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 third time.

The purpose of our transport policy and the outcomes that this excise bill makes possible are a transport system that we aim to make free of deaths and serious injury. We want a transport system that allows New Zealanders easy access to get to the things that they need on a daily basis: work, education, community. We want to reduce carbon emissions, and, of course, run a transport system on which we spend, on behalf of the citizens of New Zealand, around $4.5 billion a year to grow and maintain. We want to deliver value for money.

We know, in our largest cities, that they are performing poorly economically. One of the reasons for that is that for years this country has not properly invested in modern transport systems that deliver the mobility and the access that allow us to take advantage of the productivity gains that we should be reaping in large cities. Cities are, from one perspective, essentially labour markets. They give large numbers of our citizens access to jobs. They give firms access to the workers that they need to be productive. When you don’t have efficient transport systems that deliver mobility and access, then it’s a drag on labour market productivity.

So this bill is designed to inflation-proof the revenue streams for our transport system now and into the future. If we don’t make the increases in revenue that this bill enables, over the next 10 years—if we were not to pass this now—we would be taking around $2 billion out of the transport revenue system. If we did that, we would simply not be able to make the investment that we’re doing now. For example, on more than 3,000 kilometres of roads around the country, at a cost of $1.4 billion in this three-year period, it is estimated to save more than 150 lives annually by making a serious programme of improvements to the roading network to prevent deaths and serious injuries.

This bill increases the rates of excise duty on petrol by 3.5c per litre on 1 July 2019 and, again, on 1 July 2020. Our Government is not shying away from the hard decisions. We’re tackling the long-term issues to give people and businesses predictability and certainty, and we flagged the increases that we are legislating through this bill when we announced the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport a year ago.

For too long, New Zealanders have paid the price for the previous Government’s unbalanced transport policy that spent 40 percent of the transport budget on a handful of projects that carried only 4 percent of vehicle journeys. We have to turn that around. This excise increase is absolutely necessary to overcome the infrastructure deficit that we inherited as a result of that unbalanced transport policy.

We’ve heard in this debate, as the bill has progressed through the stages, time and again the Opposition’s resistance to these excise increases, but their position lacks credibility and integrity. The Opposition party, during nine years in Government, raised the excise tax—just as we are doing today in the House—six times. They added 24c a litre to the excise tax, and now they oppose this regular, incremental increase in the excise. Political parties of all stripes have funded the transport system through fuel excise since 1927. There hasn’t been a Government in New Zealand’s history that hasn’t raised the excise tax to inflation-proof the revenue sources for our transport system.

What makes it even worse, the gall and the shamefaced audacity of the Opposition to oppose this revenue increase is exposed by the fact that in the last election campaign, they made unfunded promises of $12 billion for 10 new motorway projects, and transport officials advised Simon Bridges, who was then the transport Minister, that those promises would require an excise increase of more than 8c a litre. He never signed off that advice. In the dying months of that Government, the transport officials advised an 8c increase—8c a litre in one go—just to fund their election promises.

So they’re happy to go around the country like a drunken sailor, promising new motorways, but they will not admit that they require extra revenue to fund it. That is worse than being a tax and spend Government; that is a spend Government—completely irresponsible and lacking in integrity. We know that the productivity and growth of the country’s economy has been held back by the gridlock in our cities and under-investment in regional roads, local roads, and all of the other modes of transport that make up our transport system.

We are committed to building a modern, efficient, and sustainable transport system. To do that requires revenue. To do that means that we have to inflation-proof the revenue streams for the National Land Transport Programme. We have to get New Zealanders out of the gridlock in our cities. We have to stop the epidemic of deaths and serious injuries that have happened in recent years on our roads, and we must get on with building an efficient and sustainable way to move freight around this country. This bill will provide for the increase in transport funding that will allow us to meet those objectives. I commend this bill to the House.

Before I call the Hon Paul Goldsmith, a number of members have drawn to my attention the fact that we are having a problem with one of our lights up there, which is causing some annoyance to members—quite rightly. What I’ve asked is for an attempt to isolate it, and it might mean that we work even more in the dark than we do generally for a period of time, because it’s frankly not acceptable the way that it is.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The flicking light is a metaphor for this Government falling apart—a botched Budget and a botched Government. Now they can’t even get the lights to stay on properly.

We’ve had a short and truncated debate about this increase in taxes on the car. So, ultimately, what we’re talking about here in this legislation is about $360 million extra over the next two years for motorists to be paying at the pump, and that flows through to the rest of the economy. So it’s a pretty ironic thing that the first piece of legislation passed following the so-called Wellbeing Budget is a significant increase on the taxes of hard-working New Zealanders as they go about their lives, and that’s what it is. This Government gives with one hand, so a little bit of extra saving on school fees—$150 million over four years. Well that’s swamped by the significant increase that all those families will be paying in their fuel taxes.

Now, the Minister says it’s inflation. It’s much more than inflation, sorry, Minister. It’s more than inflation; it’s actually increasing the pool. People would understand that if they were getting something for it, but they’re not getting anything for it. What they’ve seen from this Government so far is the cancellation of 12 major transport projects or more: so the East-West Link gone; the road north of Tauranga to Katikati gone; the Waikato Expressway slowed down and little pieces lopped off so that you stop in the middle of just out of Cambridge, and then you’re back into a dangerous road; if you want to go down to Ashburton, no future for you there; and the Melling Link intersection in Wellington gone, delayed into the never-never land. So you’re paying more but you’re getting less for it. Well, that’s a really great deal, isn’t it? The people of New Zealand will be delighted at that—they get to pay more taxes on their roads and in their cars to get less for it. That sums up things perfectly.

Instead, the extra funds are going to go to two areas: firstly, is the focus on safety. Everybody understands that we should absolutely be focused on road safety. You’ll get no debate from this House on the importance of trying to reduce the road toll. What we find frustrating, however, is that at the same time that they’re keen to increase taxes to focus on road safety, they have a complete blind spot when it comes to doing anything about drug-driving, for example, because the Greens, of course, want us all to be smoking more drugs, so they have a blind spot on that area. Secondly, the Budget’s got nothing more on road safety.

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

Sorry, I was just trying to get some context to the story, Mr Speaker.

💬 SPEAKER: No, the member’s had too much on the second reading; we’re on the third reading now.

Right. This is our last chance to make some comments on this bill before it is hastened through in the short time that we have here in this urgent debate. So the point I’m making is that we’re going to get to spend all this extra money, not on reducing congestion, but on road safety and mode shift. Mode shift, for the uninitiated, is getting people out of their cars on to some other form of transport. So, ultimately, you’re being asked to pay more tax at the petrol pump for your car in order to get you out of your car to do something that, presumably, you don’t want to do, given the fact that you might be trying to pick up something in your car, pick up a child in your car on the way home from work, or do something that—if you live in most parts of provincial New Zealand, you don’t have the opportunity to necessarily cycle long distances in the rain and the dark, or catch a bus that doesn’t exist, along with picking up 10 bags of groceries from the supermarket, and so forth.

So it’s a very, very ideological approach to transport that we’re dealing with under this Government. The previous Government, of course, yes indeed did increase road-user charges at a much slower rate over the nine years of Government. We did that in order to fund things that would make the lives of New Zealanders easier in getting around. You can think of the Waterview Tunnel and the Waikato Expressway—things that have made a dramatic impact on the quality of life and the speed and efficiency and safety of all Kiwi motorists. People can understand paying something to get something. What they struggle with is paying more at a much-increased tempo of increases in road taxes that we’ve seen from this Government—$360 million extra over two years. What they struggle with is paying all that extra fund and getting less for it, and that’s what we’re seeing in the Government, because you can’t talk about an excise bill without seeing the results for it.

Now, we asked some other questions during the second reading debate and didn’t get any answers to them, unfortunately. One was: how is it right that this extra $360 million that is being collected through these duties and is supposed to be hypothecated—that’s what the regulatory impact statement says, and we’re looking at the regulatory impact statement. It talks about this money being hypothecated for the National Land Transport Fund and it has to be spent on particular things. Here we go, a footnote in the regulatory impact statement: “The revenue is ‘hypothecated’ in the sense that there are legislative constraints (in the Land Transport Management Act 2003) that govern how this revenue can be used.” Well, hang on. That’s fine, but I never got an answer as to how an urban regeneration project, which is the basis for the light rail, slow tram down Dominion Road that’s been proposed to be built with some of this money, relates to land transport management—an urban regeneration project. I never got an answer to that. I’d be interested to hear from somebody somewhere in the Government to explain why they’re going to motorists saying “We want more money from you for your motor spirits levy in order to fund the roads and transport directly.”, and how they’ve extended that into an urban regeneration project. We haven’t got an answer, and we won’t get an answer because there is no answer.

The other question that I raised was I thought there were supposed to be 42 days between the gazetting of the new rates and when they come into effect. We’re less than 30 days from that happening now. I never got an answer to that basic question either. I’d be very interested to hear at some point from somebody in the Government to explain those basic details.

So we’ve had, as I’ve said, the first piece of legislation from this Government following the much-heralded Wellbeing Budget, with the glossy photos and the picture of the—

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

—lady that’s now in Australia—

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

—and the first piece of legislation that we’re debating under urgency after that Budget is a $360 million tax increase on New Zealanders. When we talk about these duties and excise duties, we have to think about who pays them. The point I wanted to make—with the indulgence of the Speaker—is a simple one: who pays this levy? It’s not just the person that drives into the petrol station and has to pay an extra 7c plus GST for the two years that we’re talking about, but we have to remember these are the second and third years of a three-year increase. So, in total, they’re paying an extra 12c a litre. Everybody knows that the fuel prices fluctuate given international prices, but the one thing that doesn’t fluctuate is the tax that you have to pay, which is the same and it continues to grow. So at the fuel pump they have to pay an extra 12c after GST—12.5c—and they don’t like it. Why should they like it?

But what we sometimes forget is that that increase in diesel and fuel prices flows through to every part of the economy—flows through to every part of the economy. It represents about a 5 percent increase in each year—so, collectively, over a 10 percent or 11 percent increase—in the road-user charges. So every time everybody’s wanting to buy something, whether it’s ice cream, milk, bread, clothes, fridges—you name it—anything that is transported will cost more because of this increase in taxes.

We can understand that, we could put up with that, if we could see that there was a clear focus on reducing congestion so that people could get their goods more efficiently and the whole system might be more efficient. We can understand that. But there is no evidence whatsoever that this Government has any interest in that. They are solely focused on other things. Their ideological pursuit of mode shift—in a couple of decades’ time when most people are driving around in electric vehicles, which don’t have an impact on the environment, people will be looking back and saying, “What on earth were they trying to do? Why were they trying to get people out of cars when cars don’t necessarily have a negative environmental impact?” They did it because they just loved bossing people around—that’s the fundamental. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak. What I’d like to do is thank the previous speaker, Mr Goldsmith, and just summarise his stuttered and confused 10-minute contribution to the House and take out some of the key points he made. The first point he made was that National, when they were in Government, increased the excise themselves at least six times, from my own recollection, on petrol—when they were in Government. He acknowledged they did it themselves.

He then also acknowledged that road safety is incredibly important—in fact, for the National Party, road safety is incredibly important. So here I am right now on this side of the House thanking him for that contribution from the member, and I say I agree with him. I thank him for his support. I’m upset about the way they’re going to vote, but I agree with him.

I also recommend it to the House, and with that I commend it to the House. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand in opposition to this bill in its third reading. I have a few comments to make about, particularly, the Minister’s contribution, before getting on to the more substance that I wanted to talk about.

The Minister, when he introduced this bill in its third reading, claimed before this House—with all the rules that go around that—that the purpose of this bill is to inflation-proof funding for our land transport system, which is quite remarkable really, because despite every effort by this Government to drive up the cost of living, which they are actually being successful at, inflation is still, if you take general reports, around 1.6 percent and occasionally going up to about 2 percent, but then international fuel price assistance is helping that a bit. So inflation, we’ll say, is 1.6 to 2 percent, but the impact of this bill in year 1 is an increase of 5.6 percent, and in year 2 it’s an increase of 4.8 percent.

Now, either the Minister has told the House one thing which the facts do not substantiate—and he may wish to have another contribution at some point during this debate—or we’ve actually seen, after the inadvertent openness and transparency earlier this week around the Budget itself, and we may just have witnessed in this House the Government being its most open and most transparent of all, and Mr Twyford is sending a signal to New Zealanders that they can expect over the next year and a bit for inflation to leap up to in excess of 5 percent. Quite frankly, having seen all the other stuff in their Budget, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if New Zealanders at least feel that sort of pain over the course of the next 18 months.

But it is remarkable—absolutely remarkable—that here we are, the first piece of legislation in Budget 2019, the Budget that was lauded by the deliverer of it and the Prime Minister as being a global first, the first ever wellbeing Budget.

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

The very first action of it—the very first legislative action of that Budget—is to make New Zealanders worse off in 2019 by imposing an additional 4c, including GST, of tax on the consumption of motor fuels in their work and in their lives. It’s even worse than that though—that’s just 2019. The same legislation that is so hell-bent on making New Zealanders worse off this year is equally—equally—determined to make sure that they are worse off next year as well, because it puts a further imposition in legislative concrete: a further 4c, including GST, per litre of motor fuels at the beginning of July next year. How can that possibly be described as helping people’s wellbeing? It certainly cannot.

I just want to tidy up another misconception, which I guess members weren’t really hearing in the committee stage. But throughout the process of this bill today, including at its introduction, I’ve heard members on the other side talk as if they believe that fuel excise taxes have a short half-life—that they just disappear into the ether after a period of time. Because it is true that Governments of either stripe have increased fuel excises over the years, whether it was in 2012 or 2002, or any other date, there have been instances where fuel excises have been increased. Those increases remain in perpetuity unless, such as with this bill, they are changed by Parliament. They do not naturally come down. Some of the real value of them is inflated away over time, but the dollars are still collected, and yet members over there talk as if you don’t constantly add fuel taxes—and I’ll just reiterate that this is far greater than the current rate of inflation. If Parliament doesn’t through Government continually add to fuel excises, somehow it all goes away—it doesn’t go away. Those earlier excise changes are still being collected today.

So the question comes to: what is the need for additional tax burden to be placed upon New Zealanders at the fuel pump? Well, we know that the tax itself, the excise itself, is hypothecated to the National Land Transport Fund. That’s the only purpose for which the tax can be used. We know from comments, both in the Chamber during the course of the passage of this bill but also by Ministers related and by Government Ministers outside at various times, that the decision has been made, set very firmly, that the funding that is taken from fuel excises, including these increases, is to be set against other land transport projects than might have been the case in more recent years. For instance, $5 billion has been taken out of the State highway improvement category and redirected mainly to mass transit, which is not particularly good code for loss-making light rail in Auckland along Dominion Road but also, as we discovered recently, in Wellington, from the railway station to the airport.

All motorists are looking now, if this bill passes—and it’s only a short way away, one fears—at facing a further tax burden over the course of two years of another 8c a litre on their fuel, including GST, and it will be funding things other than what they are using. The mere fact, the obvious fact, is that in order to be paying this tax increase, someone has to be in their motor vehicle, because if they’re not using their motor vehicle, quite obviously, they’re not consuming fuel and, therefore, they’re not paying it. So the people that are paying this impost have every right to want to know what it is being spent on and how it is helping them.

Well, we know that it’s going, very largely, to mass transit, to light rail projects. We know through the Public Transport Spine Study in Wellington that they can be enormous loss-making vehicles. In Wellington, it was estimated that the light rail from the railway station to the airport would lose 90c to 95c in every $1 spent on it—90c to 95c loss in every $1 spent on it. That, by the way, was when that project was estimated to cost half a billion dollars less than it is currently estimated. So the math doesn’t look at all good on that. So if one is a motorist being impacted by this legislation, they have every right—because they know that the extra tax they’re paying is going into the National Land Transport Fund—to want to know what it’s being spent on, but, importantly, to know that there is genuine value that will come from it.

Now, in this region in particular, most of the people that will pay most of this tax are people that live on the northern edge of the harbour or beyond—people in the electorate of Ōhāriu, people in Mana and Remutaka and Kāpiti and Wairarapa and Hutt South, and people who might travel from Wainuiōmata every day, sometimes by cycle, sometimes by car. They will be asking themselves, as they are seeking to make their way into work or perhaps weekend sport in Wellington, what is happening to the additional tax that is being levied upon them. They are not going to benefit from a light rail system from the railway station to the airport, but every day that they hear about that project, they will be reminded that there will be no additional southbound lane from Ngauranga to Aotea Quay, there will be no additional Terrace Tunnel, and there’ll be no undergrounding from the Terrace Tunnel to the Basin Reserve, and yet they will be paying, by the time this is fully effected, 8c a litre more, including GST.

But wait, it’s even worse for them, and particularly for people in the Hutt Valley. So not only are they being taxed more and getting less out of the “Let’s Get Wellington Not Actually Moving” programme, but they’ve also had a major roading project deferred in their area: the Melling interchange. It’s off the table now for at least 10 years—10 years before it even gets redesigned, let alone re-implemented, although, I could suggest to them there is a way that they could possibly bring that forward if they changed the Government. But none the less, the outlook they have right now is it’s being pushed out by at least 10 years, and they might well ask themselves “If that’s gone out that long because of these other decisions the Government’s making about spending my additional fuel tax, then what’s going to happen to the cross-valley link?”, because I dare say that’s not going to be rushing ahead and a priority of this Government any time soon.

Also, particularly for people in Ōhāriu, because they too live further away from town, will travel more in their vehicles, and, therefore, will pay more of this fuel tax, the Government has dipped out on the Pētone to Grenada link road, a link road that was estimated to take well over 20,000 vehicle movements a day off State Highway 1—off the Wellington motorway. Every one of those vehicle movements would have helped to reduce congestion for what was probably about 80 percent of the—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! We’ll get back to the bill now, I think. There’s some appeal to what the member is saying, but I think he’d better get back to the bill.

So they’re missing out, but they’re paying extra tax—that is the point. They are paying the extra 8c a litre, but they get nothing for it.

This is supposed to be a wellbeing Budget. It was supposed to make Kiwis better off, but its very, very first legislative action is to take money out of the pockets of hard-working Kiwis this year and next year and to make sure they get nothing in return for it.

This bill provides choice for people: choice and options about how they move about their cities, choice and options about how they get from point A to point B. It provides safety for people: safety on our roads, which desperately need safety improvements. I commend the far-sighted Minister of Transport for bringing this bill to the House—the Minister who has the courage to say that if we want choice, if we want options, and if we want safety, then we need to find a way to pay for it. This is an excellent bill and I commend it to the House.

Jonathan Young—a five-minute call.

A five-minute call—thank you, sir. I think that Brett Hudson, the previous National Party speaker, has identified the issue that this is a city-centric move by this Government to build optionality in cities but that the regions miss out massively.

You know, the money that we pay in regional New Zealand is going to go for rail options in Auckland and in Wellington. We look at just even the recent announcement to get Wellington moving: $6.4 billion, with 60 percent paid for by people out there who are paying more tax for petrol in the excise fuel tax in regional New Zealand, in Hawke’s Bay, in Taranaki, in Gisborne, and in Southland. These are the people who are paying for these rail options that are in cities that, as the previous speaker mentioned, are going to be huge loss-leaders for transportation in the cities themselves.

We have this mode shift mentality that wants to, basically, punish motorists, and get people out of their cars, get them on to bikes, and get them into trains, and yet it’s the motorists who pay for it and the motorists receive no benefit. So we have a taxation without compensation. We have a taxation that is affecting people in regions of New Zealand where we see that there are projects being cancelled that would bring benefit to them and would bring faster travel times and safer travel times, as well. We do not support what this Government is doing in this regard.

When you think about the increases on top of an increase that already came in last year, on 30 September, of 4c, including GST, there is another 4c on 1 July and another 4c on 1 July next year, and then, on top of that, of course, Aucklanders are paying 12c, plus GST, as well, it all adds up to an incredible amount of money that, as the different speakers have said, has a purpose around urban refurbishment and urban renewal. So, once again, we would make the criticism that, actually, this is using funds that motorists in cars are paying in an excise tax that is being redirected for purposes that it should not be.

So can I just raise the point and reiterate what the Hon Paul Goldsmith raised, and that is the fact that the cost of living increases for New Zealanders are mounting. We just need to be aware that with excise increases year after year after year—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Ahem.

—I’m referring to excise increases—year after year after year—

💬 SPEAKER: Just two years in this bill.

I beg your pardon, sir?

💬 SPEAKER: Just two years in this bill.

Yeah. Year after year—right. Year after year—

💬 SPEAKER: Very good.

So I’ll say it twice—ha! But I think the point needs to be made that regional New Zealand is missing out on this analysis.

I thank the member last night in the committee stage who said, “Don’t worry, the Labour Government is coming to the rescue of the people of Taranaki. We’re doing Mount Messenger.”, and, in fact, you might recall that last week, Simon Bridges asked the Minister “Can you name one genuinely new road this Government is building, particularly in regional New Zealand?” and he said, “We’re starting Mount Messenger.” Well, that’s where we expect excise tax money to be spent. But, already, Gerry Brownlee had put aside $30 million and Simon Bridges had put $100 million aside, so for this Minister to claim—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order!

—that he’s starting that road—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! Let’s get back to the bill.

Well, the bill, sir, is that the people—

💬 SPEAKER: No, no, it’s nothing to do with what Mr Brownlee and Mr Bridges did years ago.

The final context of this bill is that it is a city-centric focus in terms of the excise tax increases that I believe that regional New Zealand is upset at.

Sir, just in my final, closing comments, I thank you for the opportunity to speak on this. I would suggest that the mode shift that the Minister wishes to initiate and lead through is going to be a misstep for this Government in terms of what the purpose of this excise tax is all about.

Thank you, sir. I’d like to comment, firstly, on what Deborah Russell mentioned about this bill vis-à-vis choice—giving people choice. She couldn’t even spend a minute to describe the choice that was given to consumers of petrol, but I’ll tell you what, this bill gives no choice to the people in Wairarapa specifically and to the regions more generally. They have to spend this extra tax on their petrol to get from A to B. There is no other choice. There is no option to get on your pedal bike and cycle to your rugby practice, or to walk or even get public transport. We’ve got to get in cars, and cars use petrol.

In the provinces, you will find that incomes are below average—below those incomes in the cities. This bill affects those people, those lower-income people, more aggressively than those with higher incomes, and we find those people in the provinces. We find in the provinces those people who drive older cars, less efficient cars—cars that use more petrol per kilometre.

We have people who are unable to turn up to work some days because their petrol tank is empty. They’ve put the 20 bucks in on a Monday, and that’s gone by Thursday night. They don’t turn up to work on Friday, and now they are at risk of not turning up to work on Thursday because there’s still only 20 bucks and the petrol price continues to rise and rise. And where does the money go? It goes straight to Auckland.

This is a regressive tax. This is also, by the way, a regional fuel tax, and the Prime Minister said earlier that there were going to be no more regional fuel taxes on her watch. When the uproar and the protests at the Auckland regional fuel tax hit her right between the eyes, she said—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! Back to the bill.

—“No more regional fuel taxes.” This affects the regions of the Wairarapa, Wellington, and all provinces.

This is a national road tax across the whole place, and it affects the provinces. It’s so ironic. We’ve got a prince of the provinces over there—a prince of the provinces. It will be interesting to see him stand up—

💬 Brett Hudson: He supports it.

He supports it. How can he possibly support it when this hits the provinces harder than those who have choice in the cities?

This is a terrible bill. This is a bill that taxes the poor harder than those who sit in this House, who can afford an extra two bucks, five bucks, or 10 bucks. There is no concern for those people who are at the bottom of the ladder. There is no concern for people who have limited resources and who do have further to travel, who do live in the provinces, and who do have to spend half an hour going in and out to rugby practice, to netball, and to schools every day. There is no option. There is no choice of public transport. There is no choice of walking. There is no choice of cycling—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: No choice of walking? Do they not walk in the Wairarapa?

How long would it take you, Mr Webb, to walk from Tīnui to Masterton—how long would it take you? You wouldn’t have a clue—you wouldn’t have a clue. Mr Speaker would be able to cycle at least, but you wouldn’t even be able to cycle.

It’s a disastrous bill. It is a regressive tax. It’s not just petrol that it affects, obviously. It affects your beer and your bread. Everything—everything—that’s on the supermarket shelves is affected by this bill. It affects the—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Does it affect your chardonnay?

—transport costs of everything that, Mr Webb, you use in your household. It’s inflationary. It gives no more money to wage and salary earners to compensate for that inflationary effect. It is a terrible, terrible bill, and I’m very pleased to be speaking against it.

Now, before I call Jan Logie, I’m going to ask Dr Jian Yang to remove his advertisement. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s with pleasure that I rise on behalf of the Green Party to add our support to this piece of legislation. Really, I am sometimes just struck by how much the Opposition seems to be stuck in the 1950s. At times it really is this dinosaur attitude towards getting around and mobility, and it does—

💬 Matt King: It’s called reality.

Well, if your province is stuck in the 1950s, then I think that’s on the previous Government, so I’d be a bit careful about characterising your communities in that way. I suspect they might not wish to be characterised in that way.

At the heart of this, this is about ensuring that the Government has the money to be able to ensure that our roads are safe for people. That benefits every single person in this country. When I hear the concept of mode shift spoken about in a kind of sneering tone, really, that’s the bit for me that strikes like the 1950s—not recognising the value to us of that mode shift collectively and that, actually, we have to invest to enable that. The fact that people, at the moment, don’t have a choice in some areas is because we have not collectively invested to give them the options to be able to cycle and to be able to take public transport, and that is what this is about doing.

I do think there’s this sense that it’s being said that “Well, electric cars are going to solve all this, so, you know, actually, we’re going to look back on this and be like ‘Argh, what were we thinking, trying to support people to have options to get out of their car?’.” This is directly related to the debate and related to what we’re investing in, which is enabling that mode shift as well as safety.

I do need to say that part of the value of the mode shift is in reducing our carbon emissions—that is for sure—but it’s also in the co-benefits of public transport and walking and cycling, which are to our health, for us individually but also collectively, which shows up as reduced impact on our health system. It’s also about connecting people to their communities. We need to have the infrastructure for cycling—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! I am going to interrupt the member. She’s making a contribution to the debate which could well have been marginally inside the requirements of the second reading, but she’s gone sort of about three steps away from the increases in the excise duty. One step’s OK, but not three.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll go back to some of the other arguments that I’ve heard from the Opposition around the cost of this being too onerous. The advice that I have in front of me is that this will result in a rise in the cost for the average family of 83c a week, which is $43.16 a year. For low-income families, this will be $20.80 a year. We don’t take that lightly. This Government, I think, is very committed to reducing costs and ensuring that people have more money in their pockets to be able to pay for these. I heard somebody saying that the school donations announcement in the Budget was going to be overwhelmed by this, but that equates to $150 per family, and this is $20.80 a family, so, actually, it’s the other way round. This Government is very aware of that.

But I also need to say that by enabling people to have those options for public transport—and you will have seen the announcement around the work enabling people on low incomes to be able to access public transport for free in the future—this is the start of us staging that transition for people to be able to get around freely and without that cost.

💬 Alastair Scott: In rural New Zealand? How many buses in rural New Zealand?

It’s also about delivering safety for those people in rural New Zealand, who deserve to be safe on their roads and who have not been, under the previous Government’s strategy of massive, massive infrastructure in small areas that didn’t benefit most New Zealanders. So this cost actually pays off in safety and wellbeing and is being offset by other initiatives from this Government to make sure that people have more money in their pockets to make those choices. We are all going to be much better off when these policies are realised by stronger communities and more mobility options. Thank you.

I’ve lost his name—Matt King.

You’re killing me—you’re killing me!

💬 SPEAKER: It’s a mental block.

I know you know me—I know you know me, Mr Speaker.

Look, I’ve got to reply. I feel so strongly that I’ve got to reply to Jan Logie about this excise tax. She earnestly believes in what she’s saying. If she could come to rural New Zealand and tell them that they’re going to spend this increased excise tax on trains and trams in Auckland or on public transport, she would get booed out of every regional hall in the country. It’s just simply not practical.

They talk about this excise tax and this increase in excise tax, and they’re going on about road safety. Well, when we were in Government, we invested in road safety—every Government does. The Labour Government did before us. They invest in road safety. The only road safety investment I’ve seen in Northland that this excise tax is going on is plastic sticks and rumble strips. Plastic sticks up the middle of the road and rumble strips—that’s the only thing I’ve seen in Northland.

If you’re an apartment dweller in Wellington or any of the major cities and they’re talking about public transport—yeah, that’s fine. You know, money’s going to that—that’s great—but what about the rest of the country? The fact is that this excise tax is funnelled. It’s taken off, it’s extracted from the motorists, and the motorists expect that this money should be spent on roads.

I mean, they talk about this multimodal transport. In Northland, we don’t have buses, except for school buses. For the distances that we’re talking about, we’re not going to be biking and we’re not going to be walking. We need to take the vehicles, so we need this excise tax money spent on roads.

We’ve got four-lane roads. We started the programme of four-laning, and this Government seems to have taken the excise tax out of that spend. They’ve cancelled 12 projects—our four-lane highways, which are winners—and they’re going to funnel that into, I guess, trams in Auckland and rail and so forth. It’s just not going to work.

In the UK and the USA, they’ve got extensive train tracks—especially the UK. They’ve got a massive population, and all their trains are used for passengers. The freight goes on the four-lane highways. It’s the same in the US—their freight goes on the four-lane highways. So in Northland, you’re going to take this excise tax, taken together with the regional fuel tax out of the southern end of my electorate—the Wellsford, Port Albert area is in the Auckland region, so there’s a regional fuel tax. If you put this excise tax on top of that, they’re paying a massive percentage of tax. Under this Government, none of that money is going to be spent for them.

There’s people in Port Albert who would go to Auckland maybe once a year, and their excise tax, their fuel tax every time they fill their car up—and in my electorate, there’s a large number of rural people on low incomes. They’ve got a large number of rural people on low incomes, and they’re paying this excise tax, this increase, to pay for spend in Auckland. They’re not going to get any benefit out of it.

I know that Phil Twyford has talked about our gold-plated four-lanes, but he doesn’t refer to his gold-plated tram that they’re going to spend this increased fuel tax on. Well, these four-lane highways, it’s just what the rest of the world are doing. This is the way of the future. We’re going to be ending up going on electric vehicles. The Greens will love that, and I’m all for it. Everyone knows that we’re all for that. We’ve got our own MP here with an electric car. He’s very proud of it; he shows it off all the time. So we’re all about the future. We’re all about lowering our emissions—I mean, you’re a fool if you’re not—but in the here and now, we’ve got to improve our infrastructure, and the four-laning is future-proofing.

I’ve got to talk about Northland. In Northland, the four-laning is—

💬 SPEAKER: Just keep relating it back.

I see the Speaker’s holding up the bill. I’ve mentioned the excise tax increase just about every sentence, I have. I’m talking about it. Phil Twyford talked about what they’re going to spend this excise tax on, and I’m demonstrating that it’s actually not going to be going on the roads, because they’ve cancelled 12 of these projects. It’s actually going to be going on trams, so I think it’s relevant to be talking about what the excise tax is going to be spent on.

They always harp on about safety, so they’re going to spend this excise tax on road safety. Well, piecemeal repairs on old dangerous roads, in my book, are not going to cut it. In Northland, spending on the State highway—yeah, that’s great. There are a few stretches of road that are especially dangerous, and Dome Valley’s one of them. I’m all for spending this increase on that, and I go along with that. That’s a good spend. Dome Valley is called the killing fields up North. It’s a particular stretch of road, and they’re going to widen it, and they’re going to put some safety wires up the middle, and some rumble strips, and all that. You know, quite frankly, that’s great. I appreciate that. I think it’s a $30 million spend, and we would have done that in our term as well, but the actual answer for Northland is a four-lane highway going right through to Whangarei. That’s the answer.

So they’ve cancelled the leg from Whangarei south. They’ve cancelled that. They’re taking money off Northlanders for this excise tax and they’re going to can that. That’s the busiest road in Northland, and I think the cost-benefit ratio for that section of road is three or four. So it’s, hands down, better than just about all the projects in the country, but they’ve canned that. They’re building a roundabout there. They’re going to spend the excise tax on the roundabout, but they’re not going to do that road.

The New Zealand Transport Agency have told us they might put another State highway next to the one that they’ve already got instead of doing a four-lane highway. They’ve told us that the costs for that are going to be two-thirds of the cost of just doing a four-lane highway, which we all accept we’re going to have to do in the future with the excise tax. We’re going to have to build a four-lane highway, and it’s going to have to wait until the National Government comes in to do that.

So instead of accepting that “Hey, this four-lane project that we’ve got going throughout the country is actually a winner.”, they’d do anything but. They’d pour money into piecemeal repairs down the State highway—in some areas, it’s great; in some areas, it’s just wasting money—and they’re even going to talk about putting in just another State highway next to the existing one. But the fact of the matter is that if you want to spend the excise tax efficiently, you build a four-lane highway with the gradient and the camber that can carry heavy freight. They’re pouring money into rail in Northland, and it’s just going to be a waste of money. It’s going to be a big white elephant—it’s a total waste of money—but the four-lane highway is going to open up Northland to economic growth and it’s going to future-proof us for 40 years.

So this Government isn’t very visionary, in my view. They talk about us being in the 1950s—the previous speaker, Jan Logie, talked about National being in the 1950s—and yet they’re going to invest in last century’s technology: trains and trams. That’s last century’s technology. We are planning and we are visionary. We are visionary because we’re planning four-lane highways, which will carry electric vehicles, electric trucks, in the future. You boohoo it—you boohoo it—but, deep down, you know it to be true. You know it to be true.

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

The four-laning of the highway is a good spend of this excise tax, and, rest assured, when we’re back in, we will start building that four-lane highway—we will start building it.

You talk about safety. OK, we want to make the existing roads safer, which is what you’re going to spend this excise tax on—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I’m “you”.

Sorry, Mr Speaker. Sorry, it’s—[Interruption] OK. Are you me? Oh, OK.

💬 SPEAKER: Well, that’s close to the most embarrassing thing I’ve said in here.

I know you’d like to be me—no, sorry. Now I’ve lost my train of thought.

Building a four-lane highway. So us, in National, we’re going to spend that excise tax on—you plan for the future, so you’re visionary. You build four-lane highways—that’s what you do. The rest of the world is, so we’re just doing what the rest of the world’s doing. You plan for the future, but you also have to live for the here and now as well. We have to build for the here and now as well, and as National MPs, we recognise that not everyone can catch a bus—you know, that’s great. In my electorate, unless you’re going to school, you can’t catch the bus. Cycling everywhere? Well, the Speaker might be able to cover the miles—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: On yer bike!

—on yer bike, yeah—but the rest of us mere mortals, we’re not going to get on our bike. We’re not going to ride, so it’s not practical. So yep, OK, funnel all that money from the excise tax into Auckland—that’s fine—but what about the rest of the country? Ninety-eight percent of the rest of the country is rural, and this is not going to work. We oppose this bill on principle, and that’s it.

Mr Speaker, thank you. “That’s it”—if that’s a King-hit, God help us. Poor Northland, hung out to dry by the leader of the National Party. What happened to Bridges’ 10 bridges? Still there, one-way—“One-way Bridges”—and Judith Collins is coming the other way.

This bill, this 3.5c excise tax, is nothing more than a “no free ride tax”. All of this money is hypothecated to go back into the roading network—simply, a pay as you go. This Government is tired of decent, hard-working New Zealanders subsidising a roading network. What we need is a framework where the money that is gathered on taxes goes straight back into those roads and is self-sufficient. That’s what this fantastic Minister of Transport is aiming for, that’s what this bill does, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. What a contribution from Duncan Webb. It demonstrates just how disconnected this Government is. I’ll refer to a comment he made earlier in this debate, actually, when he laughed at the suggestion that people might not be able to walk everywhere. Well, I think even his constituents in Christchurch would be embarrassed by the naivety of that comment when you consider the regions around New Zealand. Clearly, that Government is not considering the regions around New Zealand when it comes to the excise tax increases that we’re seeing under this bill—4c extra this year, 4c extra next year. What’s the benefit of that to regional New Zealand? We’ve heard from the Government that their focus is on trams in Auckland—trams and trains. We’re not seeing any new roading projects as a result of this additional $360 million - odd of tax revenue that they will gain through these increases.

During the committee stage I asked the Minister of Transport a question which went unanswered—a couple actually, but one in particular that I’ll come back to now—which was in relation to the timing of this being implemented. We’d heard previously there was going to be $300 million - odd of tax which they’ve signalled through these 4c increases each year, but they’ve pulled it forward three months, so now it’s 1 July. The Minister refused to change that via an amendment from Mr Goldsmith, because he said it would be $30 million a year of lost revenue. So, conversely, that’s $60 million of additional revenue the Government will now have through bringing this forward that they had not expected to have previously, which was not in the Budget when they originally planned their projects.

So the question I had during the committee stage, which I’ll reiterate now and hope to get an answer from the Government on, is: will the Minister now reconsider the Waikato Expressway from near Cambridge down to Piarere, through my electorate, a very dangerous section of road? That $60 million would cover a significant portion of that road. Will he consider putting that back on the cards now, given that the New Zealand Transport Agency has said it has a very strong case—a very good cost-benefit ratio—and has a significant safety focus? We’ve heard from numerous members on that side saying, “Oh, if only the Opposition would think about safety.” This is all about safety, Minister.

I want to touch on Jan Logie’s comments earlier as well. I admire her focus on safety there, because, actually, we all want to see increased safety in the transportation space. This won’t achieve it. The Government’s projects here will not achieve that for rural New Zealand. There are a number of roads around the country that do have quite dangerous intersections. Of course, people need to be mindful of that when they approach them, but, actually, we can be doing more as a Parliament to reduce that risk, and we should be. Two of those intersections—State Highways 1 and 29, Karapiro Road and State Highway 1—would have been bypassed by that expressway, and so I’d urge the Minister to reconsider that. Those intersections have been absolutely dangerous. There have been lives lost, sadly, and we would have bypassed those with the expressway.

So we hear about how this is all about safety, but, really, it’s not. It’s about trams and trains, which will have very little impact on safety and, actually, very little impact on reducing congestion as well, which has also been identified by the Government as no longer the priority that it was, although they have mentioned it a few times throughout the course of this debate. As I’ve sat here through the entirety of each reading and each stage of this bill, I have not heard any clear reasoning why the Government is unprepared to look at projects in the regions. All of these projects are centralised to Auckland, to the cities, and whilst I absolutely accept there is a need in some of those places, it’s not going to benefit all the residents in those areas, and it’s certainly not helping the regions. The regions are losing out.

We heard a bit from Scott Simpson during the committee stage as well, around his electric vehicle. There are a number of members on this side of the House who do drive electric vehicles. I have a lovely one myself, which I drive around the mighty Waikato, and, of course, we won’t be paying any of this excise tax with those electric vehicle capabilities. Is that fair for all of New Zealand, given that we use the roads just as much? It’s not. The regions are missing out, the Government doesn’t care, and, quite frankly, it’s not good enough.

It’s about time we had a modern, efficient, and safe transport system in New Zealand, and this bill will go a long way to ensuring that we get there. Can I commend this coalition Government for its vision for a transport system that offers choice. I’d also like to thank the Minister of Transport, the Hon Phil Twyford, for his leadership to get us to a place where we implement that vision. I commend this bill to the House.

Well, we haven’t had any contributions from the Government on this bill, and I think that’s really disappointing. They say this is the most important piece of legislation they’ve got to do following a wellbeing Budget, and yet very few of them can even stand up and give a 10-minute speech on the merits of why this is so important. I think, for democracy, all those people who are watching should be ashamed of the Government in not standing up for what they are meant to be doing.

The first thing is I heard a Labour member describe tax as a beautiful thing, recently—tax is a beautiful thing. I’ve got to say it’s like I’m hearing all the Government members there saying, “Yes, taxes are a beautiful thing and that’s why we’re going to increase them.” Of course, this excise bill increases tax for ordinary New Zealanders. That’s what it does, and in the context of where we’ve come from since this Government has come to power, not only have they brought about the increase through the Auckland regional fuel tax—10c, plus GST—but this bill is also about increasing excise taxes over a similar period. We had the first bit last year, we’ve got this lot this year, and we’ve got another lot the following year. I’ve asked the Minister to be clear about what happens after that if they are lucky to be in power. He’s a bit silent on that—silent on that issue about what the future tax might be.

Before I talk just a little bit more about the tax aspect, I want to say again that National supports a lot of new modes of transport. In fact, we did actually invest a lot in alternative modes of transport, and the Minister even acknowledged it himself. He said that 40 percent of the Budget was going towards motorways, and, yes, that’s right. We were trying to bring together and finalise a 50- to 60-year vision for motorways around New Zealand that actually should have been done by successive Governments over that period. That concept of having this seamless, four-lane highway from Cambridge right through to Wellsford is a good concept, and as I said earlier in another debate on this, I have no doubt we are going to see the Minister of Transport and the Associate Minister and anyone else from the Government at the opening of those final stages that were introduced and implemented under a National Government.

I think it’s wrong to characterise the National Party as being one that is against multimodal transport. That’s not right: we invested lots in it. We were the ones who went out and bought the $660 million worth of new trains for Auckland. We did a lot for trains and a lot for KiwiRail but also for the biking initiative came from National, so I’d just remind the Government members of that.

But the thing about this excise tax is that it is actually quite a perverse tax, in my view. What it’s doing is ripping money out of the pockets of motorists, but, as the Minister has said, the priority is on other modes of transport. So we’re going to take all that money from people who use cars, and use that to fund bikeways, buses, walking ways—all those types of alternative modes of transport. I do not think that’s an appropriate thing. I do not think it is appropriate that you take money from one class of user and apply it to another class of user.

I think that that is the first inconsistency, and, I think, the most disturbing thing about the use of the excise tax, which no doubt this Government is going to set about doing, but also what this excise tax does is it continues to create this divide between urban and rural areas. Many of the people who will pay this tax live in small provincial rural towns, and they are going to be paying for large projects. We know what the priorities are: $6 billion going into light rail projects in Auckland at the expense of $6 billion of significant roading projects around New Zealand. We know it’s going into those large projects—those large rail projects—and yet many of those people who live in those rural communities do not have the opportunity even to experience the benefit of what this money will be spent on. I think that is a really bad thing and yet another inconsistency.

Even in my electorate of Hunua, which is still part of the Auckland Council region, I have people in places like Waiuku and Kawakawa Bay who have no or limited access to public transport, and yet they are reliant on their cars and will have to pay this amount of money to go into those projects in places like central Auckland. I think that’s wrong. I think that really is wrong, and, unfortunately, those are the same people, in many cases, in those smaller rural towns who are the most vulnerable. They are the most vulnerable to changes and increases in fuel tax because they have no other choice. As we’ve heard earlier today, the cost of petrol for these people is proportionately much higher, and that’s why it’s always described—this type of tax, an excise tax—as a regressive tax, because it hits the poorest and the more vulnerable members of our community the most.

Even in my electorate, we’ve got the Southern Motorway that’s a year behind schedule. There’s been a Minister of Transport missing in action in terms of how that project is so far behind schedule, even though as local MPs we’ve been pushing for that, and it is still delayed and causing mayhem. The thing about transport and these roading projects that this Government is sitting on is they’re no longer just regarded as being infrastructure projects; they’ve actually become social issues because of the level of congestion. The Government can say what it likes—it can say what it likes—but the voting public of New Zealand know what the issue is every morning when they get in their car—and the vast majority do—and try and commute on our major roads, and yet we know that the Government has ripped six billion bucks’ worth and put it into what they believe are far higher priorities.

The other thing is we’ve got the Pukekohe electrification—the Minister talks about it. Well, actually, it’s now going through, I think, the third redesign, and it’s probably two to three years away. At some point, I’d really like to hear the Minister be clear about it, because we’re going to have to tell the commuters of the Pukekohe and Franklin area what’s going on. But there is absolute silence on it. It continuously gets delayed. We talk a good shop about rail and how we’re going to extend the network, but all I’ve seen is delay and delay and delay on that project.

Then they’ve got another issue—and I’m just using these examples because these are all projects that this excise tax could have been used for. We’ve got the issue of a brand new roundabout required to unleash and unlock Wesley development, the highest and largest special housing area in all of New Zealand—4,500 homes—and that has been stuck. That will not be able to continue to build new houses that that Government so desperately needs but, more importantly, the people of New Zealand so desperately need, because this Government—your Government—will not spend the money on upgrading a roundabout to make it happen, which is a consent condition. So you talk a great shop, but the reality is that it’s not, and I think that again just shows you the deception—if I can use that word—between what has been said and what is actually occurring on the ground.

The other thing I’d like to raise is the issue of my farmers in Franklin, at the heart of the horticulture industry of New Zealand. I of course recognise there are other industries in parts of New Zealand, but Franklin is the only place where you can grow horticultural crops 365 days a year. The cost and the imposition of the road-user charge arrangements, which are part of this bill, and the administrative arrangements of that are onerous and have not been dealt with.

This is a Government that does not recognise the value of productive areas of our economy, and this is all part of this excise tax that this Government is imposing. They do not listen to people, they do not listen to the travelling public of New Zealand, and they certainly do not listen to the business community of New Zealand.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m speaker No. 12 of 12. This is it, and I’m the only speech standing in between transformation and—that’s it.

It’s my pleasure to thank the Minister of Transport for this transformational plan. It will save lives, and I’m really looking forward to it. I commend this bill to the House.