King Annette: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: General Debate[Sitting date: 26 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11290. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai):I have to ask the question: why is that member not in Cabinet? Why is Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga not a member of the Cabinet when it put in other members who do not have the gravitas and the intellect of the member who has just spoken? No wonder he is an unhappy member of that caucus. He is looking at a party that saw a drop of 6 percent in one poll very recently and he knows that it has a party leader who has lost 30 percentage points in his own popularity in 1 year alone and that the track has been downward every month regardless of the crowing that National members are doing today. I say to the members opposite: do not be too smug. Some of us have been around here long enough to see the crowing rooster become a feather duster and that is exactly what we will see from the National Party.Five wasted years: 5 long years of delay of political posturing and 5 years of weasel words. Worse still 5 years of inaction over the Auckland City Rail Link. You know National members had it all. It was given to them and all they had to do was to pick it up and run. But what did they do? They decided any policy any good Labour policy could not continue so they turned round and repealed the very mechanism that would have given them the money to pay for public transport including rail in Auckland. It was a whim. It was a Steven Joyce decision. If it was Labour it equalled bad. So after 5 wasted years 5 years of inaction today they have been forced by the Labour Party to accept our policy—to accept a policy that we put in place and started back in the 2000s.In 2006 we set up the very working party that decided the future decisions around rail infrastructure and funding. It included double-tracking of the western commuter rail line the redevelopment of the Newmarket station the improved linking of Manukau City to the network and the electrification of rail and it was around $1 billion that could be spent. We gave them the mechanism to pay for the Auckland City Rail Link. We knew how to pay for it: a regional fuel tax. It was a mere 10c and the former mayor of the North Shore saw immediately that this was a good deal for Auckland—as did all the other mayors—and signed up to the deal. They signed up and they all agreed. Do you know that that 10c regional fuel tax paid by the people of Auckland for their public transport would have supported $1.5 billion in funding that could help pay for the Auckland rail link?One of the first things that National did was to repeal the regional fuel tax—it repealed the regional fuel tax. But what has happened? It put 9c alone in this last Budgeton regional fuel. Nine cents alone and to do what? None of it has gone—not just for Auckland no.Hon David Parker: No Dunedin too.Hon ANNETTE KING: In Dunedin in Christchurch in Wellington—Andrew Williams: Chatham Islands.Hon ANNETTE KING: The Chatham Islands—quite right. It has gone everywhere and it is doing nothing in terms of public transport. Let me tell you this: National has not invested in a single public transport infrastructure in Auckland since the election. There have been 5 wasted years.Phil Twyford: What? Not one?Hon ANNETTE KING: Not one not a single one. You know it is very much of the 1990s. National spent nothing on public transport in the 1990s and then it said: “What is Labour doing about it?”. Well we did plenty about it.Now we are told that National members have always been thinking about it. I have to tell you that they have been thinking about it in the smallest room in the House. That is where they have been thinking about it. We have got the biggest U-turn in transport in living memory. We have gone from no go to get-go. Now they want to invest in it because they were forced into it by the people of Auckland and by the Labour Party. And we have the Minister of Transport with the biggest egg on his face you have ever seen. It has taken a whole dozen eggs—scrambled—and there is still not enough egg.I have to say where is Nikki Kaye on this the member for Auckland Central? Why was she not allowed to speak on a serious issue? They put up all their clowns to speak today to crack jokes about polls but no one got up to say: “We are sorry Auckland. We made a mistake. We have wasted 5 years and we could have been putting in place public transport.” It was our policy.