Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I do appreciate your indulgence. One of the things about being an ACT MP is that there's only 10 of us and so that means we have to work much much harder than any of the other people representing Kiwis. So if I was late to the House here this afternoon to speak on behalf of ACT on this Fuel Industry Amendment Bill you must forgive me. But I promise you I do come well prepared.One of the problems that we have in New Zealand is that we're a very small country of 5 million consumers at the end of a very very long supply chain—very very long supply chain. What that means is that when we need petrol diesel or other liquid fuels like jet fuel we're dependent. At one point it was the Marsden Point Oil Refinery but now we're dependent on imports. So we have to look at what is important to New Zealand—affordability of fuels; security of supply of course—but also what is the opportunity for businesses that supply into New Zealand to come to their own arrangements with customers so that they get the best value?Now when I drive around Auckland I use an app called PriceSpy. What that tells me—Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Gaspy.SIMON COURT: Gaspy. PriceSpy is another tool that you can use to compare the price of consumer goods on the internet. And what Gaspy or Gasp-eye"—I'm not quite sure—Hon Judith Collins: Gaspy it's called.SIMON COURT: —Gaspy I'm told—tells you is that across Auckland there is a difference of around 40c a litre between retailers supplying petrol into the Auckland market. What that tells you is there is competition and that consumers who shop around can find a good deal.Now what this bill proposes to do is essentially establish a regulatory mechanism that would require those who wholesale fuel to New Zealand—so that is the fuel comes in ships it's offloaded either into fuel storage tanks or maybe taken by truck and trailer to fuel storage depots in other parts of the country—like Hamilton for example; you know a bit further away from the ports—and from there it is distributed to retailers. What this bill proposes to do is to put up a sign outside the fuel depot where all the storage tanks are saying how much the petrol will cost that day.If I was running a big construction business and I thought "Crikey there's a depot down the road with some storage tanks where I can go and buy diesel at a certain price" where else could I go and compare that? Well in Auckland we have the Wiri oil storage terminal; that's where fuel is stored in Auckland. There's a few tanks scattered around in other places like up the Tāmaki River. There's no more fuel storage tanks down at the Port of Auckland anymore—they've all gone from Winyard wharf. So where is the competition in the wholesale market? Where is this practically able to be achieved if there's only one place in town I can go and pick up diesel if I have a tanker? It doesn't make any sense to introduce a wholesale regulatory system—or potentially force these businesses to publish wholesale prices—when there is no practical way of going and accessing a competitor's product at a certain price. There is only one Wiri oil storage terminal in Auckland.Then we think: well how do businesses and consumers get the best price? Well if you're using a very large volume of fuel if you're running a commercial trucking business if you're running a construction business and you're putting 200 or 400 litres of diesel into a whole fleet of diggers and bulldozers every day then you can go to your fuel supplier whether it be an ExxonMobil or an Ampol Z Chevron Texaco Waitomo fuels—whoever operates in New Zealand—and you can organise for bulk supply of fuel to your yards to your depots and use that in your machines. And I guarantee if you're buying $1 million a week you're going to get a much better price than if you're buying 100 litres a month. What ACT would say is: look if there is a problem in terms of how much petrol and diesel costs when it's imported into New Zealand and if the Government thinks there is an excessive amount of profit being made by these fuel suppliers—when you look at well crikey it can come into New Zealand at about a dollar something a litre but it's being sold at $2.80—ACT would say the Government needs to look at itself needs to look long and hard in the mirror because almost half the cost of petrol at the pump is fuel excise duties GST and of course charges under the emissions trading scheme (ETS). Everybody who fuels up in New Zealand pays for their emissions—on diesel petrol whatever else they choose to use. Jet fuel—I don't know if they use that in cars; maybe in places like Hamilton and West Auckland where I'm from! They pay for their emissions—right?—under the emissions trading scheme. It's somewhere around 18c 19c 20c a litre. It might be a bit less now because New Zealanders have found a way to reduce their emissions at a lower price and the ETS price has come down. But almost half the cost at the pump is actually cost imposed through regulation: fuel excise duty—that money taken from motorists at the pump—that's supposed to be spent on roads although only about a third of it is spent on capital projects actually building new bridges and new capacity new motorways. About a third is spent on operational expenditure or maintenance of roads and about a third is shandied off to spend on KiwiRail and bike bridges and all kinds of other things that our Green and Labour politicians like to boast about.So look what ACT would say—it's quite simple—if the Government was concerned about reducing the price of fuel and making it more affordable it could do a couple of things. It could stop making stupid regulations that force companies to hold more fuel storage onshore and impose all of those additional costs on them—that are coming through another bill that's been introduced to the House today: the Fuel Industry (Improving Fuel Resilience) Amendment Bill—which could require these companies to build tank storage all around New Zealand even though I'm not sure if Labour realises we're only a few days' sail away from Queensland and other big refineries in Australia. It could stop punishing Kiwis by spending a whole lot of money on stuff like bike bridges over the Auckland Harbour—$100 million spent on designing and planning a bridge that will never be built. Hon Julie Anne Genter: It's not $100 million.SIMON COURT: It's not $100 million my colleague and transport planner Julie Anne Genter says and she does agree with me it is a total waste of money. We can differ on the nickels and dimes but it's a lot of money—it's a lot of money. If they were to reduce their wasteful spending on transport projects that no one asked for and that aren't needed then maybe they could liberate us from the crushing burden of fuel excise duty—and maybe if we take it one step further and we think about what it would look like to transform the road funding and financing system. In fact it's interesting: Julie Anne Genter and I have been getting on so well at public debates that I think it's probably a good time to start an ACT-Green cross-party alliance on transportation planning! I'm pretty sure that we could do a deal. I'll give Aucklanders two or four more lanes and we'll create an extra lane for Julie Anne to ride her bike when she comes to Auckland. I reckon that's a pretty good deal! Even Chris Penk who lives out west where I'm from agrees. But here's the opportunity: instead of beating up the fuel companies and telling them that they're overcharging and threatening to set prices what the Government could do is say "Look we're going to actually transition from collecting fuel excise duties at the pump to a road pricing system that's fair where users of the road network pay per kilometre and per tonnage and how much they're actually doing damage to the roads if they're running heavy trucks. We get rid of fuel excise duty altogether except for the bare minimum. We transition to a system like that over five or six years." That would give Kiwis time to adapt. That would also reveal the fact that a lot of the money being taken by the Government on fuel excise duty isn't being spent on roads. ACT would show how you can actually reallocate funds from kilometres travelled back to the roads that need it. We think that's a much better way. Thank you."