Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: If you want to cut taxes, accept the bad roads

Author: Heather du Plessis-Allan,
Publish Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2026, 6:00pm

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Now listen, if you're one of the people celebrating Chris Hipkins for promising to cancel fuel tax rises if he wins the election, can I just warn you about the implications of him doing that?

And to be fair, it's not just him, okay?

I suspect very strongly, because they've hinted as much, that the National Party and the coalition government will announce exactly the same thing on Monday. After all, raising fuel taxes by 12 cents a litre in January, at a time when petrol prices are already elevated because of the war involving Iran, is, as Chris Bishop once put it, a political death wish.

But you can't have everything, okay? You're going to have to give something up.

Maybe it's the maintenance on your local road that those taxes help pay for. Maybe it's the new road you were hoping for.

In my case, it's the upgrade to Mill Road, which was promised to us by Grant Robertson, then cancelled, then re-promised by Chris Bishop, and now appears to have been cancelled again. That's because letters have gone out to property owners informing them that the deal is off.

NZTA is passing this off as a delay of maybe a couple of years. BS.

This is not a small delay. Remember, they started buying properties for a second Mt Victoria Tunnel in the 1960s. It is now 60 years later and we still don't have that tunnel.

So if they're cancelling these property purchases, it's because the upgrade has effectively been shelved for the foreseeable future.

Now, I'm gutted about that because I've lived south of Auckland in Pukekohe and I know how difficult it is to get up the Southern Motorway during rush hour. I also know how important Mill Road is as an alternative route for those vehicles.

But it has been cancelled because there simply isn't enough money. We haven't increased fuel taxes for nearly seven years now.

So sure, politically it's a smart move for these political parties not to increase the fuel tax, but there will be consequences.

And Mill Road is one of them.

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