Falloon AndrewANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Yesterday the transport Minister Phil Twyford released the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport. For me as the member of Parliament for Rangitata and for many of my regional colleagues it made for sober reading. More fuel taxes are on the way with a fuel tax of at least between 9c and 12c and potentially more when the Auckland fuel levy is rolled out to other regions. Now some members might recall the Labour Party travelling round the country before the last election making all sorts of comments about tax—I certainly do. Just a week before the election in an attempt to burnish his economic credentials Grant Robertson made the following statement: There will be no new taxes or levies introduced in our first term of Government beyond those we have already announced." Now Labour has been in Government for less than six months and how many times has that already been broken? How many times will it be broken again?What's worse though is what we're getting for that money. We're going to pay more but we'll get less. The National Land Transport Fund is paid for out of road-user charges and petrol taxes. It's vitally important for the continued maintenance of roads by the New Zealand Transport Agency and councils and improving the roading network. By cutting $5 billion out of it to spend on Auckland rail projects and cycleways the transport Minister is putting a huge number of critically important transport projects in the bin. I come from one of the regions that Shane Jones often likes to stand up and claim that he speaks for. Mid-Canterbury and South Canterbury have grown strongly in recent years. With a strong economy our farms and businesses have succeeded and as a result traffic across the region has increased. The success of Prime Port in Timaru and the development and expansion of the inland port at Rolleston have seen more trucks travelling between the two.There are more tourists on our roads. The number of international tourists has doubled in the last 15 years. Where previously they might have stuck to places like Auckland and Rotorua now far more of them are coming to the South Island and are driving themselves around. All of these factors have caused State Highway 1—particularly between Christchurch and Ashburton—to become more congested more often and all of that growth is projected to continue. It's impacting on safety. The road as it is now—two lanes with passing lanes—is becoming more dangerous. Every week I meet people who are no longer willing to drive on the road through to Christchurch nervous about the number of trucks or drivers new to our roads.What used to be a straightforward one-hour drive now regularly sees delays of 20 minutes 30 minutes or as we saw on the weekend even longer. Not only are those delays frustrating for passenger traffic they're also contributing to costly delays for freight—particularly in the Canterbury and South Island economies—through higher freight fees and missed deadlines. Those small deadlines though are dwarfed by the impact of the closure of the Rākaia bridge. As we've seen from the Canterbury and Kaikōura earthquakes to build resilience in the network we need second bridge crossings over the Rākaia River and the Ashburton River.Unfortunately the announcement made by Phil Twyford yesterday makes those sorts of investments nearly impossible under this Government. Important roading projects like four-laning State Highway 1 won't happen. Belfast to Pegasus won't happen. Upgrading the road between Queenstown and Milford won't happen. A second bridge over the Ashburton River won't happen. My constituents and others across the South Island and regional New Zealand will pay more but will get less.This is a Government who have already turned their backs on the regions. Instead of backing our regions instead of investing in the engine room of the New Zealand economy Phil Twyford and the Labour - New Zealand First Government have decided to put all their eggs in the Auckland basket. It makes a complete falsehood of Shane Jones' attempts to woo regional New Zealand. It makes his $3 billion pot nothing more than a slush fund to make up for the cuts made elsewhere by his Government but only to his favoured region of Northland. It's more evidence that this is a Government that has given up on the regions and given up on people south of the Bombay Hills.SPEAKER: Before I call the next member—I have said something previously and I'm now going to say it for the last time and that is that in the general debate members must not read their speeches. A cheery suggestion to the member Andrew Falloon is that until he's confident he might want to sit slightly further away from me because it then doesn't become quite as obvious."