Auckland Mayor Phil Goff rubbishes fuel tax red herrings
Friday, 27 October 2017
Mayor Phil Goff is pushing back on criticisms his Auckland regional fuel tax will hurt rather than help.
Critics of an anticipated 10c per litre petrol tax to help fund the region's transport infrastructure complain it will encourage a fuel black market, out-of-region fuel buying and hurt the poor.
The first term super city mayor has no time for such red herring arguments opposing the fuel tax, that was confirmed by incoming Transport Minister Phil Twyford on Thursday.
'Nobody is going to spend an hour travelling outside [of Auckland] to save 10c a litre,' Goff said. And he pointed out petrol prices outside of Auckland were generally higher anyway.
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Goff said he will introduce the fuel tax as soon as he can and he has a mandate to do so.
'Right through the election campaign I campaigned on this, I had mayoral candidate opponents that said 'we're not going to do it',
'I was absolutely blunt and said 'if you don't want your transport system to be addressed and you do want increased congestion and gridlock, don't vote for me',
'We've discussed this with people and the first thing they say is, 'I don't want to pay anymore tax,' and then you say, 'well these are the options, we pay no more tax, have no more money and have increasing congestion, frustration and lost productivity – would you rather us do something or nothing?'
'And they almost always say, 'you've got to do something.''
Goff won almost 50 per cent of the November 2016 Auckland mayoral race votes, netting more than 187,000 votes - 76,000 more than his nearest rival.
'We've got to tackle this Auckland infrastructure problem and pay our fair share of it'.
Without paying to build public transport Auckland would end up like Los Angeles, a tangle of motorways that remain traffic-choked no matter how many new lanes are added.
Goff said even California was now investing billions in public transport infrastructure, as they woke up to what was needed to fix congestion.
The current $114-per-year interim transport levy brought in by previous mayor Len Brown would be dropped when 'we start to get the revenue from a fuel tax', Goff said.
The tax would help contribute about $120 million a year toward the new Labour government's promised 10 year, $27 billion Auckland transport infrastructure spend including light rail.
Auckland's poorest residents could be hurt most by a fuel tax, forced to choose between filling-up cars they have to use, or stocking the pantry.
But Goff said light rail would eventually 'go through some of our poorest neighbourhoods and will make it more accessible and convenient for those people to travel around Auckland'
Goff dodged answering whether tickets on new public transport services like light rail would be more expensive while acknowledging it will take several years for tax revenue raised to materialise as new public transport services.
'You're talking about years' to reach 'final delivery' on such services, Goff conceded.
Although Auckland Transport is so far only investigating central city to Auckland Airport light rail routes, Labour has sprung a city to Westgate light rail line using the new north western motorway busway.
Goff doesn't believe Labour's Westgate promise will over-extend Auckland Council's already $7.5b-plus debt-burden.
Building Westgate light rail would leap-frog inevitable busway congestion, Goff said.