Regional fuel tax and national excise duty

There is a Robert Frost poem which I believe summarises this entire debate:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference

The issue for this House of course, is which is the road that will make all the difference?

The Minister’s announcement last week, to unveil a near-$1 billion fund to fast-track state highway projects will be welcomed by New Zealanders who for years have been waiting for the shabby states of our roads to improve.

The new nationally significant roads including the Waikato Expressway; the Tauranga Eastern Corridor; the northern corridor between Wellington and Levin; are a signal to New Zealand, that there will be progress made in reducing congestion, improving safety, and supporting economic development.

The green light ahead for new electric trains for Auckland and new passenger trains for Wellington are also important signals that steps are being made to protect the economy; to facilitate the more effective passage of freight.

But there are of course other issues that we must confront.

The Maori Party supported the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, which introduced the regional fuel tax. And we supported it because at least half of the additional tax revenue collected in a region had to be spent on developing public transport initiatives.
The National Government is now planning to scrap the regional fuel tax and instead increase the fuel excise tax – which applies to the whole country.
The tax goes to the Land Transport Fund out of which roading infrastructure and public transport projects are funded.
And so we have many questions around whether rural communities will benefit; whether communities outside of the regions identified as significant, will also benefit from the additional tax that they are being asked to supply.
There are good arguments to be made for both the regional and national regimes.
The key point to be made, however, is that it appears that roading developments will be prioritized over public transport developments.
And the Maori Party’s priority for transport and roading is to further invest in public transport, by developing well integrated public transport networks of buses and trains, and walking and cycling tracks – that are frequent, reliable and inexpensive for users.
So while we in the Maori Party are pleased that the government has agreed to fund the electrification of Auckland rail out of the Land Transport fund, there is no commitment to fund the wider integrated public transport services that are needed to make Auckland’s public transport system user-friendly.
And it is this whole concept of support for public transport that we believe is the road least travelled, but the road that could clearly yield long term gain.
The Maori Party has always been supportive of the development of public transport options as a key response to the dual challenges of peak oil and climate change.
With peak oil upon us, there is an urgent need to prepare for ongoing significant oil price increases and a future down turn in availability by providing people with affordable alternatives to private motor cars.
There is an urgent need to reduce our dependency on oil.
In the medium-long term, public transport will benefit lower income earners by providing affordable transport as petrol costs continue to increase.
We do, of course, have concerns about the additional costs to consumers. The cost at the petrol pump is going to hurt our constituents, and we must consider ways of easing the burden that this will take on low income communities, many of course who are Maori and of Pasifika descent.
Now that the whole country will have to pay for Auckland's trains out of their taxes we have to query whether the rise of six cents a litre can be justified against the immediate impact of improving the roads which so desperately needed attention.
And finally, Mr Speaker, the question that we leave in this debate, is exactly how the precarious condition of some of the rural roads for the communities of the Maori electorates, will benefit from the new tax increase.
The narrow, windy gravel roads that stretch across our electorates; the unsealed roads that are a site of danger for so many of our constituents – the question for us is how will they benefit?