Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I move, That the Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This day marks a significant milestone in our journey towards a smarter and more efficient road network. This bill will cut congestion, boost productivity, and help futureproof our transport system. Today, we take a decisive step forward in tackling congestion and modernising how we manage road use in New Zealand. The bill creates an enabling framework that can be used to establish a time of use charging scheme anywhere in the country that needs it. This legislation is not just about traffic; it’s about time, productivity, and the future of our cities. It places New Zealand amongst a growing number of countries embracing intelligent transport solutions.

The design of the bill and the schemes that will be created under it—or potentially created—draw on international best practice with tailored findings to our unique needs. It enables targeted and adjustable charges that are designed to improve traffic flow and make better use of existing infrastructure. It embeds a partnership approach between local authorities and the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), working together to design and deliver charging schemes. It puts strict limits around exemptions, to ensure time of use schemes are fair and effective and to reduce overhead and bureaucracy.

We had quite a debate in the committee stage of the bill’s passage around whether or not there should be wider exemptions. I think Parliament has rightly decided that there are narrow exemptions in the bill for emergency vehicles and for school buses, for example, but anything wider than that leads to a potential slippery slope where, once you start one exemption, you keep going, and then, eventually, everyone’s got an exemption, and the scheme becomes deficient. We have taken an agnostic approach to the use of technology, which means that, in the future, time of use schemes could interface with future road pricing mechanisms like fleet-wide road user charges, which, of course, the Government is advancing separately.

Time of use charging is not about raising revenue; it’s about improving network performance. Every scheme must show it will enhance traffic flow and efficiency, and it has to go through public consultation and impact assessments and will be subject to strong oversight. This is a really important point: net revenue raised through congestion pricing, or time of use pricing, will be reinvested directly into local public transport infrastructure, which means it supports better services and outcomes for those communities. The trade-off is quite simple: people pay a bit more to travel at peak times, which encourages them to travel at different times or to alter their behaviour or to use different routes, thus smoothing traffic across the road network and increasing productivity and efficiency. The revenue that is generated from that can be reinvested into the public transport options on the local road network, creating even greater options for people, and creating a synergistic feedback loop—as someone said to me.

Dr Vanessa Weenink: I love it.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Now, listen, I’m not one for big buzzwords like that, but I did quite like that—synergistic feedback loop. When I first heard about that, I didn’t know what it was, and I’m still, today, not sure I’m using it in the correct way. Anyway, there we go. What will be achieved is fewer hours stuck in traffic, more reliable traffic, and more reliable journey times.

I do want to thank the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. This is a bill that I was really determined to try and get cross-party support for. It is really important, and, I think I said in the second reading or maybe the first reading that Parliament, or at least New Zealand, has looked at congestion pricing since 1994; we’re well over 30 years. I think the first New Zealand Institute of Economic Research report was 1994. Back then, it was a bit of a new concept, but in the meantime, lots of countries and jurisdictions have done it, and we’ve sat there saying, “That sounds like a good idea. Maybe we should do that one day.” Well, we’re actually doing it, and to be fair to the previous Government, they did advance some legislation around that. I don’t think it’s as good as this piece of legislation, but they did take those first steps in that direction. When I talk about cross-party support in infrastructure and transport and bipartisanship, that’s what this means, because, ultimately, if we’re going to make this scheme work for New Zealand, we’ve got to make sure that it enjoys broad support. It will be bumpy on the way through. I fully anticipate that the first scheme will be quite contentious.

Dan Bidois: Probably in Auckland.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: It’ll probably be in Auckland; Dan Bidois is right—MP for Northcote. It will probably, almost certainly, be in Auckland. We’ve already said we want to work closely with Auckland Council on the first scheme. It will be bumpy. Successive countries and jurisdictions that have done congestion pricing have found that people, broadly, don’t like paying for things they think they’ve already paid for. Fair enough. But, actually, once it starts—and this was certainly the experience of New York, where I was three or four months ago—and the benefits start to flow in terms of smoother journey times, reduced traffic at peak times, smog goes down, and safety improves, people go, “This is fantastic.”, and, immediately, public opinion turns around. We’ve just got to hold—

Dana Kirkpatrick: Ride it out!

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —ride it out. Literally ride it out. We’ve just got to ride it out, Dana. We’ve just got to hold our nerve as a polity and—

Dan Bidois: Foot on the accelerator.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, foot on the accelerator in a smooth, congestion-charged way.

I want to thank the committee for the work on it. It was really well led by Andy Foster, and I understand the committee worked quite hard to find common ground. The Government did cede some things through the committee process. Thank you to the public, who submitted on it, and to all the officials and the parliamentary staff. There has been a range of people working on this for a large number of years. In particular, I do want to thank Mr John Edwards, who members with long memories will know. He is the Ministry of Transport’s lead official on the bill, and he will soon retire after four decades of service at the Ministry of Transport. Isn’t that remarkable? Four decades; 40 years. I was going to say it’s longer than I’ve been alive, but that’s not true anymore—but 40 years, four decades, of service at the Ministry of Transport.

When he began his career at the Ministry of Transport in 1986, back in the halcyon days of the fourth Labour Government, he worked on future road pricing policies, including, I am told, congestion charging—all the way back in 1986. The first report might have been in 1994, but, actually, smart cookies in the bureaucracy have been talking about this and thinking about it for four decades. Isn’t that remarkable? Here we are, in 2025, and we’ll get congestion charging over the line in 2026 and 2027. I hope that Mr Edwards—who I don’t know well—will get an opportunity to drive on the first congestion-charged scheme.

This has been a long time coming, and I think it is a significant achievement, actually. I think we will look back on this day with a great deal of pride. Certainly on behalf of the Government, we are proud of what has been developed, and we are looking forward to rolling it out. We know that it’ll be a difficult journey at various points, and we know that it’ll be a bumpy path along the way, but it is the right thing to do for productivity in our major cities, and I therefore commend the bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, Minister, for those words and for summing up what we agree is a very good bill, and Labour will be supporting it.

It’s a simple idea: essentially, when too many people are driving at the same time, the system—unsurprisingly—clogs up and makes it worse for everybody. It’s important to note, as well as the Minister’s comments, that it’s not a revenue grab—unlike many changes, sometimes, in the transport arena—but it is, as has been depicted, a really smart tool to fix what is a serious problem.

The bill is about making our cities better and making our cities move faster. It’s about tackling that very common frustration of sitting in traffic and not moving. It’s not just a waste of people’s individual time when that happens; it’s a real pull on productivity. It has huge complications for all aspects of the economy, let alone aspects of everyday life. It establishes a framework for time of use charging, as has been discussed, allowing local councils with New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi to introduce congestion management schemes in those high traffic areas. I’m sure we can all probably relate to sitting in a queue on some motorway and watching the lights change once or twice before anything ever moves, and knowing that we are losing time that we’ll simply never get back. This bill does give us a way to tackle that.

In terms of a little bit of background to further elucidate on the comments that the Minister has made, when we think about Auckland, congestion in our largest city is something like 35 percent more time in traffic is spent by people in Auckland than their counterparts spend in traffic in Sydney and Brisbane and places like that. So it’s one of the worst in the OECD. It’s definitely not a solution looking for a problem. As I said, that’s productivity loss, that’s lost time with families, that’s lost opportunities to spend your leisure time differently. The international experience, as the Minister correctly pointed out, is that when this congestion charging has been introduced elsewhere in big cities where there’s specific congestion, it has appeared to work.

However, the proof of how good a policy this will be, as with any policy, is in the implementation. That’s where things fall down, if they’re going to, and whilst we’re supporting this, we certainly will be keeping an eye to make sure it’s well implemented. Realistically, all we need is a 5 to 10 percent drop in that peak traffic usage to actually make a significant change. That is something that we can certainly look forward to.

With regards to fairness and accessibility, that was certainly a theme that came through the prior stages of this bill as it’s progressed through the House, and it does matter, because fairness does matter. We have to make sure that in introducing a congestion charge, or a different system—an alternative—that there are actually viable alternatives for people to make those behavioural changes. It’s OK for people that have relatively equal choices to make—do they travel at this time? Could they travel a little bit later to avoid the traffic and avoid the congestion charge?—but we do have to acknowledge that for lots of people, they simply don’t have the luxury of necessarily being able to time their life around peak traffic, or they don’t have the luxury of being able to take any other form of transport other than their personal vehicle. So we do have to ensure that the system is fair and that it’s equitable, otherwise that public buy-in will erode, and that public buy-in—that social licence—will be incredibly important to this.

My colleague Tangi Utikere spoke at the committee of the whole House stage about consultation and fairness, and that it is going to be important that people understand what they’re being asked to pay for, what alternatives exist, and that those, particularly with mobility challenges, are not left out. That was a point raised by the Hon Julie Anne Genter in so far as the amendments that she put forward, and it’s a really, really important consideration. I take the Minister of Transport’s point that he made—quite correctly—early on: that if the integrity of a system can be degraded really quickly, the more exceptions that you make, but exceptions are there for a reason, to be carved out when there are exceptional circumstances. So we were very disappointed that the mobility permit holders weren’t—that that amendment wasn’t considered. We do urge the Government to reconsider that and to think about the overall integrity of the system, should it not—well, should it affect people particularly adversely.

It’s really also important that revenue from the scheme goes back into better transport options, not just motorways or—certainly not back into the Government’s central coffers. As highlighted during the committee of the whole House stage, successful cities where they have introduced this scheme—the ones that have been the most successful—have used those initial congestion charges to expand bus services and reduce fares, therefore really making that alternative option; if we’re looking for behavioural change, something that’s more and more viable. We’ll be watching closely to ensure that that pretty simple basic principle is applied to this one.

With regard to transparency and local leadership, public trust will be important here, and I think that the points that have been raised in previous readings and certainly in the committee of the whole House stage were really important. If we think of new section 6E requiring consultation before a scheme is submitted—but consultation must mean more than just a survey buried in the junk mail or at the bottom of some website that people may or may not see. It’s incredibly important that it be done really well. With regard to the potential flow-on effects, I think it goes beyond just basic traffic flow. Cities overseas, as we’ve heard, are linking congestion charging to low-emission zones, tackling pollution, and improving public health. So there’s an opportunity here—if implemented correctly and implemented well—and we have to wait and see how this Government tackles that, but if done well and if revenue comes in and can be channelled into, firstly, improving those alternatives through cheaper buses or more reliable buses, and then actually providing some public good, I think that’s a real win-win for this scheme. Cleaner, faster, more efficient transport could be the outcome, if done well.

Labour supports this bill, because, fundamentally, we have to; because, at some point, we’ve got to change the way that we operate as a society. For too long, we’ve been so used to one person in a car driving, roads being congested, and as the population grows and as our infrastructure—our woeful history of infrastructure spend—has not kept up with all of the alternatives to those more roads, we find ourselves in this situation.

In the committee of the whole House stage, there were a couple of amendments that I just want to briefly touch on. The Hon Chris Bishop’s Amendment Paper 400: Labour did support efforts to tidy up and strengthen the bill by the host of things that were touched on in that Amendment Paper, and we supported these changes because, essentially, they did address some of their concerns around transparency and around accountability. But, as I alluded to earlier, I think it’s a real shame that the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s Amendment Paper 376—we’re disappointed that the total mobility users are not part of the exemption criteria. We do understand, again, that exemption criteria can degrade the integrity of a system, but that’s what exemptions are for.

We support the amendment which exempts vehicles registered to people who hold those disabled persons parking permits from having to pay time of use charges. That’s not about saying there’s an intrinsic fairness issue there; that’s just simply saying that the fundamental conditions that allow for behaviour change aren’t in play when someone doesn’t have a legitimate alternative. You can’t change a behaviour toward a legitimate alternative if those conditions aren’t there or if those factors aren’t the same. So we are disappointed in that, but, overall, we support this goal.

The Green Party has had in its transport policy a point about investigating congestion pricing for at least 15 years—probably closer to 20—so we do support this bill. Enabling local authorities to have tools to better manage their transport systems and their streets is the right thing to do. This actually starts to take a paradigm shift approach to how we define and manage our transport problems. We now have decades and decades of research that shows that expanding lane capacity—that’s a technical term for adding more car lanes within cities—does not reduce congestion. It never has, and it never will. Adding car lanes will actually result in more congestion and more car trips within five to 10 years of building those roads, and that’s why urban highway projects are not the best use of money to solve the problem if your goal is reducing congestion, improving travel times, and reducing transport costs.

It seems like many members on the Government benches don’t really grasp this concept, so I’ll take this opportunity to say that we can’t build our way out of congestion. Bringing in congestion pricing or enabling more direct pricing, whether that’s through time of use charges or changes to road-user charges, will result in a shift in demand away from private car trips to other modes of transport, hence why the Green Party has always said that we need to invest better in more capacity for public transport, for rail and coastal shipping, and for active transport modes. These are all things that absolutely have to happen, and, if we’re going to bring in congestion pricing—or if local authorities are going to be enabled to do that—we need to have a shift in transport investments.

The current Government’s transport investments over the next 10 years make zero sense. They’re just incredibly expensive, they don’t solve the actual problems, and, when we bring in demand management tools like time of use pricing, there will be even more demand for the alternatives, and even less demand for the roads. I really hope that the Government is going to take on board the fact that once this legislation is passed, every single investment case for every single urban or urban fringe highway must include congestion pricing as a base case in the transport modelling. If we did that, we would see that we don’t need to spend $3.8 billion on two kilometres of one extra car lane in each direction in the centre of Wellington. That makes no sense. We should be investing in much better, more frequent public transport and lower public transport prices.

The Greens support the bill, but there are three big missed opportunities with it. The first one is local autonomy. Basically, the vast majority of trips are local trips. Whether they’re on State highways, whether they’re on local roads, whether they’re on public transport, the vast majority of peak hour trips are local trips. If we want decisions to be made well and efficiently, we need to give the funding and the decisions to the local authorities, and we do need to have the right setup for that. Maybe we need some more regional transport authorities. This bill really puts way too much control in central government’s hands. It really should be more for local authorities to be controlling the scheme boards, how the scheme is operating, and where the revenue is going. We raised that in the Transport and Infrastructure Committee; it’s in our differing view, and we put Amendment Papers to that point.

In places around Christchurch or around Wellington, you could have a whole lot of suburban or fringe territorial local authorities joining a scheme board and then outvoting the local authority who are actually the managers of where the scheme is going to be. Imagine we’re bringing in congestion pricing in Wellington city or in Christchurch city, and we’ve got a whole lot of outlying territorial authorities and the New Zealand Transport Authority who can outvote the local authority on the design of the scheme and the use of the revenue. That doesn’t make sense; that’s a missed opportunity.

The second big missed opportunity is around the low-emission zones and addressing air pollution. I was the only one who was on the committee last term who heard the inquiry into a congestion question or Auckland congestion pricing, and we heard from a lot of experts from European cities and other cities that have brought in congestion pricing, and they said that low-emission zones are big. It makes sense, if you’re enabling legislation for congestion pricing or time of use pricing, to also enable local authorities to bring in low-emission zones, which is a different type of tool. It’s similar to congestion pricing, but, actually, it’s addressing an even bigger productivity challenge, which is air pollution.

We aren’t even really measuring the true cost of air pollution from vehicles in Aotearoa, but the Health and Air Pollution in New Zealand report—the most recent one—was absolutely shocking. It says that the cost of harmful air pollution from vehicles—well, harmful air pollution generally—costs $10 billion a year, and the majority of that is actually from vehicles. A lot of those aren’t old vehicles—they’re brand-new diesel vehicles. Diesel has turned out to be far worse for human health than people realised, and that’s why European cities have been actively managing it and reducing diesel particulate in their city centres for the last 15 years. A recent OECD research report shows that 30 percent of all the productivity growth in European cities from 2010 to 2019 was due to improvements in air quality. A big part of that is low-emission zones.

Another big part of it is making cycling, walking, and public transport the priority for urban areas, which also makes sense from a transport cost perspective, from a congestion perspective, and from an air quality perspective. If the Government’s goal is productivity, they should be thinking about air pollution and giving councils the tools to manage air pollution from private motor vehicles, because that is a big hidden cost. It causes tens of thousands of children to have asthma—to be hospitalised with asthma—and far more premature deaths than we even have through road crashes, which this Government is, of course, absolutely keen on increasing with their absolutely evidence-free approach to speed limits.

Finally, the third thing with this bill that is a missed opportunity is the earlier point that I raised about how it changes the investment priorities. The Government policy statement on transport funding needs to be revised, and we need to make sure—we proposed an amendment at the select committee stage—that we limit what the revenue can be spent on. It needs to be spent on providing for the alternatives. Everybody knows that New Zealand has underinvested in public and active transport for decades. This isn’t a result of people’s choices—people have not chosen to own and use cars at a higher rate than pretty much any other country in the OECD—it is the result of previous Governments’ decisions. Local government and central government, over decades, have made it difficult, impossible, impractical, and expensive to do anything else, and that costs New Zealanders tens of billions of dollars a year. That is a major cost of living issue. After rent and food, transport is the largest expense for most households. Households who own one car are having to spend thousands of dollars a year owning that car, and that doesn’t even take into account the full costs of car parking, etc.

The costs of high car ownership are far more than congestion; congestion is probably one of the smaller costs associated with our transportation system. If we look at all the cities in the world that have embraced congestion pricing early—and there were only about five of them until recently: Stockholm, Singapore, the City of London, Gothenburg, and Milan—all of those cities had higher levels of residential and employment density in their cities. They had much lower levels of car ownership, much higher levels of public transportation services, and better provision for walking and cycling. They also had higher prices for car parking, so the cost of car ownership was already more direct in those places. Then they brought in congestion pricing. Of course, that’s been extended to New York City, but I would say that those criteria also apply to New York City.

The answer is pretty simple; it’s going to become very clear. As the Minister said, he embraces congestion pricing, and he thinks it’s the right thing to do. Does he understand—does the Government understand—what New Zealanders need their Government to do as a response to making the cost of using a car at peak time more direct? The answer is Government investment priorities need to change. Right now, we are barely investing in, or planning for, any improvements to public transport right across the country. The Government is spending not one cent on the critical public transport spine along the quays in Wellington. The big project that they’re bragging about is one that I campaigned on for four years—the City Rail Link—before the then National Government agreed to pay for it, and there’s almost no planning for serious capacity improvements for public transport outside of a few busways. The Government needs to step up and realise that New Zealanders are crying out for passenger transport services. We need to invest in those, and that helps the roads, too.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. ACT supports the Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill because it is a smarter way of dealing with congestion. It sends a price signal and creates an incentive for motorists traveling at peak times, and I’ve been one of them. As a civil engineer and working as a contractor, I’ve spent hours and hours and hours of my life stuck in traffic on Auckland’s motorways and arterial routes, cursing the people who failed to provide the capacity for our city to grow.

Now, it’s true that congestion charging can influence people to choose to travel at a different time, but for the 60, 70, 80 percent of New Zealanders who do now and always will rely on private transport, it’s not necessarily going to help them unless they have alternatives. So, look, congestion charging is important; it’s just one more funding tool in the funding toolbox. This Government will also be introducing Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act amendments—we’ve talked about that previously—so we can actually start to increase revenues from land that benefits from large-scale infrastructure and development projects. We’re moving to road-user charges so that Kiwis, no matter what type of vehicle they drive, pay the full cost of using the roads. But it doesn’t change the fact that growing cities, growing populations, people who are more mobile, need extra capacity.

There’s going to be a test. The honourable member Julie Anne Genter said that this Government does face a test. Well, we will see it. If you raise a congestion charge to a certain amount and you collect the money but the congestion doesn’t change, what that tells you is that even despite providing public transport services—and, maybe, these bike lanes, which, you know, carry a very small amount of people at great cost—maybe what that signals is that you then have to provide the additional capacity, the additional lanes. Auckland is a city that’s going to grow from about 1.3 or 1.4 million to 2, maybe 2.5 million people between now and 2050, and simply assuming the next million people who come will only ever catch a bus is the kind of fantasy, unicorn-chasing thinking we hear from the Green Party. It’s not real; it’s not true. That’s why congestion charging is one very small part of the way to solve this problem.

ACT does support this bill, and we’re also very keen to let people who have been concerned about their privacy know that this bill actually contains protections for their data. For the ACT Party, privacy is not up for negotiation. Clause 65ZF of this bill deals directly with privacy, and it’s one of the most important parts of the whole framework, because people using a network and paying a congestion charge want to make sure that any information collected under a time of use scheme is handled responsibly, securely, and only used for its intended purpose. Under this clause, personal information can only be kept for as long as it’s needed to calculate and collect the charge—no longer. That’s vital; it means that this information won’t become a backdoor for Government to track where people drive or how they travel. Now, I know some members of the Green Party would love to know where people drive and how they travel, so then they can work out how to change their behaviour. But I trust Kiwis to respond to price signals like congestion charging, and also respond to other incentives.

The clause will also require a clear and transparent privacy policy. For each scheme, it puts limits on agencies so they can’t use the information for anything beyond the operation of the time of use system itself. This charging system could have easily gone the wrong way and became a mechanism for State surveillance. ACT will not accept that. This bill includes clear, practical limits that keep it focused on the roads and on reducing congestion and providing incentives for Kiwis to travel at different times. ACT supports this bill because it represents modern, practical reform done the right way. It’s another example of this Government fixing what matters.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I’m delighted to rise on behalf of New Zealand First, and delighted to speak on this time of use bill, and that time of use changing will soon become available as another tool in the transport tool kit. It’s something that local government—in particular in our biggest city, Auckland, but also in the Wellington region—has been asking for, for several years, and saying, “Can we have some empowering legislation that allows us to look at time of use or congestion charging schemes?”

As a former councillor in the Wellington City Council, I was charged often with, and quite enthusiastically, advocated for that both to the Hon Phil Twyford when he was Minister of Transport, and Urban Development, and also to the inquiry which was headed by Greg O’Connor in the last Parliament’s Transport and Infrastructure Committee where we, as a Wellington City Council and we as a Wellington region, were advocating for this very tool.

It’s really nice, now, to be in a position of having been able to shepherd this bill through the select committee process as the chair of that committee and to make some good improvements to that bill. I did want to start by saying thank you to all the members of the committee, to our great committee clerks, to all the officials who helped us, to all the submitters, and also to the Minister of Transport. I’m going to come back to the Minister later on because there was a particular role which I think is really, really important that he played in this process.

Time of use charging, really, is all about managing or balancing supply and demand. It’s what you potentially impose; the price goes up when supply is overwhelmed by demand at those peak times. While we’re not used to it in the road transport situation, we are in many other situations. Think about public transport pricing: peak, off peak; those prices are different. Think about energy prices, think about aviation, think about ferries, think about accommodation; all of those we have a charge which is greater at times of higher demand than it is at lower demand periods.

The Infrastructure Commission has encouraged greater use across the board of charges to modify behaviour so that we take some of that pressure that the Hon Julie Anne Genter was talking about off our infrastructure system. Time of use charging in the transport area is about putting a charge in place so that people either change the time of travel or the way in which they travel, the mode in which they travel. It sometimes only takes a small change in traffic volume to make all the difference to the speed in which you travel and the travel time that it takes to get from A to B.

It also potentially—and I guess this reflects one of the things that Julie Anne Genter was talking about—allows you to either delay or even not to do some major infrastructural projects. I think she’s quite right that every one of those business cases now should really be considering what would happen to that business case if you put in place a time of use charge. Does it still hold water? Is it still something you should do or maybe it’s something you can do later or maybe it’s something you don’t need to do at all. Those are the things which we should be thinking about.

She also raised—it was interesting—the old induced demand. If you build some more lanes, they’ll automatically fill up over a period of time just because you built the lanes. Well, yeah, but do think about sometimes the population has grown very, very significantly, and those people, as Simon Court said, might not all travel on a bus; they might also put their cars on that road. There might also be different changes in land use which are driven by—so, for example, in the Wellington region, you think about the roads which have been built up towards the Kāpiti Coast. Funnily enough, as soon as those roads were announced, what did the real estate agents start saying? “Well, there’ll be more development up there.” Of course there’s going to be more development up there; that is induced demand. But it’s not just because you built the road; it’s because people decided to go and live there—more people decided to go and live there. That is where that demand is coming from.

Dr Tracey McLellan raised concerns that some people cannot change their time or their mode of travel, and that’s absolutely true, but they will get a benefit from that. That’s one of the answers we have, particularly to the freight sector: you do get a benefit because you’re able to travel to where you want to get to much quicker. She said that the cost of congestion was one of the smaller costs in the transport system. The estimate in Auckland alone is $2.6 billion in time lost in traffic congestion every year; that is not a small cost to the system, not a small cost to us as a community, and not a small cost to productivity.

The Transport and Infrastructure Committee listened carefully to submissions, we asked questions; I think we engaged authentically and that is what we should always be doing, whether it is in select committees or any form of Government or local government, and also challenging submitters. All of those things are really vital to trust and confidence in process. The Transport and Infrastructure Committee made several amendments and one of the things I did want to say—I go back to the Minister of Transport—we did get pushed back from the Minister’s office on three amendments, but we pushed back again and said, “Actually, we think that those amendments really hold merit.” We had some conversations and ultimately the Minister said, “Actually, I agree with you and I’m going to accept those amendments.” I think that is the select committee process at its best; it is not just automatically going along with what the executive says, but it’s saying let’s think about those things, let’s push back, let’s come to the right answer.

It’s interesting to reflect that when we are considering the issue of a four-year term, the bill—which is still, I think, somewhere in the system, talks about the role of select committees in that process and that being one of the checks and balances on the system and on the executive. So I think that is something that we should be thinking about: what do we expect from our select committees in terms of the way in which they look at, consider, and report back legislation?

Quickly, on those three changes, one of those was around governance and we put in place several safeguards for local government, for the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), and for the community. The particular one for local government was that local government was quite adamant that if NZTA was given the dominant role—was given the chairing, effectively, of the scheme boards which we set up—that they weren’t going to have a bar of it, and that would defeat the whole purpose. So what we’ve done is we’ve listened to that very carefully and we’ve recommended that there is an independent chair of that process to balance NZTA and the councils, and that is something we should push with the Minister, and the Minister said, “Ultimately, yes, I agree with that.” So that was really, really good.

The second one was exclusions. Originally, the bill as introduced only had emergency vehicles being excluded. The ACT Party representative decided that even those shouldn’t be excluded, but we figured that those had to get to where they had to get to and the ambulance officers aren’t going to get out and walk with their equipment, or the fire engine crew aren’t going to be able to walk their hose from A to B. So that exclusion stayed, but we did include the exclusion for public transport—for scheduled public transport—and for Ministry of Education rural buses. The reason for that simply is we want—part of this is changing the time you travel, part of it is changing the mode you travel. That was about changing the mode you travel.

The third one which we pushed was the use of surplus funds, and hopefully there are some surplus funds because there is a big, big deficit in the transport budget—over decades, probably—and we need to be able to address that over time. We said there needs to be a closer nexus between where the money comes from and where the money is used; not just in the wider region, but in the area close to the area where the congestion is, to help deal with that congestion. That’s about making the ideas of these schemes palatable and understandable to the communities. The Minister, again, accepted that, after discussion.

The legislation does not implement any time of use charges, but what it does do is create the framework so that councils and NZTA can go and engage with their communities and implement those, working together. I think it’s great that we’ve got to this point. Again, I thank everybody for the hard work that’s gone into this and I commend this bill to the House

Thank you. I rise to support this bill, and it’s a pleasure to speak after the man who was the chair of the Transport and Urban Development Committee at Wellington City Council. I know we jointly signed off a number of submissions supporting time of use, but remember that transport and urban development should go hand in hand.

There are a number of things that I want to say, despite the Green Party—and I listened to Julie Anne eloquently putting our position. I want to say that this is a good step forward, but it’s lacking some systems thinking. For example, it promotes people being able to choose a different transport mode if it’s available, but it’s a bit like the old saying—and some of you may be old enough to remember this—“Mother, mother, may I swim?” “Yes, my darling daughter, but don’t go near the water.”

It’s a bit like that: “Choose another transport mode, but we won’t fund walking. We won’t fund cycling. We will put up the prices of public transport, but, oh, time of use will encourage people to use different transport modes.” You actually have to do both. You have to do time of use and you have to invest in transport modes that are less emitting and less congesting.

Talking about urban development, I take the point from Mr Court, who is not listening at all at the moment, which is sort of typical of his approach to evidence, I would suggest. There may be population growth, but where is it going to go? Is it going to go in the inner cities? Only yesterday, Minister Bishop approved less residential intensification in Christchurch. He said, “Let them off the hook.” I mean, Christchurch doesn’t have the benefits of a hilly city that has given us topographical limitations, that have promoted us as being the highest proportion of people who walk to work because (a) it’s downhill to walk to work and (b) people live close to their work, whereas if you live on the outskirts of Auckland or the outskirts of Christchurch, it’s very difficult to walk.

I would also suggest that this is partly during the hours—and I’m glad that it’s up to the local scheme boards to determine questions like the hours and where the boundaries might be. Some of that congestion will be caused by parents or caregivers dropping off children to school and the amazing cognitive dissonance between saying, “Yes, we want to reduce congestion, but we’re not going to fund safe routes to schools. We’re going to allow for there to be a tiny period in the day with lower speed limits around schools, but we’re not actually going to do anything to help children walk or cycle to school.”

Frankly, putting those time limits on lower speed limits in areas around schools is like saying that you’ve got a curfew for kids; that, OK, if they’re going to school, if they’ve been dropped off by their parent on one side of the road, they’re going across a crossing, it’s a lower speed for that moment, but if they’re going back home from after-school sports or after-school drama or Duke of Edinburgh club or all of the different things that kids do, “Oh, it doesn’t apply then, because, my gosh, we’ve got to let the cars through at 50 kilometres an hour.”, which is not safe for people on foot.

The other interesting thing is how Government parties talk about localism and yet all of those councils that consulted on mainly lower speed limits consulted with their communities. If they hadn’t done it exactly ABC for six weeks, that was reversed, and at a huge cost to councils and communities. So stick with it, stay local, have your development and population growth in the centre of cities, and now we can do the time of use congestion charge. Thank you.

This is a good day for this Parliament, that we come together and support legislation unanimously. You wouldn’t think that from the previous speaker’s speech. But it is unanimous because we recognise that this bill is a game-changer. It’s a game-changer for productivity on our major roads, for reducing congestion, and for investment in public transport.

This bill is the right thing to do. As I said, it’s got the unanimous support from our Parliament. It follows other successful schemes implemented overseas and it makes good economic sense to put a price on congestion. Now, we know, as the Minister said, that this bill is going to have a bumpy road through to implementation, and we’re saying let’s stick with it so that the public can see the benefit for themselves of lower congestion, increased investment on public transport, and certainty for how long it takes you to get across Auckland, for example.

I wish to thank the Minister for entertaining the important amendments that the select committee wished for inclusion as part of this bill. I also wish to acknowledge our bipartisan Transport and Infrastructure Committee, led by Andy Foster. Great committee and leading, really, some real tough challenges. This is an important tool in the tool box, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to be able to rise today to speak in this third reading of the time of use charging bill. As I’ve said before, Labour supports this bill. I do, too. As a resident of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, and on the North Shore, I support its intention to decongest our city, get our transport networks flowing, and allow Aucklanders to get from A to B more quickly and efficiently. This legislation has been, in fact, a long time coming. Work began under Labour in 2021 when we opened an inquiry on addressing the congestion challenges in our cities. It was a robust and thorough consultation, as any legislation with such a large impact should have.

But we know the statistics: Kiwis spend up to 35 percent more time commuting across our cities then our Australian counterparts do. It leads to lost productivity, a reduced quality of life, and greater frustration for us all. The estimations for Auckland were that congestion would cost us $2.6 billion a year by 2026 if we did not act. There was simply too much time, too much productivity, and too much money to be lost to congestion.

I do want to take this opportunity to talk to the impact this will have on the community where I live in Northcote. I’ve said before that the reality of this legislation is that it will halve congestion, and that for people in our community it will mean the dreaded morning rush down Onewa Road will look more like what we experience during the school holidays. It’s a stark difference we all relish during those school holiday commutes, and soon we will get this experience on every day. This is a good thing.

However, I do acknowledge too that this is another cost for our community, one that they are faced with during a time when there are many cost of living pressures biting at their heels. If we look at the six charging options presented by Auckland Council, I note that five of them will directly impact our community who travel over the Harbour Bridge; all through the isthmus to get to and from work each day. So I appreciate the anticipation from our community about what this will mean, money-wise, for them going forward.

Auckland Transport’s 2020 modelling suggested that for light vehicles this would cost up to $3.50 per trip at peak times. Of course, more work now needs to be done to update these figures. It is important that our community is informed and consulted on what this will look like for them. To date, there hasn’t been a lot of information provided by Government MPs to the North Shore, and it is important that not only do they get to have their say but also our local board in Kaipātiki does too.

As you can imagine, with congestion charging coming, there is a lot of discontent and concerns coming directly from our community that currently remains unresponded to. Congestion charging is not a solution in and of itself. The charge is a demand management tool that requires alternatives to motivate people to change the way that they move around the city.

The 2023 census showed 84 percent of Aucklanders use private or company vehicles to get to work. That is why it was always the vision and intention of the previous Government to roll out congestion charging alongside the alternative measures we were working on. Investments in reliable and available public transport, active walking and cycling measures, and affordable fees that encourage behaviour change and an uptake in buses, in rail, and in ferries.

Congestion charging cannot be left as a revenue-gathering measure alone. Under this Government, they have cut the regional fuel tax, leaving a $1.2 billion hole in transport infrastructure in Auckland. The result of this is that Aucklanders are paying more to use our public transport system, whether that is individually or through their rates. Half-price fees and free for under-12s made a significant difference in the affordability of using public transport to get around our largest city.

Mayor Wayne Brown and Auckland Council have also made it clear that under the National Government’s national land transport plan, Auckland’s public transport network has been cut. Thirty-nine percent less funding for bus projects, 37 percent less for ferry projects, 35 percent less for cycleway projects, and 36 percent less for road safety. These are all things that we need to be investing in if we want this legislation to be successful.

The North Shore has one of the most progressive transport systems in this country, thanks to the Northern Busway, which was an innovation established more than 50 years ago. While we support congestion charging in principle today, affordability and reliability need to remain the priority for Aucklanders to be able to take public transport to get them to and from work. Currently, the Government is not investing enough in public transport and alternative modes to ensure that this legislation will be successful. That, of course, is my main concern.

This has been an ongoing conversation for a long time and that is why I’m happy for this legislation to be before the House today. But it does worry me, the lack of information locally that has been provided, or not provided, by MPs that represent our area. I wonder—I wonder why they haven’t spoken up on this issue. Why have they not put it out to the community? Why have they not taken a leadership role to educate the community on the benefits of congestion charging as a tool, and the opportunities and benefits that it presents to our community?

I think I know the reason for that. It might be unpopular, but it’s the right thing to do. But it also holds Government members accountable for the cuts that they’ve made to our public transport system. It is more expensive than ever to catch the bus in Northcote into the city, where the majority of people use the system.

This goes through today. Further consultation will be up. But I hope that Government MPs—and there’s seven of them across the North Shore, seven in total—actually front up, hold a public meeting on the North Shore, take the responsibility to educate our community about this tool, and ensure that they do the right thing in putting the information out there. So, without further ado, I commend this bill to the House.

Dr Carlos Cheung: Mr Chair.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Dr Carlos Cheung. It’s Mr Speaker, because I’m in the big chair.

Oh, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): There you go.

Dr CARLOS CHEUNG: This Government is doing the right thing. The intent of this bill is very clear: to better use a transport network and to ease congestion. This is a goal we can all support. However, as the MP for Mt Roskill, I want to urge Auckland Council to treat this as an opportunity to deliver real solutions, not as a tool to punish drivers. Aucklanders, including people in Mt Roskill, already contend with a long travelling time, unreliable public transport, and a rising living cost. Any charging scheme that is set up must not—let me repeat: must not—become another burden on hardworking families or, worse, lead to further congestion, as we have seen in the past, with poorly designed T2 and T3 transit lanes.

This is a chance to get it right—for Auckland Council and for Auckland Transport to pair smartly, to communicate clearly, and to ensure that Aucklanders experience travel that is genuinely smoother, fair, and more efficient. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise, like my colleagues, to speak in support of this bill. I’ve been a resident of Auckland for 30 years, so I am very familiar with some of the congestion issues that our beautiful but very big city has. I do think that this is a positive step that’s being taken in terms of changing behaviours, but as my colleagues have said, it can’t be the only step. It must be one of many that supports people to take public transport and that informs people about the fact that these changes are going to happen.

I wanted to address some of the privacy issues that were discussed at select committee when the bill went through that process, and I do commend the committee for making some changes in this respect. The committee made some very helpful changes in response to a number of submissions, including inserting new paragraph (fa) into new section 65Z(2) to require that the scheme impact assessment must set out potential impacts on privacy, to include that there must be privacy policies in place as well, and to ensure that there’s consultation with the Privacy Commissioner—all good things.

However, my view is that this is one of those bills where we do need to ensure we’re actively monitoring how privacy requirements are playing out. It is because, as with a number of different bills that travel through the House, they are still subject to the privacy principles which sit separately. In this case, as in those other cases, the police, for example, could bypass the requirements in this bill due to information privacy principle 11(1)(e), which says that “the disclosure of information is necessary—(i) to avoid prejudice to the maintenance of the law”. So, in essence, there is an out clause to still allow the disclosure of that information even if privacy and interests are protected within the bill itself. This is something that I do think we need to actively monitor.

The Law Society also made some useful suggestions, which in my view should be periodically reviewed as we see how the bill impacts people’s lives. They talked about the fact that the current tolling provisions were deemed to be sufficient because people had another option, whereas with this framework they simply won’t.

Now, you have countries like the US where they have these sorts of user charges but they also offer lanes and ways through the city where they’re not subject to those user charges. One might say that’s a positive and that it retains that option of choice, but what they’ve found in the US in those circumstances is that there are arguments that it creates layers of privilege and access as well. So these are certainly not easy issues to grapple with. However, I do think that we must ensure that we keep a keen eye on the privacy interests.

The Law Society also made the point that there’s power within the current scheme for specifics within the scheme to be changed, and that perhaps there should be explicit consideration of privacy policies when changes are made. That’s not a current requirement that those policies be updated. So again, that may be something that we want to look at down the track.

From here on in, I do think there are still questions about implementation, and Shanan Halbert has made the point that there hasn’t been sufficient socialising of this thus far, so there is absolutely a need to bring the public on board. We’ve seen how in Edinburgh there was a failure to do this and a rejection by the public of moves towards a system like this. We’ve seen operational issues in Germany, where they underestimated the technology that would be needed to effectively run this kind of system, and we’ve seen the system where, in London, people did stop using their cars but then opted for taxis, which then maintained the congestion that the city had.

So the need for active review is absolutely necessary. But, again, for now, this is a good bill as part of a broader scheme of changes that we would like to see, and I commend this bill to the House.

Te mutunga kē mai o te ohorere! I whakaae kotahi. He rite tēnei ki te pire whakataunga, ne? Kua horahoratia ngā taipitopito o te pire nei e te mema o mua, nā reira ko tōku harikoa kia tuku i te pire nei ki te Whare.

[Mr Speaker, I am so surprised! We are all agreed. This is like a settlement bill, isn’t it? The details of this bill have been laid out by the previous member, therefore it is my pleasure to commend this bill to the House.]

I’m very happy to be making a contribution on this third and final reading of the Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill. The reform that this bill sets up the framework for is, in my view, one of the most important reforms that we can make as a country to kind of modernise our legislative and policy framework to support the growth and development of our towns and cities.

This and its policy cousin—the shift to an electronic time of use charging system for our entire transport system to replace the old road-user charge and the petrol excise; the chief sources of funding for our whole transport system—will make very, very important system changes for us. When you put them alongside some of the other reforms that have been adopted in recent years or are in the pipeline, like the whole reform of our zoning system to enable urban intensification, actually, it’s remarkable and good that both the zoning reforms and this reform to put in place time of use charging are supported across the House, and we have cross-party consensus in the Parliament for two of the most critically important reforms.

Others that I would put in the same category in terms of really important modernisation are the elimination of mandatory parking minimums, which was contained in the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, and the ongoing quest for new funding and financing streams for the infrastructure that enables urban growth. Both transport networks and the pipes that carry water and waste water—these are the system reforms that will allow our cities to grow. They have been put together because our policy framework has been so unfit for purpose and so out of date that it has acted as a terrible roadblock that has stopped the market responding to demand—that is, we just haven’t been building the homes and the urban infrastructure that our growing population has needed—and that is one of the things that’s at the root of the housing crisis that has bedevilled New Zealand for the best part of 20 years now.

There’s one additional reform that’s critically important if this one is to succeed, and it is that we need more investment in public transport, in rapid transit, and in walking and cycling. If you want people to change their behaviour at those critical peak congestion times—that is, in the morning and the afternoon peaks; that’s what this reform is all about—it’s about smoothing off those peaks to allow a more efficient use of the transport network. If you want people to make those decisions not to clog up, in my patch, the Northwestern Motorway, then you have to give them proper alternatives. You’ve got to allow people to use other ways to get where they need to go, so we need more investment in the ferries, we need more modernisation and more efficiency in our rail system in Auckland, and we need more high-frequency, comfortable, convenient buses. That’s what will enable people to make the choices. If we don’t make that complimentary investment alongside time of use charging, we won’t get the returns.

Some people, to avoid spending five bucks to use the motorway to get into the city or to go out south on a busy afternoon in Auckland, will choose to delay their journey or do it at another time, but many, many people cannot do that, and so they have no choice. Because of the dictates of their employment, they have to travel at a certain time, and so we must give them better choices, and that means walking and cycling, trains, buses, and ferries, otherwise this won’t work.

The second point I wanted to make is that this is critically important, because all of the international evidence is that with cities of scale that are growing, congestion always, always comes. You cannot build your way out of urban congestion in large growing cities, and the reason is induced demand. If most people rely on the private car to get where they’re going and you build more roads and more motorways, you increase the carrying capacity of the urban transport network; people will simply buy more cars and use the roads more. You might add an extra lane to the motorway, as we have done time and time again in Auckland, and in no time at all, those extra lanes just fill up with cars.

It’s called induced demand, and the members on the National Party benches would benefit, I think, from doing a bit of reading on induced demand, because their fetish—the cult that they have on that side of the House for the private car as a solution to every transport problem is one of the biggest issues we’ve got in developing good transport policy in this country. So please do some reading up on induced demand because it will change your perspective on how we modernise our transport system.

The next thing I wanted to say—and other colleagues have referred to this—is that one of the really challenging parts of this framework that we’re putting in place with this bill is that there are real equity, real social justice fish hooks in here. Pricing to ration the use of the roading network—let’s use Auckland’s motorway network as an example—is very likely to be extremely efficient. Pricing works as a rationing mechanism, but it’s very, very tough on the people who can afford it least, and so we have to take that seriously, and it’s up to Auckland Transport and Auckland Council to really apply themselves to this problem.

If you spend 2½ hours on the road every day driving to and from work—and in West Auckland, where I’m from, more people have to drive every day to get to and from work than any other part of the city because the jobs and the education opportunities are, by and large, in other parts of the city. So if you have to spend all that time on the motorway every day—and for some people it does amount to two hours or 2½ hours—that’s less time that you can spend working and earning money to feed your family, spending time with your family, or spending time doing things like getting an education or starting a business. That is a form of transport poverty that affects large areas of our city.

We have to invest in the public transport choices and walking and cycling choices that will give those communities real options. It is distressing at this time, when the country is in a cost of living crisis, when there is more than 5 percent unemployment, that this Government has chosen to slash by a third the expenditure on public transport and road safety and cycleways. It cuts completely against the grain and shows no common sense.

I want to just briefly mention a part of the electorate that I represent in West Auckland, Te Atatū and Henderson. It is entirely dependent on State Highway 16, the Northwestern Motorway, for connection to the rest of the city. We’re talking about 100,000 people in Henderson and Te Atatū, and 15 years ago, it was a transport crisis. The congestion on the Northwestern Motorway spilled back on to the arterials like Te Atatu Road and Lincoln Road. State Highway 16 was, basically, a parking lot, and yet in the 10 to 15 years since, we now have a form of rapid transit - lite on the Northwestern Motorway, which I’m very happy to say I played a part in getting the funding for. We now have a high-frequency bus network serving our communities, with buses going every 10 minutes, seven days a week. We have much better cycling infrastructure and the promise of Te Whau pathway/cycleway connecting New Lynn to Te Atatū.

We’ve made enormous progress—we actually have. The public transport system is much, much better now and congestion is no worse than it was 15 years ago. You can make a difference with these things, and it’s not by building more motorway capacity and more roads. It’s by investing in public transport infrastructure, and that’s what this Government needs to do to make this time of use policy work.

Oh, thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very pleased to be invited to make the final speech in this third and final reading of the Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill. Let me just take you back. This has been 25 years in the making, and I was working in the Auckland mayor’s office at the time when the Land Transport Management Act 2003 came through. That was, in theory, about enabling user-pays funding, but it didn’t work—it didn’t work.

Steven Joyce in 2011 amended the Act, which of course removed the barriers to tolling and public-private partnerships, and now, the third leg of the treble, we’re amending the bill again with the time of use charging. As has been articulated, 25 years ago it was a billion dollars in wasted time and wasted energy for Aucklanders every year; now it’s projected to be $2.5 billion. I congratulate the Minister of Transport, Chris Bishop, on putting this bill together—25 years in the making—and getting unanimous support across the House.

Aucklanders will soon experience school holiday - like traffic—school holiday - like traffic. It might be a little bit bumpy to start with as far as the small cost involved, but that will well and truly be outweighed by the savings in time and energy. I commend the bill.

Thank you. I rise to speak on this bill, in support. I think this is actually a really good opportunity. Obviously, it’s been in the pipelines for a long, long time. I remember as a city councillor when I chaired the Urban Development and Transport Committee between 2019 and 2022 at Christchurch City Council, we were trying to get measures in place for road pricing. At that point, we did have a few councillors pushing back and most of them were on the, let’s say, right side of the political spectrum. So I hope, actually, when this is approved that we can work with local government to ensure this does happen smoothly.

I know we’ve heard a lot about Auckland, but the slowest commute in New Zealand is actually in Christchurch. A 2025 report showed it took Christchurch drivers 33 minutes on average to travel just 10 kilometres during the 5 p.m. rush hour. So this is a very good tool to have.

But I think we need to acknowledge this is actually the stick; it is not a carrot. The solution to congestion is modal shift, not actual congestion pricing. What we’ve seen of late is actually the taking away of funding from the areas that we will get modal shift in public transport and active transport.

When I look at Christchurch City, we were very fortunate to have investment from the last Labour Government, the previous National Government. That paid massive dividends in our cycleway roll-out, which we started in 2013, and we’re probably at least two-thirds or three-quarters of the way through. Last year, we had 4 million cycle trips in Christchurch City. One cycle counter had 500,000. That was because of investments. Point of contact surveys showed that 15 percent of the people on the cycleway cycling had got out of a car because of the cycleway. Survey after survey shows that, actually, the reason why people don’t bike is because they feel unsafe and it’s the cycling infrastructure that actually encourages them to bike and start biking.

That is what reduces congestion. When we give people true modal choice, you will actually see congestion ease. It’s very, very simple to actually understand that. It surprises me when I see the likes of $54 billion going to be invested in roading, when, actually, the solution is not in building more roads; it’s about encouraging modal shift—a very, very cheap and affordable method to not just make people move easier but also help people’s health.

One of the things that’s also been interesting as well in the transport space is this clear desire from the Government to not care about the health of people too, because there’s a really good opportunity to actually bring more into this space when you look at the amount of people having premature deaths because of pollution from vehicles. But yet we simply ignore the elephant in the room and just focus on little things that you think are wins when there are bigger things that we can do in the transport space.

It has been very clear that this Government has deprioritised actual moving people and just focused on vehicles. It is not good enough for the cities. If we want to be a truly modern and sustainable country, we need to ensure that people can move around safely in all forms and modes and it’s just not happening. We have seen that in Christchurch, where the Government reduced funding to active transport, that suddenly the cycleway programmes have almost come to a halt.

Hon Member: Hallelujah!

MIKE DAVIDSON: This is not helping people.

You say, “Hallelujah!”; what about the young tamariki that want to bike to school? The reason why we have congestion is because you focus on cars, cars, cars, and kids are too scared to bike to school because of the attitude on the other side of the House.

While I support this bill, I think we need to realise that, actually, the solution to congestion is modal shift. If you actually care about people’s wellbeing, you’ll actually help them to get there with where they need to go safely.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.