Twyford Phil; Mallard TrevorThird ReadingHon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): 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 3000 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. SPEAKER: 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.