Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It's a pleasure to be talking on the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill at its third reading. I think this bill is best characterised by the Hon Phil Twyford as opening up the floodgates for every council around the country to put this new tax in place and impose this new tax on everyone in New Zealand. But of course we know that initially it's designated for only Auckland which was by the way the original promise but now has been granted in the bill as it's worked its way through the Finance and Expenditure Committee to give every council in New Zealand the right to be able to take this and put it in place in 2021. I think that is the first point to note: that this is a broken promise in the sense of its scope.The other aspect I just want to talk about a little bit is that I think we just missed the context. The National Government when it was in power had set out and spent a lot of time with the Auckland Council agreeing what was called the Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) which was about setting out a 30-year vision for new infrastructure spend in Auckland. It covered all the types of different spending. It covered roads it covered rail it covered buses it covered cycleways—the whole gambit. And the only aspect that was missing in that $28 billion was $4 billion of funding—i.e. $24 billion of it was funded and agreed how it was going to be funded and when it was going to be spent and all the priority around it. So what we're talking about is a $4 billion spend over a 30-year period. And what originally happened and what mostly happened and what was increasingly happening was that our Government—the National Government—was stepping in and helping the Auckland Council to take over major roads of significance and consent them and put them in place much much quicker than any council can ever do because we had made changes to the Resource Management Act which meant that if a road was of national significance it could be consented within a maximum of nine months and then built. And we saw some of those roads come to pass. In fact the recent Ōtaki motorway that opened late last year was a prime example of that.So the question is: how should we go about funding that $4 billion? And the best answer that Mr Twyford could come up with was in agreement with Auckland Transport the imposition of a regional fuel tax. And of course we've all heard that regional fuel taxes have been in place previously—they were in the 1990s—but largely have been discarded because they're a fairly inefficient way to fund infrastructure spend.So then there was the big focus around congestion charging and I've spoken about this previously—that the deputy mayor and a whole group have been over to places like Singapore. Congestion charging: I think if you had a clean slate you would always—everyone in this House and even the council—agree that congestion charging is the way to go. And in fact that should be the way to go and that should be the incentive to go. And in fact any structure that is put in place as a temporary measure should actually still have that as its objective. But the worst thing about this bill that's come to the House is that it's been given a 10-year time frame and at the 10-year time frame Auckland Council may after going through a little bit of deliberation agree to extend it. And so there is no incentive to actually put in place some congestion charging which is the ideal form.There were other mechanisms that Mr Twyford could have considered and of course we never heard any of these. There were ones about just making the system simpler. At the moment what the system is about means that the distributor—for instance if you get fuel at the Tauranga port—picks it up from the port and distributes it. Whether it's to a farmer or whether it's to a fishing company or whether it is to a fuel company they are the ones who are now going to have to account for where it's distributed and also in effect for collecting some of that tax in terms of making sure the administration around that is right. And there are much clearer and easier ways to do it. And if you are going to do New Zealand's system which is what the intent of the bill is now why wouldn't you just put a tax on any petrol or diesel coming into New Zealand at the port and it would be done and dusted and it would be very clear and no administration charge for anyone.A couple of speakers—and Mr Twyford talked about it right at the beginning—said it was to put pressure on Auckland Council. And he said he'd had a bit of a conversation with the mayor. Well the issue is that the mayor said that he was going to achieve 3 to 4 percent savings on a budget of roughly $3.2 billion of rates that the council take. They take in another billion dollars of income. And if Mr Twyford had actually sat down and worked out some of the numbers if the mayor had actually achieved his objective—what he said to the constituency when he got voted in as mayor—he would actually more than offset this $150 million that's going to come from this regional fuel tax.And the last way—and probably the best way in my view—was for the central government to take over key roading projects. Every new motorway basically costs a million dollars and that's why the National Government had committed at the last election that they were going to fund the entire Mill Road - Redoubt Road extension round from Manukau round the back of Papakura to Drury as one road and we would consent it which means we could have done it in nine months and we would actually have had this thing built probably by the time Auckland Council is even starting to get to the stage where they might be calling for tenders. And I think that's the travesty in it. So what I'm saying to you is that there are much much simpler ways to go about this.The one area I do want to think about—and I've just heard the very modest Hon Shane Jones speaking; a very modest man the champion of New Zealand the champion of the country as I heard him talk about last week.Matt King: Provincial champion.ANDREW BAYLY: No he's moved from the champion of the regions to the champion of the country. That's what he claimed. So what does it mean for the growers? And of course I represent Hunua which includes the area of Pukekohe which he was talking about—I've got to say to you that the onion-growers the potato-growers and the lettuce and the fresh vegetable - growers are all particularly concerned about this bill. It is an imposition on them and their operations. They are key to supplying food for not only Auckland but the rest of the country and this fuel arrangement in terms of how they have to account for it is going to bedevil them in detail. We had one of the key growers from Pukekohe Brendan Balle come to the committee—did a great job—with Horticulture New Zealand Inc. They are implacably opposed to this because they know what this is going to mean for their operation.They also know what it's going to mean for the cost of food because sure as eggs the price of food is going to go up because of the cost of the fuel—the 25.3c a litre for petrol that every person is going to be paying when they go to the pump from 1 July next week. Also there's a whole imposition around transport and everything that goes with it and what that will mean for inflationary pressures for New Zealand and also what it means for the poorer people of New Zealand particularly people in parts of my area like Waiuku. It's interesting looking at the regulatory impact statement. It states and I'm quoting lower income households tend to live further away"—such as Waiuku in my area or Kawakawa Bay or Ōrere Point—"from the central city and have to travel further to get into the CBD or to the opposite side of the region … This results in higher fuel consumption by these households than those living closer to the centre." because in many cases not only do they live further away but they have older cars. This is an incredibly regressive tax and I am particularly concerned about people in my electorate. You say "Well they're going to get all these benefits." and I'll say to you: in the ATAP plan that's now been announced what are we going to get? Well we're not going to get Mill Road which is in my view misleadingly described; we're going to get Redoubt Road in the first part of that extension from Manukau to Alfriston School—a road to nowhere. Secondly we thought we were going to get a whole lot of ferry services; well it's silent on that so people in Waiuku won't be able to get there. We're going to get some rail stations apparently—well we'd committed to that. But I think most of all it just means that my people have to spend longer on the motorway without good access going up the Southern Motorway and with very very little benefit. I therefore terribly and significantly oppose this bill."