Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Mr Speaker thank you very much. Well today the country learnt what we in the National Party have known for weeks and what has been an open secret around this Parliament: light rail is dead. This is an utter humiliation for Phil Twyford and the Government. Let's be very clear about the significance of this. In 2017 in her first act as Labour Party leader the putative Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said We will build light rail to the airport and we will build it from the Auckland CBD to Mount Roskill by 2021." We're now in mid-June 2020 80-odd days out from the election and where are we? Absolutely nowhere. In fact you can mount a plausible argument that light rail has actually gone backwards from where it was in 2017 when the Government changed. This is KiwiBuild 2.0. This is a failure it is a broken promise and Government members over the next few days and in the lead-up to the election are going to have to reflect on what they say on the campaign trail about light rail and why it has failed. And they are going to have to explain to Aucklanders why Aucklanders have paid an extra 10c a litre in fuel tax and why the whole country has paid an extra 12c or more a litre in fuel tax to fund a project that doesn't exist that in fact has gone absolutely backwards in the last three years. Let's also be very clear about whose responsibility this is. It is not the fault of New Zealand First. It is not the fault of the Green Party. It is the responsibility of Phil Twyford as the Minister of Transport. No one forced the Government to take the existing Auckland transport proposal off them and give it to the New Zealand Transport Agency. That was one of the first things they did—February 2018. No one forced them to do that; that was their decision. No one forced the Government to take the proposal from the New Zealand Transport Agency and then put it into this weird twin-track process against the quixotic unsolicited bid from what's called NZ Infra which is the Canadian pension fund and the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. No one forced them to do that. No one forced them to be bedazzled by the six PowerPoint slides that got presented and that attracted so much apparent love and adoration from the Government. No one forced them to do that. This is on the Government. The train wreck of the last three years is the responsibility of the Government. Right from the start there's been a lack of clarity about the objectives. What is the purpose of Auckland light rail? Where does it go? Right from the start there has been an uncertainty about what exactly the Government has been trying to achieve. We know that even as late as nine months ago officials were saying to Ministers "You actually need to be clear about what you're trying to achieve." Just an extraordinary situation. Questions have abounded the whole way through. What's the cost? How much is it? Two billion dollars is in the Auckland transport alignment programme but the latest estimate that's been made public by the Deputy Prime Minister is that it's somewhere between $6 billion and $8 billion. There's no idea about the route. Does it go to the airport or does it not? How many stops are there? Is it a mass transit system in which there are lots of stops along the road or is a rapid one in which there are very few? What even is the rail? Is it heavy rail or is it light rail or is it a combination of the two? Does it go underground? Does it go over ground? We don't know.It's just extraordinary that almost three years into this Government's time in office we don't have any clarity around those questions. Let's remember Aucklanders have paid for this. They're paying for it right now. Every time they top up at the pump every time they put more petrol into their car they're paying extra for a rapid transit system and for a light rail system that they're not going to get and that the Government says they're going to take to the election.Phil Twyford said in October 2017 "If we can do it faster we will." If we can do it faster we will! Well if this is fast I'd like to know what slow means. It's just extraordinary. This is the new KiwiBuild. This is a totemic emblematic policy for the Government. This is something they campaigned on as their first election promise. And it will be consigned to the history books and emblematic of this Government's utter ineptitude and total failure to deliver on their promises and in particular their transport commitments to this country. Thank you Mr Speaker."