Ross Jami-LeeJAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm glad I get to respond to Phil Twyford because Phil Twyford the man who has single-handedly seen support for the regional fuel tax plummet in his time as Minister of Transport is standing up in this House trying to defend the indefensible. I've heard Labour members opposite saying that there's all this overwhelming support for a regional fuel tax. Well when Phil Twyford first had the Auckland Council do a poll on a regional fuel tax there was 52 percent support for the regional fuel tax. What's it at now? The same company Colmar Brunton has done a poll. There's 58 percent opposed to a regional fuel tax. Far from selling this issue to the public he's actually lost support and is losing support for the ideas he's putting forward. I just want to say the Hon Nikki Kaye has done the right thing in putting forward Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 27 to try and exempt the part of Auckland that is paying overwhelmingly higher fuel taxes and fuel prices already. She's a member of Parliament that cares about her local area and is trying to find a way to help them through. Phil Twyford says Rely on us—rely on us. We have got these regulation-making powers." Phil Twyford thinks we should just leave everything to him to exempt areas and ensure that they don't have to pay a regional fuel tax because he'll do it by way of regulation. He also thinks it should be left to the councils to decide in which part of the areas regional fuel taxes should be paid. The very reason why Nikki Kaye has put forward that SOP is because on Waiheke on Great Barrier Island they're probably going to see the least benefit from a regional fuel tax in Auckland but their taxes and their prices are already higher than anyone else in the country. Of course people on Waiheke and Great Barrier Island have been asking her as a member of Parliament to ensure they're exempt. That's why this House should be supporting that SOP and not leaving it to Phil Twyford and regulation-making powers. But if we come to regulation-making powers—and I do note that Chris Penk has an amendment on one of the regulation-making powers—Phil Twyford takes exception to us saying that they have broken promises on this. Sure they might have campaigned on a regional fuel tax. They also campaigned on no new taxes. What they didn't campaign on was Phil Twyford and this Government through Ministers having regulation-making powers under the legislation to put up regional fuel taxes as high as they want. That's something that's a broken promise. They may have set a regional fuel tax of 10c a litre but under new section 65ZD "Change to maximum rate of regional fuel tax" in clause 5 it says right there that by Order in Council the Governor-General—recommended by Phil Twyford—can put a regional fuel tax as high as he wants. It turns out that that's a legislative instrument. It can come back to the House. We say that should come back to the House on an annual basis because the very problem with regulation-making powers and the very problem with allowing things to be decided such as the maximum rate of taxation is that we essentially will have a situation where a Minister of the Crown on his own volition—all by himself—will be able to go in and implement a higher set of taxation than was already in the legislation. It's a "Henry VIII" power. It means Phil Twyford—who I am sure is embarrassed that this was exposed in this bill—will have the power to put up taxes around the country at his own behest whenever he wants without any sort of parliamentary review that we'd normally have. If we were to have taxes around the country normal income taxes to be increased—when the Government comes back with their Tax Working Group and they come up with a whole lot of new taxes that'll come before the Parliament. That'll be voted on. This is a dangerous power. It's a power that gives the Minister the ability to put up tax rates all by himself—no parliamentary scrutiny no ability to for a select committee look at it and no ability for New Zealanders to submit on it. All by himself—the power to put up taxes can go ahead. I say that's a power that shouldn't be in this bill but I've also said that if there are powers in this bill that are going to go through we're going to try and blunt those dangerous instruments and Chris Penk has that particular type of change in front of him. There's also a range of other areas that I think we should be legislating for. The Minister and his officials have said in the select committee that they're going to be coming back with a whole range of regulations that'll exempt certain areas. Well we've got a whole range of amendments that put in place actual legislative exemptions for those areas. We had submissions for example from people in the agricultural area and in the horticultural area. We had submissions from people—and there's an amendment in my name an amendment that I've put forward because we had submissions about recreational aircraft use. The way it currently sits in the legislation is that if there is an aircraft that uses fuel that does not have gas—not Jet A-1. If it uses fuel that is the normal type of fuel that goes into motor vehicles—[Time expired]"