Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): The Minister's brazen confidence in pushing a bill through without actually substantiating the cost of living impacts it will have despite the general policy statement focusing on the cost of living relief that the repeal of the regional fuel tax will have is quite frankly admirable. For a Minister to have campaigned on a transport policy that was fiscally incoherent and then bring a bill into the House claiming that it will have a benefit in terms of the cost of living pressures and yet refusing to actually even present any evidence on how those benefits will be distributed amongst our different communities and not even being able to back up on how the poorest people in Aotearoa will benefit from the repeal of the regional fuel tax let alone how this will lift for example child poverty rates—which the Government is making worse with other bills—speaks to the Government's approach in the past few weeks which is to ram through bills during urgency with absolutely no evidence whatsoever making a mockery of their supposed commitment to using data and evidence. Actually this just speaks of a climate-denialist Government that wants to lock in polluting infrastructure—infrastructure that will make it worse for the people who were affected by the Auckland floods. Effectively what this Government is doing is locking in damaging infrastructure that will prevent people having options while at the same time presenting no alternative for revenue-gathering to be able to fund the clean green public transport infrastructure that we desperately need and we're desperately so behind on and yet all that we have is a repeal that cuts off critical revenue sources and a climate-denialist Minister who actually just wants to condemn people to live in neighbourhoods that are going to be prone to flooding neighbourhoods that actually are not going to be as safe as they could have been for children who need to go to schools. This Minister is leading a generation of the Americanisation of our towns and our cities which is not exactly the kind of urban planning that I think we should be going towards. The Minister should be ashamed that he was not able during the committee of the whole House to substantiate—he couldn't even confirm to us about whether he had done a child impact assessment despite parading the cost of living impacts that this bill would have. But are we surprised? No. At this point I don't think any of us should be shocked at the Minister being unwilling to back his legislation with data and evidence when actually he campaigned on a transport plan that was as I said fiscally incoherent—completely incoherent. So what we are going to have as a result of this bill is a going to be a transport mess. There are going to be more people locked in traffic because this guy thinks that all we need is one more lane and that that will actually fix transport. According to him he's seen plenty of reports that I assume show that in the cities in the US that have taken the approach of just building more lanes and more infrastructure. That has not been proven to actually give people choices or to relieve pressures for those people who do need to use cars and at the same time it increases emissions by locking in years of funding of infrastructure that will make the climate crisis worse. This is a Government that by nature of not providing a sustainable alternative and by the repeal of the regional fuel tax is making the climate crisis worse. Make no mistake: do not doubt the fact that this is a Government that is not committing to public transport infrastructure despite people—particularly in areas like Auckland—being very very well aware that our public transport system is not fit for purpose and needs a Government that is seriously committed to locking in generations of funding and to having a serious reliable funding stream that does not become a political football. This Government is not taking the climate crisis or the lack of public transport seriously in the repeal of the regional fuel tax and it's a Government that does clearly not care about actually fronting up about who is going to benefit the most and to what extent despite passing through legislation earlier that will make 7000 kids poorer and push them into poverty. The Minister couldn't substantiate whether this bill will lift some of those 7000 children out of poverty. Despite again being told that we should wait for those other interventions that will help people this was supposed to be one of those and yet clearly the Minister cannot back any of this up with evidence. This will simply make future generations poorer by making the climate crisis worse.