Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Chair. It is a great pleasure to speak here on the debate around infrastructure in particular. We'll all be aware that the Reserve Bank Governor has been out there sort of saying—massively cutting interest rates. People are a bit worried about that: what does that portend; what does that point to in the future? But his other message has been that the Government needs to spend on infrastructure in order to bolster supply and investment in the economy. The only problem is that the Government—as we heard from Shane Jones the Minister for Infrastructure when he came before the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee—of course is investing less in infrastructure than they expected to. So this Budget that we're talking about the Budget 2019 shaved $3 billion off the infrastructure spending over the next five years in just six months since the previous estimate at the end of last year. So in six months they've shaved $3 billion off what they expected to spend on infrastructure. And why? Why—because they can't get their act together. What they did when they came into Government this Government was to say We're going to stop a whole bunch of projects that were ready to go." Some of them were ready to go. Most of them were in the pipeline. They were road projects. They were in places like going north from Tauranga to Katikati—and we've just heard from the previous speaker how wonderful it was that Shane Jones came into Tauranga last week and promised them $980000 for a tourist hub but in the meantime they've completely cancelled the road that everybody needs in order to get out of town and to get around. So it makes no sense whatsoever.So Winston came to Katikati and he promised it; they're not happening. So the road going north from Tauranga through to Katikati—cancelled. The Mill Road going south out of Auckland—postponed to the never-never. The East-West Link—cancelled. Going north up to Northland—postponed to the never-never. All these things—so what they did was they cancelled and postponed a whole lot of projects some of which were ready to go and replaced them with a bunch of projects that aren't ready to go and won't be ready to go for quite some time including the infamous light rail project that has been suggested. Anybody who lives in Auckland will be struggling with the concept that the number one priority for transport in Auckland is a slight improvement to the public transport down Dominion Road. That is what this Government is suggesting: that they're going to spend $4 billion or $6 billion. Shane Jones I think doubled the price of the potential light rail. He thought it might have been somewhere around $6 billion or $8 billion that it would cost. He didn't in any way suggest he was up for it but that is what the Government is talking about. We've also been talking about the higher fuel taxes that New Zealanders are paying. Unfortunately they're getting less for it. One of the most outrageous suggestions that we've heard about the light rail project in Auckland—the main justification for it now—is that it's an urban regeneration project. So nobody believes that it's going to the airport any more. It's not going there because the most obvious thing to do if you want to go to the airport is you go down the electric railway to Puhinui and then jink across a few kilometres to the airport—so nobody believes it's about that. Now their only justification is urban regeneration. But hang on a moment they're taking fuel taxes from motorists out of their pockets and making it more difficult for Kiwis to get around in order to fund an urban regeneration project. That's not what the fuel taxes are about. So you're paying higher taxes and getting less for it and in terms of infrastructure actually being built there's going to be less of it than we expected in the next couple of years because they've cancelled a whole lot of things that were ready to go and replaced them with a whole lot of things that aren't ready to go. That I think is one of the reasons why the Reserve Bank Governor is worried about the impetus coming into the economy over the next little while. Then we've heard about the Provincial Growth Fund. Mr Jones—he's out and about. He's spending all this money apparently. He's allocated $1.7 billion. The last figure that we heard of money actually going out the door and into the hands of people it was about $50 million. He might have got it up a bit in the last couple of months but not very fast. The main theme that we hear about this Government is that they're great at announcing things and they think that's all we have to do. You just announce that you're going to spend a whole lot of money and that's all you have to do. But actually when you get to deliver and actually see some improvements from the money that is spent that's a very long way off and they haven't delivered much at all. It's a gonna Government—"We're gonna do this we're gonna do that we're gonna do this but we never quite get round to it." At the moment they haven't built the roads. So it's deeply disappointing because this is a time when money is cheap and we do have an opportunity to invest in quality infrastructure in order to make this economy grow faster and to improve people's lives and to get them home on time safely. This is the time when we could be investing and we should be investing. A National Government would be investing and we would be continuing on with a clear pipeline of projects in order to get this country moving and for New Zealanders to get around. But instead we've been overtaken by Phil Twyford who thinks we've over-invested in roads and Julie Anne Genter who doesn't want to give in to the car fascists in any way shape or form."