Jones ShaneHon SHANE JONES (Associate Minister of Transport): I just want listeners to be reminded that the name of this bill is the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill 2018 because what the House has been served up by the Opposition are a whole host of speeches that veer wildly into the territory of irrelevancy. Let's just go back to basics. This is a Government that has striven to achieve sustainable growth and long-term investment in capital assets that will continue to generate public benefit societal efficiency and economic progress. But that cannot be done in the absence of access to capital.Now we can have all of the fables and the fairy stories from the other side of the House but the deep reality is that this is a bill that enables the people of Auckland now to watch a pipeline of projects come into being. Let's also remind ourselves about some of the arithmetic and not these fictitious stories about Manurewa and South Auckland—strange and alien territory to the other side of the House—not these fictitious stories about how this will disappear on pet projects. This contributes to the $28 billion which is an amalgam of funding between Auckland Council and central Government. It also enables Auckland's projects to be expedited. In actual fact the origins of the Waterview tunnel go a long way back before Steven Joyce. That was the subject of great debate. In fact I think my ministerial colleague Mr Twyford would recall it was an item driven by a certain politician who had her office in Sandringham: her name was Helen Clark. She was unable however to secure any endorsement during that period of bleak history when Don Brash for a mercifully short period of time spread his baleful influence upon New Zealand society. Those days have long now since disappeared. The $28 billion—$150 million per year—enables the council to drive through projects that have followed an open democratic transparent process. Of course my lament is that we need to see a similar level of lucidity in other regions around New Zealand but I've been assured by the senior transport Minister such pleasure awaits us.Let's carry on because it's important that listeners realise we must not fall victim to scaremongering or half-baked truths. There is no way that Auckland can unlock its potential unless it can move goods and services and people around. As the projects grow in terms of public service transport more people—indeed like my good self for a period of time. When I wasn't in the tropics I was in Auckland. I was a regular user of the train service and I abandoned the car. We need to see more of that. I mean if it's good enough for a 58-year-old Dalmatian Māori from Kaitāia to catch the train I spread the pleasure but that pleasure is not accessible in the absence of pūtea to actually fund these issues.Now let's just continue. There have been some concerns amongst my friends out in Pukekohe the market gardens and my fellow hunters and gatherers of Tangaroa the fishing industry both recreational and commercial that the rebate system inside this proposed piece of legislation is not fit for task. That's why we thoroughly endorse what the Minister said during the second stage when the House considered this bill. He is bringing forward in short order a body of work that will enable the inefficiencies and the areas that have to be refined in terms of a broad rebate system. It will deal to not only the challenges of implementing this particular impost but also the entirety of the country. So I say to the potato-growers and onion-growers that not only will I look forward to defending your elite soils destroyed by Nick Smith under the last regime but there will be an efficient process to ensure that people who feel that too much of the fuel that they're purchasing with this impost they cannot claim back through a robust rebate system. So the bill does deal with that and the Minister is going to go on to make further announcements.Other specious remarks that have been made about this are that it'll spread like some sort of uncontrollable weed some sort of fiscal wisteria from Spirits Bay to Foveaux Strait. In actual fact that is never going to happen in the short term and there is a robust process before this regional impost can be spread into other regions but this bill allows that decision to be made by the people of that region. What is wrong with that local democracy? What is wrong with that participatory democracy? I've no doubt that a whole host of members on the other side of the House—because they're quietly telling business as business goes to see them Can you give us your perspective?"—are already saying "Oh these changes that are being implemented by the Jacinda Ardern - led coalition Government we're not going to be able to unravel all of them but we say the opposite in the House." They're saying that in Kaikohe Whangarei Eketahuna already—we know these things. So it is wrong for the myth to be perpetuated that this is an impost that will travel indiscriminately around the regions. There is a robust process for the current impost to be spread and so it should be. It should be tested.Let's think about some of the projects that the Minister has identified that will capture the attention of the allocators of this pūtea. Number one they have to be publicly acknowledged. They have to go through a robust process and the process is going to test whether it is a quality and a quantity of development that would not already have happened—so that's additionality. This is taking the way in which we fund and the way we can afford these additional developments in Auckland to another level and that's a hallmark of how transportation issues are being thought about by this Government. It's a Government that's willing through this bill to take a risk and make a bold decision—sure and be socked on the chin once or thrice as a consequence of misinformation but that's politics. But no one will be able to say come 2020 that this was not a Government that stood up allocated a substantial amount of money out of the central government fund augmented by local government funding in Auckland and added as a topping on top of this fine Betty Crocker cake recipe otherwise known as Auckland transport planning this additional funding. It's something worth fighting for.This bill is going to be substantially supported by our party. We are a party that also wants to see the benefits spread to the more provincial aspects of the broader super-city region. Every time that I have been invited to speak about this I have reminded not only my colleagues in the House but the leaders of local government in that area that you have areas such as Wellsford Warkworth right down into Tainui country. And I've absolute confidence that Mr Goff as he wanders around planting his million trees in those areas—with some modest assistance from my good self not exclusively rhetorical—will actually plant some of the fiscal seeds to improve bus services and to improve other services so that those areas feel connected to Auckland.In the absence of pūtea you don't get connectivity. In the absence of pūtea you can't put down the transportation infrastructure to allow people to move into new areas around Auckland and enjoy the experience of owning an affordable property because those properties cannot exist in the absence of up-to-date extensive infrastructure. And this is a Government that is ambitious for infrastructure. This is a Government that is willing to boldly move into this territory. It was originally promoted by one of our finest parliamentarians: Michael Cullen. And then in a spirit and an act of mean-spiritedness it was struck down arbitrarily by a former transport Minister who was possessed of a vision that the country needed to be covered in four-lane tarmac. That man is gone. We have a new Minister. We support this bill."