van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Magnificent choice Madam Chair. It's wonderful to be able to join the thoroughly robust questioning that has been happening from this side of the House in relation to the committee stage of this bill. Now we'd heard from Mr Goldsmith around the timing his amendment looking to bring that timing earlier because it was a bit of a sneaky move to impose a weasel tax" as it were.I think a "weasel tax" is an appropriate term. I see Mr McAnulty looking quizzically at that term. Perhaps he's confused about what a weasel is. Well I can assure him the weasel is "weasonably" small whereas the stoat is "stoatally" different. But if he prefers I can refer to it by the family name of mustelids if that helps him at any point in this debate.Now the first question I had for the Minister of Transport this evening was in relation to an answer he gave earlier in regards to Mr Penk's question about the additional terms under Part 1 clause 3(2) the plus 8c per gram of lead—or plumbum the Latin term it's derived from. I think the atomic number's 82 for lead off the top of my head. The question there is whether or not that term is relevant and he suggested it was perhaps a somewhat outdated term given—Hon Paul Goldsmith: Historic artefact.TIM VAN DE MOLEN: A historic artefact. Thank you Mr Goldsmith. And perhaps that's how the Minister might like to be remembered in time. But I wonder why and the question for the Minister is: why haven't we taken this opportunity whilst we're bringing this change in to actually tidy that up and to remove that term if it's no longer necessary—in particular because given under the next clause Part 1 clause 4(2) it talks about the refund rates and those being a single figure in terms of cents? So why on the one hand are we talking about a figure with three decimal places plus 8c per gram of lead but in the refund option we have no mention about minus X number of cents per gram of lead; we simply talk about a straight cent figure. So is there a reason why that differentiation exists and why it wasn't able to be tidied up in this consideration of the changes we're making to these excise duties at this point in time? I would have thought that would be an appropriate time to tidy that up.A couple of other aspects I just wanted to touch on were around the timing again and the impact that has around the additional revenue. I'd touched earlier in the second reading on my intent to mention this during the committee stage around the regions missing out. We've heard a little bit about that on some of the South Island and other North Island regions as well. In the Waikato in particular we had the Waikato Expressway projects planned. They were in the pipeline ready to go—previous Government continuing a safety focus there. This Government withdrew that as a result of changes to the Government policy statement. We heard then that the focus was around safety rather than expressways. Well of course that was a contradiction because expressways are very safe. That particular project in the Waikato going from near Cambridge down to Piarere was bypassing two very dangerous intersections with high crash rates.So my question in relation to that was: are we going to see additional benefit in that region for those sorts of projects given his increased safety focus as expressed in the Government policy statement? Specifically in relation to the timing that Mr Goldsmith's amendment addressed the Minister ruled it would not be supported by the Government because of the significant revenue that would be lost with that three-month change. Well my question then is: if we are pulling it forward three months and we're gaining an additional $30 million of revenue under this in the first year and indeed another $30 million in the second year—that's $60 million of additional revenue—would he now reconsider that Cambridge to Piarere expressway given that $60 million would be a significant part of the total build project for that particular project? So I'd like to hear from the Minister whether he will now reconsider carrying out that project given the significant safety benefits it brings to the region as well given his additional revenue he is sourcing under this "weasel tax" as it were.The other aspect I wanted to know was with the safety focus again. Now I wrote to the Minister recently about my concerns on safety and the New Zealand Transport Agency's (NZTA's) inability to deliver on time frames with committed projects in the Waikato region. So my question here is: does he expect that with a significant additional tax grab NZTA will be able to meet all future obligations that they have committed to in regards to safety projects under his watch as Minister? Those are the key questions that I have for the Minister and I would appreciate his response to those."