Bennett PaulaHon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm pleased to be able to stand up and take a call on this really important bill and important for all the wrong reasons really. It's important because of the cost that it's going to add to Aucklanders in particular and Aucklanders who actually voted for this Government in the belief that they would actually support them that they would believe in them and that they would make the cost of living go down. How disappointed they must be to be seeing this go through the House.I stand here and I speak for those that live in South Auckland and that are going to be travelling to work at weird hours and can't catch public transport because they're cleaning hotels. They're the ones that actually get this extra cost put on them—the people that can least afford it. Let's be quite honest: an extra 15 or 20 bucks a week may not affect the people that are sitting in this Chamber and debating this bill at the moment but it damned well will affect those that can least afford it and actually believed they were voting for a Government that would support them and not put unnecessary costs on them. I think that's a crying shame for them.So I do stand up and speak about an amendment that I would like to put forward in my name and it's a proposed amendment. It proposes after new section 65L(2) in clause 5 inserting new subsection 65L(3): The Minister of Finance and the responsible Minister must recommend such an order if it becomes clear at any point while an RFT"—the regional fuel tax—"is in place that the programme could be funded by alternative reasonable means."It seems incredible to me that we have over a hundred working groups where everything possible every rock is being unturned and everything's being looked at but they couldn't actually set one up to see if there are actual expenses that could be taken and actually reduced so that poorer people do not have to pay this tax. I don't think there's been alternatives that have been looked at and that's what my amendment is actually requesting—that they look at alternative reasonable means and at the very least that we put into the bill the means for the Minister and the Minister of Finance to recommend that this actually could be dropped if there are alternative reasonable means that could be done. That's what the amendment says and I think that that's quite common-sense.You can't feel that every rock has been unturned. You can't feel that they've looked at all alternative means for funding of what they want to do or that the council have truly looked at their expenses—where they're at and what's important to Aucklanders—and are actually able to look at what those alternative means might be for funding and which would make this bill at the very least unnecessary. But if it's going to pass could we put in this amendment that could fundamentally mean there's at least an out for the future?Should it have been means-tested? Should it be actually a tax—if you're going to put one in—that goes to those that are using the roads the most and not everybody and those people that are less fortunate? I feel for those older people that have looked at alternative reasonable means and know that neither the Government nor the council have looked at those as options for how they might fund it and the people that are just living on their super and need as much help as they can possibly get.Is there an amount that this will go to where the Government will look at backtracking or the council might? Is $3 a litre—well it sounds too much to me. There has to be an alternative means that we can look at that makes it affordable for people. It's quite plain there are those that voted for Labour and New Zealand First and they did not do it in the belief that their costs would go up in just a few months and they would have extra tax. They did not believe that that would come from the so-called caring Government. They did not believe that this would be someone that would impose costs on them that they could least afford and that it would just be thrown at them without the council actually truly looking at alternative means. And let's be honest—let's be really honest here—if a false promise of "I will not raise rates above the 2.5 percent."—had not been made then this is actually a council that could have rated differently spent money differently and made a huge difference so that we didn't see renters and people that can't afford it."