Immigration (International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Immigration (International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill amends the Immigration Act 2009 to provide for the collection of the international visitor conservation and tourism levy (IVL) and to enable the automatic decision-making process with the electronic travel authority. Tourism is one of our biggest industries. It generates around $39 billion in GDP every year, and it employs around 200,000 people. It is a growing industry. In the last few years we’ve seen tremendous growth, and that has brought economic prosperity to New Zealand, but it also has placed a large amount of pressure on our infrastructure and on our natural resources. The benefits of tourism growth have not been evenly felt across the country, with some regions actively seeking to grow their sector. These types of issues highlight why the Government is committing to a more active and deliberate approach to tourism. The Government has already made some progress: recently, the Minister of Tourism and the Minister of Conservation launched the New Zealand-Aotearoa Government Tourism Strategy. This strategy sets out initiatives the Government will take to ensure that our tourism sector is sustainable, is productive, and is inclusive.

The levy this bill enables is an important part of the Government’s strategy. It will create a sustainable revenue system with the scale to invest in a way that substantially changes the way the tourism system operates. The IVL will generate a revenue stream, which we will invest in tourism and conservation. The environment is our most precious taonga. It is a huge drawcard for both domestic and international visitors, as well as local residents. The levy is one way in which we’ll ensure that tourism protects and enhances our iconic places. We’ll also invest the levy in infrastructure that visitors use and in supporting initiatives that improve coordination and planning in the tourism sector. More detail will follow as Ministers finalise the investment plan. This Government acknowledges the existing contributions to tourism and conservation made by taxpayers and by ratepayers, and therefore the levy will only be paid by international visitors.

The international visitor conservation and tourism levy has been extensively consulted on throughout its development. Through the design process we received input from conservation stakeholders, from industry bodies, and from local government on what the levy should look like. Once the design was agreed upon, we consulted extensively with the public. We received well over 100 submissions on the levy. Overall, feedback on the levy was hugely supportive, including from the tourism industry. I thank everyone who made a submission. Their feedback was invaluable to finalising the scope and design of the levy.

Tourism is a key part of our economy. It’s an opportunity for future development. It adds vibrancy to our communities and strengthens international connections. The levy is an important part of realising those benefits by ensuring the sector is underpinned with sustainable solutions to manage growth. I commend this bill to the House.

The Hon Roger McClay.

💬 Hon Members: Todd.

Todd McClay—I’m sorry. I do live in the past, don’t I.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Indeed, if I was the Hon Roger McClay, the rules of the House would allow a very, very wide-ranging debate, and you and others would be out there in the snooker hall drinking and smoking right now. The world has moved on.

💬 SPEAKER: He did play for a very good rugby club in Taumarunui.

He did, thank you very much. When it comes to this legislation, Part 2 of the bill is around the electronic travel authority, and that is something that we do believe is important. Indeed, actually, it is a tool to allow our border authorities to undertake their jobs to the best degree possible. Equally, for international visitors wanting to come to New Zealand, to be able to do this with ease electronically is an important means for us to ensure we have the information required to know about them before they get here, before they get on the plane. We have no issue at all with that. Indeed, our spokesperson, Michael Woodhouse, is a firm believer that this is an important tool.

The challenge we have, though, is the speed with which this legislation is going through the House. There have been times when this House has had to pass legislation under urgency and there have been times when this House, on both sides, has used urgency when the need, perhaps, is less obvious. In the case that there is a real need that urgency must be afforded, often the House has been able to come together. This is not one of those times, because this legislation is not urgent. It’s not fixing an urgent problem that’s been sitting there that the Government has just found.

Indeed, the Minister has now had 18 months to work through this to be able to meet the promises that he made before the election, to deliver well-thought-out legislation that has all of the detail that a tax bill should have in it so that a select committee can study it, can question the department, and can bring in experts, and so that anybody in New Zealand can submit on it, to make the legislation better, or to say they don’t need it. But it is a fundamental right of democracy in New Zealand, and this House, that New Zealanders have the opportunity to come before us as parliamentarians, as the decision makers, and make their case. In this legislation, they are being robbed of that opportunity.

Now, the Minister said he has consulted widely and, actually, the first reading speeches are often boisterous but this is a very important issue because, actually, I am not sure that the sector has the same degree of confidence in this legislation to be delivered in the way that the Minister says it is, as the Minister has. I know that his officials don’t have the same degree of confidence that this legislation will achieve the outcomes that the Minister is telling us it will, as he has. The reason for that is when you come and look at the regulatory impact statement (RIS) and you look at what his officials have said there, they have said that, actually, this won’t deliver all of the funding that’s required. Much, much more will be needed; much more was needed last year in the Budget—much more was needed last year in the Budget.

The tourism sector is important. It didn’t deserve a cut to the Budget last year. Even though it was a small one, it sends a signal to them that the Government either is not taking this seriously, or is taking them for granted, or just thinks a new tax later on will achieve everything that is needed. So in the RIS it says that this isn’t enough money; it won’t achieve anything that the Ministers have said in their speeches that they’ve just read in the House. But if you go to page nine on the International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy (IVL) impact statement, halfway down under “Consultation” it says “Further targeted consultation is planned to inform the IVL expenditure decisions”. Well, that is important, but this legislation has no guidance at all about how those expenditure decisions will be made. It says, “Legislation will also be subject to select committee process.” So the officials said to the Minister that, actually, more consultation is needed, and that there will be a select committee process.

He’s had 18 months to deliver a full bill to this House, not something that relies upon the Immigration Act to give him the ability to pass regulations on everything, and these regulation-setting powers that are in this bill are extremely broad. This is more than the equivalent of a “Henry VIII” clause, because there is no boundary other than that it’s going to be used for tourism—but the legislation doesn’t say that. It says the IVL will be collected and it will go into the Crown accounts. It’s not being protected for conservation and tourism. The Minister has just said that that’s what will happen, just as it says in the RIS that the “legislation will also be subject to select committee process.” This should be going before the select committee because there has never been a bill in this House that’s been rushed through that hasn’t had problems, that we haven’t had to come back to fix. Mark my words; we won’t have to fix this bill, because it actually does not deliver this tax. All it does is give the Minister the ability to set regulations, and any regulation he wants.

The most concerning part of it is he said he must consult, but he can consult on anybody he deems fit. Well, that’s extremely concerning, because I guarantee you there are New Zealanders who are being robbed of the opportunity to put in submissions and come before the committee of this Parliament to have their say. That Minister’s not going to go and talk to them, and if they email him he’s not going to listen to them, because he’s already made up his mind. This is bad legislative process. It’s bad legislation. I have no faith at all that this Minister will deliver regulations that won’t have to be fixed—the tourism Minister will deliver regulations that won’t have to be fixed and are going to deliver for the New Zealand tourism industry.

Now, the cost to the tourism sector is significant. The Minister of Tourism will say, “But lots of tourists are going to come”, and he is right; the numbers have been going up. But his officials have informed him that 20,000 fewer visitors will come here. I would argue they may not be the richest visitors to our country. They may well be, to some degree, the backpackers, because we are not a cheap destination, New Zealand, anymore. We shouldn’t compete on price but we should be value for money, or people should see there is value in visiting New Zealand. Every extra cost, every extra tax this Government puts on means that visitors have choices and some of them, many of them may choose elsewhere.

Now, what we also know, in the advice he’s been given, is that $70 million less will be spent in the New Zealand economy because of this tourist tax. Now, that doesn’t sound like very much, I suppose, when there’s $16 billion spent. But when we look at that, $70 million less being spent in small tourism businesses in New Zealand is the equivalent of the annual revenue for 80 small, family-owned motels in New Zealand—80 small, family-owned motels in New Zealand. In fact, every single motel in Havelock North in Hastings—it adds up to just about 80. That’s the equivalent annual revenue they get.

This Minister is saying, “Doesn’t matter what the officials say because I’ve already consulted. I’ve already decided that $70 million is going to harm small businesses in New Zealand that rely upon tourism”. He’s right; more visitors will come. But we shouldn’t say it doesn’t really matter that this tax that we’re putting in is going to actually have an impact upon the value that people see in New Zealand and whether they come or not. It doesn’t matter that some won’t come, because, actually, he made a promise to the New Zealand electorate to deliver money for them, extra money for tourism, and in 18 months he’s only delivered a $7 million cut in the Budget last year. There is no new money in this year’s, but there is a tax. That tax is only going to deliver $40 million to tourism; none to those small businesses.

Every single council in the country has been saying to him, when he’s been visiting them, that it won’t even come close. There are councils in the country that have said they won’t even apply for this money because it’s not even worth it—it won’t even come close. Therein lies the challenge—$40 million, Mr Minister of Tourism, doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t meet your commitment to the New Zealand tourism industry. It doesn’t show that you are interested in them. It certainly doesn’t show that you understand the challenges.

When the Minister stands up here and says, “We’re going to do all of these things”, well, announcements are not going to build those roads; announcements are not going to promote New Zealand overseas. His announcements of what he hopes to do in the future, by the way, so far have rested solely on—the sole delivery has been on—the money that we committed in tourism funding previously over a four-year period. Those sorts of things are actually not going to buy the social licence and not going to convince the New Zealand tourism sector—who employ 400,000 people in this country; one in every seven jobs is tourism—that you have their best interests at heart.

This $40 million is nowhere near enough. He had the opportunity to make the case for hundreds of millions of dollars in the Budget last year, and this year, and, sadly, he has failed them.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It gives me pleasure to rise in the second reading here. I just want to address a number of the sort of issues and the misinformation that’s been propagated by the Opposition.

First of all, the speaker who just finished, Todd McClay, said there is nowhere in here that says what the fund will be spent on. He says it could be used for anything at all. He just needs to look at clause 4, which amends section 3. It says this “enables a levy to be charged to fund, or contribute to the funding of, costs associated with conservation or tourism.” That’s pretty specific: “conservation or tourism”. That’s not “anything at all”. That’s exactly what this bill does.

They raised some other issues. “How does it make sense to exempt Australians?” was one of the questions. Well, it’s really quite simple. If someone is flying from, say, the States and pays $1,500 for a fare and they have to pay $35 extra for this visitor levy, that’s a 2.3 percent increase on the fare. Compare that to, say, paying a short-haul fare of $180 from Australia. That’s about a 20 percent proportion of the fare there. So what the National Party is saying is that they are prepared to jeopardise our biggest tourism market—1.5 million Australians come to New Zealand every year, and they are prepared to jeopardise that, because what they’ll do is make Bali a lot more attractive and Fiji a lot more attractive rather than having them come here. What they are saying, by opposing the international visitor levy (IVL), is that they want to put the costs on ratepayers, because that’s where the costs are borne—by local governments, by ratepayers.

They’re saying tourism numbers will drop. Well, the advice—because they’ve been reading from the advice—says that any impact will be negligible. In fact, it’s so small that it’s almost impossible to bother reporting on. We know that we’re going to have 5.1 million visitors by 2025, up from 3.8 million visitors now.

What’s the price of doing nothing? The Opposition is a party that knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. The cost of doing nothing means that we risk losing our social licence in tourism. It means we risk the degradation of our environment. It means we threaten our very brand proposition in tourism. But that Opposition party is happy to do this.

Both Todd McClay and Harete Hipango have said words to the effect that they want the fund to go to tourism operators. Look, this isn’t a business development fund. This is a fund that will support the infrastructure and conservation to make sure that we protect our brand proposition and that we don’t lose our social licence. They talk about the pressure on infrastructure, but they won’t say how they will pay to ease the pressure on the infrastructure. They say that the fund was arbitrarily set at $35. Sorry, the fund was not arbitrarily set; this was a process that went through months of consultation with the tourism sector and tourism businesses. It went through consultation with local government, it went through consultation with the conservation sector, it went through consultation with communities, and it went through consultation with the regions. The $35 tourism levy equates to US$22. It equates to €20. That is not going to prevent people from coming here.

They ask, “Why is this part of an immigration bill?” It’s quite simple. This Government is looking for efficiencies, and we found a very, very effective efficiency by using the Electronic Travel Authority (ETA) as a mechanism by which to collect the IVL. Now, I’ve seen an app that people overseas are going to use. The app takes a photo. If you take a photo of the passport, you take a selfie, you tap in your credit card details, and you answer a couple of questions, the ETA and the IVL can all be sorted out and paid for in a matter of seconds.

They ask, “How will decisions be made on how it will be spent?” Those decisions will be made by an advisory group. That advisory group will be made up of folk from conservation, it will be made up of folk from local government, it will be made up of folk from the tourism sector, and it will be made up of folk, probably, and hopefully, from Māori communities, and they will form an investment plan—a plan—a plan to make sure that we protect our brand proposition.

The Opposition are making stuff up. They are trying to deliberately confuse exactly what this is doing. They want local communities to foot the bill, and they need to go out there to all those communities—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Sorry, I am going to interrupt the member. Members are not allowed to say in the House that other members are making things up. The inference that people take from that is that they are deliberately misleading them—that they know what they’re doing and that they’re deliberately misleading them. That’s not something you’re allowed to say in here.

They are confusing the issue entirely because they want local government and they want ratepayers to have to foot the bill for our infrastructure, because that’s where the costs will fall. The costs will fall on the mayors and the councillors. They’ll fall on the ratepayers all around the country.

Now, this is an important part of the funding toolkit for tourism. It is not the silver bullet, it’s not going to fix every ailment, but it’s going to go a long way. We’ve made spectacular use of the Tourism Infrastructure Fund—$8.5 million last year invested in consultation with councils and communities on how best to address the responsible camping issue. The number of complaints this Christmas was probably less than 80 percent of the number of complaints that I had in my first Christmas as Minister of Tourism. The previous Government had marketed New Zealand as a destination, they had completely failed to manage New Zealand as a destination, and we had to clean up the mess—myself and Minister Sage. We were the Ministers who had to fix up the bungling, the hopelessness, of the previous Government, and all they need to do, Minister Sage, is look us in the eye and say thank you. We don’t ask for much. Just say thank you because we have averted a catastrophe again—averted another catastrophe—because if that Opposition was still in Government, then the issues around responsible camping, the overloading of communities, and the facilities that visitors use would still persist and we would be at risk of losing our brand proposition.

Part of taking a more deliberate and active role in tourism is strengthening the Government’s stewardship of the tourism system. The stewardship involves looking across the whole tourism sector to make sure that it’s working effectively across our regions and that local governments, businesses, communities, iwi, and hapū have the tools and don’t actually have to front with the costs of fixing up the mess that that previous Government left behind for us to clean up.

In the past, our role as a steward has involved setting up Tourism New Zealand as a national tourism marketer. More recently, we’ve established the Tourism Infrastructure Fund, and that was a good fund—$25 million a year for four years from the previous Government. The thing is, as I said in the first reading speech, that $25 million fund for four years doesn’t go on for a fifth year. It wasn’t long-term, sustainable, consistent funding, and what we’re saying with the Tourism Infrastructure Fund is that for five years we will have this fund. It allows the tourism sector and conservation to plan five years in advance. It’s not something that is at the whim of Governments as they come and go. We know that individual tourism businesses have been benefiting from tourism growth, but the broader system didn’t have those long-term funding arrangements needed to respond quickly to significant shifts in the number of visitors we’ve received. Again, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Normally in a second reading debate, the House would have the benefit of having a select committee report back. The House would have the benefit of being able to scrutinise and look at a departmental report that had analysed the detail made by submitters, recommendations that submitters had made, and also a sense of what the departmental officials had made of those submissions. Of course, when we’re operating under urgency on a piece of legislation like that, we don’t have the benefit of that kind of scrutiny or feedback, so we are left in a situation where members of the Opposition are going to have to rely on the regulatory impact statement (RIS) prepared by officials from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. In the time that’s available to me, I’d like to go through just some of the points that are raised in the regulatory impact statement in relation to this short but not very specific piece of legislation.

My colleague the Hon Jacqui Dean made, I think, some very good points around definitions, particularly the looseness of the definition of “Minister” in clause 5(2). Now, there are further issues of concern that point to this bill having been thought about for some time but obviously prepared with haste and in a hurry, because when one looks through the regulatory impact statement, frankly, more questions are raised than answered. The very first question that is raised by a quick look at the RIS is that it says that the proposing Minister is the Hon Kelvin Davis. Well, actually, it’s not; it’s Iain Lees-Galloway. He’s the Minister of Immigration. This is an immigration bill in the name of Iain Lees-Galloway, and yet it’s the tourism Minister that clearly has done most of the work on this bill. So that raises an interesting question as to the process that members on this side of the House asked questions about in the first reading debate.

When we come down to section B of the RIS, there’s a section that’s headed up “Summary Impacts: Benefits and costs.” It says, “Who are the main expected beneficiaries and what is the nature of the expected benefit?” And it says right at the beginning, in that very first sentence, “No specific decisions have been made on where [the levy] revenue will be spent.”—no specific decisions have been made on where the revenue will be spent. It’s envisaged—just envisaged—that revenue will be used to support conservation and tourism infrastructure.

Then, if you go to the actual bill, again it’s suitably vague. It just says that the levy will be charged to contribute to the funding of costs associated with conservation or tourism. So there’s nothing terribly certain or fixed or defined about that in the bill. Indeed, when we go further through it, if we look in Part 2, there’s a new section 399A, inserted into the principal Act by clause 7. Subsection (5) of that says, “All levy money collected under this section must be paid [to the Crown account]”. Now, that’s actually the consolidated account. So the money gets put into the consolidated account and then we hope, and we hope with the goodwill of the Minister of Finance, that he’s actually then going to make an appropriation to redirect that funding from the consolidated account—funding that’s been collected at the border, collected by the electronic mechanisms, on the hope that the Minister will make a funding decision, in a Budget, presumably, that will direct funds to conservation and/or tourism infrastructure. But there’s no certainty about that.

Then we get further into the regulatory impact statement. The question is asked: where do the costs fall? It says in the statement that, like any other charge, it may—may—have impacts on commercial activity. I mentioned in my first reading speech the potential impacts on small tourism operators in electorates like mine in the Coromandel. So there is—and it’s acknowledged by officials—a potential impact on commercial activity, and none of the Government members who have spoken so far have paid any attention to that or attempted to answer the questions that we’ve raised on this subject.

The RIS goes on further to say that “Information on price effects of charging the IVL is limited”. We don’t know what the information is, because there hasn’t been information prepared, and it’s unlikely that we’re going to get it before this bill is passed. So, as my colleague the Hon Todd McClay mentioned, when we pass, as a House, legislation under urgency—rushed as it is, without the scrutiny of a select committee, without the scrutiny of officials looking at submissions that have been made by submitters—we are almost certainly going to have to come back at some stage and look to some kind of amendment to tidy up this legislation.

I want to go further into the RIS, because there is an issue that has been mentioned by Ministers on the Government side relating to the consultation process that took place ahead of the introduction of this bill. Now, it seems that, clearly, there was some pre-engagement. In fact, the RIS mentions that.

It says, “pre-engagement with key stakeholders”, including Tourism Industry Aotearoa, Local Government New Zealand, and aviation and cruise representatives. But there is no mention of consultation or engagement with any of the smaller operators that make up the large bulk of tourist operators in the country. A public consultation process, it says, was held in July 2018 and 107 submissions were received, with 45, just under half of those submissions, being from the general public—so they weren’t even from tourism sector operators or local government people or anything like that at all; they were simply members of the general public, who I’m sure made a valuable contribution to the process. But the point I’m trying to make is that the number of submitters in this consultation process was actually very, very small. It was a narrow band of quite narrowly defined tourism operators and local government people.

But what’s most telling in the RIS is the sense that this was clearly meant to be a piece of legislation that was due to have the full, proper process of a parliamentary legislative introduction—a select committee and then a report back, a second reading, a proper committee of the whole House, and then a third reading—because in the RIS it says, on page 9, “Further targeted consultation is planned to inform IVL expenditure decisions.” Then it says, boldly, “Legislation will also be subject to select committee process.” So, clearly, there was an intention from officials and from the people who did make submissions that this was a bill that would go through a proper parliamentary process and would not be one that was passed in the dead of night, under urgency—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Oh, there it is—“the dead of night”.

—on the back of a botched Budget. So those people who did consult—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Dead of night—bingo!

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Oh, what? I was one off!

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! We’re a Parliament, not a drinking game.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Those people in the process who were consulted, who did make submissions, did so, clearly, on the basis that they’d have another go—that they’d have an opportunity to make a submission to a select committee and come to the Parliament and present their views and opinions and ideas to the Parliament. That’s the way it would normally be done. So for the RIS to actually say, “Legislation will also be subject to [a] select committee process.”, I think, actually shows that this is a piece of legislation that the Government’s just sort of snuck in, trying to create this under the guise of a botched Budget process. And I say to those members who interjected: that’s another one for you.

I want to, in the time remaining, just talk quickly about the exemptions, because it seems that the Australians have been exempt, visitors from Pacific forum countries have been exempt, and there is also a category of others that have been exempt, which seems to be a little bit arbitrary. One of the challenges, I think, is that, as far as I am aware, the electronic travel authority system doesn’t apply to Australians, so possibly there was literally no mechanism for collecting levies from Australians. So when we get to the committee of the whole House, it’s my intention to put forward a Supplementary Order Paper that will look at some of these issues, and I know that other colleagues of mine will have Supplementary Order Papers as well, and we’ll be wanting to detail those in the committee of the whole House.

Thank you, sir. It’s a pleasure to rise for the second reading and acknowledge Karen back home and some of the friends I’ve been speaking to about this legislation. Basically, the conversation was, “Well, if it’s so bad, get Todd McClay to stand up on behalf of the National Party and commit to repealing it.”—commit to repealing this legislation which they say is so bad, which we on this side of the House say is going to go towards dealing with infrastructure stuff-ups and blockages in our environment and the conservation estate. That’s what we’re going to do over here. And with that, I’ll sit down.

Mr Speaker, at the risk of surprising you at 10 o’clock at night, I too rise in opposition to this bill, the Immigration (International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy) Amendment Bill, otherwise known as the tourist tax bill.

Look, I am really quite concerned as to what this Government is signalling to our visitors from overseas but also to our tourism industry. I think some of the things that this Government is trying to moot—or not moot, because this bill is such a lazy piece of drafting, given that it basically defers everything to regulation—and some of the things that are being signalled are going to be to the detriment of an industry that contributes $16 billion in GDP. Let’s just think about that—$16 billion. That is a mammoth source of income and revenue to this country. Tourism contributes $1.7 billion in GST. It is phenomenal what this industry gives to our country, and that’s before you start talking about the jobs that this industry generates, the indirect jobs and servicing that it generates, and the way that it places our country on the international stage to attract more visitors to our country and increase that growth.

Now, given that the second reading is very wide ranging, I’m going to address some of the things that were laid at the National Party’s feet with respect to tourism, and the first is with respect to sustainability. Somehow, throughout this argument it was put to us that we don’t care about the environment and we are not interested in sustainability. Well, look, that is absolute rubbish. There are many blue-greens sitting here on this side of the House at the moment, and we believe that there is a balance to be had between our economy and our environment.

I mentioned before some of the projects that the National Party, through our Tourism Infrastructure Fund, had contributed to, in my first reading speech. Again, I mentioned that one of those was Curioscape at the Catlins, and that investment was in direct correlation to avoiding and remedying some of the adverse effects that were occurring from visitors to a fledgling tourism site. Now, that site at Curio Bay is growing in popularity. There were over 100,000 visitors to that site last summer, and there were serious concerns about the movements of those visitors, not only to a scientific reserve managed by the Department of Conservation (DOC), the petrified forest, but in respect of their toileting and their behaviour around wildlife.

Now, that investment in that interpretive museum was to educate visitors about appropriate movement and behaviour in that environment. That was part of the National Party’s mantra, and that is why we invested from central government in that process and in that project. It was a coming together of the community, of central government, and of local government, and that partnership is flourishing today.

The other thing that I want to address is the Minister of Conservation’s noting that there is a Stewart Island levy in my very own electorate of Invercargill. Yes, the National Party does support that levy. It was brought in by Eric Roy, my predecessor, the MP for Invercargill. However, there are some very wide-ranging differences with respect to that levy compared to this tourist tax. Now, the first that we’ve got to note is that Stewart Island basically has a resident population of just under 400 people and, certainly, the GST generated from that community is significantly low. Given that they are a remote island at the bottom of New Zealand, they do need investment in infrastructure, and this is a levy that is put on to the ticket price of people entering Stewart Island and that is administered by the Southland District Council—

💬 Hon Kelvin Davis: What about all the other small communities around New Zealand, Sarah?

—and goes directly to infrastructure in that community. Well, Minister, that brings me back to the next point, and that is that this piece of legislation is lazy. We have absolutely no idea as to how you will administer the funds—I’m sorry, Mr Speaker—how the Minister will distribute the funds. I have no idea how the Minister is going to prioritise projects, how the Minister is going to look at different environmental effects, how the Minister is going to apportion the different funds, given you said that there’s going to be an equal split between conservation and infrastructure. But how is that money in conservation going to be apportioned between the different national parks and reserves? We have absolutely no idea.

For some reason, over that side of the House, they fail to come back to the fiscals. They talk about consultation with the tourism industry, but I bet if they were up front with the fiscals, the tourism industry’s reaction would be very, very different. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), their own officials, have come back and estimated that the tax will generate $80 million. Yet, on the other side, they say that that tax—

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: It’s not a tax; it’s a levy.

—will discourage—it’s a tax. It’s a tax. It’s tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and spend from that Government, and ruining our economy, with GDP absolutely decreasing and this economy failing, with growth moving from 4 percent to 2 percent under that Government, a Labour - New Zealand First - Greens Government. Without that growing economy, Mr Nash, there will be limited jobs and there will be limited opportunities for families to get ahead. This is just another tax that will continue to discourage visitors to our shores.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Another handbrake on the economy.

It is absolutely another handbrake on our country. MBIE, your own officials, have said that this tax will discourage approximately 20,000 visitors from our shores, and that will result in a loss of revenue of $70 million. How is that of any benefit to our tourism sector with respect to building up infrastructure? How is that of any benefit to conservation when there is practically nothing left? If the Government had been more prudent with the finances and less foolhardy on some of these extreme policies, where the ramifications weren’t thought through—failed policies, like fees free—then they could have reprioritised money into the tourism sector rather than cutting $7 million from the Budget last year. They could have reinvested in tourism as a growth industry in a sustainable way and produced jobs—created a framework that would grow job opportunities for our families, especially in the regions.

Now, there are a number of smaller communities that abut the conservation estate and are located in remote areas, and they are reliant on tourism activities. You look at some of the initiatives that the Rt Hon John Key brought in, like the cycle trails. Look at the Otago Central Rail Trail and some of the businesses that have sprung up in remote areas from that rail trail, where mum and dad can get on their e-bike and ride along the trail and stop and have cups of coffee and enjoy the scenery that Otago and other places around New Zealand have to offer. It creates jobs, it creates wealth, and this tourist tax will simply put a handbrake on our tourism industry.

The signal that it’s giving to our overseas visitors is absolutely appalling. We want to be opening our shores to visitors so that they come and have a very good experience, a valuable experience, and they go away—after spending money in our country, creating jobs and wealth for our families—back overseas and talk about the wonderful experience that they have had here in New Zealand. But this is a Government that doesn’t care about tourism, that doesn’t care about attracting visitors to our shores, and growing it in a sustainable way. It’s an appalling tax and appallingly thought-out.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you. The tourism sector is built on an ethos of manaakitanga, of hospitality, of New Zealanders welcoming visitors to our country. If we let that be undermined because of a feeling local communities have that the areas that they enjoy are being overwhelmed with visitors, that they as local ratepayers and taxpayers are funding all of the facilities and the infrastructure from toilets to camping grounds, from dump stations to camper vans, then they feel burdened by tourism. It loses its social licence to operate. So, far from being a handbrake, as the National Opposition is portraying, this bill—this levy—is about ensuring a sustainable future for tourism, because it preserves the social licence by ensuring that there is a means of funding infrastructure and of funding the protection of the landscapes and biodiversity that visitors come to see.

The Opposition has been quoting very selectively from the regulatory impact statement. As the regulatory impact statement says, “If these issues”—of loss of community support for the tourism sector, a perception that locals are paying the financial burden, and that there is overcrowding at visitor hotspots—“are not addressed, the costs of tourism could potentially outweigh the benefits we enjoy as a result of a thriving tourism sector, including employment, amenities, economic benefits and connections with our trade partners. The sector could also contract as a result of deterioration in the visitor experience, or loss of local community support for the sector.” That is why this levy is so critical, because it’s about visitors paying their fair share. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition to this, frankly, atrocious and outrageous tourist tax. I will start by just speaking to Ms Sage’s point that tourists don’t pay their fair share. Tourists in this country pay $1.7 billion in tax each year—each year. Like I said, they paid last year, they paid this year, and they will pay next year. They pay their fair share. It is this Government’s choice not to use that tax in a prudent way to fund conservation, infrastructure, and tourism initiatives. That is their choice. There is plenty of money. Tourists pay their fair share every single day.

I’d be furious, frankly, if I was a tourist operator tonight. Kelvin Davis has done nothing for tourism, as I mentioned earlier. If I was a jetboat operator or a tour guide operator, I would feel angry because he’s done nothing in the last 18 months for the sector. He cut $7 million. He hasn’t given them any additional funding, and then he brings this bill. He brings a bill that his own officials say is going to bring 20,000 fewer visitors to our shores and cost $70 million in lost revenue. He’s going to take $40 million for his tourist initiatives and divvy it up as he decides, back to the sector—to a sector that already doesn’t trust him. They don’t even get their say. These poor tourist operators—these mum and dad small businesses out there trying to make their way—don’t even get to have a say, because he hasn’t been out to consult them. Now with this rushed process—in the dead of night, as Minister Mr Scott Simpson said—they don’t get to have their say through the consultation process. It doesn’t sound great.

As he has often done—I have heard it before from him—Mr Davis says, “Well, actually, National just obviously don’t want to do anything.” But that’s not the case at all. We just want to do it smarter. That, I think, is the point. Just because we oppose the bill doesn’t mean we want to do nothing. In fact, what we’d like to see this Minister do is use some of the $1.7 billion that he gets, or even the Provincial Growth Fund. We’ve got another Minister racing around the country splashing cash out willy-nilly—can’t spend it fast enough—and with absolutely no probity, on his own pet projects. We’ve got plenty of money to spend, but this Government is hell-bent on taxing everything that moves, including our international visitors, and putting our tourism at risk.

Now, I want to go back to talking about Australians because I didn’t get to it in my first speech. What I wanted to say was that 40 percent of the visitors that come to our shores are from Australia. If we were to apply this levy to them, they would bring in an additional $36 million. Now, the Minister came out tonight and he defended exempting Australians, and he made the excuse that, “Oh, actually, we don’t want to put this at risk, because they don’t spend as much as everybody else and it’s a greater proportion.” You know, he made all these excuses. But the reality is not that. The reality is not that at all.

Firstly, in the bill, he has the regulation-making powers, if he so decides, to prescribe different amounts or methods of calculation in the levy, in respect of different categories or classes of person. If he wanted to, he could charge Australians less. By his own rationale, he could actually, as the bill points out, charge them less so that they pay their fair share, as Minister Sage wants everyone to pay their fair share. So it’s clearly in there. There’s nothing stopping him. The reason that he can’t charge Australians the visitor levy is he’s got no mechanism to do it. That’s what he won’t tell you. He can’t levy the tax on the electronic travel authority (ETA), because Australians won’t be able to use the ETA. So that’s actually the real reason. He has every other ability, under this bill, to charge them a smaller amount. So his excuses tonight don’t make sense.

What Minister Davis is saying, though—and I found it quite interesting—is “We don’t want to put this very important market at risk—this 40 percent.” But he’s quite prepared to put the other 60 percent at risk, for some reason—that doesn’t matter. But these people have choices. New Zealand is an expensive place to come to, and already we are losing. I read the other day that German, Dutch, and many other European tourists are being put off by the high cost of coming here. This is just another thing that will make them pick somewhere else.

Now, one of the other things I wanted to do in my contribution is to talk about the process. We’ve heard a bit tonight from the Hon Todd McClay about the unnecessary speed of this bill. Mr Davis had 18 months to bring this bill to the House, and—let’s be honest and let’s be fair—there’s not a huge amount to it. We can tell, clearly, that not a lot of thought’s gone into it. So what was stopping the Minister bringing this bill to the House months and months ago, or, indeed, last year? It’s not a huge bill. It doesn’t do anything, particularly, apart from the fact that it just gives Minister Davis all of these fancy regulation-making powers that we’ve got no idea what he’s going to do. Even the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment officials have said that more consultation was needed and a select committee process should take place. But no, Minister Kelvin Davis knows best.

International visitors already pay their fair share. Now, if this Government was serious about tourism and they were serious about conservation infrastructure, they would have already funded it over the last 18 months from the $1.7 billion they get every year. But they chose to fritter that away. They chose to use it on wasteful spray-and-walk-away working groups and many other failed policies. Instead, our tourism industry is going to be put at risk and we’re going to probably see 20,000 visitors fewer each year because of their inability to look past anything other than tax. For those reasons, we will be opposing this bill. Thank you.

I call Marja Lubeck—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. This is a very short call because the bill really speaks for itself, but a previous speaker mentioned the Dutch and the Germans, who somehow seem to think that it is too expensive to spend their time here. Well, actually, it’s absolutely incorrect. From all of the family and friends who quite frequently come all the way from the other side of the world, every single one of them is always saying that they cannot believe how cheap it is or how little they have to pay to use our beautiful spots. So what this bill does is actually ensure our international visitors contribute their fair share to the infrastructure that they use. It’s only fair. Tourists absolutely agree, and if the Opposition would go out, they would hear that feedback. So I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I call Harete Hipango—five minutes.

Thank you for the opportunity to address the House in the second reading of this. It’s interesting that members in the House, the Government particularly, are grand at the blame game, often lack good grace and graciousness, and speak loudly about kindness—talks up the wellbeing, care, and kindness—but somehow lack the sense of decorum to exhibit that.

So moving now on to the bill. Just in terms of the process, one has to question the due diligence in the care associated with the tiaki promise that’s espoused under this tourism brand from the Government. The tiaki promise is about acting with care and manaakitanga. One questions whether this bill actually does that.

So talking about due care and diligence, I refer specifically to the provisions of the bill and also the risk impact statement, which my colleagues have also mentioned. I turn again to page 9, where it talks about the process of consultation. It’s quite apparent, based on the advice from the officials, that there were two rounds of consultation. That was held in July 2018. However, stated very emphatically and quite clearly, and again to be emphasised and restated in the House this evening, is that further targeted consultation is planned—further targeted consultation is planned—which is clearly indicative that the officials were of the view that this due process ought to be adhered to. Well, regrettably, it hasn’t, and, regrettably, that has to question the integrity not only of the process but the haste and the speed with which this bill is being introduced under urgency.

It’s also indicative in terms of the gaps and the lapses that are obviously and identifiably noted within this bill. It’s a hastily drafted bill, and there are flaws that my colleagues here this evening have addressed.

I challenged the Minister at the first reading of the bill around the collection of this levy, and how that’s going to go back into the pockets and the pukus of our tourist operators out in the regions. The Minister is of the view that that’s going to be done. However, it’s not stated here within this bill, and I make it very clear and emphatic, again, that under the proposed section 399A(5), in clause 7, “All levy money collected under this section must be paid into a Crown Bank Account.”—a consolidated fund. There’s nothing there specifically in the bill that states there will be an allocation of these funds out to those tourist operators. It is purely at the discretion of whoever is making the decision. There is no compulsion. There’s no transparency. There’s no accountability.

So the Government talks the big game. When things break down, it points the finger and blames. It’s time to step up and to honour that tiaki promise, all about care and due diligence.

So I also turn to the part within the impact statement. The Minister had stated and sought to justify why there is an exemption to the Australian market, the Australian tourist operator. It was stated that there is concern that there’s a choice of other countries that the Australians may prefer to go to because of the cost imperatives. Well, precisely. That is the very reason why this side, the National Party, is arguing against the imposition of this tiaki tax to the international visitor: for the very reason that it will be a disincentive to pay to travel so far to come and then to be met, our manuhiri to be greeted, with a tax.

I conclude by saying that this bill as it’s proposed is a tiaki promise to tax our manuhiri. There’s no tick from this side of the House on that tiaki tax promise.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak on the Immigration (International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy) Amendment Bill. This bill does two things: it sets up a levy to ensure the environment and our infrastructure can support a very successful tourist industry, and the bill also allows for the automatic electronic collection of fees when visitors pay for their visas. It’s a wonderful bill. Everyone knows about the difficulty we have in this country around our conservation community and our conservation land, that is absolutely being visited. We love visiting it, but, let’s face it, nobody wants to see toilet paper on the Tongariro track. I commend this bill to the House.

Well, thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It was very concerning in the first reading speech of the Hon Eugenie Sage when she noted that, with regards to how money was going to be spent by conservation—I quote—“[There is] a crisis in … threatened species”. Well, that seems an awfully long way away from providing tourism infrastructure, and the comment by the Minister of Conservation was—

💬 Hon Eugenie Sage: They come to see them.

Ah, there we are. So the conservation Minister has just confirmed over the House, well, “They come to see them.” Yes, they do. So does that mean that this tourist tax is what it looks like it appears to be? Is this tourist tax merely a blank cheque for Ministers to ply towards their pet projects? It certainly sounds like that, and from the dearth of information and clarity in the bill and all the many questions that are raised in the regulatory impact statement (RIS), I am so looking forward to the committee of the whole House stage, because I have a number of questions.

I have a number of questions for whichever Minister is in the chair, and I do hope they take it in turns. If it is the Hon Kelvin Davis, I have questions around the tourism spend. If it is the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway, I have questions around the Immigration Act and the application of that. If it’s the Hon Eugenie Sage, I have questions about how it can be that a tourist tax gets distributed so widely and diluted through the conservation estate.

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Read the bill.

Well, you see, “Read the bill.”—there’s not much there. If I could direct the member opposite who just resumed her seat, if she cast her eye over the bill, it might confirm to her as well that this bill is extremely vague, unclear, and, if I might say, when it was hurriedly thrown together on Tuesday evening, I don’t know that the officials really had their hearts in it.

I want to just mention a matter of concern to me. In the RIS, under section B “Summary Impacts:”, it asks “Who are the main expected beneficiaries and what is the nature of the expected benefit?” That’s the question asked and answered in the RIS. The RIS says no specific decisions have been made where the tourist tax revenue will be spent. Well, I suppose that’s fair enough, because the bill is just going through the House, and with the benefit of a select committee process, we might have had a bit more direction. The only direction we’ve had so far is the Minister of Conservation, who is welcoming with open arms the carte blanche blank cheque, which she will spend in whatever way she likes, because—to quote—“They just want to come and see the threatened species.” So if that isn’t loose, I don’t know what is, and if there is a danger signal in there about the lack of rigour in this bill and by the receiving Ministers, then we should be very, very concerned about that.

In the committee of the whole House stage, I’d also like to see the Hon Nanaia Mahuta take a turn in the seat, because she is also one of the receiving Ministers, and it does say in the RIS who the main expected beneficiaries are. It notes they are the local government agencies responsible for most public tourism infrastructure. So I am expecting the Hon Nanaia Mahuta to come down and take a turn in the chair to answer questions in the absence of a select committee process. This is, after all—they tell us—the most transparent, open, and kind Government in the history of New Zealand. Let’s just see them deliver on that.

Talofa lava. Quoting the Hon Kelvin Davis, “We need tourism to enrich New Zealand.” Section 399A(2)(a), (b), and (c) will ensure this money will be ring-fenced for tourism. I commend this bill to the House.