Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I don't agree with everything that the Hon Poto Williams the former speaker just said but I do generally echo and agree with her sentiments particularly around sending aroha to our Cantabrian whānau and salaam alaikum to our Muslim brothers in New Zealand at this very tough time. I too have been quite moved by the grace and the compassion and the raw emotion that has been on display in Christchurch in the last couple of days.But I want to talk in my remarks about infrastructure and I want to talk about transport in particular because there was quite a revealing moment in question time today when the Hon Judith Collins was questioning the Prime Minister about various matters. She made a passing reference towards the end of one of her supplementary questions about how the National Government—well National Party; Government hopefully one day soon—wanted to use money from the COVID fund just on roads—just on roads. I thought it was a revealing insight and I want to unpick it.Firstly it's contradictory.Hon Member: Tunnels—tunnels.CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah tunnels. That's right. We are going to build some tunnels. That's exactly right and I'll come to the tunnels in a moment. But firstly it's contradictory because it was only in January and February that the Government rocked up through the New Zealand Upgrade Programme and went on what they described as a road-building bonanza. There was an orgy of roads and after having spent two years with Phil Twyford creating in the Prime Minister's own advisory council's words an infrastructure crisis stopping all the four-lane roads the National Government wanted to build the Government turned up and realised they'd lost the political battle when it comes to expressways and roads and decided to bring back all the projects that they'd cancelled in the first place like Ōtaki to north Levin for example; like the Tauranga Northern Link for example; like the four-lane road from further up the line up to Ōmokoroa for example; like the four-laning of Whangārei to Marsden.All projects that Phil Twyford spent two years saying were uneconomic and bad ideas the Government is now funding again and they've added a couple of cycle lanes next to them to appease the Greens to keep them happy. We've got the extraordinary situation of the Associate Minister of Transport who put on her Green Party hat to write an op-ed for The Spinoff about how dumb the Government's package was. So the first point is it's a bit contradictory for the Prime Minister to just say all we want to do is spend money on roads when the Government itself has essentially given up the fight when it comes to four-lane expressways.The second point I want to make is it is factually inaccurate. If you look at the transport package announced by the National Government we're incredibly proud of it because it is multimodal. It's not just roads; it is four-lane roads of course because as I always say to my friend Julie Anne Genter they're the safest roads in the country. Just one person has died on a four-lane expressway at a national road of significance. But we also want to expand rail to Auckland Airport. We want to expand the Auckland rail line down to Tuakau in the Waikato which I know has strong support from that part of the country. We want to expand rail up to Onehunga from Auckland Airport. We want to expand our bus network in both Auckland and Wellington. We want to spend more money on trains in Wellington for the Wellington metro rail network and expand the connections to Palmerston North and Wairarapa as well. So it is just factually inaccurate.The third point I want to make is the really important point which is about what is the right policy response to COVID. Our view in the National Party is that we are going to borrow money. There's no doubt about that. COVID has knocked the socks off the New Zealand economy and we are going to borrow money for some time to come. The question is what you do with that money and our view is that if you're going to have intergenerational debt as we are going to have you should invest in projects that will have an intergenerational benefit particularly with interest rates so low. The time is now to invest in projects that will really move the dial—not borrowing for operational spending although we're going to have to do a bit of that too.Let's borrow for the major transformational projects that will really change the nature of New Zealand. Let's do the second Mount Vic tunnel. We're going to do it. Let's do Pētone to Grenada. Let's do the Cross Valley Link. Let's do the four-lane road from Whangārei to Auckland. Let's do the third and the fourth main rail lines in Auckland. Let's do the four-laning from Christchurch to Ashburton. Let's do these projects because if we're going to borrow intergenerationally we may as well get projects that have an intergenerational benefit.