van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. I believe the previous speaker Kiritapu Allan's contribution was actually referring to the next piece of legislation we're debating in the House rather than the current one but that aside I'd like to touch now on the Land Transport (Rail) Legislation Bill rather than the Land Transport (NZTA) Legislation Amendment Bill. Now this bill is fundamentally shifting how rail is funded in New Zealand. That is a major concern for us because historically what we have seen is those using the roads pay to use the roads and those using rail pay to use rail. It seems like a pretty common-sense approach and actually I think most users of roads would agree that that is a fair and reasonable measure. As a road user you pay your road-user charges you also pay your fuel tax every time you fuel up at the pump and that's appropriate. That goes towards contributing to the upkeep and development of new roads over time which is a fair reflection to ensure the cost of those is met by those that utilise those particular modes of transport.Now I know the Green Party are fundamentally opposed to any sort of vehicle on a road and would rather that we only had pedestrians cyclists or maybe train users but the reality is that simple mindset simply doesn't work in rural New Zealand. Having that sort of narrow-minded idealistic view is totally out of touch with what broad New Zealand requires from a transportation system. Now absolutely on this side of the House we understand that rail has a place; that is not in the regions. We cannot expect everyone to commute around the Waikato region for example by train. That's simply unrealistic. Actually those that do utilise the road systems which is by far the vast majority of New Zealanders should not have to fund the rail network.Rail in New Zealand is run as a State-owned enterprise (SOE). It's a commercially driven enterprise designed to create a profit. What this Government is now saying is that actually we're going to totally change that view. What we're going to have instead is a rail system that's an SOE but we're going to say actually it doesn't have to generate a profit. So we're going to value it from a public-good perspective rather than a profit commercially driven focus. That is a total shift from where we've been and of course that requires a significant increase in funding if KiwiRail is no longer required to generate a profit.That's why this particular piece of legislation has been put forward so that current road users can help to fund this massive requirement that KiwiRail is demanding. We've seen a significant hole open up in terms of the funding need for KiwiRail as this Government signals a whole range of different projects on which to focus with rail. Now look there is as I've mentioned already a place for rail but focusing investment willy-nilly through re-diverting transport funds into rail is simply not the right way to do that because it sees investment go into lines that may not be viable and do not have a significant economic benefit for the country.So we absolutely oppose this sort of total re-routing of the transportation funding system and recommend that the Government focus instead on building some of the roads with the National Land Transport Fund that we have committed to previously.