Luxon ChristopherCHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): Well Mr Speaker thank you. Kia orana. It gives me a real buzz to be able to stand here today and talk about the Land Transport (Vehicles Responding to Electrical Emergency) Amendment Bill and I am delighted to take a call on a member's bill in the name of my very energised friend here Simeon Brown the great MP for Pakuranga my neighbouring area.What a fascinating evening it's been because what we've heard from the other side is really a series of excuses for why it's just all a bit too hard. We've got Mr O'Connor who's getting migraine headaches from coloured lights. We've got other people saying it's just a little bit too much work for the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and the member for Northcote and I both know we spend a third of that meeting discussing what's on the morning tea agenda and whether Mr Eagle has secured product from the Chatham Islands or not.Chris Bishop: Is that right?CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Yep. And the third excuse was a classic: it's just an Auckland-only issue. There are only 1.7 million people living there but let's just forget about that! I just think the average New Zealander watching this this evening is looking at this going This is a pretty common sense practical no nonsense straightforward sort of bill and we should be doing it." And I think "Too many lights" "Too much work" and "Just an Auckland-only issue" probably really isn't good enough.If we cut to the chase this is really at the heart of this issue an issue around road congestion and let's just be really honest: in the time of this Government road congestion has gone from 77 hours in 2017 to 95 hours in 2019. That means the average Auckland motorway user is spending almost 2½ work-hour weeks per year in lost productivity just sitting on the motorway going nowhere—up 23 percent; so an incredible loss of daily productivity a huge loss in terms of just inconveniencing people's daily lives as they go to work as they go to get educated as they do a bunch of things. And I can tell you the fine people out in East Auckland who are from Pakuranga and Botany know all about this because they've been paying a regional fuel tax for the last three years and they've got no public transport options there. In fact the only one that was being built was something called the Eastern Busway. It's been going for almost 20 years. It got delayed another two years as a result of—Simeon Brown: Why'd it get delayed?CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well I'm going to tell you why it got delayed: because this city is gridlocked but this Government isn't actually funding critical projects. It likes to talk about it likes to announce stuff likes to allocate budget but it doesn't understand you've actually got to do stuff and how to actually execute things and get things done. But the good news is the $785 million cycle and walking bridge which the member for Northcote has been so excited about for 61 days. I know Mr Wood is calling it a current proposal but it's had a lot of resistance. Did you get that one Mr Seymour? Resistance—another electrical pun.David Seymour: I'm an electrical engineer; I know all about it.CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Yeah it's good. But 61 days and that's now gone. So maybe there's some hope that we can use some of that to get some things done but until fundamentally the Government bins the bridge until it starts investing properly in roads there's no way that we can get vehicles that are responding to electrical emergencies through that gridlock as quickly as we need to.Over the weekend we saw in Auckland some pretty extreme weather events. Trees hit cars fences got blown down power voltage lines came down. It was a really tangible example of what's at issue here. And the bottom line is that this bill is pretty straightforward. When you just zoom out and take a look at it this sort of legislation already exists in places like Sweden and France—very very normal to help vehicles to respond to electrical emergencies really quickly. The proposals that my good colleague is recommending are very targeted small adjustments to the Land Transport Act. We can work out the type of lights we can make sure other motorists pull over and give way as they go through and we've well defined what an electrical emergency situation actually is.As my good colleague pointed out there is a car crash a car hitting a power pole in Auckland every single day on average.Chris Bishop: Every day?CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Every single day. A car hits a power line every single day and that has some pretty grave consequences and if you just think about—I know everyone's being quite flippant about it this evening but there are some really serious things here: people who are relying on power for their health reasons people who are medically dependent on power. They genuinely create life and death consequences. First responders can't respond to accidents until powerlines have been resolved and having Vector trucks or lines companies stuck in traffic before they can actually get to the car or to the victim is a real problem. So as Vector has said this bill will actually save lives and that's quite a serious thing; that's something that we should be really fixated on and we should be able to do something about it.I'd just say to you that these lines mechanics don't bike themselves over the new bicycle bridge—you know for 61 days it's been in existence. They can't walk or they can't catch the bus. So the public transport arguments that our Green member Teanau Tuiono made are interesting but are not particularly helpful. At the end of the day I'd just say that this is an excellent very practical bill. People watching this will say "That is common sense. It makes sense. It's a good thing that would improve my daily life and we de-risk the whole situation." So thank you very much. We commend the bill to the House."