[CCS]

Auckland's tax money has for years been funding the rest of the country while our roading needs were mostly put aside.

The problem with a regional petrol tax funding the electrifiying of the Auckland railway is that people on the North Shore, for example, end up funding this railway even though there's no railway on the North Shore. If Hamilton doesn't want to pay to electrify a railway that only covers part of Auckland, then why should the North Shore also help to pay it?

And really, this is the problem with regional taxes. What say Hamilton wants some totally cool public transport system... is the rest of the country going to object to paying for Hamilton's public transport? Is Dunedin going to get shitty? Probably not, because it's more fun to say "Bluddy fucken Aucklanders can pay for their own train set" than it is to say "Bluddy fucken Hamiltonians, who do they think they are?"

The only way to fairly implement a regional petrol tax would be to slice the whole country into regions and raise the petrol tax by the same amount across the board and that way everyone can pay for their own roading and public transport costs. Then we'll get rid of the pathetic "WHY SHOULD I PAY FOR 'X' CITY'S ROADS?!" nonsense.

Of course, the obvious problem with that is that the amount available to spend is proportionate to how many motorists there are in each region. A low population area might end up with bugger all money to spend. Because why should Auckland pay for roads anywhere but Auckland, right?

I think the ideal solution is no regional petrol tax anywhere. When the government wants to increase the petrol tax, it gets increased for everyone. That way everyone is paying for everyone's roading and public transport. The money gets allocated on the basis of necessity. And no more of this bullshit where money from petrol tax disappears into Michael Cullen's mysterious pile of cash which doesn't necessarily get used for roading/transport.