van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Mr Chair. Look I rise to take a call on Part 2 of the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill. My intent here is to include an amendment to clause 10(5) where we insert a new section 34B(3) into the Local Government Act 2002. So what we're talking about here and I think it's appropriate just to reflect on section 34B(1) and (2)—so this is additional information for the regional fuel tax schemes. What we're proposing under those two indeed in the current proposal of the bill is that The regional council of an RFT region"—regional fuel tax region—"in its annual report" must report on the revenue paid to the council it must report on how that revenue was applied which projects and for what purposes that was allocated and also any progress with respect to the programme of capital projects. So that was new subsection (1) and then under new subsection (2) it goes on to outline some of the definitions within that to capture that succinctly.So what I am proposing here with new subsection (3) is to actually signal the intent—so a precursor if you will—to that original subpart requiring a report on the progress of the revenue and associated expenditure and actually requiring an outline of that in advance. So the wording I am proposing is "In conjunction with councils application for a Regional Fuel Tax councils must produce a report for ratepayers on their forecasted spending priorities in relation to the revenue obtained from the RFT and make this publicly available." As I mentioned it's about signalling the intent so that ratepayers can justifiably have an understanding of what their council is proposing to cover with their request for a regional fuel tax.Of course the regional fuel tax has to be for specific purposes within that council's jurisdiction and should not be to cover poor funding management as we are actually seeing under the Auckland Council at the moment. Indeed actually we've heard already under the discussion last night of Part 1 that had Mayor Phil Goff met his obligation his promise his commitment to reduce council expenditure there would actually be no need for this regional fuel tax.That aside and coming back to my proposal here this is what I'm proposing to be a requirement to make it publicly notified in advance what the intent is of those spending priorities alongside the application process for councils. Really we're trying to demonstrate appropriate transparency. We've heard a lot from this Government about transparency and how important that is. It would be fantastic if we saw that demonstrated as well. Although that is questionable—and certainly on this side we haven't seen it demonstrated anywhere near what we would like to—that is what we should be seeing from all levels of governance. Certainly in this aspect in the application for a regional fuel tax the amendment I'm proposing under the Local Government Act 2002 would require those councils to be fully transparent up front so their ratepayers can indeed have a clear understanding on what their proposal is how that's forecasted to be spent and the objectives envisaged to be obtained as a result of that.So yes this may create and likely will create additional work for the council in having to outline that detail but it is important and justified I believe in giving that transparency to their ratepayers. Also when you go through that sort of a process what it actually does is help crystallise the focus or the priorities in terms of what you're achieving to really reflect on what the aspects are that are critical to any particular proposal rather than perhaps getting caught up in some of the higher-level or more pie-in-the-sky wishes that might indeed come off the back of an application being expanded into areas that could perhaps be frivolous.So really just to recap we're looking at here including a precursor to the already proposed new section 34B(1) and (2)—although it will come in as section 34B(3). That would provide in advance an outline of what we're anticipating it to be spent on under these sections. I look forward to taking another call shortly on the GST Act. Thank you."