Halbert ShananSHANAN HALBERT (Labour): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. I think that last contribution was about 23 seconds. It kind of reflects on where that member is at. [Interruption] Mr Speaker if I may I can't hear over the boys there on the other side. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Yeah look can I just say that we've done pretty well. It's late at night and we all need to keep our blood flowing. Interjections should be rare reasonable and preferably just a little bit witty—failing on all counts across the board. We need to keep awake so can we just try a little harder? Thank you. We'll give you back however many seconds my little soliloquy cost then—start again. SHANAN HALBERT: Tēnā koe thank you Mr Speaker. I do want to speak for the full 10 minutes on this call because it is an important one. As a member of Parliament in Auckland based on the North Shore living in Northcote actually the contribution here is very important. We've actually had a lack of input into this particular discussion. We've got the global city of Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland that will have population growth hitting 2 million come 2030. So the common point for everyone in this House whether you're from Aotearoa New Zealand or if you're an Aucklander is actually: how are we going to ensure that productivity improves and remains high that Aucklanders can get around the city out of their cars and that they can get out of congestion? What we know Mr Speaker is that under good tuition—yours—in the Transport and Infrastructure Committee we did work around the congestion question. We debated in this House tools solutions of how we provide Aucklanders with some other options to sitting in their cars. So I'm disappointed tonight after going through three speaking rounds a committee stage with the lack of input from members opposite and a lack of voices from Auckland MPs from the Government. Where was their contribution and representation of Auckland communities? They did not put that argument up.Like my colleague Lemauga Sosene we know the results of the election and I accept that. I'm fine with that. I accept that this Government wants to repeal the regional fuel tax for Auckland. But in this process as with anyone who wins an election it doesn't mean you're above this House. If you win an election it doesn't mean that you can bypass parliamentary process. What's happened here tonight is that through ramming this bill through the House Aucklanders haven't had the chance to have a say. Aucklanders contributed—Hon Member: They did when they voted.SHANAN HALBERT: The person who said that Aucklanders had their say when they voted—that doesn't give you a mandate. It doesn't give you a mandate to overlook parliamentary process because the voices that matter in this discussion—and the questions I asked the Minister who was sitting in the chair during the committee stages were: who have you spoken to who have you consulted with what did Mayor Wayne Brown say and what did Auckland Transport say? His response was: I had a meeting." I then asked what was the nature of the relationship knowing that both of those organisations—both Mayor Wayne Brown and Dean Kempton CEO of Auckland Transport—do not agree with this particular piece of legislation. Why? Because it goes backwards—it goes backwards on addressing the common goal that Aucklanders need us to achieve for them. It goes backwards on every time in this House when we have agreed that we have a deficit in our transport infrastructure and that Government after Government has not invested in adequate transport infrastructure in Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland. While I agree that this was put up under a Labour Government—this was our plan—what we don't see tonight is a plan from that side of the House. There is no plan; there's only repeal. That's not good enough for Aucklanders. That is not good enough for people sitting in their cars. There hasn't been a regulatory impact statement. They've pushed this legislation through the House. There haven't been public submissions. There hasn't even been a contribution from Auckland Council themselves. So when this bill particularly relates to Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland how the heck can we not invite those voices to make a contribution on this subject? Auckland members on that side of the House have done 23 seconds in their contribution in this speaking round—23 seconds. They've heckled from over there. The member for Upper Harbour has heckled. The member for Northcote has heckled. His contribution was 23 seconds long—I don't care about Rangitata. My point here is: where are the voices from Auckland? They only tend to be on this side of the House.The other key point and what's very clear in this bill is that what the Minister is attempting is to save some of the National Party's reputation in providing cost of living relief. A clear promise that they made in the election—a clear promise. Tonight I'm calling them out. I'm calling them out on their broken promises to Aucklanders because all we've seen in 16 out of 17 bills come through this House in urgency is that they are only repealing bills and not putting up new plans. James Meager: The 100-day plan.SHANAN HALBERT: It's a 100-day plan but just in this 100 days we have incurred additional costs for Aucklanders. Let's count them because if you had asked me a week ago I would have defended this piece of legislation differently. But what Aucklanders and the rest of the country learnt this week is that they might like the idea of not having a regional fuel tax and I'm sure most people like that idea. They also want to get out of having congestion. But they got hoodwinked—they got hoodwinked. They got gaslit by this Minister. Through his cynicism he cancelled a bunch of projects—cancelled the only thing that gets Aucklanders out of their congestion challenges. But what they got hoodwinked with was not cost of living relief as promised; they got slapped with a $50 drivers' tax and if you count that up that's already impacting on Aucklanders. On top of that they're adding another 22c to fuel excise.Katie Nimon: Talk to the bill.SHANAN HALBERT: Whoever said "Talk to the bill." and I think it was the member for Napier—it's actually the cost of living and if she'd read the bill it talks specifically about the cost of living. It's actually a failed attempt by this Minister and the Government to provide cost of living relief for Aucklanders. So that's quite embarrassing when these MPs have to go back to their communities and explain: "Sorry we had a fiscal hole that yes we pretended in the election wasn't there but absolutely it's there. We can't fund our promises." But that's not the only broken promise to cost of living because Aucklanders also face a 23 percent increase in water rates because those members also repealed the affordable water reforms. They also didn't put up another plan for that. At the heart of this is Aucklanders the people of Tāmaki-makau-rau—people still stuck in congestion people still feeling stressed and having their mental health be impacted on—and productivity still being lost in our economy. For a city that makes the largest contribution to our economy this has been one of the poorest pieces of legislation smashed through this House that I have ever seen. I've seen the poorest contribution from members of Parliament from Auckland but most of all I've seen the broken promises that in only 100 days this Government have made and they will be held accountable for that. But most of all they've let down our people of Auckland."