Bennett David: Urgent Debates — Transport Funding—Replacement of Regional Fuel Tax with Increased Fuel Excise Duty and Road-user Charges 
Bennett David: Urgent Debates — Transport Funding—Replacement of Regional Fuel Tax with Increased Fuel Excise Duty and Road-user Charges 
[Volume:653;Page:1992] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 Following on from that great speech from the member for Otaki Nathan Guy who has delivered for the people in his electorate I say we need to look at some of the arguments that have been going on about this issue. The Labour Party has been saying the rest of the country will pay for Auckland’s roads. If Labour members had gone to the select committee they would have found out that the rest of the country made submissions against the regional petrol taxes. The rest of the country put in submission after submission against the regional petrol taxes. 
Moana Mackey 
: That’s not true. 
DAVID BENNETT 
: The member should check the records; that is what happened. The reason that happened is that the previous Labour Government in its approach of knowing best told the regions how they had to split the regional petrol tax. The regions had to split the tax so that 5c went into public transport and 5c into roading. 
Paul Quinn 
: They did not want that. 
DAVID BENNETT 
: The reason the regions did not want that is that they saw no need for 5c to go to public transport in some regions. There was no need for that. 
The regions wanted to use that money for what they were talking about. If people were talking about Southland and its roading network they would not have been talking about having a train go from one part of Southland to the other; they would have wanted the money to be used on their local roads. The regions wanted to have that discretion. The rest of the country made submissions against the regional fuel taxes because the regions wanted to have discretion to decide how to spend the money. It is a bit rich for Labour members to come into this House now and say the rest of the country wanted that proposal. Members should go back and consider what was actually said by those in the regions. The regions did not want that proposal. 
The Waikato Expressway in the Waikato region is an example of that. That is a road that the Labour Government would not have funded and would not have built. We did not hear the Labour members say that in all their commentary today. They have not mentioned that road because they know they had no chance of delivering it; they had no plan and no funding for it. The National Government has made a commitment to build that road and we will build it—this is the first step in building it. That road is the biggest payback my region has received from central government for many many years. It has taken 9 years to get rid of the previous Government so that we can deliver for the people of the Waikato. We will deliver and we have delivered. 
The second part of Labour’s argument is that the Government is increasing the nationwide petrol tax. Labour was going to do that anyway; it was going to charge another 4.5c anyway. So it is rich for Labour members to come into this House and say the national petrol tax cannot be increased when they were going to increase it. It was their plan to increase the national taxes on top of the regional taxes so Labour members cannot come into this House and say they are not aware of that. In fact during Labour’s term in office it substantially increased the national petrol taxes. Labour increased those taxes time and time again so it cannot come in here and cry foul now when that is what it did for 9 years. 
The transport issues in Auckland have been raised by Labour members. Members have to look at that issue in the sense that if someone was in business would that person own a railway network—KiwiRail—and then pay for two other organisations to run rail networks within the same network that the person owned? A person would not do that; it does not make any business sense for somebody to do that. I think Minister Joyce needs to be complimented on his business sense for putting all the rail network together so that we can have the best possible public transport system and freight system in New Zealand. That will bring efficiencies to the system. It will mean that we can provide new initiatives in public and passenger transport through the rail network because it has been put together in a more efficient basket rather than being spread out and having different organisations funded to run the same thing. What the Minister has done makes good commercial sense and we applaud him for making that decision. 
The last thing I will talk about is what the Greens say about roading. They say that roading is not good. When one looks at what will happen in 10 years’ time one sees that the cleanest greenest form of transport will be electric cars on roads. It will not be dirty trains; it will be clean green transport on roads through the use of electric cars. The National Government is setting up New Zealand to have a clean green economy for the future. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.