Jones ShaneHon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): We have just heard from the one-trick pony Jami-Lee Ross the one-trick pony who reminds me of that figure in Dickens—he's got the look he's got the excitable language—otherwise known as Scrooge. There's nothing Scrooge-like on this side of the House. We realise that if you want to fund infrastructure—if you want to fund infrastructure—you need to be bold; you need to take a risk and stand up and meet the challenges. Let's just recite a few of the facts: $28 billion committed by this side of the House over 10 years in comparison to the miserly stingy approach characterising the last nine years. Those days Auckland are over. Aucklanders know that if you want to meet the costs of modernising infrastructure trains or transport you have to pay for it and they realise that the burden has to be borne by all users of the service because this is an investment in a transition. So this bill most certainly has the support of the first citizen of the provinces.Now we realise that it's a gift that I might be bestowing on the Auckland-based fuel buyers but in order for us over a 10-year period to enable Auckland to meet the targets that they were denied—denied—under the last nine years unfortunately investment and not only investment but commitment are required. I find it very interesting about the younger members—the sophomores—and even their younger cousins of the Auckland political community that have come here. They come with loud voices but they come realising that they have nowhere to go if they want to actually themselves solve these problems in Auckland. Now let's just think what my senior colleague Mr Twyford is offering. He is saying that not only will we utilise the monopoly powers of the State to impose an overdue opportunity for Auckland to contribute to its own works—great step forward. Secondly he's going to provide that opportunity for other regional centres but there's such an arduous process that other centres will have to go through that there's no guarantee that Whangarei will have such an opportunity. That all lies in the future.In addition to that the infrastructure required in order for users and the contributors via this tax—how are we going to fund that? He makes reference in his speech that we are willing to look at market mechanisms through to classic public-good failure mechanisms. That is something the other side of the House failed to do. How long did they take to build the loop? How long did they wait before they made a decision? That decision was made by Mr Bridges while Mr English was out of the country. That shows that not only did they not be straight up with Auckland but there's a deep division in themselves because I know from the provincial members on the other side of the House that they happen to believe that Auckland ought to do the heavy lifting. Auckland ought to contribute to solve the problems that are a blight on broader New Zealand society but they do deter regional creatures such as myself from spending too much time on such jobs as from time to time I might be called to respond to in Auckland which are to share with Aucklanders the justification of trees and provinces.But I'm being distracted. I need to come back to the underlying purpose of this piece of legislation. This legislation is actually traceable back to the work that Labour did eight nine 10 years ago and why New Zealanders in Auckland are quite excited about it is it shows a willingness to be bold; a willingness to put political rhetoric into legislative action. Now we'll hear some loud voices and caterwauling cats etc. but the reality is that this will soon pass and it will be in the law and Mr Twyford and Mayor Goff and the other councillors will now have a treasure trove to dip into to meet the overdue costs to upgrade the infrastructure of Auckland. And for that they will be suitably rewarded in 2020. Thank you very much.