Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. Well it's good to hear the member who's just resumed her seat Ginny Andersen endorsing the National Government's retrofit programme for State housing—fantastic. We're still waiting for the 400 KiwiBuild homes in the Hutt but no doubt they'll be along before the election.I want to cover the five elements in Budget 2020 as they relate to transport. I want to talk about shovel-ready projects. I want to talk about Auckland light rail talk about the New Zealand Upgrade Programme. I want to talk about KiwiRail. And I want to talk finally in my remarks about the fuel tax because the increase in fuel tax is due in this coming financial year starting on 1 July.Let's first talk about shovel-ready projects. Now Budget 2020 contains the COVID response and recovery fund". It's got a funkier name than that but that's basically what it is. It's a $50 billion fund to make sure that we recover and respond to COVID19. Included within that are going to be shovel-ready projects and my question to the Parliament is: where are they? When is the Government going to tell us exactly what they're funding? Critically—this is my second question—will they be sensible projects? Because there's about 1300 all around the country that the councils have bid in—local smaller councils larger councils; in fact there's a range of private sector projects that have been bid in as well and we've got Mark Binns and the infrastructure reference group going through them. We've got to make sure that the spending is value for money.Now here in the National Party—and as National's new infrastructure spokesperson and spokesperson for transport—we're all in favour of sensible infrastructure projects that move the dial that make it easier to get around our cities make it easier to transport freight to and from our export ports. We're all in favour of those projects. But my fear is that what we're going to see from the Government will be low-value projects that don't actually move the dial and don't represent good value for money.And then of course you say "Well OK it's fine to have the shovel-ready projects." That's all good. There's about $3 billion flagged in the Budget. Some of them are coming at some point. We were told a few weeks ago they'd be ready by now; presumably we'll get them at some point in the future. But of course we worry on this side of the House about the history of lack of delivery from this Government. Because when it comes to critical infrastructure projects and when it comes to transport projects more generally this Government—as it does in so many areas whether it's child poverty or housing as I mentioned at the start of my contribution—they talk a big game but they don't actually deliver. My point is talk is cheap; actually it's the delivery that matters and that's what New Zealanders want to focus on.So that brings me to the second point I want to cover which is the debacle and the train wreck that is Auckland light rail. Now members will remember this was a key election promise in 2017 of the incoming Ardern administration. It was promised that it would be under way to Mount Roskill by 2021 which is only a year away and we found out today after a bit of back and forth with Mr Twyford that the last time he took a paper to Cabinet on it was June. I asked him "Well June of what year?" And it turns out it was June last year. Cabinet hasn't considered the matter for about a year so as of now in late May 2020 we have no consents no business case no funding no delivery partner no route. We don't even know if it will be heavy rail or a monorail-type structure along Dominion Road on the way out to the airport. In fact we don't even know if it'll be to the airport. There is actually a real lack of clarity around that. It's called City Centre to Māngere and Mr Twyford likes to talk about going to the airport but actually there's a bit of confusion around that.So OK good luck Mr Twyford. If you can build you know 20 kilometres' worth of a tram network in a year's time I will give you that and say congratulations. But I'm putting it to the House: that is not going to happen. In fact we found out today from Winston Peters the Deputy Prime Minister there's no plans to build it in the immediate term. This project is dead. It's absolutely dead—first election promise from the Labour leader now Prime Minister the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern. This project is going nowhere. We add it to the long litany of failures that Phil Twyford and Julie Anne Genter have overseen in the transport area: no projects started cancelled roads funding gutted out of the transport budget and light rail—the flagship promise—nowhere to be seen. Nowhere to be seen just an absolute train wreck a real disaster.Let me talk about the New Zealand Upgrade Programme because basically what happened between the last two years and then over the summer break is the National Party won the argument about roads. We said for two years you cannot cut $5 billion out of the State highway budget and expect there to be no consequence of that whatsoever. They cut $5 billion over 10 years out of the State highway budget and what was the response? Well immediately projects that were on the books got cancelled—the term was "re-evaluated" and they're still you know sitting in the ether somewhere on the New Zealand Transport Agency website. But let's be frank about it let's be upfront: they were cancelled or delayed. I'm thinking of projects like the Melling interchange—Hon Member: Waikato Expressway.CHRIS BISHOP: —in the Hutt or Pētone to Grenada or the Cambridge to Piarere section of the Waikato Expressway—and my good friend Tim van de Molen's—four lanes from Christchurch to Ashburton as Andrew Falloon likes to talk about. I know Matt King is very keen on four lanes up north as well. In fact the East-West Link that's another one that associate transport Minister Julie Anne Genter liked to criticise all the time. All these projects are simply re-evaluated and delayed and that's simply because of the $5 billion funding cut to the State highway budget. And so the National Party we did our petitions we did our criticism we ran those campaigns. Phil Twyford spent most of the last two years talking about how we'd over-invested roads. He was not going to give way. He was not going to give way. They were gold-plated roads! They were unnecessary! We'd spent too much on highways we'd spent too much on motorways! They were uneconomic! The National Party was obsessed with roads! Blah blah blah. We heard it all before—he spent most of six years saying it. And then what did we get in February? A big spend-up on roads: $6.8 billion announced for new National Party roads. Melling interchange back on the table Cambridge to Piarere—well that's actually not on the table but we've got at least one section of it we got some parts of it—and a whole bunch of spending around the country. I know this drives the Green Party absolutely demented. They cannot cope with the fact that the Government lost the political argument on roads and they're finally funding these.Our argument the simple argument of the National Party is: you should not have wasted two years. These projects could have been gotten on with right away. I'm not saying they'd all have been built straight away. Obviously you can't build everything overnight. But what a waste of two years and what a destruction of the construction sector pipeline. The pipeline of projects—and I know for a fact from my talking to the industry there are people out there working on roads right now who expected there to be a pipeline and that pipeline was destroyed pretty much overnight by the Labour Government's government policy statement on transport. That has caused enormous harm to the pipeline of projects. And now they're back on the table and we welcome that. We welcome them being back on the table. Doing the Melling interchange 2022—that's fantastic. We welcome that. That's good news. But the delay and the chaos in transport policy is really regrettable.Fourthly just briefly on KiwiRail: $1.2 billion in this Budget. And we ask: is that really the best value for money from a use of $1.2 billion? We've seen the opening of the Napier to Wairoa line—$23.3 million to reopen the Napier to Wairoa line I think it is. Guess how many trains have gone down it?Hon Member: Surely every day.CHRIS BISHOP: No three. Not three a day. Three. Not three a week. Not three a month. Three. Three trains have been down that line. It's $3 million a train. And these guys like to say to us that we are you know—$3 million a train it's a waste of money. And of course Gisborne to Napier: the Government has finally after campaigning to open it and being told by Julie Anne Genter for nine years that this was an enormous destruction of taxpayer wealth and it was an amazing train line—even KiwiRail and the Government have admitted that that is an uneconomic line. But of course giving $1.2 billion to KiwiRail some of that investment will make a difference. Some of it will be sensible. But just a big lump sum $3.6 billion over the last three years we really query.In my final minute I want to talk about the fuel tax because this Government came into power and they immediately lifted the fuel—well firstly they put in place the Auckland regional fuel tax 10c plus GST and then they put in place the three fuel tax rises. We had one last July we had one in July the year before that and now we've got another one coming on 1 July. And my simple point is the reason we had the fuel tax increases put in place was in part to pay for the enormous multibillion-dollar cost to pay for light rail to pay for the Crown taking over that project—well it's dead. It's not happening. And of course coupled with that we're in a time of enormous economic crisis. Households are going to be under pressure. Yes we accept the wage subsidy scheme's done a great job but households are going to be under enormous pressure in the coming weeks and months and we think it's time the Government bit the bullet and deferred that fuel tax increase scheduled for 1 July. You can expect to hear more from us on that in due course. Thank you Madam Speaker."