Hobbs Marian: Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Hobbs Marian: Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:623;Page:18419] 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 I rise in support of the Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill and I want to make the point that the bill is necessary because when we came in as Government 5½ years ago we faced an extraordinary deficit in transport infrastructure. Speaking as a member for Wellington Central I think we felt it absolutely and particularly. We had broken-down railways. We had obsolete railway cars or train cars. We were in an absolutely appalling situation. So this 5c per litre indexed to inflation from 1 April 2006 is there for growing the National Land Transport Fund. We want it for road safety administration. Unlike the Opposition I have knocked on doors in my electorate and have had people tell me they are nervous about travelling up the road to the Kapiti coast because of Centennial Highway and the lack of safety on it. They did not tell me they were nervous of being assaulted in their homes. They told me they were nervous about going on Sunday drives. Issues of road safety are very important in this country particularly for those of us who live in Wellington. So I absolutely support continued money going into road safety administration. 
My experience over Christmas as I drove up north before I canoed down the Whanganui River was that I saw only one idiot overtaking on a yellow line. That was a change and an improvement in what I normally face when driving on some of the highways in New Zealand. I think there has been an improvement in road safety because it has been forced on people. 
The second issue is passenger transport. This is the one issue that has been ignored and it is why I thank the Greens. They have done a tremendous amount of work in bringing this to our attention. We are very fortunate in Wellington because I think about 33 percent of our population actually uses public transport to travel to work. But when public transport starts to fail one starts to lose and that has been the problem in Auckland. So we have to build confidence in the whole notion of public transport. This is what this sort of money is about—building confidence in public transport so that we have other alternatives to road. It is about changing attitudes. 
Then we have to build roads; boy do we have to build roads! We have to make the roads safe we have to make them secure and we have to do something about finding other ways out of Wellington. That is all work that has to be done. It cannot be done unless it is funded and that is what this legislation is about. 
I say to the United Future member that New Zealand is lightly taxed. If we talk to people who have worked overseas in other countries and I have family who have worked in other countries at fairly senior levels of administration they always make the point that we are ranked 12th lowest among 30 OECD countries—remember that as we go there. But this is a dedicated tax. It is not a tax disappearing into anywhere; it is a tax for transport. But we do not take United Future’s support for granted. I therefore move accept and support very much the second reading of the Customs and Excise (Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill.