Turia Tariana: Urgent Debates — Transport Funding—Replacement of Regional Fuel Tax with Increased Fuel Excise Duty and Road-user Charges 
Turia Tariana: Urgent Debates — Transport Funding—Replacement of Regional Fuel Tax with Increased Fuel Excise Duty and Road-user Charges 
[Volume:653;Page:1985] 
Hon TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Tena tatou katoa. I was thinking that Sir Dove-Myer Robinson is probably looking down on the House at this time having a little smile to himself given that he was a visionary who could see all these things way back then. There is a Robert Frost poem that I believe summarises this entire debate. 
Two roads diverged in a wood and I— 
I took the one less travelled by  
And that has made all the difference. 
The issue for this House is of course which is the road that will make all the difference. The Minister’s announcement last week to unveil a nearly $1 billion fund to fast track State highway projects will be welcomed by New Zealanders who for years have been waiting for the shabby state of our roads to improve. The new nationally significant roads including the Waikato Expressway the Tauranga eastern corridor and the northern corridor between Wellington and Levin are a signal to New Zealand that progress will be made in reducing congestion improving safety and supporting economic development. The green light ahead for new electric trains for Auckland and new passenger trains for Wellington is also an important signal that steps are being take to protect the economy and to facilitate the more effective passage of freight but there are of course other issues that we must confront. 
The Maori Party supported the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill which introduced a regional fuel tax. We supported it because at least half of the additional tax revenue collected in a region had to be spent on developing public transport initiatives. The National Government is now planning to scrap the regional fuel tax and instead increase the fuel excise tax which applies to the whole country. The tax goes to the Land Transport Fund out of which roading infrastructure and public transport projects are funded. We have many questions around whether rural communities will benefit and whether communities outside the regions identified as significant will also benefit from the additional tax that they are being asked to supply. 
There are good arguments to be made for both the regional and national regimes. The key point to be made however is that it appears that roading developments will be prioritised over public transport developments. The Maori Party’s priority for transport and roading is to further invest in public transport by developing well-integrated public transport networks of buses and trains and walking and cycling tracks that are frequent reliable and inexpensive for users. 
So although we in the Maori Party are pleased that the Government has agreed to fund the electrification of Auckland’s rail network out of the Land Transport Fund there is no commitment to fund the wider integrated public transport services that are needed to make Auckland’s public transport system user-friendly. It is this whole concept of support for public transport that we believe is the road less travelled—but the road that could clearly yield a long-term gain. The Maori Party has always been supportive of the development of public transport options as a key response to the dual challenges of peak oil and climate change. 
With peak oil upon us there is an urgent need to prepare for ongoing significant oil price increases and a future downturn in the availability of oil by providing people with affordable alternatives to private motorcars. There is an urgent need to reduce our dependency on oil. In the medium to long term public transport will benefit lower-income earners by providing affordable transport as petrol costs continue to increase. Of course we do have concerns about the additional costs to consumers. The cost at the petrol pump is going to hurt our constituents and we must consider ways of easing this burden because of the burden this will place on low-income communities many of whom are of Maori and Pacific descent. Now that the whole country will have to pay for Auckland’s trains out of their taxes we have to query whether the rise of 6c a litre can be justified against the immediate impact of improving the roads that so desperately needed attention. 
And finally the question we leave in this debate is exactly how the precarious condition of some of the rural roads for the communities of the Maori electorates will benefit from this new tax increase—the narrow windy gravel roads that stretch across our electorates; the unsealed roads that are a site of danger for so many of our constituents. The question for us is how they will benefit. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: Labour has informed the Chair that this will be a 10-minute call.