Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Well that was a very very negative speech I feel from the member for Botany. In my comments I want to focus more on the positive pro-growth vision that this Government has for Auckland's transport system and the plan and the funding that we are delivering through this very important piece of legislation—something that the former Government failed to do in its nine years of Government.Just before moving on to that I do want to reflect on the member for Botany's comment that the previous National Government had a nine-year track record of delivering for transport in Auckland. I reflected on this a little bit and I thought Well let's see what the National Party's friends thought of that. That's always an interesting place to go—DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'd really rather that the member focused on the bill. Third readings are—MICHAEL WOOD: I'm about to launch into defining the problems that the bill is attempting to solve and that's by talking about the serious congestion that Auckland faces. I'm doing that by way of reference to a report that the Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA) commissioned last year—an independent report produced by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research which assessed the congestion crisis that Auckland faces. Here's what it said. It said that 24 percent of the arterial network in Auckland was congested in the December 2016 quarter up from 18 percent in the same period two years ago. Kim Campbell the Chief Executive of the EMA said "What business is telling us and what we're seeing in the numbers is that congestion has worsened exponentially in the past three to five years." He noted that businesses had hired 20 percent more staff to carry out the same work and trucking firms were making fewer runs and taking longer to do so creating a 30 percent productivity loss.The Chief Executive of the National Road Carriers association David Aitken said that the number of cross-town trips possible for transport firms in a working day had halved in that period to only slightly more than three over the previous three years from 2014 to 2017. In the report he noted that the journey from Pakuranga to the CBD had increased by 21 minutes or 45 percent and "it's going to get worse."In the same report the average speeds on Auckland's arterial roads were: Tristram Ave in the Northcote electorate 13 kilometres an hour at peak hour; Khyber Pass in the Auckland Central electorate 18 kilometres an hour; Tiverton-Wolverton and Maioro Street in the New Lynn electorate 20 kilometres an hour. Auckland is a wonderful growing city but it is choking on its growth because of a failure to invest in the transport infrastructure that we need and this Government says we need to keep looking forward. We heard in the previous speaker's comments a lot about the Waterview tunnel. That was a project that was supported by all sides of the House and it's great. It's made an improvement but that simply doesn't solve Auckland's transport problems. We've had recent media reports that say that by November of last year we were already back to the same congestion that we had before the Waterview tunnel.This bill is about a vision for finally unlocking Auckland. It's about putting forward a clear plan and it's about actually funding it. You need all three of those things if we finally want to get Auckland moving. The vision that we have as I said is a pro-growth vision to get Auckland moving by giving Aucklanders real transport choice. What we know at the moment is that too many Aucklanders simply don't have that choice. The previous speaker Mr Jami-Lee Ross quite incorrectly stated that the proposed light-rail plan from the city centre of Auckland through to the airport apparently magically won't go through South Auckland. Well the news for him is that it actually does. There's a big part of South Auckland between the city centre and the airport and the people of Māngere Bridge and Māngere currently do not have access to modern high-quality mass transit in our city.It is this 10-year plan that the Government is delivering through the agreement that we have with Auckland Council that will actually deliver people those choices in every single part of our city; whether it's those people in Māngere and Māngere Bridge who will have access to light rail; whether it's the fast-growing north-west of Auckland—massive growth happening in that area: tens of thousands of new properties planned and we're going to deliver the modern high-quality light rail to give those people real transport choices; whether it's the eastern suburbs of Auckland the electorates of Pakuranga and Botany currently the worst-served areas for quality public transport in the whole of our region. The plans that this Government has will open up options for high-quality public transport through dedicated busways into those communities and give those people real choices about how they move around and it will free up our roads for the people that need to drive and the freight that needs to use those roads.The other key part of the vison that we have here is a vision of safe and vibrant communities. Over the past five years the number of serious injuries and deaths on Auckland's roads has skyrocketed by 60 percent. That is a scandal. That is real people losing their lives; real people being injured because the previous Government forgot to invest in the safety that we need in a growing city. This plan specifically funded from the regional fuel tax puts the investment in to make sure we have safer streets for our communities to make sure that our kids have the options to walk and cycle safely to school as many of us did but it's simply not safe to do so these days because of the congestion because of the traffic on our roads.The plan that we are delivering supported by this bill supported by the $4.3 billion of extra transport investment this bill leverages will make Auckland's roads safer it will make our communities more vibrant it will make our businesses more efficient and it will finally deal with that issue of congestion—the sheer frustration that 1.5 million Aucklanders face every single day on our roads: 1.5 million Aucklanders are crying out for a Government to finally do something about this problem.Most importantly this plan funds those projects because it's all very well to get up in this House and talk about what you're going to do to put some ideas down on a piece of paper but unless you front up with the funding it don't count for anything. That is the status of the projects that were tabled by the previous Government in its dying days in August of last year. This project funds the Auckland Transport Alignment Project—a $28 billion package—by leveraging the regional fuel tax.It is time for some vision for Auckland. It is time to unclog our roads. It is time to give people real transport choices. After nine years of drift this Government is taking action and this bill is at the centre of it. I commend it to the House. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker."