Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN (Minister for Transport Safety) Link to this
I move, That the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill involves major improvements for New Zealand’s land transport planning and funding system. The bill addresses the issues raised in a number of reviews into the land transport sector and aims at improving value for money. It also provides a mechanism for regions to accelerate capital works through a regional fuel tax, if they wish to. There will be full hypothecation of fuel excise taxes for land transport purposes. Those taxes will be ring-fenced exclusively for land transport activities.
For many years our land transport planning and funding system has been based on an annual cycle. The National Land Transport Programme will now need to be produced only every 3 years, therefore reducing compliance costs and increasing certainty in the sector. The bill will enable provision for a 3-year Government policy statement that will provide strategic guidance in the spending of the National Land Transport Fund.
The New Zealand Transport Agency, which replaces the existing Crown entities Land Transport New Zealand and Transit New Zealand, will give effect to the Government policy statement when it develops and manages each new 3-year National Land Transport Programme. Other approved organisations as specified in the bill will need to incorporate the statement into their decision making. The Minister of Transport will remain responsible for decisions around the allocation of the fund to New Zealand Police road safety activities, based on recommendations developed by the New Zealand Transport Agency.
The bill also provides for moneys from the National Land Transport Fund to be used for activities that benefit the users of pleasure craft, as well as for search and rescue generally. This is in lieu of a refund of the petrol tax paid by recreational boaties. Might I add that I am delighted to see this move, as it is something I have advocated for years, and I am really pleased that the Minister has seen fit to include this in the bill.
Under the bill regional land transport committees will be replaced by regional transport committees. These committees will have enhanced functions, including the preparation of new 3-yearly regional land transport programmes and also regional fuel tax schemes, if they wish to develop them. The 3-yearly regional land transport programmes will feed into a 3-yearly National Land Transport Programme.
I am very pleased that this bill has inserted an express reference to rail and coastal shipping into the purpose section of the Land Transport Management Act. The bill ensures that the New Zealand Transport Agency is transparent and accountable, given its role as funder and provider of some land transport activities.
Finally, the bill will allow regions to opt for a regional fuel tax to fund priority projects that cannot reasonably be funded from another source within the time frame wanted by that region. I confidently expect that crucial and critical projects such as the electrification of the Auckland rail network will be amongst the first to benefit. It will be up to each region to decide whether to introduce a regional fuel tax of up to 10c per litre, with a maximum of 5c of that amount available for roading projects. The bill phases in the amounts of the tax that can be levied in 2009 and 2010 and includes a number of measures to ensure that a robust decision-making process will be followed before a regional fuel tax can be introduced.
The measures set out in this bill will allow New Zealanders to have confidence that our land transport system is being planned and developed in a fully integrated manner for future generations. I am pleased to commend this bill to the House.
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) Link to this
The problem with legislation in this Parliament when it includes lots and lots of elements is that if the Opposition likes certain bits of a bill, it would love to be able to vote for those bits, but because there are also some bits of this legislation that we found quite obnoxious and obscene, it has proved difficult for us to vote for it. So the National Party will actually be voting against the third reading of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. But I want to make it very clear—I want it to be on record—that had the Minister been sensible enough to drop the regional petrol tax stuff, then probably National would have definitely voted for it.
But there are some steps that we are very strongly supportive of. For example, there is the dreadful word “hypothecation”. That means that all of what comes from the roads goes to the roads. It is something that National has been out campaigning on. At the last election, members will remember, our billboards were promoting that very policy, and it was Labour that was opposed and was saying that we must have been three sandwiches short of a picnic for advocating such a thing. But then it turned out that Labour saw the light—as has every other party in the House, I think—and it believes now that hypothecation is the right way to go.
We support some other things in this legislation as well—for example, the restructuring of regional land transport committees into regional transport committees and the setting up of a planning regime that has a 3-year planning cycle and a 3-year Government policy statement accompanying it. We are quite interested in the concept of the Government policy statement, which will basically be a structure of how land transport is to be funded for the coming 3 years. It will set out the priorities and specifics of that regime. The difficulty with it is that we do not know what that Government policy statement will look like, so it is hard to be 100 percent supportive of legislation where even the Minister herself, I think, still has some ideas to flesh out about how the Government policy statement will be structured. Nevertheless, we actually agree with it, we think it is a great idea, and we think it is worth supporting.
There are some other aspects of the bill that we were not comfortable with, and we are still not sure of their exact rationale—I do not think we have been given it. For example, for a long time back in the 1990s the argument from local government in New Zealand and from councils up and down this country was that Transit, as it was, was both the funder of all roading and the provider of State highways. I can tell members that I got beaten up on a regular basis at local government forums and so on by people saying that Transit was abusing that privilege and that we must separate the funding and providing roles. They told me that we should get a funding agency that is independent of the road provider, so that it would not have incentives to fund itself, but would actually have a more transparent process.
So the National Government went ahead and did something that was being asked for and was actually quite sensible: we separated the role of funder and provider. We set up an agency called Transfund and an agency called Transit. The Transfund agency had no reason to fund State highways over and above local roads, because it had nothing to do with that agency. However, in recent times the Transfund agency became absorbed with the Land Transport Safety Authority—something we did not object to; in fact, the National Party thought it was probably reasonably sensible, given that the agency did not have any conflicts. The Land Transport Safety Authority was involved with the safety of our land transport sector and with regulating and controlling safety, and Transfund was to do with the funding of roading. So we were comfortable about that merger to form Land Transport New Zealand, and we said so.
But now we have come to the Next Steps review, which is bringing what was Transfund and Transit back into this one agency to be called the New Zealand Transport Agency, which will be the funder. It is all back into the one agency again. I think we were given some assurances during the course of the select committee process that there were enough checks and balances to prevent the old claim of conflict of interest. What I found interesting was that so many of the agencies from the past that had whinged and grizzled at length that there was such a conflict and had demanded the roles be separated were all quite carefully silent in that respect. When asked at the committee, I think the best response came from one of the councillors on the Auckland City Council. His answer was brilliant. He said: “Well, that was then; this is now.” I have to say that my “gast” was completely “flabbered”. That was as good as the answer could get—“That was then and this is now.” That was the only thing he could say to explain why Auckland City Council had changed its stance.
Some other issues in the bill are worth thinking about. For a long time there has been a perpetual and ongoing debate about the designation of State highways. I give notice to this House that, if anything, we really have to go back as a nation and make a major review of what those delineations are. We really have only two types of roads in this country. A road is either a State highway, which gets 100 percent of its money from the road users by way of the petrol tax, road-user charges, and so on; or a local road, which is administered, run, built, and maintained by the territorial local authority. Local roads get some form of a financial assistance rate, averaging about 50 percent, but the other 50 percent must be found from ratepayers.
I know that every time Transit used to do the State highway review there were always huge arguments from territorial local authorities on why a particular road really should not be their responsibility any more—it was too big, there was too much traffic, or it was meeting the definition of a State highway. The reason was that if they could get a local road off their books and move it over to being a State highway, then it became 100 percent funded by the State, or central government, and it came out of their responsibility. Interestingly, this legislation will actually move the job that Transit used to do—a very methodical and actually quite frustratingly long-winded process of determining which roads were State highways—over to the Secretary for Transport. New section 101, which is to be inserted into the Land Transport Management Act by clause 32, proposes that the role of delineating what is a State highway will reside with the Secretary for Transport. That will put a lot of pressure on the Secretary for Transport. I understand we have a new Secretary for Transport as of Tuesday; it will put a lot of pressure on that person.
The reasons for our objection to the regional petrol tax are manifold. First of all, we felt that while hypothecation was being introduced it would probably guarantee enough of a revenue stream, but there were other reasons.
For example, Land Transport New Zealand, the funding agency, finished the last full financial year with $220 million unspent. I guess the question is, if it has this big pot of money in the National Land Transport Fund and was unable to spend $220 million in the last financial year—and it will be interesting to watch what happens when the current financial year is over and we have it reported back as to whether there is any more of that—then how on earth can we justify adding more cost impost to the poor old long-suffering motorists out there, who are suffering shockingly at present from very, very high petrol prices, and to the trucking industry, which is suffering from very, very high diesel prices? How can we justify socking them with another thing called a regional petrol tax, which will be up to 10c a litre and will be artificially broken down to 5c and 5c, because again the Government took no heed of what was asked for by a number of parties like regional councils?
The Taranaki Regional Council said: “Please understand that we know that in Auckland public transport is a big issue and it needs to be funded, and we understand why the Government may be doing a 5c split to public transport and a 5c split to projects like some roading project. But in our particular area of Taranaki we do not have an issue with public transport; it is not even on our books. We have a major problem with roading. So please, please at least take that artificial barrier of 5c maximum for roading and 5c maximum for public transport out, and allow us to configure up a bid to the Minister.”—because we must remember that it is the Minister who will approve any regional petrol tax applications. The Government, instead of saying that it will trust the regional council to at least make the application based on the needs of its area because it should at least trust it to do so, has said: “No, that is it. The 5c-5c split stays.”
National members are opposed to the regional petrol tax. I am happy to tell Brian Rudman from the New Zealand Herald that we are opposed to it for a number of reasons, and the main reason is that there are a multitude of other funding devices. There is debt, there is public-private partnership debt, there are infrastructure bonds, there is debt/equity ratio stuff, there is long-term stuff. There are a multitude of ways of funding land transport, and this Government has shut its eyes to it and said: “It is only petrol tax. We will ramp it up on the poor old motorist, and that is it.”
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) Link to this
That was a speech of a member of the National Party Maurice Williamson really struggling with the instructions from Crosby/Textor not to get into anything difficult. He spoke a lot about the good things in the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, and waited until the last minute to tell us why National is voting against it. I want to quote from the New Zealand Herald editorial about the previous speaker. He is the National Party’s transport spokesman, which the New Zealand Herald found out.
Hon Judith TizardYes. “The legislation, foreshadowed in the 2007 Budget but still awaiting its second reading”—so this was a little while ago—”in Parliament, has run into opposition from National. The party’s transport spokesman, Maurice Williamson, has questioned the desirability of such a tax at a time of spiralling living costs, especially for food and petrol. He says a National government would look at other ways to pay for the project, such as infrastructure bonds or a public-private partnership. The party was committed to electrification and did not rule out regional fuel taxes as a long-term possibility, said Mr Williamson, but “right now is the worst of all timings”, to quote Mr Williamson. “This sort of thinking has reduced”—listen, this is the good part—”Auckland public transport to its present lamentable state. Quite simply the large sums involved mean no time is the right time.”
That is the editorial, critical of Mr Williamson and the National Party, and it is absolutely right. How are public-private partnerships paid for in the rest of the world? Mr Williamson has been around the world looking at them. He is on that plane so often that he has more airpoints than anybody I know. I ask Mr Williamson how they are paid for. Oh, they are paid for by the motorist, through a toll! National members say: “Oh no, no, no, let’s not have something simple like a regional fuel tax to pay for electrification, let’s have a toll instead. Let’s have a toll to pay for the infrastructure bonds, the borrowing, and the debt funding he has talked about.” What a load of nonsense!
National members desperately want to vote for this bill but Crosby/Textor has said “No, don’t do anything that might upset the public. Don’t show any bravery. Don’t go into Parliament and do the right thing for Auckland, or for Wellington, or for Bay of Plenty.” Submitters from those regions came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and said: “We need this money and we are prepared, as the local authority, to impose it.” It does not even need the Minister of Transport to have the courage to do it. The bill allows the councils to make the decision. The Minister of Transport will not impose a regional fuel tax; the councillors elected by the ratepayers in their region will make the decision. So if the Hon Maurice Williamson were the Minister he could not get hurt—although it would be too hard for him to have to approve anything. He had 9 years in Government approving nothing. That is why nothing was built. That is why the public transport system had its funding frozen for 6 years. That is why National spent $40 million on public transport whereas the Labour Government has spent $300 million—because he would never sign anything that would approve something. Oh no, that would require some work!
It is interesting that the National Party will vote against a mechanism that the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith said he would cross the floor to vote for—Penlink. Penlink is a road in his electorate that he said is absolutely vital. I saw the Mayor of Rodney District Council the other day and she is absolutely hanging out for this vote today so that her people in Rodney can get Penlink. National is going to vote against it, and we are looking forward to Dr Lockwood Smith coming to vote on this side of the House as he said he would. Maurice Williamson would like to be voting for this, as well. He claimed in his last election manifesto to be all for hypothecation—absolutely rock-solid. The only policy one could find on National’s website about transport was a policy to spend all the petrol tax and all the road-user charges on transport infrastructure. That was National Party policy. Is it still National Party policy?
It is still National’s policy, but in a few minutes’ time he will vote against it. What courage, what leadership, what vision, and what optimism for the future! Are they not the lines that were told to John Key—the vision, the optimism, taking us forward? Yet in a few minutes’ time National members will vote against their only policy—hypothecation. They will not vote for it.
The other day I was out with members of the coastguard from Maurice Williamson’s own electorate—the Howick people. They are in Mr Williamson’s electorate, are they not? They are looking forward to the passing of this bill because they will get some well-deserved money. They take their boats on the water, they pay petrol tax. That petrol tax did not pay for the water, it cannot pay for it to be improved, because the petrol tax builds roads—it pays for buses. The National Party knows that. The members of the coastguard from his electorate, who are volunteers, who give up their own time, also have to pay petrol tax to run their boats along the water. The National Party knows that is not right, but will it vote for this bill? No, Maurice Williamson will vote against that, as well. He can go back to those people and explain, as can all of the other National members.
Bob Clarkson did not know about the provision that benefits coastguards. He has just found out about it from my speech. Bob Clarkson will go back and tell the coastguards from the Bay of Plenty that he did not support it. He thinks they should pay petrol tax as if they were running on the road, even though their boats are on the water. I ask Mr Clarkson and Mr Bennett whether that is sensible, common-sense stuff. Mr Bennett will not care, because Hamilton does not have a coastguard. So he will be able to get away with it. He will be able to go back to the search and rescue people and say that he did not care and he did not vote because there is no coastguard in Hamilton. There is no coastguard on the Waikato River, probably, so he can say that he did that in all good conscience.
Everybody in Auckland knows that we need electrification of the rail. The Auckland Regional Council and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority are hanging out, and all the people are hanging out, for the ability to get electrification of the rail. The National Party says it supports that, but they will vote against the method to pay for it, which is in this bill. Oh! Pansy Wong has just figured that one out too. I think the excuse is that no trains go to the eastern suburbs of Auckland, where Maurice Williamson lives. That is what I heard him say the other day. There are no trains. Well, no ferries go to Ōtāhuhu, so I should be voting against the bill—we should not subsidise ferries because no ferries come to Ōtāhuhu, or, for that matter, to Onehunga, or to Mount Albert, or to west Auckland. Where is the logic in that? You see, Pakuranga does have a very good public transport system. It is called buses. Those big maroon-coloured things that drive past Mr Williamson’s office are buses and they will benefit from public transport infrastructure being improved.
This is a good bill. Remember that the National Party said it will solve all the problems and give everybody a tax cut if it becomes the Government, because it will take out the bureaucracy. At the moment, we have three separate sets of bureaucracy created by National; they are called Transfund, Transit, and the Land Transport Safety Authority. Not so long ago this Government put the Land Transport Safety Authority back into a single organisation with Transfund, and with this bill we get rid of another set of bureaucrats—another chief executive, another board, another set of people doing duplicate work in two organisations. One would think the National Party would be voting for that. National members say they are against all those bureaucrats doing that work. They say they are for efficiency. No. They want to keep three separate boards and they want to keep three separate chief executives because Maurice Williamson came up with that idea back in the early 1990s. It was so sad watching him question all these people who, he said, had demanded that he do this. They demanded that, so why were they not demanding that we keep it? Well, it is because the world has moved on. That was then and this is now.
As the Auckland City Council transport chairman said—I think he might be closer politically to Mr Williamson than he is to me—that was then and this is now. Even he could see, new in the job as he was when he came before the select committee, that having a single organisation made sense. Then we asked a whole lot of people—not politicians but experts in looking at whether separate organisations were the way to go—and they said no, bring them back together under the Next Steps programme.
The National Party will be voting against a reduction in bureaucracy. It will be voting against its policy on fuel tax—hypothecation—it will be voting against getting less bureaucracy, it will be voting against the search and rescue people, it will be voting against the Penlink project, and it will be voting against Auckland getting electrification. What vision! What vision we are getting from the National Party. That is a good description of its lack of vision.
PANSY WONG (National) Link to this
I just want to remind the public that today we are actually debating the Labour-led Government bill, the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. I thought the public might be very confused after that 10-minute speech. The Hon Mark Gosche sounded like he is practising to be an Opposition member. He treated my colleague the Hon Maurice Williamson as if he were the Minister responsible for the bill. Here he is attacking Maurice Williamson as if it were his legislation. None of the Labour members seem to be proud of the bill, because Mark Gosche could not seem to find much to say about Labour’s own legislation but spent his whole 10 minutes attacking Maurice Williamson.
I would change tack and say that we should come back to debating the third reading of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. The reason the National Party is voting against the bill is that we support only one initiative in it, which is to make sure that all the tax collected through the fuel tax will be put towards transport, but I am afraid that we could not find any good reasons to support the rest of the legislation. We find even fewer reasons to support it because right at the beginning, as the Hon Mark Gosche correctly pointed out, regional councils, city councils, and everybody rushed to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to support the bill because they thought they would get additional funding. They thought the Labour Government was courageously promising them that they could go out and start consultation and start to put in a 5c or a 10c tax, and then they could build their roads—[Interruption] Well, what happened? Everybody rushed to the various centres to make their submissions. We travelled to Christchurch and to Auckland to listen to very earnest submitters who really believed that if they put in the hard yards they would get a reward on the passage of this bill. But before we even reported back to the House, the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Helen Clark, unilaterally made the announcement that it was all off. Petrol prices are too expensive, so it was a no go. So I tell the Hon Mark Gosche that I am afraid the Rodney District Council project, no matter what the council has been promised by the Labour Government, will not happen. There ain’t going to be a regional petrol tax. What happened to the courage, the vision, etc., that was announced by the Hon Mark Gosche?
I want to bring something into the debate, because it was suddenly brought into this legislation on Tuesday. When we thought we were going to do the Committee stage of the bill, the Minister of Finance suddenly tabled an urgent Supplementary Order Paper, apparently on the theory of tempting the Toll Holdings shareholders to buy back the rail, now we know that the cost is going up every day. By the way, the Prime Minister was not too sure what the cost was. She thought it was an additional $80 million to upgrade, and $300 million over 5 years. But the Minister of Finance said that it was actually $80 million over 5 years. It just shows, amazingly, that the Labour Government members do not seem to go into any detail, and the Prime Minister does not know the costs when it comes to the use of a huge amount of taxpayers’ money. When schools apply for a little bit of funding for upgrading their sewerage or for maintenance, the Labour Government makes them go through all sorts of reports to justify the $5,000 or the $10,000, but, boy oh boy, when Labour members spend $1 billion of taxpayers’ money they do not seem to do the sums.
That Supplementary Order Paper demonstrates that the Labour Party, which always proclaims it is the workers’ party, actually forgot about its workers. The Government brought in a Supplementary Order Paper to ensure that the staff transferring from Toll to KiwiRail will have their superannuation contributions recognised by the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. That was quite a revelation for a party that proclaims itself to be on the side of workers. I wonder what happened to the union delegate—did he or she forget to remind the Labour Party?
It is quite ironic that we are standing in this House today debating the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill while at the same time we have angry truckies out there because the Minister of Transport, the Hon Annette King, told them that they are the ones who have not paid their way, and they are the ones doing all the damage to the roads. She has increased the road-user charge despite the fact that last year there was quite a clear undertaking, from what we can gather from question time, that the truckies were entitled to 1 month’s notice. Well, the trucking companies—the owners, the staff, etc.—go out every day and earn their money by working long hours. They cannot afford a sudden increase in road charges by a Labour Government seeking more taxpayers’ money. Those people have to earn their money and they cannot rearrange their lives just like that with 24 hours’ notice. Tomorrow the truckies are going to drive to the main cities and demonstrate their anger by protesting, so I warn all workers to make sure that their travel arrangements for tomorrow are made smartly, otherwise they will get caught in gridlock. I am not sure how the passage of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill will resolve this type of issue, where the Government simply increases charges at a drop of a hat while hard-working New Zealanders are already finding the cost of living and the cost of fuel beyond their reach.
Even Local Government New Zealand is not very happy with this legislation. First of all, it strongly preferred a partnership approach rather than a top-down approach. The Minister of Transport says that she and the officials will issue a 3-year Government policy statement to coincide with the timing of transport and local government planning, which is fair enough. I think the time-line is fine, but how about the process of arriving at that Government policy statement? In its submission Local Government New Zealand felt very strongly that if the Government simply goes out and tells it that national priorities rather than regional priorities will make their way into that Government policy statement, what is the point? That means it is a top-down approach rather than a partnership approach, and it does not take Local Government New Zealand’s point of view.
Of course, we also have district councils outside the main centres that say that that idea is an inflexible top-down approach, because some of those councils need all the money to go towards roading—they do not have public transport. Yet they will have no choice. They will almost have to dream up projects—cycleways on farm roads, etc.—in order to utilise part of their regional petrol tax funds.
If this bill is serious about improving transport management, it should take into account local situations and give the flexibility for people to put in their priorities. Of course, I am not too sure that one super-bureaucracy is necessarily better than three, in light of the fact that 10 years ago the Hon Maurice Williamson was being got at every day about the terrible super-bureaucracy that failed to take into account local concerns. We are not sure that this bill is the right way to go.
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) Link to this
Let me make it clear that parts of this bill concern us. Our first concern is the Treaty of Waitangi clause. We cannot understand why the words “principles of” are included. Nobody in this House can explain it. Nobody in this House took a call in any of the debates to attempt to clarify what it means. Frankly, to include those words in such a clause is, at best, patronising to Māori, and, at worst, insulting to all New Zealanders. That clause should have been amended by omitting any reference to the word “principles”. Nobody understands it, and it should not be there. It is not good law. Many in my caucus are exceedingly angry about it.
We also object to the regional fuel tax. We do not object in principle—we understand there needs to be a basis for local regions to get funding—but because it could have been done by alternative methods. It could have been done very simply by using windfall GST. And if it was to be phased in, as it is in the bill now, just the windfall GST on petrol alone would have given sufficient funding. [Interruption] Actually, I say to the Minister, they are not. Ultimately, they might, but right now they are not. The GST collected on fuel at the moment is still on the increase.
Well, it might ultimately go down. But the point is that it could easily be funded equal to the funding that is now currently in the bill—1c or 2c next year, 4c on petrol, and, if necessary, windfall GST on diesel. The motorist is getting slugged enough in this country—they are the only words I can use for it. I would have thought that the Government would take note of their concerns and say that it would look at using the windfall GST to some effect.
However, there are some things in this bill we are delighted to see. The bill provides for better, longer-term planning, and we think that is an excellent move. The bill makes provision for combining Transit and Land Transport New Zealand into one entity, and we think that is a good move, providing that the governance is correct—and it appears to be correct—and that there is competent management, accountability, and transparency. When I read the bill I think it has addressed virtually all those concerns.
We are absolutely delighted that there will be some funding for the leisure boat industry in terms of aid for search and rescue. The excise tax paid on the fuel that goes into leisure boats will be transferred on an as-required basis—and it amounts to $19 million a year—to aid search and rescue operations and to fund a regime of education for maritime safety. We think that is excellent. That measure is written into New Zealand First’s policy. That is the only place I have ever seen it written down, and the Minister of Transport was gracious enough to acknowledge that it came from New Zealand First’s initiative.
We are hugely delighted that, finally, the Government has decided to hypothecate all the excise tax on petrol. Currently $600 million a year or thereabouts—the figure might be in the high $500 millions, but it is very close to $600 million—will go into the National Land Transport Fund, and that is something that New Zealand First has long advocated. Certainly, well before New Zealand First had any strong position in this Parliament, we advocated that all the excise tax taken on petrol should go into the National Land Transport Fund.
I am disappointed in the Hon Maurice Williamson, because this is the third time—the third time—he has walked away from achieving that. In 1995, when the Rt Hon Winston Peters had a bill that did just that, Maurice Williamson, as the then Minister of Transport, led the attack on it. He said it was a silly idea as there would not be enough projects to cover the money that would be transferred across, and that it should be dismissed. National voted against it.
Let me say that in 1998 when Winston Peters was Treasurer and he transferred 2.1c across into the land transport account from the Crown account, within months of us leaving the coalition it was all transferred.
The member is saying we walked away, but we did not walk away. We got the grand order of the boot, and the member is well aware of it.
As I was saying, that measure was stopped dead in its tracks. After his road to Damascus experience, and just before the last election, he said: “This must occur. We must hypothecate all the excise tax into the National Land Transport Fund.” Now, when the National Party has the opportunity to do so, it will vote against it. Six hundred million dollars, or thereabouts, a year will go into the National Land Transport Fund, and the member is voting against it. I have to say that I cannot understand the logic of the member.
Pansy Wong, who spoke before me, said that the regional fuel tax will amount to nothing because of the Prime Minister’s statement, but National members will vote against that. There is no rationale, at all. The Hon Maurice Williamson said that in 1993, or whenever, he listened to local councils and separated Transfund and Transit—because he listened to the local bodies. The local bodies came before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and, with as much passion as, I dare suggest, they displayed in 1993, they said: “Give us a regional fuel tax.” There was not one exception—there was not one exception.
But the Hon Maurice Williamson and National will vote against it. In 1993 they listened to the local bodies and voted accordingly; in 2008 they listened to the local bodies and voted against their wishes. Where is the consistency? We have to take note that by approving the regional fuel tax, we are simply giving local bodies the ability to apply for it if they have the right projects. Parliament is not imposing a regional fuel tax on anybody. We are giving the local regions the ability to apply for a regional fuel tax if they have sufficient projects that are worthy of such funding.
Hypothecation is a long time coming; a long time coming. The correct use of excise tax on roading some years ago would have resulted in huge economic advantages for this country. We could have avoided much of the congestion in Auckland if we had built the roads earlier.
Hon Harry Duynhoven Link to this
The Tories would have lowered taxes, you see. That’s what their prime purpose in life is—to privatise and lower taxes.
Hon Maurice Williamson Link to this
He didn’t say much when he had his call. I wonder why he’s saying a lot now.
He had a short call, yes. I think that this country is suffering because of the lack of finance injected into roading in this country, and it is about time we addressed the issue. Public-private partnerships are not the answer.
They do not necessarily work overseas. I spoke to the British, and they gave me the rules and regulations that they work to. True, they choose public-private partnerships in certain areas, but not always.
Bob ClarksonThe member talks about coastal shipping. I almost overlooked that. I thank the member very much. This bill will allow the Government to inject the $36 million into coastal shipping, which has been a long time coming. The National Party ignored that issue when it was brought to its attention 11 years ago.
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) Link to this
The Green Party’s position on the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill has been made pretty clear in the first reading, the second reading, and the Committee stage. So I thought that in the third reading I might go a little wider and look at the new systems that the bill is setting up and some of the things I hope they might do in the future.
We have the new Transport Agency. We have been changing the institutional structure of how the funding of land transport works over and over, over the years. We have had many different ways of funding public transport, and we still have not got it right. We had a funder/provider split, then we re-merged funders and providers. We have changed functions and we have changed boards. The important thing is what they actually do.
The bill gives increased weight to regional land transport strategies, and that is a good thing. It gives some local control over how money is spent. The bill establishes that Government policy statements have a statutory role in guiding the whole thing. But guiding it towards what end, and for what purpose? The concepts in the Land Transport Management Act—integration, responsiveness, and sustainability—are well chosen, but they are so high-level that it is very difficult to rule out a project on the basis that it does not meet them.
What we need is a system of transport agencies that acknowledges we are entering a new era when oil is never going to be cheap again; an era when the fuel that has driven our entire economy for 200 years will become unaffordable for many and, in the end, less available. At the same time, burning too much of it is changing the climate. So we need a radical shift, a transition, an economic transformation towards a sustainable economy and a less oil-dependent economy. The real question here is how much the changes in the bill lead us in that direction.
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS Link to this
I guess the easy thing to say is that it is much cheaper to run a train using electricity than it is to run a truck using oil.
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS Link to this
Electric trucks are some way off into the long-distant future, I think. The first thing that I hope the agency does is true cost-pricing. We want prices for transport modes that reflect the real costs. We want an end to the subsidies that are happening now, because some transport modes pay more of their cost to the economy than others.
This has been recognised for a very long time. The National Government asked that it be looked into, and it produced the Land Transport Pricing Study. It was many, many years in the making. We welcomed it when it came out in 1998, but it did not really lead to any change. Then, Labour had a go at it. It brought out The Surface Transport Costs and Charges Study. That did not really lead to any change, either, but the two of them showed the same thing. They showed that big trucks are paying less of the total cost that they cause to the economy than any other transport mode. They showed that trucks pay 56 percent of the cost they cause to the whole economy, and the rest is subsidy. They showed that motorists pay 64 percent—a bit better than trucks, but they still have a subsidy. They showed that freight trains pay 82 percent. They still have a subsidy, but not nearly so much. If we are trying to consign freight from one end of the country to the other, on a long-distance haul, and we are deciding how to send it, then if the trucks are subsidised much more than rail is, we will choose trucks, even though they use four to five times as much fuel to take a tonne of goods a kilometre, and even though they cause road congestion and require the building of more roads and more maintenance costs.
So the first step towards making wise transport choices is to have the real costs reflected in prices. The Government took a step in that direction today. I am interested that Maurice Williamson, who has been applauding what I have been saying about true cost-pricing and not having subsidies, is opposed to the rise in road-user charges for trucks, despite the fact that it is the first step to narrowing the gap between what trucks pay and what trains pay. Surely we want a system where, if the train is the best and most economical way to go, we use the train rather than the truck.
Hon Maurice Williamson Link to this
It was more that we were going to be given notice of the change; that’s all.
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS Link to this
OK. I thank the member for clarifying that point.
I hope we will go further and have the courage to have an in-depth look at the plethora of charges that now make no sense. Why do petrol users pay for use of the roads through their fuel, and diesel users pay through a mileage charge? We all know the historical reasons why that is the case, but is it sensible to perpetuate it? Should we be looking at different ways to pay for roads? Are we going to find a way of charging people for the use of roads that does not invade their privacy by creating a Big Brother State where the State knows exactly where every vehicle is at any time of the day? That is one of the main reasons why private motorists oppose a global positioning system for charging for road use. I am sure there are technical ways around it, and I think it is time we had another look at it. We certainly need to look at the inequities between petrol cars and diesel cars, and between small diesel cars and 3-tonne diesel trucks, which pay the same road-user charges.
We need to recognise that the more new State highways and motorways we build, the higher our maintenance bills will be in the future, and the higher road-user charges and petrol tax will be in the future, because with every new road we build we are committing future generations to a big maintenance bill, even though, with high fuel prices, they probably will not be using them as much.
The other thing that I hope will be done by the new Transport Agency, the regional strategies, and the Government policy statements is a review of the financial assistance rate. As I have told this House many times before, it really does not make sense that if Auckland decides to ask for a new State highway to take people from South Auckland right across to the North Shore, it is paid for entirely by central government through the National Land Transport Fund, but if Aucklanders want a railway line to do exactly the same thing, Auckland has to find half of the cost. In fact, with the regional fuel tax provided for in this legislation, Auckland has to find more than half the cost, because there is a crafty arrangement whereby Auckland is allowed to levy a 5c regional fuel tax, which it will put into electrifying the rail system, along with the loan that it will raise and pay interest on; the Government, in its generosity, funds its half of the electrification by raising a second loan, but, hang on, who will pay the interest costs on that loan and who will service it? Aucklanders will, through another 5c regional fuel tax. And that is supposed to be a fair split between local government and central government.
The Minister of Transport is fond of saying that she will not make an old lady in Invercargill pay for a rail system in Auckland that she will never use. But, for some reason, the Minister has no objection at all to making an old lady in Invercargill pay for the Waterview Connection, which is a gigantic new motorway in a tunnel that will cost half a billion dollars per kilometre—$2 billion for just 4½ kilometres. It is absolutely fine, apparently, for an old lady in Invercargill to pay for that. I cannot see the difference.
Let us hope this legislation will give us some transparency, some level playing fields, and some equity in the way that transport is managed. The Greens are voting for it mainly because we want the electrification of the Auckland rail system to go ahead. This bill is the only way on the table for doing it, so let us get on and do it.
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) Link to this
Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa. It seemed an uncanny coincidence that as this bill entered the Committee stage, the deprivation map hit the news-stands this week. This is the map that describes scales of deprivation across Aotearoa as determined by variables like income, family support, employment, and transport. The map demonstrates that there is still a massive gulf between the rich and the poor, with a high degree of inequality spread across cities. In Porirua, for example, a large number of people live in the most deprived areas, a large number in the least deprived, and very few in the middle. Whole regions are red—the most deprived—and they are areas where, coincidentally, there are large numbers of Māori, such as my electorate of Waiariki—the Bay of Plenty—as well as the East Coast and Northland. The rolling out of the map certainly underscored our serious concerns about this bill.
It is a difficult tightrope to walk—balancing out the development of public transport as a key response to the dual challenges of peak oil and climate change, with the inevitable impact that will occur for taxpayers. But it is a journey that we cannot avoid. We need to go with it, and, of course, public transport is the most sensible way to go. Our concern has been primarily about what measures might be put in place to assist poor people to pay for petrol price rises in the short term. It was in that context that we welcomed Supplementary Order Paper 209 during the Committee stage. We believe that that change is positive in that it phases in the regional fuel tax from a maximum of 2c per litre in the first year, 2009, to a maximum of 5c per litre in the second year, 2010. This type of sensible and equitable yearly staggering of costs could be introduced into the emissions trading scheme, rather than it giving blanket exemptions and corporate welfare subsidies to those responsible for the greatest level of pollution. We believe that staggering the costs in this way will help to alleviate the increased costs for low-income earners.
The other positive development from this amendment is the assurance that any roading projects in Auckland will need to be consistent with the Auckland regional land transport strategy. This is a positive and constructive change, which we hope will ensure that all projects are both economically and environmentally sustainable. The last thing we want to do is to end up with an open cheque to allow cost-intensive projects in the future. The inevitable trend of rising oil costs means that the building of major new highways will be extremely costly in the future, and we were pleased to support that change to ensure that certain boundaries are in place. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee recommended, I believe, the inclusion of the new clause requiring the New Zealand Transport Agency to take account of existing regional land transport programmes in preparing the National Land Transport Programme.
Our fundamental interest in this bill comes from our longstanding commitment to ensuring that immediate action is taken to address the peak oil phenomenon. We did some research. We drew on the analysis of the Science Applications International Corporation report to the United States Government, which tells it like it is; it talks about the urgent need to address an ailing global economy. In that report, the corporation’s analysis reveals that waiting until world oil production peaks before taking action would leave the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for more than two decades. We are trapped in a time that is full of uncertainty, and we must make an intense effort to put in place now strategies that act on many fronts. We know that petrol prices will continue to rise as the demand for oil continues to increase. We know also that the availability of oil on the international market will continue to decline in the face of this demand, which new oil production does not offset. It would appear that for every new barrel of oil being discovered, five barrels are being used. So every step that we can take towards preparing for a pending energy crisis must be taken seriously.
The Māori Party is of the view that the priorities of members across the House must be to significantly reduce oil dependency, and to plan for the utilisation and development of sustainable energy resources, while also ensuring that all New Zealanders are able to access affordable transport options in a world where oil shortages will mean ever-increasing petrol prices. We have, therefore, voted in support of this Land Transport Management Amendment Bill as an act of faith that the Government’s high-level priorities for transport must make significant investment in public transport as a means of reducing our reliance on oil.
But in the context of a genuine progress index, we return again to the important issue of striking a balance between expenditure to reduce oil dependence and expenditure that our low-income people cannot afford. We cannot leave this debate without continuing to raise the concept of poverty injustices—the correlation between low levels of income and the reduced likelihood of being able to afford healthy food, warm and uncrowded housing, and primary health care. We must also be concerned about the trends in the number of children being admitted to hospital with serious infectious diseases—a trend that is closely linked to the rising level of poverty. I remind the House of the case currently being heard by the Human Rights Review Tribunal that exclusion from the in-work tax credit component of Working for Families leaves our poorest children vulnerable.
On behalf of the Māori Party, I bring to this debate a recent report from the Auditor-General, Kevin Brady. It stated that his investigation had been abandoned because the ministry’s financial reporting systems were very poor. I am talking about the Ministry of Defence and the investigation into why its $2.2 billion programme for buying new ships and helicopters, and upgrading planes, had blown out by a massive $392.6 million. Mr Brady’s report stated: “My staff were unable to complete the audit as originally intended. A lot of the detailed information that I expected the defence agencies to have was not readily available. Although the defence agencies’ guidance states that cost estimates should be robust when they are submitted to Cabinet for approval to commence acquisition, in practice they are not.
In our view this information is not enough for the defence agencies to demonstrate how well they are managing the projects or for Parliament or other stakeholders to reach a view on this.”
I have taken time out to quote from that report, because I believe that it is a matter of such significance that it must affect every area of Government expenditure. Here we are, expecting ordinary New Zealanders to dig deep into their pockets again for this brand new regional fuel tax, yet the military’s cost estimate of a whopping $2.2 billion for new weapons is described as “not robust enough at this point”. It is all about credibility. Big-ticket items like helicopters, planes, and ships must be managed effectively, responsibly, and with great concern for accountability. How can this Labour-led Government expect to have any credibility if the state of mismanagement is so apparent? I guess the answer to the question is already well known, as recent poll results continue to show.
Although we make public these criticisms about the area of defence, we do not move from our responsibilities to make a difference in terms of addressing the ongoing crisis of peak oil and the complex web of issues attached to the provision of public transport. The Māori Party will support this bill at its third and final reading.
As an add-on to the discussion and the debate this afternoon, I want to say that I was interested in Mr Brown’s reflection on issues about the Treaty of Waitangi, and I thought that, for his assistance, I might tell him that the issues around the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi are noted in the Waitangi Tribunal, in the courts, and in Government statements. In fact, a Government statement of 1989 states that the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi are the principle of kāwanatanga, or Government; the principle of self-management, or rangatiratanga; the principle of equality; the principle of reasonable cooperation; and the principle of redress. If the member is looking around for an interpretation of, or an understanding about, those principles, that statement will, hopefully, be a start. He might like to try googling it.
The second issue he talked about was what is and what is not the view of Māori. It would be a good idea for him to ask Māori about how they feel about those principles. At the end of the day, without anything else in place, I think that Māori are quite happy for the principles to stay as they are, for now, their knowing full well that down the line there needs to be a debate about Te Tiriti o Waitangi across the board, in all legislation. Kia ora tātou.
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) Link to this
There is a statement attributed to the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George that could be a good metaphor for our approach to transport policy in this country over the years. Lloyd George is reported to have said, at the time of the People’s Budget in 1909, which brought in the welfare State in Britain at the price of attacking what he described as entrenched privilege, that everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die. That is a very good summary of the way in which we have approached transport funding policy in this country over the years.
We all want the infrastructure, but we are not prepared to meet the cost of providing it. When I say “we” I mean Governments as much as individuals, over a long period of time. Our response up until comparatively recently—and I will come to that point, in response to the member, in a moment—has been simply to defer, to downplay, or to downsize our requirements. When we talk now about New Zealand being a modern First World economy, and when we talk about all the slogans—we used to say “first half of the OECD” and all of those sorts of things—we come back to deficiencies in infrastructure being one of the major impediments as to why we do not achieve those goals.
There has been a huge investment in roading and public transport over the last decade, and I acknowledge that. I think that it is long overdue, but all it has done, really, is highlight the fact that we have more to do. We still have significant problems around our two major cities, and in many other areas, as well. We have to upgrade public transport. I hear members say that we should be placing much greater emphasis on public transport. Yes, we should, but it needs to be of a standard that will attract people and it needs to be reliable. There will be a good test of that, I suspect, in Auckland and Wellington tomorrow morning, but I fear that what will happen, yet again, is that public transport services will be struggling to cope with passenger demand. All that does in the longer term is fuel a public view that those services are unreliable and therefore should not be diverted to in times of need.
So we have to crack that suspicion of the worth of public transport at the same time as ensuring that our roading infrastructure is up to scratch to meet the needs we place upon it in a modern and dynamic economy. It is not a question of one or the other; it is a question of moving both together, jointly, in a reasonable period of time. I think that the bill, in its essence, attempts to set out structures by which those changes can be facilitated and by which decisions can be made about how that infrastructure can be paid for.
A lot has been said about the regional fuel tax proposals, and I acknowledge that in the times we are living in at present, with mounting international oil prices, there has to be a measure of huge sensitivity as to the acceptability of imposing fuel taxes to provide for transport services. But I come back to my opening point. We all want these additional facilities and services, and we have to find the mechanisms by which they are to be funded. I think that the bill strikes a very useful balance in that it provides for a maximum of 10c a litre but a maximum of 5c on any particular project and it says that the projects that will qualify have to be designated by the region as specific and high priority. So it is not just a case of saying: “Let’s chuck another 5, 10, or whatever number of cents it is, into this vast, amorphous pot called transport funding.” It is very much project-dedicated, and I think that that will impose a discipline that has been lacking previously.
The question then arises as to what level to impose. That is a matter, frankly, for regional councils, as they determine the projects coming forward that require their funding. In the Wellington context, Transmission Gully stands out as the obvious example. What we know about that at the moment is that on the table is a revised costing of around $1 billion. About half of that is already potentially funded because of the Government contribution. The balance now needs to be determined. It will come, I suspect, through a variety of mechanisms. Part of it will come through a regional fuel tax, part of it will come from income from tolling, and part of it may well come from some form of debt financing. But the point that we have to embark upon is a debate about the best way of putting that package together so that the roading programme can go forward. I think that that is the key point that is lost sight of, often, in this debate. We have moved on now from asking whether something should happen to recognising what has to happen, and the question now is about how we achieve that objective.
Over the years we have had many attempts, through many restructurings of transport funding, to try to strike the best mechanism for making progress. We had the notion some years ago of trying to equate road, rail, and other forms of transport, in terms of what a funding allocation might be, but it did not work. We went through the idea that perhaps we should simply privatise the whole network in various forms. That did not work. We have now come back to a much more mixed position. But what we need to have—and what this legislation is all about providing—is the framework within which those decisions can be made and, more important, within which the decisions that are made can be implemented.
We cannot afford as a country to continue to have a situation where, in our major city, the ability to do business is being severely curtailed by transport requirements. I know, as a frequent commuter to Auckland, that it is now impossible to have more than two or three appointments in a day, get around the city, and go to and from the airport. In fact, at some points of the day in Auckland it takes longer to drive from the airport to the city than it does to fly from Wellington to Auckland. That is an intolerable situation. People cannot get about their normal course of business efficiently, and those in the transport industry in Auckland are telling me that they are now effectively dropping at least one, if not 1½ runs, per day, simply because of the cost of gridlock.
In Wellington we face a similar situation for different reasons. A different typography constrains the ability of this city to expand naturally, but the numbers of vehicles and people coming into it continue to increase. We have roads that were designed for flows of around 15,000 to 18,000 vehicles a day now having to cope with 20,000 or 30,000-plus vehicles a day, and we do not have the physical capacity to extend those roads. The public transport network in this city is stretched virtually to breaking point. In Auckland there is a developing system. It has a long way to go to be comparable to the needs of a city of a million-plus people. But we have to start to seriously address the issues, and we have to start to put in place the mechanisms that will deliver change.
I think that one of the things this bill will do, particularly in the Auckland context—assuming that the royal commission on the governance arrangements for Auckland comes up with some viable solutions—is start to put a fresh focus on making sure that we can actually make significant process, and on making sure that people in that city do not spend most of their working day in trying to get to and from work, that people do feel able to move about, and that some of the boundaries being established, almost artificially because of transport requirements, can be broken down. In the city of Wellington, I think the situation is much more about facilitating the flow of people across what is a very wide region.
The point is that unless we are serious about funding and serious about organisation, we will not make that progress. And then, we will continue to have to confront the argument about why our economic performance overall is so lacklustre. Why is it that with a good ability to produce high-quality products, but in a very long, thin country, we are unable to be as efficient as we might be? The question automatically then turns on the transport network.
This bill seeks to address that. I think it is a positive step forward. I acknowledge, though, that there will be sensitivities about how aspects of it are applied. I hope good judgment applies in terms of the execution of the bill’s provisions. But do I see that the crisis it is attempting to resolve is one that we as a country simply have to grasp by the nettle and actually seek to make significant progress on if we want to continue to maintain a reasonable standard of living.
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) Link to this
The ACT party rises to oppose this bill, and we oppose it for two fundamental reasons. The first is contained in the title, which states that this bill is the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. We would be a lot more comfortable voting for this bill if we thought there was some management for the land transport sector of New Zealand, but clearly what we have seen over the past few days demonstrates that there is none.
The second reason why we oppose this bill is the concept of a regional tax. Again, if the Government was lean and efficient and taxed us very, very little, we could understand, maybe, an additional tax to go into the roads. But when we see the Government increasing its expenditure from $34 billion to $61 billion in 10 years, that is an 80 percent increase. And then it comes along and says it has not enough money for roads and needs a bit more tax. We say “Hang on, what about all the money that you have already taken and have been spending?”. When we see a Government that can gaily—and I use that word in its old-fashioned sense—come along and say “Over the next 5 years we’ve got $1.5 billion to spend, propping up rail, and by the way we need a regional tax to fund new roads.”, we start wondering what the priorities of the Government are.
We cannot deal with land transport in New Zealand until we get some principles right, and just piling up an extra tax is not actually addressing the principles. Let me explain what I mean. The Prime Minister, Helen Clark, has stood up in this House and said that the reason for buying back rail and putting in—what is it—$400 for every man, woman, and child in the country, or $2,000 for a family of five, into rail is that it is a sustainable business.
That is where the fundamental principles are wrong, because a business cannot be sustainable if it cannot cover its costs. It cannot be environmentally friendly if it cannot cover its costs; that has to be a necessary condition to be environmentally sustainable. What rail is doing is sucking in more resources than it is creating, by definition, because the cost of rail exceeds the return. I will allow that it is quite possible to have a business that is profitable and not environmentally friendly—that is possible—but there cannot be a business that is environmentally friendly, a loser, and costing resources. Rail is wasting New Zealand’s resources; it is wasting our environment, it is wasting our labour, it is wasting our capital, and it is wasting our time. The Prime Minister, Helen Clark, has come here and proudly said “Look at us. Aren’t we wonderful because we are propping up this business that is somehow sustainable?”. Well, it is not.
Here is another principle that we have got wrong.
Sue KedgleyIf they consume more resources than they create, then yes, of course we should. We should not be going around pouring our resources into, say, a horse and cart or into rail—
I am coming to the cost of roads, if Sue Kedgley can hold her horses. The idea that we run along and prop up a failing business and think that is being environmentally sustainable is, frankly, nuts.
Here is another principle: it is not smart, in a land transport management sense, to give $700 million - odd to an Australian company and think that is a smart deal, and to let it keep the largest trucking company in New Zealand for free. That is not a smart deal, yet we have done that as though it is somehow wonderful that now we own the trains. So I disagree with all those principles that we have seen displayed here.
Here is the next one. Yes, we should have public transport, but let us not make it a bottomless pit that poor taxpayers have to pour into, without any return. Let us have public transport that is actually cost efficient. Let us help people on a low income to get around the city and around the country, but let us not apply subsidies just indiscriminately like we are doing here—no one now knows what things cost. Let us also admit that roads are a great way of getting around. They are great when we are in a car, they are great when we are in a truck, and they are great when we are in a bus. Actually, rail is a horrible way of getting around because we cannot get a bus, we cannot get in a car, and we cannot get in a truck. The trains do not go where we want to go, they do not go when we want to go, and they do not end up at our house. That is why rail is a difficult proposition in New Zealand.
I am quite happy to walk along, of course. But it is very, very hard to walk from, say, Auckland to Hamilton.
It is very, very hard to ride a bike from Auckland to Hamilton; and actually it is quite hard to catch the train from Auckland to Hamilton, no matter how much money we put in. The best way to get from Auckland to Hamilton is to take a bus or a car, or to drive a truck.
Well, maybe if we followed the Greens’ policy we would all be in a horse and buggy, and be covered in pollution as a consequence. So roads are a good idea. It may well be that the price of oil continues to climb—who knows? The great thing about living in a capitalist world with entrepreneurship and invention is that, I think, we will be driving around in the future in electric cars. They will not be invented by Governments; they will not be invented by committees. Wasting billions of dollars on rail does not help us one jot. I just wish we would reflect a bit more on the ability of entrepreneurs and of New Zealanders to make the right decisions when confronted with the proper costs. [ Interruption] I also wish we would not sit in Parliament like Judith Tizard, who I notice quite happily drives around in her new BMW and then lectures the rest of us about climate change. I think if we did that a bit less, we would actually get on a lot better.
Here is what we need to do. We need to reform the Resource Management Act so that roading projects can go ahead. We need to allow the private sector to invest in roads and charge tolls. We need to consider user-pays—if we use a road, particularly at times of congestion, we have to pay the cost. If we did that, then we could afford a decent roading network. Let us stop just taxing people—the opposite of user-pays—which is what we do now. We force non-users to pay. That is unfair, wrong, and inefficient, and it wastes resources—something that I would think our environmentalist friends should be concerned about. Thank you.
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this
This is the final reading of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. It is a pleasure to take a call, when I think about what will happen tomorrow morning: there will be trucks up and down this country blocking the roads in protest at this Government. Trucks in Hamilton, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Invercargill will be blocking the roads, showing the dissatisfaction there is amongst the public at what this Government has done to the economy. This is not just about petrol taxes and the price of fuel; this is mismanagement by a Government. This is mismanagement of the New Zealand economy. It is the purchase of a rail system, which is seen as some kind of universal panacea, but it will not deliver the answers in road transport, it will not deliver the answers in passenger transport, and it will not be the answer for New Zealand.
Hon Shane JonesBecause there are things going on in the transport industry. If we look at what is happening around the world, we will see that it is probably a balance between what we have heard from the last two speakers—from the Greens and the ACT party. There will be technological advances. There will be electric cars before we know it, and those cars will run on roads. There is a huge investment in the infrastructure of roads going on around the world. The new technology will be invested in things that travel on those roads. In 10 to 20 years’ time, we may even be building roads for the cleanest, greenest form of transport, which may be cars that are not powered by fossil fuels. That may be the answer in 10 to 20 years’ time. The answer may not be in public transport; the answer may be in roads.
There may be a role for public transport, in the sense of trains, as well. It may be part of that equation. But it certainly is not part of the equation that the New Zealand Government has to buy that part of the equation. We had a very sophisticated and efficient system going, and this Government has come in and spent billions of taxpayers’ dollars on a system that it will turn just to rack and ruin.
New Zealanders will get up tomorrow and find they cannot get to work on time; they will find that there are major traffic jams around the country, because the public has had enough of this Government. It is their way of saying that they do not want any more silly ideas from the Labour Government; they want practical decisions and government on the economics that will build this country strong. That is the message members will get tomorrow. That is the message that will be on the streets of Hamilton tomorrow morning. People will be saying they have had enough of this Government, and they want better management and economic management that will deliver for all New Zealanders. That is what they will get at the election at the end of the year.
When we look at this legislation, we see that it encompasses the regional petrol tax. If this was such a visionary thing for the Labour Government to include in its legislation, why does the Prime Minister go out and say that there will be no implementation of this regional petrol tax? Why has the Prime Minister gone out and said that over her dead body will she implement a regional petrol tax next year? The reason is political expediency. She knows she cannot go into an election campaign putting another tax on New Zealanders, especially on top of high fuel prices. That is the reason why the Labour Party will not enforce that tax next year. It will pass the legislation today that gives it the right to put another tax on New Zealanders, but it says it will not implement it next year. Well, we do not believe the Labour Party. We have seen Labour’s policy in this area in the past, where it says one thing and does another. This will be another case.
I bet that next year the Government would put regional petrol taxes on as quickly as it could. It would whack the motorists of Auckland with 10c next year, even though the Prime Minister has said she would not, because the Government does not care about its word. Its word does not mean anything, and it will do whatever it wants next year, and the punters know that. They know they cannot trust these guys, and they will not, because is the Government going to pass legislation that gives it the ability to put a tax on, and then not put a tax on? Get in the real world. These guys would put a tax on. They are just waiting until after the election to do it. New Zealanders out there need to understand that they cannot trust Labour on taxes. Labour has shown that in the past. Labour said it was going to give reductions on taxes and it did not. The Government is going to put a tax on New Zealanders next year; a tax which it said it would not put on them now. That is the reality of this Government, and we know that is the case.
Another big part of the regional petrol tax was the 5c-5c split. That was the ability for regions to have their say. The regions came into the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, one after another, saying: “We want to have discretion. We want to be able to build our roads in our area, if we want to. We want to be able to put money into public transport, if we want to. Give us that discretion.” What is so hard about Government giving the regions discretion? Is that not what we are here for, to do what the people want? The people came and asked for discretion, but the Labour Government said: “No. We won’t give discretion. We won’t give the people what they want. We will give them what we think is right, what we think is the best thing for New Zealand, what we think is the answer in this case.” That is classic Labour Party mentality. It knows best, and the people, the public, and the regions do not count. They are just a tax-and-grab incentive for this Labour Government, and the regions are distraught at that.
The small parties that came into this House had the ability to change that. I hear members, such as those from United Future, talk about reasonableness, and how we need to have a balance between public and private transport, and passenger and roading transport mechanisms, but they did not want to give the regions that discretion. When it came to the crunch, parties like that were not willing to give the discretion to the regions. They were not willing to go out there and do what the people wanted. So they can talk about reasonableness until the cows come home, but when it came to the crunch, they were not there for the regions, just like the Government of the day. That is something that the regions will not forget.
The regions of New Zealand will look upon this Government and see that they have been told that they have to have a certain split in their spending, when they wanted to have the justification and the discretion to do it themselves. It is a sad indictment on this Parliament and this Government if the regional voice of New Zealand is not accommodated in this Parliament.
When we look at road transport, one of the big issues is planning—long-term planning. People need some certainty that there will be projects going into the future. They need that certainty so that they can have the capacity to deliver on those projects. This bill goes some way in dealing with that planning capacity, and that is a good step. However, much more is needed.
When we look at the history behind this bill and why it was set up, it was in reaction to the need to finance public transport in Auckland. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Transport, and the Minister of Finance said in the Budget that they were going to have the electrification of Auckland rail. Then they had to work out how they would pay for it. They had no mechanism to pay for it, so they decided to have a regional petrol tax instead.
As Maurice Williamson said, they will have these things but they will not actually fund them. Now that they have to work out how they will fund it, they have decided to put another tax on New Zealanders. They will put another tax on hard-working New Zealanders to pay for the promises they made in a Budget. That is the history behind this legislation.
The other history behind this legislation is the total mess in relation to the value for money that people were getting out of the transport sector. There was report after report showing no value for money in transport construction and maintenance. We had the Ministerial Advisory Group on Roading Costs and the Next Steps review. Those reports showed that there was no value for money in the transport sector and that major improvement was needed. This legislation is a half-stop measure that came in within a very short period of time in response to those things. This legislation has not been fully considered; it is just something the Government wanted to rush through before the election to say that it has dealt with that value-for-money issue.
The Government of the day should have been much more reflective. It should have taken a more conciliatory approach that looked at the options, rather than just ramming through one option it thought it could get through in a bill before the election. The true test of a Government that wants to do its best for New Zealand is not only identifying a problem but also working for the right solution. This measure is just the solution on the table that was the easiest, and I say shame on the Labour Government for doing that because it has not taken the regions into account. It has not done the hard work needed to get the right solution for New Zealand. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
NATHAN GUY (National) Link to this
What a week it has been for the Government. Let us just think about this week. Government members have come to Wellington and launched KiwiRail, but we still cannot get them to front up and say how much the Government has paid for it. The people of Canterbury might be impressed with the colours red and black, but when people are struggling to get food on the table and to pay the second-highest interest rates in the Western World, the Government is splashing out on this investment and we still cannot identify how much it has cost the hard-working New Zealand taxpayer. Our finance spokesperson, Bill English, has tried to ask the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance how much it has cost New Zealand taxpayers, but they still cannot front up and tell us.
Then this week there has been another increase of 2c a litre on the price of petrol at the pump as a result of accident compensation levies. Since the Government came into office in 2000 it has increased the accident compensation petrol levy from 2.3c to 9.3c a litre over that time. This increase will put another $120 million into the Government coffers. It is now costing people who are filling up at the pump every week over $100 to fill the average-sized car, and they are wondering where their money is going when they consider all the wastage on the growth in bureaucracy that this Government has endorsed over the last 8 years.
Do members know what has also happened to cap off a bad week for the Government? Road-user charges are going up by 7 to 15 percent, and there was no consultation for those road-user transport operators. As a result, the highways into our major cities will be clogged and congested in the morning. What an embarrassment that will be to the transport Minister, Annette King, because she did not consult.
These truckies have had an absolute gutsful. They are going to meet in my area tomorrow at MacKays Crossing. I have been invited there to address them. All these transport operators who are fired up will be meeting at MacKays Crossing at half-past 6 and they are going to gridlock the highway—which I think is an embarrassment. They are doing that because the Government has given up on them—it is not listening, and it does not care—and transport operators are saying that that is pathetic. So productivity tomorrow in our major cities will be slowed down. Right now people are leaving the city and telling their employers that they probably will not see them tomorrow; they probably will not see them in at work because the highways will be congested. That is because this Government has not consulted with these trucking operators, and those Government members should hang their heads in shame.
Let us look at the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, because we support some of its provisions. One of those examples is the hypothecation—that is, the moving of all the petrol tax that is collected into roading; we know that we need to do more. But the big thing we are opposed to in this bill is councils being allowed to put another fuel tax on motorists when motorists are already hurting at the pump. Why would the Government want to do that right now when people are paying hugely just to fill up and get to work or take the kids to school. I cannot understand that. Sure, we have to invest in our projects, but we should just look at the wastage.
The example I give people when I am out and talking to people in my region—and Chris Finlayson will know, because he travels up and down from Mana quite regularly—is what has happened to the area in Plimmerton commonly known as the T2 lanes. It is just a section of road that is about 1.5 kilometres long, which Transit did not design very well from the start. It has been open for 3 years, but do members know what Transit has been doing? This is a clearway area; it is open for certain periods of time, then closed for others so that residents can park their cars in front of their homes. But most of them are petrified to do that now, because there have been some nose-to-tail accidents there, and residents are not parking in the clearway. So this is an example of wastage from this Government. A section of State highway has not been designed properly. And do members know what has happened? Transit has had guys standing there with video cameras, taking imagery of whether vehicles coming through have a driver and a passenger. Then they have collected the data and sent out warning notices.
Yes, they have sent out warning notices. They have sent out 8,000 warning notices saying: “You’ve been a very naughty driver. You’re operating in the wrong lane. You should be travelling in the other one.” There is so much confusion. And do members know what? They have had three reports—three reports—on this 1.5 kilometre section of road. It has cost $500,000. It has cost the taxpayer half a million just to do reports and administrate costs for those guys in their fluorescent jackets. The point I am trying to make, for the benefit of those listening in the congestion of the traffic getting out to the Kapiti Coast now, is that this legislation, in terms of a regional fuel tax, is not needed right now. It might be needed in the future, but right now motorists are hurting. There is no way they can afford to pay another 3c, 8c, or 10c a litre when they are sitting in congestion and seeing all the wastage in some of those examples that I have put in front of the House this evening.
So National is opposed to this bill. There are some good parts in it, but we are extremely opposed to the regional fuel tax right now when motorists are hurting.
A party vote was called for on the question,
That the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 70
- New Zealand Labour 49
- New Zealand First 7
- Green Party 6
- Māori Party 4
- United Future 2
- Progressive 1
- Independent 1 (Field)
Noes 51
- New Zealand National 48
- ACT New Zealand 2
- Independent 1 (Copeland)
Bill read a third time.