Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. I am very proud like the previous speaker Ron Mark of the transport policy that we announced yesterday. It's finally going to deliver the 21st century transport system that New Zealanders have been asking for for decades. Of course for the last nine years unfortunately while they had petrol taxes and road-user charges being increased the lion's share of the new investment was going into just a few highways mainly in urban areas. Let's see where those roads of national significance were. Oh—billions of dollars in Auckland Wellington Christchurch Hamilton and Tauranga. So that must be why there was such a massive decline in the funding available for local roads and regional roads over the last nine years—because there was. There was a massive decline in the funding in regions like Bay of Plenty in—OK I've got to get my list here—Northland Chatham Islands Gisborne Hawke's Bay Southland Taranaki and West Coast.So all of those regions—producing regions where they have milk tankers and other important freight and tourism going on local and regional roads—were completely neglected under the National Government's policy of pouring all of the money into a few uneconomic highway projects. The worst part is they actually made traffic worse in the urban areas as we knew that they would. We could have spent that money across the entire nation.Now Jami-Lee Ross was saying a little bit earlier that there was a $5 billion reduction in the State highways category over 10 years and that that would have been spent in the regions. I have bad news for Jami-Lee Ross because about half of that was just going to go on a few kilometres of highway in Auckland—the East-West Link. Yet for half the cost of the East-West Link we could afford to put median barriers on every kilometre of State highway in this country.Now I know the Opposition struggles with analytical analysis reasoning and quantitative analysis so I've done some numbers for them because clearly they read their little talking notes and they get all outraged but if they actually looked at the Budget that we are proposing they would see that their constituents are going to benefit much more because we have a 20 percent increase in State highway maintenance and a 20 percent increase in local road maintenance—almost a doubling over 10 years of investment in local roads. Why is that important? Because half—half—of all car and truck journeys all vehicle kilometres travelled in the country are on local roads and yet over the last nine years that National Government was spending three to four times as much on State highways as on local roads. How can that make sense? How can it make sense to spend three to four times as much on State highways when half of all the trips are on local roads and in fact those local roads have to be subsidised by ratepayers?No wonder we have ill-maintained roads across the country. No wonder we have washouts up in Northland. No wonder we have a disastrous catastrophic number of serious injuries and deaths on our roads increasing every year for the last five years because there was a reduction in road policing and a reduction in road safety improvements on roads all over the country just to pay for a few kilometres of upgraded highway in Auckland Wellington Christchurch Tauranga and Hamilton that hasn't even given people what they actually want.Now I can tell the Opposition that the people of Hamilton are absolutely thrilled that we're finally pursuing a passenger rail service between Hamilton and Auckland that might enable people to get to Auckland in a reasonable amount of time because after the more than $2 billion they spent on the Waikato Expressway it just gets people driving to the queue in South Auckland 10 to 20 minutes sooner so they can just wait in traffic in Auckland longer.So finally we have a smart investment in transport and I don't doubt that all New Zealanders are going to see the benefit. And let's talk about those road-user charge and fuel tax increases because do you know how much they're going to cost? Less than one cup a coffee a week for the average household—even in Auckland—after three years. I think that's a great deal to finally have a 21st century transport system that gives real choices to people: safe walking and cycling to school for our kids which is good for their health and good for traffic; real public transport and rapid transit options between our towns and cities. Kia ora Mr Speaker.