Young JonathanJONATHAN YOUNG (Chairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee): I am very pleased to stand to speak on the particular area of transport under this debate which is touching on appropriations that come to the Commerce Committee and to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.The infrastructure in our country is absolutely critical if we want to see the sustained continuous economic growth that we are seeing right now carry on for years to come. One of the commitments that this Government has made is to ensure that we have a transport infrastructure that is indeed going to fuel that economic growth particularly in the regions. We know that there has been a huge investment in the Waikato Expressway. That affects regions such as the Hawke's Bay such as Taranaki and such as King Country because when our exporters take their products to ports they travel down those roads of national significance. Those roads that are outside of our region are our regional roads to our export ports.I want to just acknowledge the Minister of Transport the Hon Simon Bridges and the former Minister of Transport the Hon Steven Joyce and the commitment that these Ministers have made over the years to ensure that we have a state-of-the-art modern transport infrastructure.We often hear the comparison made between road transport and rail transport and we have at times competition between those two modes of transport. However the Road Transport Association in assessing the freight demand and the freight load it carries says that there is a very small percentage of freight that is competitive between road and rail—something like less than 5 percent—and that these modes are actually more and more complementary because we know that there are freight loads that rail can carry very efficiently but there are also services that it cannot provide efficiently such as door-to-door delivery which is needed and is where the Road Transport Association and that sector are very very efficient.We are seeing a continuous investment by this Government in the transport portfolio. This year we have seen an increase of 4.13 percent and in the 2016-17 year an investment of $4.265 billion of not just taxpayer funding but funding that comes through road-user charges. A huge proportion of that comes through tax revenue collected by the Crown—something like $3.4 billion. One of the I think great initiatives that the Minister of Transport is leading is this whole area around electric vehicles. What we are aiming to see and what the Minister is leading is a doubling of electric vehicles in our country by 2021 up to 64000 at that point in time. This is going to be important because it is the way of the future.There are multiple different fuel sources for vehicles. Here in New Zealand we have the ability to have the most sustainable supply of clean energy to vehicles—more than just about any country in the world. Eighty percent of the energy utilised in running an electric vehicle and building it and also running it comes from renewable sources whereas in other parts of the world that figure is only 60 percent. And why is that? It is because our electricity is generated by wind by water and by sunlight whereas in many other countries in the world electricity is generated through thermal oil and coal. So we have the great opportunity to have an electric vehicle fleet that has the highest level of sustainable energy supply to it of just about any nation in the world. We look forward to seeing this increase. As of 29 February this year we had 1057 light electric vehicles in the country. So lifting that to 64000 by 2021 is an ambitious goal and just getting these vehicles into the market is going to be very important to see the uptake of that. So the Minister of course has announced many initiatives around that and we look forward to seeing that continue in the future.One of the strategies that we as the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee saw was the regional State highways and we see an accelerated regional roading programme being delivered.