Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Well 2019 was supposed to be the year of delivery but all the Government is delivering is a nightmare for New Zealanders—failure after failure. Do you know what? Today we learned that apparently New Zealand police have started the gun buy-back programme some weeks and months ahead of finalising the regulations for how much they should actually pay. New Zealanders might well ask themselves—in this year of abject let-down—which Minister could possibly be worse than the Minister of Housing and Urban Development who with his Kiwi failed" programme has delivered a mere 80-odd KiwiBuild homes? Who could be worse than that? Well it's the Minister of Transport. Last Thursday the Minister of Transport—who happens to be the same person—announced finally the Let's Get Wellington Moving initiative. Well it should be called anything other than "moving". It is a programme that is both underwhelming in its detail and what it will deliver and completely overwhelming in the cost burden it's going to place on Wellingtonians in the city and across the region. Apparently we're getting some things and those things include mass transit a second Mount Victoria tunnel and something around the Basin Reserve but we don't know when. Some time at some point in the future Wellingtonians are going to be blessed with some largesse from Mr Phil Twyford that is going to do some things. We do know however because it was the National led-Government that instituted the Let's Get Wellington Moving programme—a programme that was put in place to give an integrated approach and solution for the transportation issues between Ngauranga and the airport as well as some public transport improvements including mass transit. Well the programme that's been announced can't possibly deliver that. As Mr Twyford confirmed yesterday the indicative package he announced does not include the second tunnel at the Terrace it does not include the Te Aro undergrounding from that tunnel to the Basin and—guess what?—looking at the New Zealand Transport Agency's (NZTA) documents which are the Minister's documents it doesn't include the fourth southbound lane from Ngauranga to the Aotea Quay off-ramp either. It simply cannot deliver on the promises of Let's Get Wellington Moving which were unlocking productivity into and out of the city. It can't deliver it because it leaves the major arterial route—not just for Wellington but of the country—State Highway 1 which remains blocked at the end of the Wellington motorway because they are not doing anything about it. They have this strange obsession with loss-making light rail that they will set aside all of the productivity gains that could be generated through this programme for their little $1.44 billion toy train set. Now the Prime Minister ruled out a regional fuel tax outside of Auckland. So Minister Twyford along with the Labour Wellington City mayor and the former Labour MP chair of the regional council got together and they cooked up this tricky alternative to a regional fuel tax. So instead of levying Wellingtonians on the amount of fuel they consume they are going to put a regional transport tax on their rates and other charges such as parking—$2.6 billion. This is extra money for roads that Wellingtonians will have already paid for through their fuel taxes. Oh no Labour-elected members have never met a tax they don't like and they're going to slam Wellingtonians with another $2.6 billion. While they're doing it they're going to put in a massively expensive light rail system—$1.44 billion. Now despite their protestations it can't be anything other than light rail because bus rapid transit would cost about one quarter of that amount and everyone knows that even trackless trams would be hundreds of millions of dollars less simply because they don't require steel rails in the ground—$1.44 billion. This is despite the Public Transport Spine Study in 2015 recommending bus rapid transit—that study being re-validated in Let's Get Wellington Moving just a couple of years ago—and that original study finding that a light rail system from the airport to the railway station would lose between 90 and 95 cents on every dollar spent on it and that was when it was half a billion dollars cheaper. This is simply going to absolutely gouge Wellingtonians for no benefit at all. Talking about no benefit—the ones who are really worst off out of this certainly in Wellington City are the people all across Ohariu. They pay a disproportionate amount because using their vehicles more they would be paying more in fuel taxes as well as their share of this regional transport tax and they get absolutely zilch out of it. No southbound lane no Terrace tunnel. Eventually when they get to the Basin things might be a little bit better but it's going to take them as much time in 10 years' time to get there as it takes them today. I could think to paraphrase someone about this plan: never in the field of human endeavour will so much be taken from so many for so little."