Land Transport Management (Repeal of Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Land Transport Management (Repeal of Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This is a great day for Aucklanders. We’re repealing the Auckland regional fuel tax, a tax which the last Government put in place, promising that this tax would transform Auckland, promising that Mill Road in Takanini would be built, and promising the major infrastructure and congestion issues, which I’ve heard members from across the House talking about—but what has this tax actually done?

I see my good colleague from Upper Harbour there. The big red zero is coming out—the big red zero which featured with the last Government; a big fat zero. Well, the reality is that it has helped pay for $500,000 speed bumps—slowing people down. They talk about congestion on the other side of this House. Well, what do $500,000 speed bumps, riddled across Auckland—what are they doing to congestion in Auckland? That’s what they are doing, and that’s what this money was being spent on. Red-light cameras—red-light cameras. That’s what the regional fuel tax money was being spent on.

What about speed management plans? Well, whenever you hear about a speed management plan, you actually know what a speed management actually means. It means slowing everyone down, and the last Government’s plans, of course, were to make us crawl around in our cars with people walking in front with red flags to tell us how fast we could go. That’s what the regional fuel tax revenue was being spent on.

So when the members on this side of the House say that Aucklanders voted for this, it’s true: Aucklanders voted in overwhelming numbers to repeal the Auckland regional fuel tax. They were doing it not only because it was a cost of living issue but they knew—they knew—that the money was going to waste. When they drive around the roads, they see the congestion and they feel the potholes, but they see $500,000 speed bumps being built, and Aucklanders are wondering “Why is there always enough money to build $500,000 speed bumps, but not enough asphalt to fill the potholes?” Well, it’s because the regional fuel tax was putting the money into the wrong areas. So the National Party, the ACT Party, and the New Zealand First Party are proud to be here, putting this bill through to repeal the Auckland regional fuel tax.

This bill does not just—as I outlined—stop the fuel tax but it is about priorities. It is about making sure that the revenues that are collected from people who use our roads are prioritised into what is important to them. So this bill will ring-fence the remaining money, because—I mean, lo and behold, over $340 million of money was unspent. So, for six years, Aucklanders have been taxed over $340 million—that is, over two years’ worth of the revenues collected from Aucklanders has not even been spent; it’s sitting in a bank account, collecting interest. So this bill will require that that remaining funding is put—

💬 Tom Rutherford: That’s 680 speed bumps.

Well, it scares me, I say to the member for Bay of Plenty. It scares me to think about how many speed bumps that could build. My view is actually just to stop the speed bumps, which is what we’re doing through the Government policy statement, rather than continuing to spend money on something which isn’t a priority.

So this will stop the regional fuel tax. It will require the remaining funding to go towards our priority project, which is the City Rail Link, trains and stabling for the City Rail Link—and, by the way, the last Government talked big about public transport, but we started the City Rail Link and we will complete it—the Eastern Busway, which will ensure more transport choices for those in East Auckland, including the Reeves Road flyover; and there are some local roading improvement projects, which are important to Auckland.

Also, importantly for the rest of the country—and I heard members opposite saying, “Oh well, why is it that all of these people from outside of Auckland speaking on this bill?” Well, the reality is that we’re all elected as members of this House and we take a national interest to the issues facing this country. I put it to members opposite that by repealing this legislation, it means there will not be regional fuel taxes being able to be put in place in other regions around our country as well, which is of course good news for all New Zealanders. This bill is progressing through the House, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m going to begin this contribution by putting to bed the ridiculous notion of $500,000 speed bumps. I think it’s important to do so because it’s indicative of the way that that Government over there has approached this whole issue. It seized on one or two issues and then, frankly, pursued a misleading approach to what is going on. Now, those $500,000 speed bumps, alleged, were a blaring headline in the New Zealand Herald—“$500,000 speed bumps”, they said, blaring up. The Minister of Transport over there seized upon that number and has repeated it with glee. But the New Zealand Herald had to retract that number. Radio New Zealand, who had repeated it, had to retract that number.

There was one speed bump—or one raised crossing, I think—that had to be rebuilt because it encountered serious stormwater problems, and that led to increased costs because of those serious stormwater problems; it incurred those costs. But the speed bumps, and the like, along Meola Road, and the like, cost around about $19,000—cost a much, much smaller amount than has been recited with glee by that side of the House. So the estimated cost of crossings is between $19,000 and $31,000. So I’m going to ask the Minister to treat this with a bit of integrity, to treat this with a bit of being straightforward, and to treat this going with what the real numbers are. So instead of reciting a headline that had to be withdrawn, to go to the actual real numbers in this case.

Let me go on to another issue. There has been no select committee process here, yet again—yet again, no select committee process. This Government has barrelled through bill after bill after bill after bill with no select committee process, in some kind of frenzied attempt to meet an artificially imposed deadline of 100 days, so that they can trotter around saying, “Oh, we’ve achieved a whole lot of ‘stop, repeal, replace’ in a hundred days.” Well, good on them! That does mean we haven’t had a select committee process for this bill.

So what I have chosen to do with the time I have available here is to actually get some evidence from what is happening in our largest city. So in the New Zealand Herald—what’s the date today?—well, yesterday, the day before yesterday, Monday: “Extra Buses for March Madness as Auckland’s worst choke points revealed”. It happens every year in Auckland. In March, the roads are just beyond congested—extraordinary choke points on the road. Now, it happens as the universities go back and the polytechnics go back and as schools go back, so, suddenly, there is just a whole lot more people on the roads.

The choke points are reasonably well known. We know it’s East Tāmaki to Greenlane in the morning. It’s Royal to St Lukes. We know it’s Greville Road to Esmonde Road on the Northern Motorway. We know it’s Manukau to Māngere northbound on State Highway 20. We know where the choke points are and we know what the problems are. We have some of the same issues, going home in the evenings. Any Aucklander who is trying to get through the city at sort of between 8 and 10 in the morning, or maybe 7 and 10 morning, and trying to get home between, say, 3 and 6 in the evening, we don’t have to tell you this. It’s northbound on the Southern Motorway from Princess Street to Greenlane. It’s State Highway 20 and State Highway 1 merging in the evening—that’s a really choked-up point. You know, we might as well call State Highway 20 “a parking lot” at that time of the day. And on it goes, just the known choke points.

Now, part of what we are trying to do in Auckland is to get people to change to public transport, to change to active modes of transport so that we have fewer cars on the road. What some of the regional fuel tax was going to do was to help with that, with providing those projects, which would enable people to access other modes of transport so that they didn’t have to be on the roads, in their cars. Gone, and the March madness will persist. So that’s one story coming from Auckland.

I thought this one was fascinating, coming from Devonport. So this was on Radio New Zealand, on 22 February. One of the local ward councillors on the Devonport Takapuna Local Board was really, really worried when she heard the news that the regional fuel tax was going to be removed. Why? It was because the Lake Road project has gone. Now, that’s the road that runs down into the peninsula, so from Takapuna down to Devonport, and it is hopelessly crowded.

💬 Hon Member: Always blocked.

It is always blocked. It makes life quite difficult for people living on that peninsula. You know, Devonport is a really beautiful suburb, and I can understand why people want to live there, but they cannot get in and they cannot get out. Why? It’s because Lake Road is choked up.

Now, one of the potential improvements that actually hasn’t just been put on hold but has been stopped was the improvements to Lake Road that were going to help with the congestion along there. So taking out the regional fuel tax has left people in Devonport stuck with their deeply congested road. Now, I know that people in Devonport, quite overwhelmingly, voted for that Government; I’m beginning to wonder if they regret their choices.

And here again, another piece of information, and this is in lieu of the submissions that we might have received, is from Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. Now, Mr Brown can be fairly cantankerous at times, but he’s a pretty straight-dealing sort of man. It’s one of the interesting things about dealing with him: he might be grumpy, but, by goodness, you get a straight answer from him. You get some pretty straight language, and it makes him quite easy to deal with, because at least you know where he stands on stuff. He has warned, he says, that, actually, stopping the Auckland fuel tax is going to create huge problems for Auckland. He has been quite outspoken about how he actually wanted that regional fuel tax to continue. He has had to call for a stop on all sorts of transport projects because the regional fuel tax is no longer in place.

It’s not just Mr Brown; it’s other city councillors who have said that this is a real problem. The transport committee chair, John Watson, said that a number of significant projects have been left up in the air. Councillor Richard Hills said that the projects that were being funded through the regional fuel tax were needed. So, by removing the regional fuel tax, that Government has created real, ongoing problems for Auckland. The Auckland Mayor, who said, you know, “We needed that funding up in Auckland.”, has put a stop to projects that were needed. Well, thank you very much, you know, we’re one of the people who are stuck in that.

But I want to talk a little bit further, because some of the other submissions that might have come in—had there only been submissions—might have got to some of the information that was revealed in this disclosure statement. We’ve already traversed a little bit of the information that was there about the actual impact on people’s back pockets, which we know is going to be about $2.70 a week per household—big deal! But there are going to be a couple of problems. One is that, in theory, the price of fuel is going to drop by 10c a litre. Now, no matter that it varies by more than that across the city a lot, even on a single day, but driving from the Gull station in Titirangi down to the Mobil station in New Lynn can see a 10c increase in the price of petrol just because of the way that pricing operates. But one of the things about the way those prices fluctuate means it is going to be very hard to be sure that that 10c a litre is actually going to be passed on to consumers.

I haven’t heard a word yet from the other side of the House as to how they are going to ensure that the actual benefit of that cut is going to be passed on to the consumers, instead of just quietly absorbed by the fuel companies. So I’d like to hear about that, and I’ll be asking the Minister about it later on in the committee of the whole House stage of the bill.

But let me just read the last paragraph of the disclosure statement that was prepared by the Minister’s own officials—the last paragraph. It says: “Removing the Regional Fuel Tax is unlikely to have a substantive impact on households and this change would need to be made alongside other interventions in order to help reduce the cost of living on Aucklanders.” What are the other interventions that they put in place in this space? Well, they’re going to whack up the cost of registration by $50. An own goal, Minister; you are making the wrong decision.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

As I said in my first contribution on this bill, I think that it’s really a shame that the current coalition Government took such an antagonistic approach to being in Opposition and developed such knee-jerk policies and didn’t really do the work to figure out how they would raise enough revenue to pay for the projects they’re promising.

While, on the one hand, it’s clear they did campaign on cancelling the regional fuel tax, what was never clear was how the additional revenue was going to be found to pay for the projects that need to be built. And, clearly, the regional fuel tax was a tool given to Auckland so that it didn’t have to entirely rely on rates to pay for transport infrastructure. And it’s a smart, low-administrative-cost way of raising revenue that, frankly, consumers don’t really notice, because of the competitive nature of the market of petrol stations in Auckland. Despite the regional fuel tax existing in Auckland, the cheapest petrol in the country can be found in Auckland regularly. So it’s not the case that this was imposing some big additional cost that consumers are going to notice when it’s gone. But what people are going to notice is that projects they were expecting to be built—like the Lake Road upgrade in Devonport and a whole lot of other ones—are no longer going to happen. And if they are going to make a contribution to transport infrastructure, it’s going to have to come from rates. And Wayne Brown, the mayor, has been very clear about this. Cutting the regional fuel tax at this time means either a rates rise or a cut in projects.

Now, the Minister of Transport has just released a Government policy statement on transport in which he has sort of claimed that the decisions made by this Government are going to lead to a more efficient and effective transport system and that they’re concerned with productivity and economic growth. But every action they’re taking is doing the exact opposite. I think, fundamentally, there’s a real confusion—specifically for the Minister, the Hon Simeon Brown—about why everyone drives everywhere in Auckland. He seems to think people are driving cars all over Auckland because they want to and are being stuck in traffic because they want to, and what he doesn’t realise is that decades of Government and local government decisions have made it impossible for them to get anywhere without a car. Actually, those Government decisions have forced huge costs on to households, because it’s very costly to own and run a car, and then lots of land is needed to park the car—everywhere you need to go. And, now, New Zealand has actually just surpassed the US for highest car-ownership rate in the world. That’s not a success story for New Zealand, because we import all of our cars and all of the fuel to run them. So all of our dairy exports do not cover the cost of the private vehicles that we import and the fuel that we need to use to run them. Those capital assets—they are barely used. The average private vehicle is sitting parked 96 percent of the day, taking up valuable urban land in our cities.

Now, when I say all of this, the Minister and the people opposite come back with “Julie Anne Genter just hates cars. She just hates roads. She just hates cars.” Guys, that’s not what I’m saying. Cars can be very practical, useful tools, but it’s not practical for every person in New Zealand to have to have their own car, which they use four hours a day or less and that they have to keep parked somewhere and they all try to use at the same time of day in the morning and the night in urban areas. That doesn’t work. Do you understand—Madam Speaker, not you, but do they understand? Why do they say this? Why do they say this when I say, “This is not the most cost-effective way to solve our country’s transport problems, and there are better ways that get better outcomes.”? Why do they say, “Why do you hate roads?” Why do they say that?

I think that must be projection, and on the part of the Minister, he actually does hate people who walk and ride bikes, because why else would he have such a policy that is trying to stop every safe, evidence-based pedestrian crossing in front of every school that might have been proposed? Why is he doing that? I mean, that’s shocking. Why is he saying that no money from the State highway activity class could ever be used for a multimodal transport—

💬 Cameron Luxton: Point of order. This is my first time raising a point of order, and taking note of what the previous Speaker had said—that we must quote one—I would just say Standing Order 121: “Personal reflections. A member may not [impute improper motives] against a member”, and I feel like we just heard that. So, as much as I’m enjoying listening to the speaker, I would hope that she’d keep her comments to not reflections.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I will just get some advice on that. Yes, the member did refer to an opinion about the Minister’s point of view on something. It was borderline, but I don’t believe it did breach the Standing Orders.

To be honest, I would never say that, except that people consistently say it about me when I say this is not the most cost-effective way to solve your problem. And so I said, “If they’re saying that about me, what does it say about their thoughts and their attitudes and beliefs?”, because there is not—

💬 Todd Stephenson: You said the Minister hates people.

Well, maybe it was projection, because, yeah—maybe it’s projection on their part.

But the point is that there is an opportunity that New Zealand has to get much better outcomes from transport spending, and if we took a logical, evidence-based approach, then we would be investing in things that move more people and goods at lower cost—and that is things like multimodal integrated transport projects, that is busways and public transport to new greenfields housing areas on the outskirts of Auckland, that is making it possible for people to get from one neighbourhood on one side of a State highway and the other side of the State highway walking and cycling, because some people live on one side of a State highway, and the school that their kids go to is on the other side. If they aren’t able to take an overbridge or have a walking and cycling path, then they have to get in their car and drive the kilometre or whatever to get there. And if they have to get in their car and drive at peak time, that’s adding more congestion to the network.

So the whole rationale of spending money on public transport and walking and cycling from the transport budget is because it benefits everyone. It benefits everyone, and that includes the people who are driving the cars on the road. For whatever reason that they have to do that, that’s fine, but the point is that they benefit more from the busway or from the pedestrian connection than they do from a few kilometres of extra lane of motorway, because that is very quickly filled up with more cars when people have no choice but to drive.

And, in some ways, the fact that the Minister recognises the value of public transport to road users is reflected in this bill, because, in this bill, the Government is stipulating that the remaining funds that exist from the Auckland regional fuel tax should go towards the Eastern Busway. It is a project that that Government, the National Party, campaigned on. I think it’s quite specifically beneficial to the Minister’s electorate. He’s brought up, over and over again, that his constituents will benefit from the Eastern Busway. And, in this case, he’s saying it’s OK to use revenue from the regional fuel tax—revenue from Aucklanders who’ve paid it from driving their cars—on a busway when it’s of significance to the party who campaigned on it.

So there’s no actual rule here that says road users shouldn’t pay for busways and bike lanes, because we know they benefit from it. It’s just that the Government will use whatever argument supports the things they want to do for the reasons they want to do it. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be because it’s going to benefit all New Zealanders and all of Auckland, because people in some parts of Auckland are going to be seriously disadvantaged by this repeal of the regional fuel tax, because it means that there won’t be the money there to build the projects that they were relying on, whether they were public transport or walking and cycling or roading projects. The revenue won’t be there to pay for it, other than through rates. And we know local government needs more revenue tools, and congestion pricing and direct road-user charging is going to take years to get up. So, in the interim, there’s this gap, there’s this absence that has to be made up with other revenue. So that’s why the Green Party’s not supporting this.

But, as ever, what I would really love—and I will continue to do this; I’ve been doing this for 12½ years in this House, and I was doing it for three years before that—is to try to make the case that, actually, transport should not be a political football. It’s not a tribal battle between people who happen to use a bike some days and people who happen to use a car. The choices that people have to them, that they’re able to make about how to get around, are fundamentally shaped by decisions made in this House by the executive in their Government policy statement and by local government. But the executive significantly influences what local government can do. So let’s not pretend that we’re giving people choice simply by building more roads. I mean, that’s not what’s happening. Successive Governments have underfunded public transport. They’ve pushed development out to the fringes where there’s no other alternatives. In order to give people effective choices, we need to significantly invest much, much more in public transport, walking, and cycling. To mend the severance that’s been caused by urban motorways, we need to allow more density in our cities, and that, ironically, is the thing that’s going to deliver the most for the people who are trying to use private vehicles on the roads we currently have.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand here in support of this repeal bill for many reasons and just to name a couple: I feel like the good people of Tauranga are already living with two toll roads. Now, there’s three toll roads in New Zealand, two of which are paid for in Tauranga, and we are enjoying these very much. They’re a user-pays situation in which—

💬 Tom Rutherford: “Toll-ranga”.

Tauranga!

💬 Tom Rutherford: “Toll-ranga”.

Oh, well, Tauranga—I don’t actually know how to pronounce it the way you did there. Oh, “Toll-ranga”! Nice work, “Tom-ranga”.

So what we have got is a user-pays system which works. I would love to see more people being able to access the central city. A lot of people from the Matapihi, Pāpāmoa, Arataki area already cycle over to the Strand, and when that option’s available people can take it. But for the vast majority of New Zealanders who choose to live where they want to live—and that might be in a suburb for their kids, it might be close to a lifestyle opportunity like a beach—they need to be able to get to town. A regressive thing such as a regional fuel tax sets a precedent for the rest of the country that we do not want.

I stand here glad to be repealing Auckland’s fuel tax so that we don’t end up with one in the Bay of Plenty. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

My turn. I’m pleased again to support this bill. Look, I’m going to start off by responding to a couple of comments that were made by the Hon Julie Anne Genter. She said that transport shouldn’t be a political football. I would agree with her, because I would say that the more things that we can get long-term consensus on in the community and across the political divide, the better, especially on things like transport, which, often, you’re putting in transport infrastructure and it will be there for 100, 200, 300 years, and will have an effect across that long period of time. The reality is, though, we are having a vigorous debate about this.

I’m just going to pick up on some of the issues which have been raised, just to show that I’ve been listening to what the Opposition has been saying. The Hon Deborah Russell talked about any council being able to apply for a fuel tax, and, of course, that is going to go under this legislation. However, my recollection was that Jacinda Ardern, as Prime Minister, actually ruled out any more regional fuel taxes, and she did, indeed, do that. I’ve got a quote from a news article here: “Jacinda Ardern has ruled out any more regional fuel taxes under her leadership,” I accept that she’s obviously not the leader anymore, but it was clear and emphatic, ruling that out. “I can give [a] guarantee to this House and consumers [that] there will be no other regional fuel taxes while I’m Prime Minister.” She also said—which was interesting because of this concept of saying, “Well, actually, there could be other parts of the country which would like to have a regional fuel tax.” She also said, “Well, some regions are desperate for investment,” said Ms Ardern, “but we’ve ruled it out.”—but we’ve ruled it out.

So these other parts of the country which were going to benefit from the thing which had gone in in Auckland—and I can remember, because I was mayor at the time, and, actually, my predecessor also came and asked the Hon Phil Twyford, who I see over here, and he’s nodding. He said, “Well, on the basis of that ruling out”—I presume that’s what it was—“no, Wellington, you cannot have a regional fuel tax either.” In fact, what I wanted was to say, “I would like you to at least say, ‘Can we get the congestion price legislation under way.’ ”—nodding over there again. The answer was no. But after you got through the 2020 election, the answer was “Yeah, well, maybe, maybe, maybe.” So we felt like we were making some progress.

But I think the reality was that, from our perspective, there was value in getting the right mechanism there. I accept that the congestion pricing is going to take a fair bit of time to get to, but that is the right mechanism, because it changes people’s behaviour as well. It is not simply a blunt tool which affects everybody.

We’ve heard that issue about being regressive. The reality is that many people are going to need to use their car. Auckland’s issue is not just about the transport system; it’s about its form. It’s such a big city that to get around it, for many people, the car is the only option. Public transport is not going to be viable for many, many people to use, and so the car is going to be necessary. For those people, what this is is regressive and it affects them significantly, and that’s why we’re pleased to stand to repeal this.

We also heard that there’s going to be a whole lot of projects which will now be cancelled. They won’t be cancelled; Auckland can still put them up into the National Land Transport Programme, and if they are good projects, they will get through that process. Now, sometimes we over-embellish things in this House, but the reality is we’re talking about something like—

💬 Grant McCallum: Really?

Really? Yes, sometimes things get over-embellished. But we’re talking here about $130 million - odd a year. The National Land Transport Fund from fuel taxes, etc., $4.5 billion a year. Auckland would usually get roughly a third of that—$1.5 billion a year. So we’re talking about 8 percent or so of the money which would be, effectively, going to Auckland. So, yes, it will have an impact; the issue is: how much impact.

Then, of course, the issue is: does that put that little bit of extra pressure on, saying that you’ve got to get better-quality projects? And, look, we’ve heard about $500,000 speed humps and pedestrian crossings. That’s not great. We’ve heard about the cost of putting those sort of things in, and we’ve got to have a look at that, the cost of all the health and safety issues around those. But if we can try and make sure that we get better-quality investment, I think that that will be a very, very good thing.

We’ve also heard some accusations about this Government whacking up the fuel tax. What we haven’t heard from the other side of the House is that it’s three years before any of that happens at all. We also haven’t heard the recognition that—in fact, I think it was both under a National- and a Labour-led Government that 4c a litre regularly went on the petrol tax. So, in fact, if you said 4c a litre over six years, you’d be 24c a litre anyway, so there’s probably not a lot between the two sides there.

We’ve also heard an accusation about giving with one hand and taking away with the other, about registration rising. I don’t think that the cost of registering a vehicle has gone up since 1994—

💬 Tom Rutherford: Before I was born.

Before Tom was born. What I would say to people right around the Chamber is that so often a price is set and it’s not adjusted—

💬 Hon Member: Oh, one-off.

—yeah, these one-off prices—and Labour-led Governments are equally guilty of that. I know that, because, having been in local government, we would regularly come to Government and say, “Hey, you haven’t allowed this price to go up for 20, 30 years. It’s now completely out of whack. Can you do that?” We should never be put in that position. We should never be imposing that. A little bit of trust between central government and other people will go a very, very long way.

So I think those are most of the things that I wish to say, other than to say a really, really important thing: putting cycleways in, putting busways and public transport improvements in, can benefit motorists, but we have to get the balance right, and, so often, we are not taking motorists with us—we are not taking motorists with us. In fact, some of those projects have a significant negative impact on motorists. I look around the city that I live in, and I know that people have not been taken on that journey at all, and that they see a real, negative impact on people who want to get about and do their business and they just happen to want to be able to use a car and they are not happy with that. I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Te Pāti Māori do not support the Government’s transport agenda. Let’s start, firstly, by saying that this is not about the cost of living. We’ve already heard from this Government about their anti-beneficiary, anti - wage earner policies, where they want to sanction beneficiaries and cut the yearly increase for minimum wage. So let’s not have a cost of living discussion with this policy.

Our policy is for free public transport that is accessible and efficient. This could be implemented immediately with tamariki, students, and community services card holders, and be made free for everyone within five years. Our policy is to ensure that urban planning and infrastructure allows for safe cycling and walking paths, and that cheap and accessible public and active transport is also prioritised in regional and rural Aotearoa and not just in our major cities. That is the whakaaro behind our position today.

This Government campaigned to build 15 new roads and has pledged $500 million to fix potholes. The one pothole they cannot fix, however, is the $24 billion pothole in their Budget. It’s the road users that are going to have to be paying for their reckless policies.

On top of road-user charges, they are putting up regos by $50. That money will go towards funding 50,000 roadside drug-tests, which they will be making back by increasing fines. They are cutting cycleway and walkway projects, creating more congestion on the roads, and then increasing congestion charges at peak-hour traffic. How many people here have sat in peak-hour traffic in Tāmaki-makau-rau? It’s a nightmare.

This Government is taking the option away from people to use reliable public transport, forcing them to sit in traffic and then pay for it, because they cannot plan more than three years ahead. By disincentivising electric vehicles while at the same time cutting public transport, this Government is fuelling climate change.

We’re in urgency, so just a message from some of our community members across Tāmaki-makau-rau who want to be able to share their thinking. The first message I got today was, “Takutai, Aucklanders don’t feel confident in this Government.”

💬 Shanan Halbert: They’re confused.

They are confused, exactly—they are confused. But they don’t feel confident with this Government. Here’s the thing: this Government wants to cancel projects. However, these projects are already under way. They’ve still got to go ahead. We’ve still got to find the money for them. They can’t just stop. One of the projects that was mentioned was: what’s going to happen to the safety for our school kids that are needing the flashing lights, the traffic lights, to keep those tamariki safe when they’re going to school? That’s one of those projects. The community are asking: what happens? Does that mean it doesn’t go ahead now, and then our kids are unsafe on the roads when they go to school, where they should be at their safest? Have you seen the roads down Mahia Road in Manurewa? My gosh, they are dangerous. Our kids need safe roads to cross when they’re going to school. Even outside Manurewa Marae, it’s a main road along there. Reducing the speed of traffic along that main road of Finlayson doesn’t help; it needs the flashing lights to get people safe across the roads.

This bill also creates another debate: it’s not just about transport; who’s going to be responsible for the drainage after the flooding? Who’s going to be responsible for the cesspits caused in Parnell? It’s all interrelated: infrastructure and transport. This is what Aucklanders are asking. So I’m here to say that Te Pāti Māori, on behalf of our whānau in Tāmaki-makau-rau, do not support this bill.

Everybody should have the right to fully participate in their communities, and transport options play a huge part of that. In order to ensure that people can actually get around their towns and cities, they need to have options around how they do that, not just being locked into cars being one of the options that they have, and, on top of that, with infrastructure that doesn’t allow for things like walking and cycling and for our kids to safely be able to go to things like school.

What we’re seeing right now is a repeal that will cut the revenue-gathering tool that the Government had to be able to fund transport projects, and the Government not proposing an alternative. For all the talk around the Government still being committed to public transport, the reality is that what we’re experiencing is, effectively, a cut in real funding when it comes to public transport projects, effectively locking people, particularly in big urban centres, to only being able to get around with cars.

What is worse is that by cutting revenue streams—that would have enabled greater investment in public transport—and locking in polluting infrastructure, carbon-intensive infrastructure, and locking people into cars, what we are also doing is leaving our communities more prone to severe weather events, like the ones that Auckland experienced last year, effectively putting more of our communities at risk of climate change.

This repeal needs to be put in the broader context of the Government’s infrastructure plans. It’s been portrayed as a cost of living measure. It’s interesting, because if I take the words of another Minister in a different debate, who, when we talked about benefits, talked, at the time, about how no single bill can be taken in isolation—she was talking about a bill that would increase child poverty. And then we see this bill that is being pitched as a cost of living measure when, actually, the cost of living benefits for our communities of this specific repeal are minimal in the broader context of a Government that is lowering benefit increases, attacking workers’ wages, and doing nothing to genuinely alleviate the high costs of housing. At the same time, this bill therefore has to be put into the context of a Government that is doing nothing to alleviate the pressures that people face when it comes to the cost of taking public transport.

So all that this bill is doing is cutting a key revenue-gathering tool for infrastructure projects—ideally there should be public transport infrastructure projects—and this Government is proposing no alternatives. We could be looking at general taxation policy to gather revenue for transport infrastructure projects, we could be looking at congestion pricing, and yet this Government isn’t brave enough to put progressive alternatives to commit funding for public transport infrastructure.

Anyone who lives in places like Auckland will know how far behind we are when it comes to investing in public transport infrastructure. Rather than playing political football around how slow successive Governments have been at delivering public transport infrastructure, we should have a Government that is brave enough to look at the evidence, the science, and, actually, the feedback from our communities who are very clear that they want options to get around.

People in our schools, and kids, have been proactive at galvanising and running campaigns around safe walking and cycling infrastructure so they can get to school. The repeal of the regional fuel tax leaves a gap when it comes to the ability to resource those projects, on top of a Minister of Transport that has actually waged a war on that safe infrastructure that would have enabled people to have those options.

So the Green Party does not support the Land Transport Management (Repeal of Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill for those reasons. The Minister could have been clear about what alternative revenue-gathering tools he was going to propose when he introduced that bill. We don’t have that. We just have a bill that has been led by a rhetoric that wasn’t grounded on evidence, that was pushed through the campaign, and also a bill that doesn’t allow for the people who are going to be most affected by infrastructure decisions to actually give feedback on this bill. So, by having this bill in urgency, we’re preventing the campaigners—the young people who’ve been pushing for safe walking and cycling and infrastructure, on top of better public transport—from giving their thoughts on, actually, what should therefore replace this repeal if we’re going to have this being taken away from the Government’s ability to resource transport projects. We call on the Government to genuinely commit to public transport infrastructure rather than to lock us into climate change policies.

One of the other important aspects of this bill is the removal of the opportunity for other regional fuel taxes. The people of Northland certainly do not want one. I commend this bill to the House.

I want to start by talking about some of the things that my colleagues have talked about today, about the fear they have of the war that’s being waged in this situation: I would have thought that the issue of transport and proper funding of transport was almost apolitical because it affects our entire community.

I picked up an email recently from one of the principals in a school in my area, and it’s a school that’s been subject to quite a lot of noise about what the Minister of Transport calls “speed bumps”, but they’re actually raised crossings. So they stand above the road and they are crossings that go—

💬 Hon Simeon Brown: They’re speed bumps.

The Minister’s laughing at this point, but I’m not sure he’ll be laughing once he’s heard the email that came in. It came in about the concern of the principal about the safety of children at his school, and he starts talking about speeds in the area, and how necessary they are because the children are walking to school. But he also talks about the impact of a lack of safety, and he says, “I’m not sure if anyone in this email list”—and he sent it to Melissa Lee and he sent it to myself and he sent it to Auckland Transport—“has attended the funeral of a child who has died as a result of being hit by a car. I have. It was in my time in”—and I’m going to leave the suburb out so it doesn’t affect people—“and the student was hit by a car on a 50-kilometre road while riding a bike. The car wasn’t speeding, but it killed him. I vividly remember the call from my principal. I remember the immense grief of knowing that we would not see his joyous, smiling face at school again. I remember the funeral. I remember the sobbing. I remember consoling his teacher as we stood at the open casket. I do not want to attend another funeral like this.”

Now, I don’t usually consider myself in this House to be a person who talks melodrama. But I think it’s worth remembering that when taxes like this are cut and there is a shortfall and the mayor has much pressure on him to keep down the rates, the results are likely to be that things go; things that need to be there go. When the Minister talks about speed bumps costing $500,000—knowing that that was retracted, because it’s been in the media that it wasn’t correct—there is a politicisation of an issue and a clouding of an issue that we surely have to see with much clearer vision than that. If the life of a child is at stake, we are going to have to slow down the cars, and we’re going to have to do it by raised crossings. On the road that this principal’s talking about—I know that area—it’s an area with very, very high walking and cycling as it is, so it’s even more necessary because of the vulnerability of those people. It’s absolutely necessary. We take that seriously.

I take the point that’s been made that there are other tools—there are things like congestion charging—all for looking at those things. I was on that select committee, I looked at that, I was concerned and sceptical about it because it does depend on what the impact is on people who are living a long way away, who tend to be the poorer people, and they have to come to their jobs. But I can see the point in exploring those tools and doing it together.

But what I don’t like is when the Minister politicises an issue that should never have been political. What we have here is something that affects the very hearts of our communities. We must—must—keep funding for these kinds of projects. Instead, the Minister has ring-fenced certain projects. It has been pointed out he’s ring-fenced a project in his area that affects the people in his area. He has noticed the impact of busways in that area. But he has not ring-fenced the area of mine; he has not said that, in the Mt Albert area, we’re going to give the same sort of priority to busways and—

💬 Hon Simeon Brown: Does the train go through?

Actually, the trains that are here—there are bits that are cut out of the new train services, Minister. So the comment that he’s just made across the House about whether it affects the trains is, yes, we get some of that early stuff, but we don’t get a lot of the enhancement in the trains, and I’ll be asking about that in the committee stage, so we better get ready.

So what I am saying here is that these are priorities, but it’s not all I want to say here. It is not just about safety; it’s also about the cost to Auckland in terms of its wealth. I have the portfolio of small business and I have manufacturing, and have sat in the traffic and waited and wondered how much it’s costing Auckland to be this congested. It is actually costing a lot, and we know now that if we can get people out of their cars—particularly in the inner city suburbs, because they can walk and they can cycle, and e-bikes make that possible—if we can encourage them out, and if we can have good busways, then it frees up the capacity for the roads to be used in a productive way. So I am concerned about the price that Aucklanders will pay in terms of productivity because of this retroactive step of taking this away.

I actually share the concerns of the mayor. This is money that was ring-fenced for Auckland, and it is an alternative to rate rises, and, instead, the Minister has taken away the specific ring-fenced tax to Auckland where Aucklanders pay for Auckland infrastructure, and instead he’s bringing in another tax which is actually through the driver’s licence system, and that goes to the whole of the country. How fair is that? Auckland loses its specific commitment and its specific build when it is so necessary, and it loses it to the whole country.

I note that we’ve had a lot of people jump up on the other side and speak for their whole 30 seconds and they haven’t been from Auckland; we’ve had very few Aucklanders stand up on this one because it affects their constituents. It affects the constituents in Devonport and it affects my constituents—it affects them. This is not a future-forward piece of legislation for Auckland. is going to hurt Aucklanders, and they’re going to pay in another way through the driver’s licence, a different form of tax, and they’re not going to pay for things that they know are building a better Auckland for them. That’s not going to happen, and so I am very concerned to see that.

I also just want to tell them something that’s a bit of bad news, which is that if they expect to see the fuel come down 10c a litre every time they go to the pump, unfortunately that’s very unlikely to happen. When I look at the fuel prices that have been in the North and I compare them to the fuel prices once you’ve hit the area where the tax applies, you can’t see that that’s going to be a transparent drop in the price. It’s very unlikely. It’s extremely difficult to see where that’s coming from, because Auckland often has lower fuel prices. So there is no correlation. It’s been pointed out by a few members, and, again, we’ll be asking in the committee stage about this: what is the mechanism that means we’re going to see that flow through to the ordinary Aucklander? When this law comes in, how are we going to make sure that it actually gets passed on to Aucklanders? I have some serious concerns about that.

I’d like to just talk finally about this issue—about seeing this as a cost of living issue—because I live in the suburb, and I think about what would cost more for the people in that suburb of Mount Albert. I think about the issue of things like bus fares and how those affect our poorest people. So when we move away from things like half-price bus fares and cheaper bus fares and streamlined bus services, who do we hurt? Which Aucklanders are most affected by that? It’s a simple question. The people who are most affected are the ones who’ve got lots of kids or they live a long way out. They’re the ones who miss out here, and those are the Aucklanders that, I believe, we all want to see get a step up. It’s not the people with the Range Rovers—it’s not the people with the Range Rovers living in Freemans Bay. It drives me nuts that I can’t ever find a park because I can’t squeeze past the car without being very frightened of actually scratching it—

The member’s time has expired.

It surely has. Thank you, Madam Speaker. As the MP for Bay of Plenty, anything we can do to support our colleagues across the country—and, in this case, in Auckland—with the cost of living, I am happy to support. Removing the Auckland regional fuel tax will provide cost of living support, saving the driver of a Toyota Hilux around $9.20 every time they fill up in Auckland, while a Toyota Corolla driver will save around $5.75. I commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call. I call the Hon Damien O’Connor.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Miles Anderson looked very, very uncomfortable when that was spoken of from that side of the House, because the reality is that he’s a regional MP from the South Island, and his constituents are going to suffer from this stupid piece of legislation. We have a bunch of transport geniuses on the other side of the House here!

When they last came into Government in 2008-09, one of the first things they did in 2010, they increased the weight of trucks from 44 to 53 tonnes. Oh, this was going to bring efficiency, we were told. And then the next thing they did in 2014 was change the system of funding; it was, effectively, called “sweat the assets”. This was designed to drive efficiency in the way that we funded our roading maintenance and upgrades. The combination of that, quite frankly, as every regional and rural MP knows, has been the destruction of our roads since then. We have, as a country, seen the deficiencies in Auckland, because they can’t help themselves, can’t look after themselves through many, many years of local government incompetency—I’ll say that. They have not invested properly in their infrastructure. And we as the taxpayers across the country have invested billions of dollars in Auckland’s infrastructure.

And we, when last in Government, said, “We’ll put a little bit of tax on petrol, and you can invest in that transport infrastructure that’s clearly deficient.” And the last National Government took it off, and we put it back on. And now this coalition Government’s going to take it off. And the billions of dollars of deficits that this will leave will come from regional and provincial road funding, absolutely. It will come from safety investments that save lives across our country: $5 million is the estimated cost of every single fatal accident in our country, $900,000 for every serious accident in our country. Wouldn’t we be better to put that money up front, and, if so, where should it come from? Well, I know that in my home town of Westport, actually, until we intervened to bring in Gull and Nelson NPD—Nelson Petroleum Distributors—into the South Island, we were paying a huge amount; a lot. It was about 30c or 40c more per litre than people in Auckland. So, even with the regional fuel tax, people were paying less for fuel in Auckland than many parts of our country.

💬 Grant McCallum: What other parts?

Many parts. Well, let’s go and have a look, as I did just before. So they vary between $2.80, roughly, in Auckland; $2.90 in the West Coast; in Waikato, $2.70. There’s about a 20c to 25c variation across the country.

So the question is: what’s the harm in investing in your future through a regional fuel tax? What’s the harm in investing in safety and saving lives in your community? What is the harm? Can’t answer it.

💬 Shanan Halbert: Don’t care.

Don’t care. What I’m saying is that what we did with the implementation of this tax was actually enable Auckland to invest in its future and its future infrastructure. I think, for the most part, people didn’t notice. Saving cost of living—what a joke. It’s been pointed out by my colleagues that it’s insignificant across the scheme of things. In the end, the accidents, the congestion, and all of the other chaos that will come from the lack of investment will cost a whole lot more than being upfront, raising some revenue, and investing it in the things that Auckland desperately needs.

This is one more of those stupid pieces of legislation being passed through this House in urgency, where people don’t get a chance to scrutinise it, don’t get a chance to put up the counterargument and, indeed, I’d say to you, will be reversed in the future—will be reversed. Do you know why? Because Auckland and most Aucklanders—not the Remuera crew, not the crew that sit over there, the privileged, the people who think they’re entitled to a tax cut, entitled to pay less for their fuel. Well, do you know what I suggest to you, and Mr Anderson will know: the hard-working people in Southland and Waikato and in Northland, who generate the revenue for our country, they’re entitled to a fair go as well. This regional fuel tax was an investment by Aucklanders in Auckland. It’s been taken away, and that investment will come from the regional and provincial areas of our country that earn the money and that should have the same price and the same investment as Auckland.

It’s a privilege to rise as just another fabulous Aucklander to support the repeal of the Auckland regional fuel tax. The people of Northcote want a Government that will truly ease cost of living pressures; the people of Northcote want a Government that will actually end wasteful spending. This bill does both of these, and therefore I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is an important discussion this evening for people that live in Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland, because what we all know is, as our city grows to a population of 2 million people by 2030—2 million people by 2030—the way we feel now in congestion compared to the way we’ll feel in 2030, when we’re still in congestion, we’re not moving as a city, and our GDP and contribution to our economy is severely impacted by the decision that we make today. When we talk to Aucklanders, when we talk to any family that is suffering under the cost of living challenges that we experience at the moment, and we talk about tax—and, today, we’re talking about the regional fuel tax—and we say, “Do you want to pay a tax?”, everyone says, “No.”, right? We don’t want to pay a tax if we don’t have to. At the same time, Aucklanders feel frustrated at the deep congestion that our city faces.

We have discussed this and debated this as a Transport and Infrastructure Committee in the last term. We talked about—agreed on some of—the tools that actually will change the way we get around New Zealand’s largest city of Tāmaki-makau-rau, what could be used. But while National did campaign on repealing the regional fuel tax, the truth is that under the now National-led Government, Aucklanders will be paying more, and they have had the promise of cost of living relief pulled out from under them. That is the reality. If Aucklanders tonight feel confused—because if I thought about this last week compared to this week, I’m quite confused, because, actually, they have absolutely hoodwinked Aucklanders. They’ve pulled the rug out from under them. They’ve made them believe, in an election, that they’re going to save, on average, $2 more a week or $100 a year.

But this Minister of Transport is one of the most cynical Ministers ever, who is trying to be seen to be giving with one hand but, at the same time, is actually taking with the other. He is adding costs to Aucklanders when he promised cost of living relief. Every member of Parliament from Auckland that sits across that side of the House tonight, you should hang your head in shame, because while you campaigned on one thing, actually, this week, you have done another. Because of them, Aucklanders are facing a drivers’ tax, adding a cost of $50 to Auckland families to register their car per year. Do the maths yourself: where is the cost of living relief? In addition to that, they’re adding 12c a litre to petrol. So when I talk about that they’ve hoodwinked Aucklanders, that is the actual case. They are giving with one hand and they’re taking—ripping off Aucklanders—with the other.

That’s on top of the proposed 23 percent increase to Auckland water rates, because they repealed the one thing that was the game-changer for Aucklanders when it comes to water infrastructure. National’s transport projects are estimated to cost twice the amount that they initially said. That’s a fiscal hole of $24 billion—$24 billion.

The reality of people living in Auckland, actually, is when you see the plans, they aren’t there. What the Minister has done with this piece of legislation is pulled the rug out from under Mayor Wayne Brown and his ability to deal with critical transport infrastructure for our city. Where we look for a progressive relationship between central government and local government, this particular bill obstructs that relationship from working. What it says, actually—what it does—is it takes away the localism that our city needs, that, actually, the National Government campaigned on. Auckland Council needs to be fit for purpose, and, yes, I agree there is work to be done around the future of Auckland Transport, but what we can’t do is have a big, three-headed taniwha Government making decisions in isolation. We need a view across Auckland that doesn’t have one single view about investing in roads; it needs to invest in our public transport—another thing that has been taken away from Aucklanders.

What I’ve heard this evening, I’m quite saddened by and disappointed. When people take the mickey out of the cost to pedestrian crossings, and put figures out there that they know aren’t accurate, and in our local community—and the member of Northcote talked about pedestrian crossings. The question for him is: which pedestrian crossing or transport project would he take away, because this regional fuel tax has invested in our community, and if he doesn’t know that, then he probably needs to do his research. But the important part is that we actually want to acknowledge we want people to get around efficiently, we want to get out of congestion, we want them to be safe, we want a progressive city that is as productive as it possibly can be. While, actually, we talk about what Aucklanders want, they are struggling with the cost of living, but what they said when Auckland Council commissioned a poll: 44 percent of Aucklanders actually, based on this discussion, wanted to keep the regional fuel tax; 26 percent were in favour of cancelling the regional fuel tax projects—that’s actually not that many. So we know a global city that has a transport infrastructure deficit decades in the making needs investment.

But I come back to the point: what this Government campaigned on and what they’re delivering this week does not provide the cost of living relief that Aucklanders were promised. It simply tries to give with one hand, it takes with the other, and it actually doesn’t address the issue at hand. It doesn’t invest in critical transport infrastructure projects. It doesn’t build the relationship with Auckland Council. And there’s a really good question: what is the relationship between Minister Simeon Brown and the Mayor of Auckland, Wayne Brown?

💬 Hon Simeon Brown: Very positive.

Where does that leave things? I wouldn’t be so confident, Minister.

But this Government will ram through this House, as it has done with 16 out of 17 bills in the last few weeks. It’s made decisions. It’s bypassed the parliamentary process. They cry “democracy”, but when they’re in power, actually, it doesn’t mean nothing. They’ve impacted on Māori, they’ve taken away health sovereignty, and here, today, they’ve taken the rights of Aucklanders to have better transport infrastructure that they damn well deserve.

💬 Hon Member: Stick to the bill.

Every member of Parliament—this is absolutely in the bill—in this House should be reading this bill, thinking “I’m going to turn back up to my community and I need to front up and explain how we’re resolving congestion.”, because the plan that the Minister presented this week doesn’t provide a solution to addressing Auckland’s critical problem, which is congestion. Actually, Auckland is the region that simply misses out in that plan. It says to Auckland Council, “I’m going to put you on the side. You find your own funding that’s going to increase rates to Aucklanders.”—just like it has done with water rates.

So it comes back to this Government and their absolutely false promise in the election. You haven’t provided cost of living relief to Aucklanders. This piece of legislation, I absolutely do not support.

I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the bill. Members, the time has come for the dinner break. We will suspend the House until 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6.02 p.m. to 7 p.m.

In Committee

Part 1 Abolition of regional fuel tax