Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Madam Chair. There are a couple of things I'd like to talk to on this. The first is this issue I've raised on three occasions around the regressive nature of this duty. It is noted in the regulatory impact statement (RIS) actually the impact of this duty on lower-income and vulnerable people and families. It's interesting the calculations that the Minister of Transport uses and in fact the report refers to the cost of it. Normally transport costs for low-income families are anywhere between 6 to 8 percent of their total budget. So here we are we've got a Government imposing yet another high level of duty—another 3.5c plus GST—on top of the already proposed changes in their earlier years and of course for the year coming to fruition. That together with the Auckland regional tax is as we know very very substantial.I just wanted to know—and this is a good opportunity for the Minister to talk about it—the financial implications of that. I know he talks about it being only a few cents but actually in some of the modelling in some of the estimates we received when we were looking at this issue in the committee it was quite significant—in fact some were up to a thousand dollars that would be the impact around some of the increased charges that road users are going to incur over the course of all these different arrangements that this Government has brought in even though it campaigned on the fact it wasn't going to bring in new taxes.CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! We are starting to stray a little bit.ANDREW BAYLY: The other thing I wanted to talk about is that I think this raises a whole wider issue around this excise tax because the issue is that I think the Government needs to be clear about what its future intentions are. It's fine to bring in an Auckland regional fuel tax and these three excise duties of 3.5c but I think it's absolutely imperative that people should know what the future intention of this Government is around introducing further excise taxes because as we all know—in fact in the RIS again it refers to the issue around the alternative funding mechanisms that the New Zealand Transport Agency and the Government have in terms of trying to bring in different money to meet its Government policy statement targets but I think there's a requirement that says Does the Government intend if it is lucky enough to win the next election to bring in further increases in the excise tax?" In fact there are road-user charges (RUC) questions. So I think it's fine just doing this in a piecemeal fashion but actually the public of New Zealand have a right to hear from the Government actually what it is in terms of future funding and the future increase in this petrol excise duty.The other thing is that the Ministry of Transport obviously uses a cost allocation model to work through some of the charges and it notes that the RUC is always overcharged. There's an over-receipt or collection of taxes from road-user charges and that's a perennial problem. It's noted in the RIS again. As it says quite clearly here "The actual RUC rates set in regulations are generally higher than the base rates because a level of over-recovery from the system"—they talk about the need to fund additional investments. What I'd like to hear from the Minister is that some of the submitters during this process on the excise tax suggested alternative options to increasing the petrol excise duties and the RUC such as congestion pricing and tolling. And again I think this needs to be in the context of where you've got a Government who's imposed roughly another 20c in a short order within 19 months of coming into office. Effectively the public of New Zealand and particularly in Auckland will be subject to an over 20c per litre charge that has been introduced by this rapacious tax-gathering Government since the time they've come into play. I think it's time now for the Minister to be absolutely clear about his future intentions regarding these two forms of further tax that he wishes to impose on the New Zealand public."