McKee NicoleNICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'd like to take this short call to talk about my area of Rongotai which is also the eastern suburbs of Wellington. It spans Miramar it spans Island Bay even into areas of Brooklyn and including the mighty Chatham Islands. But what I'd like to speak about today is the roadworks that are occurring around the eastern suburbs at the moment. At the moment the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) have started a seven-week upgrade on Ruahine Street which is the main arterial route State Highway 1 out of the Mount Vic tunnel towards the airport. It's been and can be extended at very short notice including any closures that they want to do or in fact any extensions of time that they want to do.Now having been living in the Rongotai district for some period of time now and having four children belonging to the Wellington rugby club it's actually quite imperative that they do do something about Ruahine Street because trying to get out of those rugby grounds on a Saturday afternoon is a bit of trouble. However one would say if you want to actually not go down Ruahine Street go around Evans Bay. But the problem is that around Evans Bay Parade there's roadworks and if you want to get to the airport you can only take these two main arterial routes unless you're willing enough to go up over Mount Vic. Now once you get to the intersection at St Patrick's College you then have the roadworks on Cobham Drive to deal with. Kieran McAnulty: Now this is a local debate.NICOLE McKEE: This is a very local issue. The route to Parliament via the airport when it's finished will look great but I expect there'll be quite a few MPs that will be missing flights because they're going to struggle to get there. So my question is why do we have two main arterial routes being operated on at the same time? Is it because NZTA and Wellington City Council don't know how to confer with each other or is it because we don't have that many tourists coming through to use our airports? At the end of it all it's going to look nice it's going to look great and it's going to keep people safe—it's going to allow multi-modal transport options—but the thing is it's not actually addressing the real issue that we have in Rongotai. We need a second tunnel. We need four lanes. We actually need to make sure that we prioritise that our politicians can get to the airport and get back in time in order to be in the House and we can do this as long as we have the roads. So while we have cycle lanes and we've got walkways those that turn up at Wellington Airport are unlikely to pack their suitcases on the back of an e-bike and try and get into town. It is more important because we also have the Kāpiti airport closing down soon which means we're going to have more and more people coming through Wellington Airport trying to get their way through all of these roadworks to hit the city. What we're seeing is huge delays in trying to get out of the Rongotai area and getting into the city. In fact last week it took me 45 minutes to go from Hataitai to the motorway and that's no more than 7 kilometres to get there. There is a paper due—there is hope because there is a paper due—about getting Wellington moving. It's due in May—due in May this year. But I have a fear that when it comes out we're going to be waiting 10 years for the council and the Government to say actually yes we do need to do something about the transport problem and you know in fact we do want people coming to the capital and visiting our city and not spending all of their time sitting in a car at traffic lights or at roadworks. The Government actually needs to back getting Wellington moving now. If we are going to prepare for e-vehicles a suggestion I have if we don't push through a second tunnel is that we put battery stations all the way along State Highway 1 and Ruahine Street because they're going to run out of battery while they sit and wait in the roadworks. Thank you Mr Speaker.