Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you Madam Chair. There are two separate legs to this contribution. Both are new. The first is about what options the Minister considered for those policies which he discussed on the campaign trail around alternatives to a regional fuel tax given that—and I'm referring the committee here to Part 1 of the bill clause 4 on page two of our copy which is entitled Subpart 3 of Part 2 repealed" and it says "Repeal subpart 3 of Part 2." So what this part does is it removes the legislative framework that allows new regional fuel taxes to be created also from 1 July 2024 and the regulations relating to the proposals of new schemes and the conditions that must follow will also be revoked. My question to the Minister about this is: is this not the part of the law which he would seek to amend were he to introduce time-user charging or would this piece of legislation not provide him with an easy way to introduce things like motorway tolls which were discussed in the campaign about alternatives to a regional fuel tax for Auckland? Would this provision that is being repealed by this bill in fact be useful to those things that he has indicated to Aucklanders he is considering and can the Minister give us an assurance that we're not going to be back in this House quite soon to bring in what is essentially a very similar regime to the one that we are repealing?You know we could work in this committee stage very quickly on an amendment that would put that back so that it is quite possible for this House to amend that section if those alternatives are something which the Minister wants to explore because if we keep that in then there is some efficiency about providing a legislative route for an amendment which is well understood and which everybody knows how it operates. That wouldn't run in the face of what the Minister is trying to do. We accept that at this stage the committee stage the Minister is absolutely able to propose an idea to the committee and this would not cut against his idea; it would simply leave in the provisions which allow for arrangements like these to be made. The Minister might provide the committee here with some clarity about how time-user charges are different. They are different—they are not revenue-raising implements usually—and in other jurisdictions they are ways of managing traffic flows because people change their behaviour when they are in place. But this would be something which would allow the levies to be raised by Government which would actually allow time-user charging to be in place. That's the first question there. The second question I have for the Minister is not about a proposal that has been taken off the table entirely—and look I think the Minister will be keen to answer this one because it's a project that he is interested in as am I. Both of us are from Manurewa and it concerns Manurewa: it is about Mill Road. But my question specifically is about this: the Minister is indicating that he is moving Mill Road out of this small pot of money here which is created by the Auckland regional fuel tax and into the big pot of money. So it's very unlike the other projects that my colleagues have been discussing. It's not going away; there is a provision for it. The Minister has indicated that it will go into the big pot to be considered alongside other significant projects that happen around the country. So my question to the Minister is: I'm keen on Mill Road as a local roading upgrade—I want people to have access to that as a local project—but what I'm concerned about is that that project could balloon into essentially a road of national significance that we spend $3.5 billion on and now if it's in that big pot and out of the instruments here in the small pot which are being repealed by this bill what assurance can the Minister give to the committee that there will be adequate controls over that sort of ballooning of costs in a project which should be an upgrade of a local road? It is a local road in South Auckland which South Aucklanders use. That's a specific question about Mill Road and I have others if you'd like to discuss that great project."