O'Connor GregTransportGREG O'CONNOR (Chairperson of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee): It gives me great pleasure to rise as the chairman of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and I see members of my hard-working committee here in the Chamber tonight. This year we heard from City Rail Link Ltd (CRLL) Maritime New Zealand the Ministry of Transport and Waka Kotahi—New Zealand Transport Agency. We basically adopted it as a sector which is an excellent way to do it because the sector is organised into aviation land rail and maritime transport. Of course the Ministry of Transport is responsible for transport policy and for monitoring most parts of the sector. The strategic planning and the implementation of regulation is carried out by the transport agencies Waka Kotahi—New Zealand Transport Agency KiwiRail Holdings the Civil Aviation Authority and Maritime New Zealand. The independent Crown entity the Transport Accident Investigation Commission provides the investigation service. These agencies work collaboratively. A significant proportion of the funding for land-based transport and coastal shipping comes from the National Land Transport Fund—the NLTF. The fund is funded from fuel excise duties road-user charges motor vehicle registration and licensing and other Crown revenues including Crown funding. Much of our work was talking about the decarbonising of the transport sector and we discussed what work is being done to reduce carbon emissions in the carbonised sector. The ministry told us that it is focused on creating a more sustainable transport system and encouraging more people to use public transport or active transport. We also discussed how Waka Kotahi sets ambitious emissions reduction targets and what Maritime New Zealand is doing to develop environmentally friendly practices. Transport is responsible for 43 percent of New Zealand's domestic carbon dioxide emissions and 21 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. The ministry has a green paper. Hīkina te Kohupara was developed and consulted on—this green paper—and this discussion document sets out potential ways of reducing emissions across the transport system. It also outlines the policies that will support this. It uses the avoid shift improve framework—or the A-S-I framework—to identify these opportunities. Of course avoid" means to improve the overall efficiency of the transport system through interventions to reduce both the need to travel and trip lengths; to "shift" is to improve the efficiency of trips by promoting mode shift to low-carbon modes such as walking cycling public transport coastal shipping and rail freight; and finally to "improve" is to lower the emissions of transport vehicles and fuels. We asked the ministry whether reducing fares for public transport or making it free would encourage people to use it and they agreed that it would be one of the ways to increase use. No report would be replete without mentioning COVID-19's effect on the transport sector. Obviously it affected all parts of the transport sector and we heard how the ministry remained responsive to COVID-19 on the City Rail Link project how Maritime New Zealand undertakes regulatory work and how the Auckland boundary supply chain issues were managed. In March 2020 the Government committed $372 million to fund the International Air Freight Capacity scheme—and I might just ask the Minister who might like to elaborate on maintaining the scheme for maintaining international air capacity with that additional $170 million and the success of that. We also spoke with City Rail Link Ltd and they acknowledged that COVID-19 has caused significant disruptions to work. It said that the effects were broad and ongoing. During 127 days of alert level 3 restrictions work was able to continue at about 80 percent of usual efficiency. Overall CRLL has been affected by some level of COVID restrictions for 271 days. They were also affected by severe shortages. So that really covers a lot of the work that the committee did and what we heard from. Now I would particularly ask the Minister to elaborate back on that air traffic—the essential transport connectivity scheme and maintaining international air capacity."