Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well thank you very much Mr Speaker and it's my pleasure to speak in support of this New Zealand Infrastructure Commission/Te Waihanga Bill one which members of parties across this House have supported because fundamentally it's a reasonably sensible idea to set up an independent group to provide some input and insight into decision making around major infrastructure projects in New Zealand. I had an early start this morning going in to speak at the Mood of the Boardroom and I'm bound to say at that particular function there was a high deal of frustration expressed at the lack of progress on infrastructure in this country. So this commission will help to a degree to the extent to which it provides insights into how to go about assessing what's going to be important what's going to be useful what isn't and how you procure it. The suggestion that we made that has been picked up by the Government—and I'm pleased that they have—is that we should extend its information powers to local government. It was very odd that the bill was introduced in this space without being able to get into local government where a big chunk of the infrastructure is actually done. So we tidied that up and it makes reasonable sense. It's interesting to hear the Minister for Infrastructure referring to the chief executive going about setting up his office already. We haven't passed the bill but anyway that's how this Government works: they haven't passed the legislation but they've already appointed the board and the chief executive and they're working. So maybe it's a bit of retrospective legislation that we're passing in order to get the cart before the horse. However the main concern I have of course is that the extent to which this commission will be useful is the extent to which the future politicians can put some level of discipline around their decision making. So what we saw as a forerunner which the Minister mentioned is the Auckland Transport Alignment Project whereby the council and the Government listed a series of projects that they saw as important for the Auckland region. But what happened when this Government came in is that they threw a bunch of them out and changed all the order around. So the third rail which is an essential piece of infrastructure in Auckland to enable the commuter trains to keep running without having to stop every half an hour for a great freight train to go through—that doesn't seem to be happening. Nothing's happening. What's happening with that Minister? Nothing and yet they're spending hundreds and hundreds of millions on rail in funny places where it's hard to understand. So the biggest rail project doesn't seem to be happening. Then of course we have the circumstance of the Government coming in cancelling a whole lot of projects that were ready to go and replacing them with a whole lot of projects that aren't ready to go and won't be for a long time. So we have a great infrastructure hole opening up over the next two or three years which is of serious concern. Now this Government of course can't even agree amongst itself about the slow tram down Dominion Road. We know New Zealand First don't like it; Labour and the Greens love it. So that inability to come up with decision making internally is not going to be helped by an infrastructure commission and ultimately it comes down to the political choices that are made. So if a Government comes in like this one and changes the Government policy statement on transport removes any reference to reducing congestion and it's driven by two Ministers: the first Julie Anne Genter who will never yield to car fascists and secondly the Minister of Transport himself Phil Twyford who thinks we've over-invested in roads—when you have got those sorts of highly ideological attitudes towards infrastructure investment you're always going to struggle to have to provide that long-term consistency over 30 years which is indeed what the Minister is referring to because you keep on chopping and changing on a regular basis. So my only plea in supporting this bill—and wishing Mr Bollard and the rest of the team all success in coming up with some logic and some careful consideration about infrastructure priorities for this country in the next little while and wishing them all the success—is I do wish to encourage members on the other side of the House to be a little bit more pragmatic about the decision making that they make and to actually listen to what the Infrastructure Commission says. On that basis I commend this bill to the House.