Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. There's no question that many Aucklanders are very concerned about traffic congestion. They've seen our city growing rapidly. It's a dynamic prosperous city which is growing and becoming more and more like an international first-class multinational city but as a consequence of that we have seen more congestion and so everybody I think is conscious of the fact that we need more investment in transport right across the board from roads through to public transport and also to cycling.Now the reasons for this are long standing. It never ceases to amaze me that people are surprised that there's congestion on the Southern Motorway when it was built with two lanes each way in the late 1960s and since then the population has probably quadrupled even more in South Auckland and yet there are parts where it's still two lanes each way and—surprise surprise!—we have congestion. So over many many decades we as a country have not kept up with the road investment that we needed to make.The previous National Government after a long period of neglect really turned the taps on and started to do the work that needed to be done as we saw with the Waterview tunnel as we saw with the massive investment in particularly rail public transport the electrification of the trains and the many roading projects—the Northern Busway; a whole lot of things that were done that have helped to alleviate the pressure but the growing population has continued to add to it.So I suppose the point I would be making is that yes this National Party agrees and most Aucklanders would agree that we need to continue to invest in transport infrastructure across Auckland to reflect the fast-growing nature of that city which is something that broadly speaking we celebrate and that needs to be done. The question then is: how should it be paid for? I think the sense that most Aucklanders have is that they already pay enough taxes to deal with this issue and if you look at the average litre of petrol that people buy at the pump currently there's 66c of excise. Then when you add the GST to that and then the GST to the whole thing they're getting close to $1—not far off $1—in taxes and excises of the roughly $2 a litre that you're paying already.Now this bill wants to crank even more on and with this regional tax in conjunction with the broader petrol taxes that are being proposed we could be looking at an extra 25c a litre in terms of taxes. So probably at current prices you'd be seeing that more than half of the cost of the petrol that goes into the pump is in taxes.Hon Shane Jones: Scaremongering—scaremongering.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: It's not scaremongering; it's the truth. So people are naturally concerned that this is just another way of getting more and more money out of their pockets and there is a natural frustration given the fact that there are potential other sources of funding for the investment that's required. The most obvious one that was referred to is that the $150 million that this extra regional fuel tax is supposed to bring in is about roughly the same amount that the Mayor of Auckland promised to find in savings in his rather bloated Auckland Council bureaucracy. He promised to do it; he hasn't done it and everybody who lives in Auckland and looks around at what Auckland Council is doing believes quite strongly that there is potential for significant savings there.We are also frustrated by the ideological approach of this Government to not really looking at private-sector funding or co-funding or public-private partnerships in the roading network and being closed-minded to that in many respects—Hon Phil Twyford: No we're very open to it—very open to it.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well let's see—lots of talk but we haven't seen any evidence of it yet. And then there's also a concern about the sort of ideological nature of the spending and what we've seen is they've been very quick to shut down important roading projects such as the East-West Link which was almost ready to go and they've been replaced with—Hon Phil Twyford: Most expensive road in human history.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: And we would've been very impressed if you could've found a more effective way to do it but it's been replaced by other projects such as trams down Dominion Road which may or may not take effect in five or six years' time once they've figured out what the route is and where it's going to go and how it's going to help. So you're taking away things that were ready to go now and are replacing them with things that may be ready to go in five or six years' time—DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'm not—I'm not.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Sorry; the Minister is. So people look at that and they wonder whether the Government is actually focused on them and their needs which is the desire to reduce congestion. So there's not a great deal of trust that's emerging amongst the public and particularly the people of Auckland about the effectiveness with which this Government spends its money.We're also acutely aware that these extra petrol taxes will add to the cost of living and Aucklanders in particular are nervous about that at an expensive time. They see their rents going up all the time because every week that passes the Government passes some new way of putting up the price making it more expensive for landlords to run their properties and eventually that flows through to rents. Of course all the other regions are looking at this and thinking Well that's nice to see Aucklanders paying more tax." but they worry in the back of their minds that it'll be them next. Next the knock on the door will happen to them and they'll be after their money as well. It all adds up and it adds to the cost of business.I suppose another aspect of this is that it is yet one more contributor to the plummeting or falling or collapsing—I don't know what's the best adjective—business confidence in this country because we've seen survey after survey show that business confidence is falling in New Zealand at a time when this economy should be growing rapidly. We've got high terms of trade the global economy is picking up we should be going gangbusters and yet a crisis of confidence is starting to develop.Hon Shane Jones: Fiction! Fiction!Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Notwithstanding some Ministers saying they're all junk. They're not junk. Particularly where they relate to specific investment intentions of businesses over the next 12 months they have actually proved to be very accurate over time. And one of the major concerns is the continual adding of costs to businesses. This petrol tax is one of them and you can't deny it. It's going to be coming in in a few days' time and every courier pack every truck every concrete truck that's delivering the concrete that's needed to grow the houses—all these things—every gallon of milk that's carried to the supermarket everything that is transported physically has to be paid for in extra fuel prices and that all adds to the cost of business. When you add that to all the uncertainty around industrial relations around oil and gas and around the general attitude of this Government towards business the general attitude of them which is to say—Hon Phil Twyford: Oh what a lot of scaremongering.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: As the Minister's colleague Mr Lees-Galloway said to businesses if you don't like it well maybe you're not resilient enough to be in business and maybe you should go and do something else. That sort of attitude is something that's not helping.So yes we agree absolutely with the Minister that we want to see more investment in transport infrastructure in Auckland. And we would hold hands and celebrate with him every advance he makes towards that goal if he made sensible and practical suggestions. But what we are questioning and what we are not at all convinced by and what most Aucklanders are not convinced by is the fact that we need to dig even deeper into the pockets of Aucklanders to pay for this when we've already got our hands so far in their pockets that we should be able to get enough money already. And we want to have some level of confidence that the money that they're collecting already is being spent wisely. And there has been nothing to indicate so far that that is the case. And so we oppose this bill and we want Aucklanders to have the investment in transport that they need and we know that they are having enough taxes and excise collected from them already right now here today to be able to get the job done if the Government does it effectively and efficiently.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just before I call the next speaker I was negligent—we don't actually have a motion. So the question is that the motion be agreed to."