Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you Madam Chair—a pleasure to speak to the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill. I say it's a pleasure but in fact it's with mixed emotions as you will soon see. It was famously the character King Lear in the play of the same name—Hon Shane Jones: Crocodile tears—crocodile crocodile!CHRIS PENK: The rebuke was given to his errant daughter I think Cordelia but Mr Shane Jones will no doubt know Nothing will come of nothing". If only that were the case in regards to this bill that would be so much better than the present situation because nothing is going to come from something in this bill. Specifically no good outcomes will come directly as a result of this bill but something is being introduced by it—namely extra taxes at the petrol pumps of Aucklanders. So we've got a cost-benefit analysis that results in a finding by me here today that there is all cost and no benefit—no tangible benefit no concrete benefit if you'll excuse the pun almost in the case of roads. Aucklanders therefore as I say—and certainly the rest of the country—will be getting something for nothing but not in a good way.Madam Chair I want to seek your indulgence to speak about the effect of this bill on a particular electorate and I'll choose one at random—Helensville. It seems to me that some of the themes that have been mentioned by my colleagues in relation to the unfairness of the mechanism whereby in effect as a result presumably of unintended consequences of the bill taxpayers and road users or petrol pump payments throughout the country will be used to benefit infrastructure in Auckland. Well if only that were so within all the boundaries of Auckland Council then the good people of the Helensville electorate might be somewhat happier than they are now about this bill because there's nothing specific in this bill to guarantee that certain works will be done in various parts of Auckland. Now I do acknowledge the points made by Mr Michael Wood in his discussion of the bill in relation to "Providing the ability to exclude parts of a region"—I quote from the commentary on the bill. But this much is unclear in terms of its application and certainly what the implications would be going forward because there is no guarantee that such a proposal would be met favourably under this bill. So in the example of the Helensville electorate not only would the rural parts of that electorate which I remind the House for any who might have known but have forgotten or perhaps indeed not known at all are rural but none the less within the Auckland Council jurisdiction and therefore paying under the Auckland region these regional fuel taxes—there is no guarantee that they will be gaining anything concrete in terms of improvements to their roading network whether that's State highways or local roads or indeed the specific projects that the current Government has recently announced.So for example light rail. Well there's a certain amount that can be said in favour and also against the proposal of light rail to the north-west of Auckland but one thing that can very definitely be said against it as proposed by the current Government is that it's not the only light rail project that's been proposed. It seems to me unfortunately obvious that if history is any guide the light rail project in the north-west of Auckland will likely take a back seat on the trains that will travel on this hypothetical light rail transport mechanism to the light rail projects elsewhere in the city—for example the one that begins in the Prime Minister's own electorate. There are very cynical people who have every right to be cynical about the likelihood of that happening any time soon. We note that there are no time frames for such a project such a benefit in that electorate despite numerous positive noises having been made by various members of the now Government when campaigning in the electorate including but not limited to the leader of the New Zealand First Party.There's no guarantee that these things will happen any time soon or indeed at all given failures to deliver by this Government elsewhere as characterised not by broken promises so much as promises that are not yet fulfilled. Well the promises that will not yet be fulfilled under this bill seem to me pretty clear. The promise only is that you'll have to pay more but you'll get nothing out of it concrete any time soon—that's the message in relation to this bill from the good people of Helensville."