Yang JianDr JIAN YANG (National): I rise to speak on the Land Transport (Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill. Now the previous speaker the Hon Julie Anne Genter talked a lot about the importance of infrastructure. We all agree infrastructure is particularly important to the economy. A sound infrastructure is crucial to a sound economy. There's no dispute. For that reason the National Government in the past eight nine years when National was in Government spent heavily on infrastructure. During the last year the last campaign we promised a large number of major road projects but the new Labour and New Zealand First Government cancelled most of them. So this leads to a few questions about this particular bill.Firstly what will the money raised be spent on? They are not particularly interested in roads. We do not have the answer at this stage right but they do not like roads particularly so most likely it will be spent—the money—on trams. These trams are very expensive—Simeon Brown: Very slow.Dr JIAN YANG: —and also very slow and also many Aucklanders may not necessarily benefit from this huge investment. So this is a question: what will the money raised from the regional fuel tax be spent on?The second question is: is this the best way to raise money for infrastructure in Auckland? Well 10c per litre means more cost for motorists in Auckland right? More cost means less travelling less economic activities which means a less active economy. That in turn means that the economy may well go down. So a better way is to make sure we have a fiscally transparent and fiscally restrained responsible central government and also local government. In this case in particular we need to make sure Auckland Council spends their money responsibly. Now Auckland Council's spending has increased by around $800 million over the last four years right? An increase in its wages bill alone over this time is more than the fuel tax would raise in its first year.Now I would like to read a few figures here. A report came out on 5 October last year and it says One in five staff at Auckland Council is earning more than $100000 as the wages bill for the Super City blows out for the third year in a row. What's more the number of executives earning more than $200000 has increased by 25 percent in the past year from 155 to 194 … The council and its six council-controlled organisations … employ 11893 staff of whom 2322 earn more than $100000. [In comparison] Brisbane City Council … employs about 8000 staff of whom 149 earn more than A$100000." This report just says that Auckland senior staff "have always been diligent in budgeting very generous pay increases for themselves" and "In the past three years the wages bill at Auckland Council has blown out by tens of millions of dollars each year. Council set a budget of $811 million in the past year and [it] spent $853 million on wages."So that is the spending of Auckland's council and if we could control the spending of Auckland Council then we'd have enough money to improve Auckland transport and that would be much more beneficial to Aucklanders Auckland and Auckland motorists. Of course there are many other issues here including the fairness issue because the lower-income households would benefit less from this kind of investment and spend more largely speaking because of low income but also because they tend to live further away from the city centre or CBD and therefore the fairness issue is another problem with this bill. Therefore I oppose the bill."