Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. Thanks for the opportunity to make a contribution in opposition to this very poorly thought-out bill in respect of Auckland transport issues relating to the regional fuel tax. It's now abundantly evident to every New Zealander who follows these issues that the National Party said anything to get elected. They were brazen as the last speaker for the Greens has said. They were not straight with the New Zealand public. They pretended that they could have their cake and eat it too and their numbers never added up—never added up. We had the Minister of Transport Simeon Brown and his leader Christopher Luxon look into the camera and promise New Zealanders that their transport numbers added up. They never did and they now must be held to account for their lack of being straight with New Zealanders.This is but one part of an enormous fiscal hole that they have created for themselves in transport. The Roads of National Party Significance" that they told the New Zealand public were properly funded in their report were not funded; not just by $1 billion but by between $6 billion and $22 billion short. That was made clear most recently in a media article reporting on advice that has been given by ministries to the Minister that their "Roads of National Party Significance" are between $6 billion and $22 billion more than the amounts that they told the electorate at the time of the election. These errors are huge. Take the one that was referred to in just the last couple of days: Tākitimu stage two. What did the National Party tell the public that was going to cost: $627 million. What's its current funding projection: between $900 million and $1400 million. What about Woodend? He was talking about that just today. The National Party took that and said that was going to be $270 million. What's it costing now? Between $550 million and a number even bigger. Cambridge to Piarere: the National Party told New Zealanders it would cost $721 million. Present budgeted cost just a month or two later: between $1.3 billion and $1.7 billion. Their numbers never added up they said anything to get elected and now they're trying to hide from public scrutiny about that lack of straightforwardness to the New Zealand public. Here we are close to five months after the election and just about every week we meet under urgency where nothing goes to select committee—nothing goes to select committee—and this bill is another example. It's being pushed through with no regulatory impact statement to judge the Minister's errant comments that this will reduce the cost of living for Aucklanders. It is so superficial in its analysis. As Julie Anne Genter and Tangi Utikere have both pointed out the costs of this will still be felt by Auckland. How will those costs affect Aucklanders? Well as others have said worthy projects that would have reduced congestion and reduced travel times in Auckland will no longer be funded. In addition to that as Julie Anne Genter rightly pointed out people are driven into having to purchase a second or third car in their family for a lack of transport alternatives.The idea that just because this regional fuel tax is removed these costs are removed for Auckland is made clear by comments from the Mayor of Auckland Wayne Brown. "The Government have cancelled this in order to reduce people's costs"—this is a quote—"which seems completely ridiculous. So I have to put up rates to increase people's costs." We've seen the Mayor of Auckland make a number of other comments and he makes the point quite fairly that there's actually going to have to be a combination of rate increases to fill in some of these funding holes but also a cancelling of projects which will of course mean worse outcomes for Auckland.The cost of Auckland's congestion is around $1.3 billion a year in lost productivity. Now that's going to get worse as the consequence of this legislation not better.Andy Foster: They need more speed bumps.Hon DAVID PARKER: Here we go the reference to speed bumps. What puerile comments we have from the other side. They know that the amount that is projected to be spent on speed bumps is infinitesimally small. Now I actually back the Mayor of Auckland to get rid of unnecessary speed bumps but it was never a big part of the funding package that was going into speed bumps. I also back the Mayor of Auckland to get rid of some of these ridiculous amounts that have been spent on traffic management for this famous new pedestrian crossing in Williamson Avenue. It's ridiculous that they've spent $170000 of that $500000 cost on traffic management—I agree with that. But that is no excuse for this measure because it is so infinitesimally small in the scheme of things even though those costs are wrong and should be driven out of the system and I'd back Wayne Brown to drive them out of the system far more than I would look to Simeon Brown to do it. Wayne Brown will be far more effective at that.What other misrepresentations do we have from Simeon Brown? Simeon Brown goes around the country and he says "Oh look we're going to fix potholes. We're going to fix potholes." The long-term problem as to the state of New Zealand roads was caused by the prior National Government. Steven Joyce came along with his "Roads of National Party Significance". There's nothing new in the National Party; it's just retread from the last term they were in Government and the last time they did that they didn't have enough money in the can then either because just as they pulled the wool over the eyes of New Zealanders coming into this election they did the same thing last time.So what did they do? How did they fund their funding hole that time? They cut back on road maintenance. For a number of years road maintenance was frozen. The effect of that was that the road surfacing of which on average about 6 percent of the length of State highways every year needs to be resurfaced—that dropped to in the worst year about 3 percent because they froze the funding for road maintenance. So what happens if you don't resurface the roads? The water gets in. What happens when the water gets in? You get potholes. So what did we do as a Government having inherited that mess? We increased State highway maintenance funding by 65 percent. We started to fill in these potholes that were caused by the National Party. Notwithstanding the enormous problems that were made worse by those flood events last year around the North Island we were making inroads into that. You can't fix this overnight but every year other than the COVID-related year after we'd been in power in the last Labour-led Government for about a year we then made sure that road maintenance increased in every year except for the COVID lockdown year. We got those maintenance rates up so that we were actually resealing 6 percent per annum of New Zealand's road length.Simeon Brown pretends that he's interested in the issues but he really is not interested in serious answers to serious and difficult problems. He's into populism. He's into processes that avoid scrutiny of his flawed decisions. No select committee no regulatory impact statement—absolutely appalling process and not just this legislation but bills week after week after week are being brought forward under urgency. No fair process; no ability for select committee to hear from interested New Zealanders who would be able to unpick the misrepresentations and brazen—brazen—falsehoods that we get from the other side. This is bad legislation. It is part of a broader suite of flawed decisions being taken in respect of transport that will make congestion worse in Auckland. They say they're going to fill it in with congestion charging; they opposed that legislation. They say "We want road tolls"; they blocked tolling for Penlink. There is no credibility on transport in this Government."