Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Look Madam Speaker forgive me: this bill has come under urgency and so it's taken a little bit of quick reading to work out exactly where this Government has gone wrong again.ACT supported the Government's proposal to give motorists a break with a discount on the petrol excise duty and road-user charges (RUC) when that was proposed in March 2022. At the time there'd been a spike in the price of fuel as a result of the dictator Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine. But it turns out that like any crisis that has befallen New Zealand under this Labour Government they've used that as an excuse—and we've heard members like Rachel Boyack continuing to restate this falsehood that petrol prices are still high because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.What this graph shows—when you look at the Government's own data their regulatory impact statement—is that indeed in March 2022 fuel prices spiked to over $3 a litre for petrol. But like all kinds of fact-adjacent proposals offered by this Government this graph omits another whole year of data because in fact the fuel price now is back to what it was before Russia invaded Ukraine. So the basis of the Labour Party's and Minister Michael Wood's argument that it's necessary to give Kiwis a break in terms of the cost of living is not justified by his own regulatory impact assessment.Now the problem that this bill causes is not just that it's bad rushed lawmaking based on half-truths and facts that are cobbled together to make a poor argument. I also want to address the fundamental problem: that the road-user charges and the petrol excise duties levied on motorists are insufficient to pay for the amount of roading that we need to deliver not because the Government doesn't collect enough money but because they siphon off so much of the money collected from motorists to spend on pet projects—wasteful spending like the Auckland Harbour bike bridge: $50 million to $100 million spent on a project that engineers I know said was unfeasible when it was announced but they persisted; or Auckland light rail what could be a wonderful futuristic project to enable land development along that corridor in Auckland between Auckland CBD the member for Mt Albert's electorate the transport Minister's Mt Roskill electorate and Auckland Airport even. But again future projects that may be sensible but we still haven't seen the business case—and that's a $200 million business case.So the problem that the Government really should be solving is not How do we offer a cost of living sop to voters in an election year?"—which is exactly what this policy does—in fact officials point out that if the Government wanted to address people who were in hardship because of transport costs there are other options. There are transfer payments available there is Working for Families there's energy payments there's all kinds of options the Government has to address the cost of living. And this policy officials recommend should not be one of them.But here we are debating whether to extend the discount on road-user charges a discount which will benefit many of my friends in the trucking and heavy transport industry many of my friends who drive turbo-diesel Toyota Surfs on the beach—all of those people will benefit. But unfortunately while they might benefit today this policy is costing $150 million a month in forgone revenue. By the end of January 2023 this policy had cost $1.3 billion in forgone revenue.When that member Shanan Halbert who's the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee stood up in the House a few minutes ago and made the claim that without this policy we wouldn't be able to afford a new Auckland harbour crossing I thought "That's the most nonsensical incoherent thing I've heard since the Prime Minister's statement yesterday." Mr Shanan Halbert you are the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee of Parliament and you don't seem to understand the link between the need to raise revenue—not discount revenue raise revenue—in order to deliver infrastructure.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member is bringing the Speaker into the debate so find another way of expressing himself.SIMON COURT: Madam Chair people watching at home—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Or "Madam Speaker" would do.SIMON COURT: Madam Speaker people watching at home must be able to tell how incensed I am as the ACT transport spokesperson about this appalling piece of legislation.So this takes around $1.3 billion in the last year from the National Land Transport Fund which is required to be made up by borrowing. That's kicking the can down the road to future citizens—to people who might not even be born yet—to pay back the $1.3 billion that this Government's already wasted on this policy. So what would ACT do? Well firstly we would stop lecturing New Zealanders about whether they should be driving less and walking or cycling more. We would stop lecturing New Zealanders about a climate emergency when this Government—in cahoots with the Greens—have failed to deliver the climate adaptation bill even though James Shaw has been the climate Minister for five years. And now we face the real problem. New Zealand's transportation network has been devastated by flooding and storms. This Government previous Governments have not put sufficient money in to upgrade our networks and make them more resilient. When you drive on new highways like Transmission Gully when you drive on new highways like the Waikato Expressway you'll see what a resilient highway looks like. If Waka Kotahi let us motorists would also be able to drive on the brand new unopened Pūhoi to Warkworth highway on State Highway 1 north of Auckland. But for contractual reasons Waka Kotahi won't let motorists on it.So what's the problem to solve? How do we raise sufficient funds to deliver a safe efficient—that means get where you're going at a decent clip—and resilient transport network funded by motorists the people who use it in a way that means what you pay for you get. In some cases that might mean that we need to apply road pricing what people in the olden days used to call "tolls". Imagine that: you could toll the road like the Auckland Harbour Bridge and then you'd get a new harbour bridge.Now that institutional memory appears to have been forgotten by this Government and its officials but ACT hasn't forgotten. In fact in our solutions for building New Zealand and conserving nature we make the case for road pricing. We don't just make the case for road pricing; we make the case as to how in five short years New Zealand could transition from road-user charges—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I'm going to ask the member to come back more closely to the bill. It is in order to make passing reference to other matters in context but the main purpose of this bill is to address the first reading of this transport RUC bill.SIMON COURT: Thank you Madam Speaker. So it's possible in five short years to transition from road-user charges and fuel excise duties to a system of electronic road pricing. This has been done elsewhere in the world. The ACT Party proposes that that should be a much better alternative to—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I've just asked the member to come back more closely to the bill. This is the second time I'm inviting him to do so.SIMON COURT: Madam Speaker. So in the regulatory impact assessment officials identified a number of different options. And of course road pricing—charging people for the roads they drive on—is in the mix. Now it's fair to say that when you rush legislation into the House under urgency and it's so urgent—I want to draw the House's attention to this—that in the section "Constraints on analysis" officials point out that the commissioning was narrow in scope and advice and needed to be provided quickly. The advice was sought on lowering petrol excise and road-user charges—well that's remarkable because the Government announced the reduction in taxes on road-user charges and petrol excise duty over a year ago. Yet it appears the request for information from officials was made very very shortly before this policy was announced; this extension on road-user charges and fuel excise duties.So that would lead me to conclude in fact the policy is poorly thought-out. The costs have not been considered adequately. The benefits are very limited except to reduce the cost of petrol to motorists in an election year. And for that reason ACT will not be supporting this bill. It does not address our long-term needs."