Russell DeborahHon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): As this bill goes through its first reading and before we've heard what might have been submissions from people who live in Auckland we need to consider why we had the regional fuel tax in the first place.As someone on the other side pointed out it could apply to any council in New Zealand who applied for the capacity to charge a regional fuel tax. So what the regional fuel tax did was set up a mechanism whereby Auckland in this instance and other councils could apply to charge a regional fuel tax and that money was to be used for projects in that region.Now as it turned out Auckland was the only regional authority that was able to take advantage of this mechanism but other city councils were interested in it too. And why were they interested? Because the cost of congestion the cost of getting us around our cities and towns the cost of our transport network is increasing in many ways.Now talk to any Aucklander and they'll be able to tell you and other people in this House what the traffic in Auckland is like. It's particularly appalling at the moment in the midst of March madness but the congestion on the roads is intense. We have many many people living and working in Auckland and they end up spending hours in traffic. The reason why that happens is because there aren't other alternatives it's because we do not have the critical roads we need and the regional fuel tax was put in place in order to enable Auckland Transport to get under way with getting some of those critical projects built.So what is the problem with removing it? Well the problem with removing it is not just that it removes the funding that Auckland Transport could have used but it removes the capacity to borrow more money because it changes the council's debt ceilings. Now I've heard members on the other side complain that there's some money left in the kitty at the moment. That's left there precisely because these big projects take time to deliver and payments get delivered as various stages in a contract are reached. It's quite straightforward. It's not that no one wanted to spend the money. The money was allocated but it was sitting there waiting to be spent on the projects as set out in time.Yet we have this critical need for transport funding in Auckland. We have the Mayor of Auckland saying that he wanted the regional fuel tax to continue and yet on the other side they are removing the capacity for Auckland to have a regional fuel tax and justifying it on the grounds of the cost of living. But it's going to save—at the most it will save a household $2.70 a week. Well that's a big contribution to the cost of living! Where's the substantial change that the other side was promising? Not only that but a few years down the track they're going to whack the fuel tax back up again by another 22c a litre and on top of this something that just simply cannot be justified by reference to the cost of living the other side is increasing vehicle registration fees so another $50 a year—whack!—out of people's back pockets.So whatever the other side thinks might be saved by repealing the regional fuel tax whatever they think it might save households well they're giving it with one hand but taking it away with the other and taking away not just the short-term monetary savings but the savings that would have been made by having better transport infrastructure in our biggest city.Hon Simeon Brown: Speed bumps.Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: And I hear the other side complaining about cycleways. Now one of the projects that has been lost because this side has taken away the Auckland regional fuel tax is the Great North Road cycleway. See what the other side fails to do is to recognise that every cyclist on the road is one less car on the road. That is a person who has chosen transport which imposes less costs on other people. So taking this decision in isolation taking away the Auckland regional fuel tax pretending it's a cost of living measure it is bereft of sense.