority, and that’s exactly what we need on our roads. We need to make sure that they are safe for our people to travel on. I know that people in my electorate have been absolutely stung by the amount of road accidents that we’ve had—and for a variety of reasons. But they are telling me that they’re crying out for better solutions. So that’s exactly what this excise is going to be reinvested back into: making sure that our roads are safe, making sure that we have options as well.

In Tauranga, one of the most congested parts of my electorate, they, unfortunately—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: My electorate.

—haven’t done very good planning at all. Their local member probably dropped the ball on it quite a while ago—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: Oh! The only work’s happening because of me.

—and we’re having to fix that up.

💬 SPEAKER: All right, all right. The member will resume his seat. Now, this member’s on a warning. I gave him a couple of minutes to get into the bill. He mentioned it, I think, once. He will now focus on it, or his speech will we curtailed.

I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the—

💬 Jonathan Young: No, we’ve got one more.

Jonathan Young—the member has the call. There’s a tradition in this House that, if you want the call, you say something.

I did say something, and I didn’t want to interrupt you.

💬 SPEAKER: I know, but it was a bit late.

I didn’t want to interrupt you. I’m very pleased to speak on this bill, the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. The question, I think, that needs to be asked is about the quantum that has been set in this bill. We have heard from other speakers on, including GST, 4c from 1 July 2019—not too far away—and then a further 4c from 1 July 2020.

I think it’s appropriate to mention that safety measures are important, and this is part of what this is about. What we are also hearing around the country is that speed limits are being reduced, and so the question is: how much does that cost? We know that doesn’t cost anything; it’s about behavioural changes in our driving. So when it comes to what is being charged to motorists at a time when petrol prices are again on the increase, here we are in the Wellbeing Budget adding in further costs. So we do challenge these steps and we do suggest that in the process of the second reading and the committee stage, we have ample opportunity to exercise our views around why we feel that this is excessive.

Can I just say in agreement with the previous speaker, Tamati Coffey, that we have been saddened by the losses of New Zealanders on our roads and we want to see that stop. We want to see not just improvements in particular centres but right through our network as well.

So as we consider these prices, we consider, also, the ability of New Zealanders to be able to have an affordable way of life, and I implore the Government to consider that in your own deliberations when you come to set these figures. With that, I will conclude my comments.

Thank you. This is a bill which imposes a paltry 3.5c in additional excise duty, and yet here we have it from the other side saying, “Too much. What’s in it for me?” Well, I’ll tell you what: the Opposition should think, not about saving 3.5c a litre out of their own pockets, but about saving some lives, as Mr Coffey noted before.

Here we have them railing against rail. They should be thinking about saving the planet, not their leader’s ego. So the 3.5c a litre that is going to be imposed this year—which is desperately needed revenue to fill the huge gap, and that we need to have—and the safety improvements that Minister Genter was referring to are a great investment, a great use of this tax. So it is time to think not about saving 3.5c out of their own pocket. We’ve well looked after hard-working New Zealanders with our Families Package and other measures. The 3.5c here is a tiny burden, it’s a trivial burden, compared to the huge benefits for our economy—saving our economy, not eight minutes of travel time. So stop railing against progress. I commend this bill to the House.