Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to speak on proposals to establish and replace a regional fuel tax (RFT) scheme. But before I do I'd just like to respond to some of the comments that Dr Russell made in her contribution. Principally I'd like to respond to her contribution because it was in fact the last cogent and coherent contribution we've had from the Government benches.Dr Russell likes to throw the odd quotation around. Well I've got one for her given that those members have tried to talk up the good aspects and the positiveness of their stinging hard-working Kiwis in the back pocket through this additional tax and that is one from Winston Churchill who remarked that Trying to tax oneself into prosperity is akin to standing in a bucket and trying to lift oneself up by the handle". Dr Russell you might do well to bear that in mind.The other point Dr Russell made or tried to make was she claimed this tax is needed. Well it's not. It's not needed at all. The Government has inherited such a strong economy that had it not set about frivolous and poorly targeted spending such as for instance $2.8 billion on free fees to achieve 900 fewer forecast students—if it hadn't made such frivolous and wasted spending it had and would have had plenty of cash in the surpluses to undertake projects like those in Auckland. So it certainly isn't needed Dr Russell for any reason other than the actions of this Government.I do have a question for Minister Phil Twyford around the proposals to establish or replace RFT schemes and that question is: why has the Minister chosen to put in legislation that encourages litigation around the formulation of the RFT scheme? I refer particularly to new section 65D(b) in clause 5: "cannot reasonably be fully funded from sources other than a regional fuel tax within the time frame desired by the council." And there's no guidance there. Other than the reasonable test under law there is no guidance there as to what would be considered as could not be reasonably fully funded.For instance does the Minister or anyone have in mind a certain debt to income ratio that if the council or the regional council were already at that level will be considered to have passed the reasonableness test? Or perhaps it could be a total annual interest payable amount against income? So there could be a number of measures including also—because through the readings in this House using the Auckland example it's been charged that if Mayor Goff for instance had achieved the savings that he pledged when standing for the mayoralty then the regional fuel tax would be completely unnecessary because those savings would bring in far more per year than the regional fuel tax will. And he's not set about driving those savings.So there's no clear guidance here to determine when the "cannot reasonably be fully funded" criteria will be met. The only way that will be able to be proven is through the courts. So if a regional council seeks to impose a levy which some active citizens oppose they will be able to challenge the establishment of that proposal in court. They will even be able to go as far as a judicial review. That will be an enormous cost in time and money which could be addressed if there was some clearer guidance as to when and under what conditions that particular criteria—or even by using a different set of criteria than just simply "cannot reasonably be fully funded".Also in new section 65E in clause 5 is the "Proposal for RFT scheme: content requirements". This is quite troubling because 65E(b)(iii) in particular actually permits regional councils to put forward a proposal which doesn't have to specifically meet any of the requirements of the general policy statement (GPS) for land transport. All it has to do is "explain how it is expected to contribute to". There is no measure in there that says that they have to meet three of the criteria or that they have to meet any one of the criteria to a certain extent. There is no particular qualification on how the contribution to the objectives under the GPS will characterise and reach a level where the proposal could be deemed acceptable.It gets worse and I'm going to call out in just a few seconds as that clock climbs down because there's another limb to this as well around the Minister."