Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Thank you Mr Speaker. The Green Party will not be supporting this bill the Land Transport Management (Repeal of Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill. I think it is worth considering what our options are to raise revenue to pay for infrastructure. While it will be great to have perfect time-of-use pricing for every user that's not the situation we're in now and fuel tax has been a very low-cost relatively administratively easy way to raise revenue. And it's a good proxy because generally the people using the roads are generating the need for the infrastructure.One of the things this coalition Government doesn't seem to understand—and it's a real shame because I feel like they're almost there; they could almost understand this—is that you don't need to use something directly to benefit from it. Road users are the greatest beneficiaries of projects that move more people with fewer cars especially in an urban area like Auckland. We know this because back in early 2000s the National Party in Opposition opposed with many other doubters the Northern Busway. They said it would be a white elephant. Now that Northern Busway was funded from State highway funding. It was the State highway agency—at the time Transit New Zealand the predecessor to the New Zealand Transport Agency—who saw the opportunity. They said We can acquire a corridor and we can either use it for one lane of traffic or we can use it for a busway." And by using it for a busway they spent a mere $200 million—incredibly effective investment—and now $200 million they were able to build the Northern Busway which now carries as many people as all the lanes of traffic on the Auckland Harbour Bridge.So let's compare $200 million to the cost of the next additional Waitematā Harbour crossing which is going to be somewhere between $20 billion and $50 billion. OK I know numbers aren't their strong suit but let's picture this. So I know 200 sounds bigger than 20 but in fact 200 million is a much much smaller number than 20 billion because 20 billion is 20 thousand million OK? So with the Northern Busway we had an incredibly effective investment that not only benefited all the people of Auckland because it enabled twice as many people now to travel around at peak time without having to build another bridge or a tunnel and without all the additional costs that are needed when you build a road.Obviously the people using the road have to pay for the car and there has to be the land for parking their cars somewhere and they've got to run the car. So there's all these costs that they're missing and that's why this shouldn't be a political football. People on the right-wing end of the political spectrum should not be opposed to sensible economically efficient investments in transport that benefit everyone. Mr Speaker you don't need to take the bus to benefit from more people being able to take the bus or the train. And Mr Speaker you don't need—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Don't bring the Speaker into this.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: You personally—I mean oh OK. Well you and anyone else—you in the general sense—don't need to ride a bike to benefit from infrastructure that means more people make short urban trips by bike instead of a car because the bike takes less room than the car—significantly less room; less parking; and guess what bikes don't cause potholes. So the more people who use bikes for short urban trips the better off the people who are driving the cars the better the quality of the roads the less the congestion the lower the transport costs.So unfortunately we have a Government that is mostly innumerate incapable of accurately forecasting the costs of the projects they campaigned on extremely extremely irresponsible in Opposition and just opposed things for the sake of it like the regional fuel tax. The money that is needed to build the infrastructure that is needed in Auckland has to come from somewhere. So instead of it being spread in a very efficient way at a very low cost over a large number of people who are driving around Auckland to get that infrastructure the infrastructure—Hon Member: How did your bike bridge go?Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: That was not my project by the way. The infrastructure will now have to be funded by rates rises or won't happen at all. And everybody in Auckland loses because those projects won't be funded. That's been signalled by the mayor. And by the way the coalition Government is happy to fund the Eastern Busway from the regional fuel tax revenue so they do kind of understand that road users should contribute to public transport."