Mr SPEAKERI have received a letter from the Hon Darren Hughes seeking to debate under Standing Order 380 the announcement made by the Minister of Transport to replace regional fuel taxes with national increases to fuel excise duty and road-user charges. This is a particular case of recent occurrence and it does involve ministerial responsibility. The announcement concerns a new development of national significance that I consider does require the immediate attention of the House. I call on the Hon Darren Hughes to move that the House take note of an urgent matter of public importance.
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) Link to this
I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. What a shambolic announcement we heard from the Government last week. Last week we saw the National Government in its full and absolutely transparent form. It was a Government determined to be unfair to everybody—unfair to the people of Auckland who got half a plan, and unfair to the people of New Zealand who are dumped with the responsibility of paying 6c a litre to fund half a plan for Auckland.
It was staggering today in the House to watch the Minister of Transport, Mr Joyce, who was so proud of the announcement he had made. He wandered into office at the end of last year as a new MP, as a man of free enterprise and private enterprise, but he decided pretty quickly that the big Government of Wellington knew all the answers. That was the approach he took as he went up to Auckland and upset what had been put together, in order to ensure that that fine city could have its transport questions met.
But he was completely unaware of the three miracles that had occurred in Auckland. No. 1 was that everybody had agreed on something; all the regional councils, all the city councils, and even the district councils that surround the city of Auckland had agreed on what needed to be done to settle Auckland’s transport issues, once and for all. They knew that the previous Labour Government had finally changed transport funding so that a percentage of what they got from the National Land Transport Fund would match the size of their populations. But they also knew that some of those projects could not be achieved in just one funding period, and that to put it all together in one big plan would require some extra funding. And that is where the second miracle of this story comes in, because Auckland had agreed on how to pay for it. So we had two good things going that all the Ministers of Transport in New Zealand’s history would have been happy to have handed to them on a plate: No. 1 was a regional agreement in our largest city, and No. 2 was an agreement on how it should be funded.
The third miracle was that the councils had then consulted with the people of the Auckland region. And guess what? They agreed to it. I cannot think of another tax where a regional government has gone out to the people of its community and said: “We’d like to levy you this amount of money in addition to what you are paying now.”, and people have come back and said: “Yes, it makes sense, because this is the total package of what we are going to be getting.”
So Auckland had these three miracles lined up in a row; it was a once-in-a generation chance for any political leader, in terms of the transport portfolio, to walk into office, pick it up, and run with it. In fact, in fairness to Mr Joyce, he could have come into office with all the radio-marketing charms he so helpfully informs his colleagues about when he is telling them off in the lobbies—but that is a story for another day—and he could have said: “The evil, terrible, left-wing Labour Government put in place this regional fuel tax; we in National are against it. But, look, so much water has gone under the bridge, so much work has been done, and you are so close with your rail electrification, your Penlink road, your ferry wharves, and your integrated ticketing—you are so close with all the work you are going to do that we, reluctant though we are to agree, are going to let it sail through.” Then the Minister could have turned up every 6 months for the next 2 years, 7 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days that he will be a Minister, and cut ribbons all over the place to celebrate what had happened, while nailing Labour as the Government that had allowed the funding regime in Auckland. But he even gave up that chance, and in doing so he has left Auckland with half a plan that does not meet the needs of our biggest city, and he has socked it to every provincial and rural area in New Zealand, which is now forced to pay 6c a litre extra in order to pay for just half a plan.
I asked the Minister of Transport during question time where it was in National’s pre-election commitment that we would all be paying 6c a litre extra. His big answer was: “Oh well, Labour was going to make you pay 3c a litre extra.” The difference was that we had said that before the election, and we had gone out and campaigned on a plan for Auckland we were proud of, because it would have made a difference. But all the Minister could say was: “It’s a little bit more than what Labour had planned, even though we didn’t front up before the election.” So the low-tax party in its first genuine policy decision has put taxes up—so much for the Minister being a right-winger! We have read all about the way he mixes messages in a certain book of a certain name, but the approach he is trying to make here takes the cake.
Let us go through the plan that Steven Joyce has left the people of Auckland. First of all, we know that this Government is not committed to public transport one iota. In fact, Steven Joyce and the National Party oppose public transport so much that they cannot even mention the words. Do you know what they call it? They call it “non - State highway classes”. We call them trains, buses, and ferries, but over there on the other side of the House they say “non - State highway classes”. I would have thought it was political correctness gone mad not to refer to trains by their name. Labour stood in favour of trying to make sure there was more public transport for Auckland, because every city in the world knows that people can be moved efficiently, affordably, and with environmental sensitivity only if it has a proper public transport plan in place. In fact, there is a fourth layer to that now, as we find ourselves in the midst of a global financial crisis, which is that countries all around the world are using public transport as an economic measure to try to kick start their economies and get things moving. But National members have come out and said that they are not in favour of that, at all.
National has chosen to electrify the Auckland railway line. The whole country is going to pay for that—mind you, the whole country is going to pay for a lot of things. I have watched National backbenchers get up and crow about roads in their area, but one day the bills will arrive on the Minister’s table and he will find out that it is not possible to keep on saying to everybody: “I’m going to fund this. Don’t worry; we’ll close off revenue streams left, right, and centre, because I will just make sure everything can happen.” We are going to have electrified railway lines; that is a good thing. And there will be trains on them. Of course, there is a tender out at the moment from the Auckland Regional Council for those trains, but the Minister has cut up right in the middle of that, as a member of the so-called business-friendly party that does not care about all the work that is going on there.
There is one problem: there is no guarantee of providing stations. I am not sure of the last time that man took a train, but the last time I was on a train—last week—I had to go to a station and get on a platform in order to get on the train. He must do that, unless, of course, he is going to run after the train and jump on it at the point it comes in, like some sort of superhero. He will be looking for trains into Wellington Station that have “CR” on the front of them, as if they were some sort of VIP service with a Crown carriage for National Ministers, who are used to things waiting for them. But of course working people cannot do that; they have to get on at a railway station. We know that right across the Auckland region National has put railway lines into jeopardy—right, left, and centre. My colleague the member for New Lynn, the Hon David Caygill—the Hon David Cunliffe, I am sorry—[Interruption] There are so many fine Davids in this party, as there are in another book. But the member for New Lynn has pointed out that in relation to the railway station in his electorate, funding for an extraordinary trench already built through it for a new station is now up in the air. What does the Minister of Transport say about that? He says: “Oh well, we cannot fund everything and we will get around to that. I’ll send a letter to the New Zealand Transport Agency about it because I don’t make the decisions. By the way, if you”—the agency—”are still listening, here are seven roads I’d like funded.” So on some things he can tell the transport agency what to do, but on other things, of course, these decisions are well outside his scope.
There are other railway stations, too. I know that Carol Beaumont is worried about the Onehunga railway station in that area, and Darien Fenton has raised questions about the Helensville railway station, as well. We know that if we are going to move more people, there is no point in electrifying a railway line if people cannot get on a train at a station.
What other options, in terms of rail, does this close off? Well, thanks to the extraordinary work of the Rt Hon Helen Clark, we are going to host the Rugby World Cup in 2011, which is a very good thing indeed. There was a prospect—I admit that it would have taken some work—that we could have achieved the use of electric trains on that railway line by 2011. But the Minister said that because it was only a chance, there was no point at all in shooting for it. I remember a time when the National Party was ambitious for New Zealand—oh, yes. That was during the election campaign. But the Minister regards that now as a marketing campaign that is over. It went off the air in November. He is on to 2009 now, and National is more—what is the phrase—ambiguous for New Zealand rather than ambitious for New Zealand, in that respect. The Minister said we are not going even to bother to try to meet that target. That means that Aucklanders who are trying to get around their city, or other New Zealanders who are going to watch a game—if, of course, they can win a raffle and afford a ticket—will not be able to use a public transport system that could move thousands and thousands of people, and tourists, around our country.
I thought that the Minister of Tourism might have had a view about that, but he would rather people cycled than took trains. Actually, that is another interesting aspect of this package. It is an economic miracle for this country to defy the global financial crisis to build a cycleway from Cape Reinga to Bluff. That is a miracle, but there is no money for cycleways across Auckland. So if people want to come as tourists to New Zealand, they can save our entire economy by cycling around as tourists, but if people want to go to work and save a bit of money by going on bikes, then that is ridiculous and PC nonsense, and Steven Joyce has come along and cut it out of the programme. Going to work or school on a bike is another thing called a “non - State Highway class”, and it is one of the things that have gone, as well. But it is OK to have a national cycleway for New Zealand, although, as Mr Goff was able to expose during question time, there are more questions than answers with regard to the cycleway. Yet when it comes to working people trying to use alternatives to road, there is no such opportunity for them, whatsoever.
What are some of the other parts of the package that the Minister has, in effect, been able to set out to ruin? One of the local body leaders who has done a lot of work on this is the Mayor of North Shore. He has regarded the Waitematā Harbour as being a possibility for an untapped motorway for New Zealanders trying to get across the harbour, in Auckland. Local bodies have gone and put a lot of work into wanting to build new wharves for ferries, and into trying to encourage that mode of transport for people. But all that has gone, under the plans that Steven Joyce is talking about. Every single proposal there has gone. Ferry development is another proposal that is now at the whim of the New Zealand Transport Agency, apparently, and there is no funding in sight or planning for where it will come from. So if people are interested only in roading, if they think that roading is the only answer to every solution, and if they have tunnel vision for just one form of transport in New Zealand, then maybe—possibly—they might welcome what the Government announced last week, unless they do not want their petrol to go up.
There are some areas of New Zealand—the Minister is actually correct on this—where people can rely only on roading because there are no public transport facilities. The member for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, the Hon Parekura Horomia, pointed this out to me in one of our usually enlightening conversations. He said to me that in Tolaga Bay where he is from, they already pay $1.84 a litre just to get gas. The Minister, an Aucklander, pays $1.59 a litre when he wants to put gas into his car, so there is already a 25c difference between living in Tolaga Bay, or in the regions in New Zealand, and living in Auckland. And now the Minister is going to go and put another 6c on top of that, so that people in Tolaga Bay will pay 31c more than what Aucklanders pay today. Where is the public transport for Tolaga Bay? Where is the extra roading for Tolaga Bay?
Hon Parekura HoromiaHon DARREN HUGHES Link to this
Where are the railway stations? Where are the ferry wharves? Where are all the things that the people of Tolaga Bay should be entitled to? Where is that transport going to be? It is nowhere for them. They will pay 31c a litre more than what Aucklanders are paying today, and Government members laugh about it. They think it is hilarious, because they are not interested in rural or regional New Zealand—not one bit, not at all.
We know one thing, though. We know that the Minister is very susceptible to fixing up areas where people go for holidays. If people go for holidays at these places, their roading gets fixed up. So the Kōpū Bridge project is going to be done because the Minister’s friends go and have holidays there. No one believes that that is due to the advocacy of the member for Coromandel. Nobody believes that Sandra Goudie’s advocacy has got the Kōpū Bridge project brought forward—nobody does. We know that the Minister would have had his mates over the summer saying: “I was hanging out in the Jag and tried to get across the Kōpū Bridge. You’ve got to do something about that; you’re a Minister now.”, and the Minister would have said “Oh, yes. I will fix that one straight away.” He has left the Waterview project in Auckland hanging. He has left the Transmission Gully scheme in Wellington hanging. He has left hanging the things that working people want to use all the time, but he is bringing forward the Kōpū Bridge project. So we know that holiday areas count with the Minister, which is why I want to know from him, when he speaks next, why the people of Hāhei have to pay $1.89 for their gas right now and why he will put another 6c on top of that. That is what he is going to do to the people who are living in the Coromandel. Their gas prices are all going up at a time when people are finding it tough.
The previous Labour Government got crucified by the then National Opposition about fuel costs, but those members could not wait to get on to the Treasury benches and hike up taxes for New Zealanders, without actually making sure they were delivering a proper plan, and that is what is wrong with this announcement. The announcement that was made last week is unfair because it hits people doubly. People living in Auckland will not be getting the joined-up transport that city needs. Nor will they have integrated ticketing. The Minister acts as though the single ticketing that people could use on a ferry, train, or bus is some sort of miraculous science that requires more work, more effort, more reviews, more inquiry—
Hon DARREN HUGHES Link to this
—and more bureaucrats, as Dr Cullen points out. When visiting any city around the world anyone can see that one of the features of a decent public transport system is integrated ticketing, which is why that was so important as part of the plan for Auckland. But that project is going, as well.
But it was not just a public transport plan that got whacked last week; it was also roading. That is why I would like to know what the leader of the ACT Party wants to say about the plan announced last week, because he must be very disappointed. With Penny Webster—who is a very fine former member of Parliament from the ACT Party, and who is now the Mayor of Rodney—he had negotiated for their peninsula to be included in the package with the Penlink road. The Minister had said they would call that by a new phrase: “a strategically local road”. No one knows what that means—it has no criteria—but somehow the ACT Party was pleased that it was going to be labelled in that way. Yet it was thrown out as part of the package. I know that the ACT Party had voted for that legislation last year because they could see that the plan was comprehensive. I know they do not all have to vote together any more as part of a sort of highly regulated system they have of casting party votes—lots of rules, and things like that. They do not have to have five votes all the same. So I want to know from ACT which of its members actually supports what the Government did last week, because the Mayor of Rodney does not support what happened. People there know they were treated unfairly.
So we have this new Minister from Wellington coming in and knowing best, and thinking that big Government has all the answers. He waltzed into Auckland last week, and upset the apple cart, but in doing so he slugged the people of New Zealand, who will be ripped off to the extent of 6c a litre, and he ripped off the people of Auckland, who for once had the chance to get their transport needs sorted out. I think that that is a matter of urgent public importance the Minister ought to explain to the House.
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) Link to this
The Hon David Hughes, formerly of Ōtaki and now of no fixed abode, comes running forward at 100 miles an hour and comes face to face with reality.
He does have more hair; he used to have a lot more hair, actually.
Let us look at the problems with the member’s argument. The first problem is that he neglects to mention that the previous Government proposed increases in national taxes of 1.5c a litre per year over the next 3 years. That was conveniently forgotten and not mentioned before the election. All we talked about then was the potential for regional fuel taxes. The previous Government forgot to say: “Oh, by the way, we’ll still be putting up fuel taxes. Oh, did we forget to mention that?”. It realised that a tax of 14c a litre in Auckland would probably not be as well received as 9.5c, which is less than 10c. The previous Government’s proposal was 4.5c a litre higher. So the member is criticising the National Government for an increase of 1.5c a litre per year for 2 years. He is criticising a national fuel tax increase of 3c a litre over 2 years.
That was his first mistake. His second mistake was to try to suggest that somehow that means—
Hon Dr Michael Cullen Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member is a new member. Perhaps, Mr Assistant Speaker, you could draw his attention to the fact that it is actually permissible to look at members opposite in the House. We have not had any eye contact so far, at all.
Then there is—[ Interruption] Yes, I have a much more interesting view looking down here. The next issue is about what the money from national fuel taxes is to pay for. Mr Hughes—Darrell Hughes—says that it is to pay for Auckland’s railway projects.
Hon Steve ChadwickHon Darren Hughes Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am not a precious person, so it did not bother me the first time—
Hon Darren Hughes Link to this
I have a point of order, and David Bennett is interjecting, so maybe we will deal with that first.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) Link to this
Points of order will be heard in silence. We will enforce that, and members must acknowledge that.
Hon Darren Hughes Link to this
My original point of order was that it would be helpful for orderly and good conduct of debate if the member could get my name correct. I called him Steven Joyce. That is his name. My name is Darren Hughes. I am very proud of David Hughes, but that is not my name.
So Mr Hughes, Darren Hughes—is “Dazza” OK?—“Dazza” Hughes tries to tell us that the Auckland railway projects will be paid for from a national fuel tax, which, of course, is not the case. As we said in the releases of last week, those projects are being funded through KiwiRail. We have made a commitment in principle for KiwiRail to own the passenger trains in Auckland and Wellington. Members might ask why that has changed since last year. The reason is that halfway through last year the previous Government made a decision to change track, so to speak, and to go out and purchase KiwiRail. It does not seem to make any sense to me or to the average layperson that the Crown would fund over a long-term period potentially three rail owners, the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington Regional Council, which are all effectively funded by the taxpayer through petrol taxes or through other means. That makes no sense at all. It leads to increased costs, poor administration, and lots of extra overheads. It just does not make any sense at all.
In terms of the remaining projects—the diesel trains, railway stations, and Penlink—the Auckland Regional Council has committed around $80 million of ratepayers’ money to these projects above the regional fuel tax. We have said to the council, and I have said in writing to the council chairman, Mr Mike Lee, that once that money has been invested, the New Zealand Transport Agency will be available in principle, as it has advised, to assist with any bids for any shortfall funding that is required for projects that are already under way.
Let us look at the regional fuel taxes again, at the rest of the country, and at which regional fuel taxes were proposed. A number of regional fuel taxes are about to come on to the drawing board. These fuel taxes are for Waikato, Wellington, Bay of Plenty, Canterbury, and Taranaki. The reason they were all coming on board was that the previous Government had reduced its expenditure on State highway infrastructure so that all the local regions had a huge number of projects that they knew had absolutely no chance of proceeding very far. They felt they would have to introduce regional fuel taxes in order to undertake those projects. They were being forced into introducing those regional fuel taxes.
Of course, the previous Government, rather than actually fronting up to say that a bit more should be added into the national fund—which, incidentally, it was going to do anyway—said that the high administration costs and boundary issues of regional fuel taxes were all worth it as long as nothing happened that was the Government’s fault. The smaller national increase in national fuel taxes—which New Zealand as a whole will benefit from, contrary to what Mr Hughes said, through the National Land Transport Fund—will generate an additional $283 million over the next 3 years. On top of that, the Government has put in $258 million in new Crown investment, so right there is an additional $541 million in the National Land Transport Fund. We reviewed the allocations that the previous Labour Government had made on various activities in the National Land Transport Fund. We discovered that the previous Government had huge increases planned in some areas of the fund, on top of other increases that occurred over previous years, and a 9 percent decline in State highway construction. That made absolutely no sense.
Whether we like it or not—and this is where reality intervenes, I say to Mr Hughes—84 percent of New Zealanders travel to and from work each day by car, bike, motorcycle, or truck. That is just the reality. We cannot build a transport system for what we would like. We have to build a transport system for what people use, unless we are arrogant enough to believe that we can and should completely change the way people go to and from work. We would have to be as arrogant as that to believe this. Of course, that approach tends to be used in respect of Governments that are in their dying days, and sometimes those Governments get thrown out.
We reviewed those allocations, and we were able to put up an additional $400 million - odd for State highway construction. State highways in New Zealand represent 11 percent of our roading system. One might not think that that is very much, but over half of the traffic that travels on New Zealand roads travels on our State highway system. The Labour Government was going to reduce the amount invested on that by 9 percent. That is a travesty, because those roads are also some of the toughest roads in respect of road safety. Let us look at these roads. Over the last 10 years there have been 21 fatalities on the road from Pūhoi to Wellsford, 55 fatalities on the road from Ōhinewai to Cambridge, and over 80 fatalities on the road from Foxton to Paremata, on State Highway 1. I am sorry, but as a country we need to engineer better roads in those areas. We received a cheap shot from Mr Hughes last week when he suggested that this Government did not care about road safety. Well, I care about road safety. I care about the need for a divided highway in parts of the country where there has been large numbers of fatalities.
We have come up with a direction for the New Zealand Transport Agency whereby it will focus on roads of national significance, and there are seven of them. Funnily enough, they happen to be around our largest five metropolitan areas in the country. They just happen to be some of the busiest, most congested, and most bottlenecked roads, and they have the worst safety records. We have identified what to focus on, and that is the Pūhoi to Wellsford road, the completion of the Auckland western ring route, the Victoria Park bottleneck, the Waikato Expressway, the Tauranga eastern corridor, the Wellington northern corridor, and the Christchurch motorway projects. What did the previous Government do to move those roading projects forward? Well, it sort of—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) Link to this
I am sorry to interrupt the member. There is no point in having debates across the Chamber. Interjections are permitted if they are rare and reasonable, but members are getting into dialogues that are excluding the speaker who is on his feet. I call order to the House.
The truth can sometimes be boring, I say to young “Dazza”. The previous Government did not even design the Pūhoi to Wellsford section, and it had no plans to complete it within 10 years. That Government came up with a plan to spend $3 billion on the Waterview Connection, but it had no plan or funding to pay for it, whatsoever. However, I give that Government half a point for its work on the Victoria Park bottleneck, because work was set down to start happening on that in the next year or so.
The Waikato Expressway was on the absolute never-never. I remember back in the 1990s that that road was set down to be completed by about 2008, but, hello, two-thirds of it is still not done. In respect of the Tauranga eastern corridor, the previous Government told the local region that it would get that road only if it turned up with regional fuel taxes and a toll. The Wellington northern corridor is one of the cruellest of all in terms of road safety. That Government went to the regional councils and said: “You want Transmission Gully? OK, well, here’s the deal: we’ll give you $400 million.”—which, just to be clear, is not appropriated—”We’ll have to call that a ‘notional’ $400 million, and you have to come up with the other $600 million.” If we do the maths, even with a regional fuel tax in Wellington, we see that it is well short—hundreds of millions of dollars short. So that was a road that the previous Government promised without actually promising a road. It basically said to the people of the Wellington region that they could not have the road, but if they were able to go out and borrow hundreds of millions of dollars, then it could be done.
Then we have the Christchurch motorway projects. Over the last 9 years Christchurch has been getting back roughly half of what its local people have been spending in fuel taxes. That is what has been happening in Christchurch over the last 9 years. Opposition members have the temerity to criticise us for coming up with some plans to invest in roading around the country, and they try to say that it is all for Auckland. Well, those members should ask the people of Christchurch how much has been invested in their roading over the last 9 years. So there we have it.
The previous member for Ōtaki, the current list member, has tried to tell us today that the removal of the regional fuel taxes means that the rest of the country pays for Auckland’s electrification. He is wrong. He tried to tell us that we are putting up national fuel taxes by 6c. That is also wrong; it is 3c over 2 years, on top of what the previous Government said. He tries to tell us that a billion dollars in extra State highway construction over 3 years is not a big deal. He tries to tell us that the $4.4 billion over 10 years is also not a big deal. I say it is a very big deal. It is a very big deal for this country. It will be the largest investment in roading infrastructure that has ever been undertaken in this country. It will help national productivity. It will reduce congestion. It will help our economic growth, as we come out of this recession. The biggest problem with Mr Hughes’ criticism of it is that he is upset that his Government did not think of it first.
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) Link to this
Even the International Energy Agency, which has long argued that there will never be any shortage of oil, has changed its tune recently, and it now says that demand will exceed supply within the next decade. Many very competent analysts think that it already has, and that only the world recession and the demand destruction it has caused are disguising that promise.
New Zealand is an extremely oil-dependent nation—oil-dependent for its trade, for its transport, and for its production. The high price of oil towards the end of last year contributed to our current account deficit, contributed to our high inflation rate, as the Finance and Expenditure Committee found in its inquiry, and contributed to massive budgetary pressures on households. The price dropped from $2.20 a litre in New Zealand, or from US$150 a barrel, in August last year, only because of a world recession, which the oil price had partly contributed to, and that then reduced demand to the point where the price dropped. But the price will not stay there if we ever get out of this recession.
New Zealand is highly car dependent: it has poorly developed public transport, it has more kilometres of sealed road per person than pretty well any country in the OECD, and it has poor cycle facilities. Transport is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in New Zealand, and we have the fourth-highest level of climate change emissions per person in the OECD, and that is still rising. If ever there was a time to make a case to protect our economy by making our transport system more efficient, it is now, but we have just seen from this Government in the last week or two the biggest step backwards on transport policy in decades.
It took Labour much of its 9 years in Government to start to take public transport and alternatives to roading seriously, but it eventually did so, under pressure from the Greens. For years I have put up with being treated like an imbecile in the House—”But Jeanette, buses need roads, too.”—as though I was somehow arguing that we should do away with roads altogether. But the Greens and I have always argued for changing the balance of new spending between roads and the alternatives to them, to give us the security of some alternative means of transport for both freight and people. Eventually Labour got it, and at the end of its 9 years it reached a ratio of spending of only $5 on roads for each $1 on all the alternatives put together—public transport, walking, cycling, and travel demand management, etc. Of course, that $5:$1 ratio is far too high, but the new Government policy statement on land transport funding that this Government has issued raises that to between $7:$1 and $9:$1. That is a recipe for gridlock, for a blowout in our oil bill, and for rising carbon emissions.
The projected spending by this Government on public transport infrastructure, according to its own figures, is set to fall from $144 million a year to $45 million a year. That is decimation; only one-tenth of what is being spent in the current year is proposed to be spent next year. The announcement about removing the regional fuel tax and replacing it with a national fuel tax was framed very cleverly as an argument about who should pay for Auckland’s transport projects. Never mind that ever since 1990, and until the last 3 years, Auckland has contributed more petrol tax to the general fund than it has received back in all transport spending, so the rest of the country is in Auckland’s debt. However, the framing of that announcement as being simply about who should pay, disguises the much more important issues of what actually should be built and what should be funded.
The Government has announced an extra billion dollars for new State motorways. Where will that billion dollars come from? It is actually not all new funding, because $420 million of it—nearly half of it—will be coming from other transport projects that are currently funded but that will not be funded in the future. Of that extra billion dollars for new motorways, $420 million is coming from public transport, from walking and cycling infrastructure, from safety programmes, and from maintenance. So we are going to have a whole lot more roads, but we will be maintaining them in a much worse way. They will be fun to drive on, will they not?
Wednesday last week was Walk2Work Day. Living Streets Aotearoa, which runs its programme to encourage people to walk to work, ran an event down on the waterfront. It was opened by the Minister of Transport, who had the gall to go down there and tell them in his speech what a great idea it was to walk to work. What he did not tell those people was that 2 days earlier he had taken $15 million away from them, away from people who walk and cycle to work, and given it as a handout to people who drive to work. Well, that is a great way of encouraging people to get out of their cars and walk to work, is it not? I called it “Hobble to Work Day”, because that is how it will be, trying to walk to work under this new Government. The Minister’s excuse was: “We needed a better balance in funding.” Well, that balance has just been made worse. It is no longer 5:1; it is now between 7:1 and 9:1, according to the Government’s figures.
The other excuse given was that most people drive to work; therefore, we should spend most of the funding on cars. But why do most people drive to work? It is not very hard to work out. For decades we have funded motorways and we have not funded public transport. Most people do not have an option about how to get to work, so “Let us continue to fund what they do now because they have no choice.”, and they will continue to do it because they have no choice.
Darren Hughes was worried that the Penlink road to Whangaparāoa will not be built under this project. Under the Official Information Act, I recently got the advice of Treasury and the Ministry of Transport to previous Ministers. It showed that much better projects, with much better benefit-cost ratios than Penlink, could have been done in the Auckland region with the regional petrol tax. Those agencies advocated to Ministers a package of road safety, pedestrian, and cycle projects spread across the region, which more fairly spread the benefits across the whole region, and which had a very much higher benefit-cost ratio than Penlink, but that information was never drawn to the attention of Cabinet in the Cabinet paper.
The Minister says that we cannot change people’s behaviour and get them out of their cars. The information he needs from his officials is that at peak hour, public transport around the country is full. The trains are full and the buses are full. We cannot get any more people out of their cars at peak hour until we have more trains and more buses, unless we are going to mechanically shove people into carriages and slam the doors behind them, as they do in Japan. People cannot use transport if it is not there. Aucklanders have demonstrated very, very clearly with the rise in petrol prices that they will leave their cars at home if they have an alternative, and that they want better public transport. Every survey has shown that they want better public transport; it is up to the Government to make sure they have that opportunity.
The papers I received last week also show that the electrification of Auckland’s rail system has a benefit-cost ratio of only 1 unless we do the surrounding projects of integrated ticketing, real time information for passengers, and upgrading of stations so that people do not have to wait in horrible places. Those projects have a benefit-cost ratio of 3:4, but they are being left unfunded to apply to the National Land Transport Fund on the chance of getting funding, with a financial assistance rate that means they will still have to pay around half of it in Auckland.
JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) Link to this
I thought it was very interesting that Jeanette Fitzsimons asked a question. She said if ever there was a time to make our transport system efficient, it is surely now. I could not agree with her more. There is no better time than the present to make our transport system efficient. I campaigned for the ACT Party on our 20-point plan. One of the most important parts of that 20-point plan was the need for spending on infrastructure.
Well, the taxes on people in Auckland, who Jeanette Fitzsimons tells me have been paying more than their share and subsidising the country, have just been put down.
Mr Hughes called for an urgent debate. I listened to what he had to say, and I really found it very hard to accept what he contributed.
What did he contribute? He said he could not believe that Aucklanders would actually vote for a regional tax. He said the Minister was looking a gift horse in the mouth, because Aucklanders had voted for a regional tax. Then, when the Minister was speaking, Mr Hughes interjected to say the regional tax was Aucklanders’ idea. Well, Mr Hughes comes from Ōtaki, so let me explain to him why Aucklanders voted for a regional tax. I know something about this, because I am an Aucklander. The reason Aucklanders voted for a regional petrol tax was that the transport system in Auckland is shocking. It is shocking. If we want to have a world-class transport system in Auckland, then we have to have a system that does not close down at peak hour or when there is a motor vehicle accident on the southern motorway.
We have had 9 years of a Labour Government and, to Labour’s credit, it had started to spend on infrastructure in the last 3 or 4 years. Labour started to do that then, but for the first 3 or 4 years of its 9-year term we had very little spending on transport in Auckland. Work has been going on in linking the south-western motorway to Manukau City and the southern motorway, and one can see that if one drives down the southern motorway today. But I ask why that was not done 15 years ago. The road that was put through from Onehunga to Auckland Airport was so successful that the length of it is now being doubled. Once again, that road could have been built 10 years before it was built.
Mr Hughes said the whole country will pay for this transport spending—the infrastructure that is going into Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, and Christchurch.
I tell Mr Hughes that he said the whole country will pay, but what he does not realise is that the whole country is already paying. Auckland is the powerhouse of this country. Auckland is the powerhouse that generates employment, income, and taxes, and Auckland is not operating efficiently. Who pays for that inefficiency and its effect on our productivity? The whole country pays.
One of the fundamental things in ACT’s 20-point plan that we highlighted was the fact that living standards in New Zealand have fallen 20 percent below living standards in Australia. I ask why that is. If one goes to Australia, if one flies into Sydney, one sees some of the world’s best motorways. One can go right into the city on an express road—straight through. What does one have in Auckland? If one tries to drive from Auckland Airport into the city in the peak-hour traffic, it takes an hour. I doubt whether there would be a single member in this House who, when he or she goes to Auckland, does not base his or her travel plans around the traffic on Auckland’s motorways. That situation is a huge cost. It is a cost not just to Aucklanders but to all New Zealanders.
Mr Hughes said the National Government will leave Transmission Gully hanging. Well, that member’s Government was in power for 9 years, so I ask who left Transmission Gully hanging. The article that I read in the Dominion Post last week told me that National has committed itself to make a decision on Transmission Gully in the next 12 months, and if this Government can achieve that in 12 months, then that is more than Mr Hughes’ Government achieved in 9 years. Mr Hughes also said that National is leaving the Waterview Connection project hanging. I ask why it would not.
Jeanette Fitzsimons talked about spending money on cycleways and busways. New Zealand spent $1 billion on buying a railway system that Treasury had virtually written down to zero, and what did the previous Labour Government propose? It proposed the building of a 4.5 kilometre tunnel under the electorate of Mt Albert—a 4.5 kilometre tunnel. That tunnel was forecast to cost $2.5 billion, but that is not the cost, because that tunnel was to be two lanes in one direction and two lanes in the other. It was to be a four-lane tunnel. If it was to be anything like the Auckland Harbour Bridge, which was built over the Waitematā Harbour in the 1950s, then it would not be 5 years before the tunnel would have to be widened and extended. Mr Joyce said that if we are committed to building that tunnel, then it will have to be built with at least three lanes in each direction. That ignores the fact that the motorway from Onehunga, which will be linking into it, is currently being extended to four lanes in each direction. So the reality is that building a 4.5 kilometre tunnel under Mt Albert would cost all of the taxpayers of this country over $3 billion.
If we are serious about building infrastructure, about making Auckland a world-class city and about making New Zealand a world-class country, then we need to complete the transport system in Auckland, and if we are to build a tunnel under anything in Auckland, then we should build it under the Waitematā Harbour. Right now, accidents on the southern motorway can bring the city to a standstill—and if members have not seen that, I invite them to come to Auckland and I will show them around—on any afternoon from 3.30 to 6.30 in the evening, and from 6 o’clock until 9 o’clock in the morning. People used to leave their homes on the North Shore at 6.30 a.m. to avoid the traffic. The reality is that they now do so at 6 o’clock in the morning if they want to be efficient and productive. As a city and as a country, we cannot afford to have an inefficient transport system.
I would like to see the National Government come to the conclusion that building a 4.5 kilometre tunnel under Mt Albert is folly. It is a waste of taxpayers’ money. We should be building that road and linking it up with the Waterview Connection as quickly as possible, and we should then continue that road from Waterview through to Point Chevalier and link it to a tunnel underneath the Waitematā Harbour, so that if there is an accident on the southern motorway or at “Spaghetti Junction”, there are alternative ways for people to move around the city.
Mr Hughes talked about having an integrated ticketing system. He said one of the factors that make a world-class city is having an integrated ticketing system. I have also had the privilege of travelling round the world. I have been to lots of cities—New York, London. I have been very privileged to travel and yes, I too have seen integrated ticketing systems. Mr Hughes said the National Government is not committed to having such a system. Once again I ask the member why, when his Government had 9 years in office, it did not implement that system. The deputy leader of the Labour Party is sitting over there, nodding her head. She knows full well that Labour had the opportunity to put an integrated ticketing system in place. I congratulate Mr Joyce, because he said that we should look at where the problem is, we should spend the money efficiently, and we should spend it where it will have the most benefit.
I was particularly interested in the admission of Jeanette Fitzsimons, when she said that the cost-benefit analysis for electrifying the Auckland railway system would be only $1 for $1. She said, essentially, that we cannot justify the electrification of the Auckland railway system on a cost-benefit analysis. It is all very well for the Opposition parties to criticise spending on roads—[Interruption] I do not mean to imply that Jeanette Fitzsimons is an imbecile, as that member suggested, but the reality is that buses are a fundamental part of our transport system. Buses work all around the world, and there is no reason why they cannot work in Auckland. If we want to have an integrated system, we have to have roads that the buses can run on, and that is why I say that if we are to build a tunnel anywhere in Auckland, we should build it under the Waitamatā Harbour.
Mr Hughes talked about the people of Auckland perhaps feeling ripped off, as they finally had the chance to build a world-class transport system. Well, I am in no doubt whatsoever that Mr Joyce has his eyes firmly set on building a world-class transport system. The ACT Party will be supporting him in that. We say it is folly to spend $3 billion or more on a tunnel 4.5 kilometres long through the heart of the Mt Albert electorate. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.
Hon TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Māori Party) Link to this
Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa. I was thinking that Sir Dove-Myer Robinson is probably looking down on the House at this time, having a little smile to himself, given that he was a visionary who could see all these things way back then. There is a Robert Frost poem that I believe summarises this entire debate.
And that has made all the difference.
The issue for this House is, of course, which is the road that will make all the difference. The Minister’s announcement last week to unveil a nearly $1 billion fund to fast track State highway projects will be welcomed by New Zealanders who, for years, have been waiting for the shabby state of our roads to improve. The new nationally significant roads, including the Waikato Expressway, the Tauranga eastern corridor, and the northern corridor between Wellington and Levin, are a signal to New Zealand that progress will be made in reducing congestion, improving safety, and supporting economic development. The green light ahead for new electric trains for Auckland, and new passenger trains for Wellington, is also an important signal that steps are being take to protect the economy and to facilitate the more effective passage of freight, but there are, of course, other issues that we must confront.
The Māori Party supported the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, which introduced a regional fuel tax. We supported it because at least half of the additional tax revenue collected in a region had to be spent on developing public transport initiatives. The National Government is now planning to scrap the regional fuel tax, and instead increase the fuel excise tax, which applies to the whole country. The tax goes to the Land Transport Fund, out of which roading infrastructure and public transport projects are funded. We have many questions around whether rural communities will benefit, and whether communities outside the regions identified as significant will also benefit from the additional tax that they are being asked to supply.
There are good arguments to be made for both the regional and national regimes. The key point to be made, however, is that it appears that roading developments will be prioritised over public transport developments. The Māori Party’s priority for transport and roading is to further invest in public transport by developing well-integrated public transport networks of buses and trains, and walking and cycling tracks, that are frequent, reliable, and inexpensive for users.
So although we in the Māori Party are pleased that the Government has agreed to fund the electrification of Auckland’s rail network out of the Land Transport Fund, there is no commitment to fund the wider integrated public transport services that are needed to make Auckland’s public transport system user-friendly. It is this whole concept of support for public transport that we believe is the road less travelled—but the road that could clearly yield a long-term gain. The Māori Party has always been supportive of the development of public transport options as a key response to the dual challenges of peak oil and climate change.
With peak oil upon us, there is an urgent need to prepare for ongoing significant oil price increases, and a future downturn in the availability of oil, by providing people with affordable alternatives to private motorcars. There is an urgent need to reduce our dependency on oil. In the medium to long term, public transport will benefit lower-income earners by providing affordable transport as petrol costs continue to increase. Of course, we do have concerns about the additional costs to consumers. The cost at the petrol pump is going to hurt our constituents, and we must consider ways of easing this burden, because of the burden this will place on low-income communities, many of whom are of Māori and Pacific descent. Now that the whole country will have to pay for Auckland’s trains out of their taxes, we have to query whether the rise of 6c a litre can be justified against the immediate impact of improving the roads that so desperately needed attention.
And finally, the question we leave in this debate is exactly how the precarious condition of some of the rural roads for the communities of the Māori electorates will benefit from this new tax increase—the narrow, windy gravel roads that stretch across our electorates; the unsealed roads that are a site of danger for so many of our constituents. The question for us is how they will benefit.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) Link to this
Labour has informed the Chair that this will be a 10-minute call.
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) Link to this
First, I congratulate the Hon Darren Hughes on bringing this issue to the urgent attention of the House today. It is an urgent issue for New Zealanders, and it needs to be brought to the attention of the House. Before I address the substantial issue, I will respond to some of the speeches we have already heard today. I would particularly like to respond to John Boscawen from the ACT Party, who said he was an Aucklander. I believe he came from the Hawke’s Bay to Auckland, but he failed to mention anything about the Hawke’s Bay and whether it got anything out of this package. He said that nothing happened in Auckland for 9 years. All I can say to Mr Boscawen is that he must have been driving with his eyes shut, because over the last 9 years there have been huge improvements in the roads of Auckland. That was because the previous Labour Government acknowledged that throughout the 1990s Auckland was underfunded by the National Land Transport Fund, and we increased the amount that went into Auckland over the last 9 years. Maybe Mr Boscawen does not know, but none of the western ring route was started under a National Government—not one road. If members look at Auckland now, they will see that most of it is completed, with the Waterview Connection the major part that has to be completed.
I also say to Mr Boscawen that we had already announced a third harbour crossing last year. The work had been undertaken for the third harbour crossing because it will be needed in the future—that happened under a Labour Government. So if we are going to talk about transport, let us have the facts on the table. There was no Albany to Pūhoi road, under a National Government. In fact, National refused to do that road. It was done under a Labour Government, only on the condition it would be brought forward if people would pay a toll to go on that road, which is something National said it believed in but it did not put in place legislation for it to happen. That happened under a Labour Government.
Mr Boscawen said that Transmission Gully was going ahead only because of the National Government. I hope that when Peter Dunne speaks he tells the full story about what happened in relation to Transmission Gully under a Labour Government. The work that has been done on preparing for that road was ignored for 30 years, but when we became the Government we said “Let’s take it seriously.”, and $80 million has been committed to the geotechnical work to see whether it is possible. We also have a route for that road, if it is going to be done, that is cheaper than the original designation. That happened under a Labour Government—Mr Boscawen probably did not know that, either.
Mr Boscawen said that he knows a lot about integrated ticketing. There was no ability to have integrated ticketing until we passed legislation to allow it to happen. I thank the ACT members for supporting our legislation. It was never passed under a National Government, but it happened with the help of the Green Party, the ACT Party, and the Māori Party, and it enabled Labour to put in place a regime that allows for much better public transport.
I also listened very carefully to the Hon Tariana Turia. I thank the Māori Party because it did support a regional fuel tax for New Zealand on the grounds that it would be shared between State highways and public transport. That is why the Māori Party voted for it, and that is what we wanted. I believe that Tariana Turia is right to be concerned about what will happen to public transport in New Zealand. Everywhere I go I am told that the new Minister of Transport has one interest alone, and that is State highways—State highways at the expense of public transport and at the expense of so much that is happening in transport that had already been announced.
Paul QuinnI realise that Paul Quinn has not looked at what has been announced by his Government today. He has not read a single thing, because if he had he would know that what the National Government is doing today is at the expense of many other parts of the transport system. Let us have a look at it. Public transport is cut under the new Government policy statement announced by Steven Joyce. Public infrastructure has been cut under the policy announced by Steven Joyce. Walking and cycling facilities will be cut by that Minister. Members should listen to this in relation to the renewal of State highways. Steven Joyce says that it is so important to have State highways—but, for goodness’ sake, let us not keep them in good condition; for goodness’ sake, let us not renew them! He will let them fall apart, and he will cut the money going into the renewal of State highways, and cut the maintenance for their operation.
I can tell Mr Quinn that I am reading from his Minister’s list, and I can tell him that he has never read it. The ignorance coming from that member’s mouth is huge.
Let me tell those members something else. Under the new National Government’s policy, maintenance has been cut to local roads. What I know as a former Minister of Transport is that if there was one issue that rural New Zealand and our local provincial mayors were worried about, it would be the maintenance of their local roads. They advocated up and down New Zealand for more money for the maintenance of local roads. Funding has been cut by a National Government’s new policy statement—so much for rural New Zealand; so much for provincial New Zealand!
I have to say that one area that will speak up loudly when it gets to grips with this measure will be Southland. I visited the Southland District Council, and it said that what it needs money for is the maintenance of local roads due to the big expansion of dairying in Southland and the use of big trucks on local roads, which are being cut out faster than ever before. Southland wanted money put into the maintenance of local roads. It is has been cut in the Government’s policy statement announced by Mr Joyce.
Here is something that I think is an absolute crying shame. Labour set about to put in place a sea freight strategy for New Zealand, so that we could actually move some freight around New Zealand domestically by sea. Our domestic sea freight with local ships had almost died out in this country from the 1990s onwards, but we set about rebuilding domestic sea freight delivery in this country, along with roads, along with the trucks on the roads, and along with rail and the sea. Let us take the example of Japan. It moves much more of its freight by sea—bulk amounts of freight can be moved by sea. So we said: “Let’s rebuild our domestic sea freight strategy in New Zealand.”, and we set about to do that. Labour worked with the Shipping Federation, worked with the unions, worked with the ship owners, and worked with the port companies, and we put in place a strategy to bring back sea freight delivery in New Zealand.
I tell members to have a look at the Government policy statement. It has removed the money, and $1 million—one miserable million—is available for domestic sea freight in New Zealand. I have already received the emails from the Shipping Federation. We will receive many more when it gets wind of this. All the work that was done, that was planned, and that was consulted on has been wiped out. This money has gone to State highways to satisfy the Government’s electoral needs. It has nothing to do with the needs of New Zealand.
Then the Government decided to cut $50 million out of road policing. What is road policing about? It is not about tickets, as Mr Quinn would have one believe; it is about keeping the roads safe for New Zealanders. Over 400 people are killed on New Zealand roads every year. More children die on our roads than from any other cause of death in New Zealand. So what does this Government do? It cuts $50 million out of road safety in New Zealand to put it into the highways that it believes will bring it votes. Shame on the National Government! It is all about trying to look like it is doing something, so it announces a list of seven highways of significance in New Zealand. What else has National done? Absolutely nothing! There is no money, no timetable—just a list of seven priorities. I have to tell this House that that same list has been announced at least three times this year alone. As Guyon Espiner said, three times this year alone, National has announced a list. [Interruption] Have I finished? No, I am enjoying myself, and no one else needs to take a call!
JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Annette King talked about getting facts right, and I think that is very important—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) Link to this
That is not a point of order. Please sit. The next speech is scheduled to be 5 minutes long, with a bell at 4 minutes.
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) Link to this
I have been campaigning for Transmission Gully here in Wellington since the early 1990s. For much of that time, it has been a lonely campaign. I have to say that since 2006 considerable progress has been made. The previous speaker, Annette King, referred to that, and I acknowledge that.
The situation that we were in, prior to the announcement last week, was simply this. The geotechnical work had been completed, a clear route had been designated, savings had been identified in the original proposal, and a certain amount of funding had been allocated. However, there was, as the Minister of Transport said, a $600 million gap to be bridged. The argument being had within this region in Wellington was how that funding was to be made up—a regional fuel tax, tolls, a local authority contribution, or whatever. The five local authorities—or is it six; they seem to grow like Topsy—could not agree amongst themselves. This project was in danger of foundering because of a lack of financial certainty.
I think that the announcement last week resolved that problem, because what the Government said, in effect, was that these seven roads of national importance would be funded nationally. Therefore, the argument about how we in Wellington will bridge the $600 million gap has been resolved. Given what has already happened in terms of the design work, the geotechnical work, and the various projects that have been completed over the last 2 or 3 years, there is now nothing to stop this road proceeding as a matter of urgency.
The commitments that are needed now are political. We have all the local authorities in the region, bar one—the Wellington City Council—onside, and it is time for the Wellington City Council to come onside. Its concern all along has been about funding, but the Minister’s announcement last week effectively resolves that. So I look forward to the Mayor of Wellington getting off her high horse, coming in behind this region, along with all the other local authorities, and supporting Transmission Gully.
I welcome the intervention of Mr Finney from the Chamber of Commerce, as reported in today’s Dominion Post. It was a wise and prudent article. I deplore the fact that the Dominion Post, which seems to feel that it has to toe the Wellington City Council line and cannot be an independent newspaper, continues to give press to the deluded little group up on the Kapiti Coast, the Coastal Highway Group. That group is promoting a dream that is utterly unattainable, and this morning’s column demonstrates that quite clearly.
So here we are in a situation where a necessary infrastructural project has had a huge amount of work done in terms of its design, costing, and a number of the consents that are required. The financial obstacle that has held it up thus far has effectively been removed by a Government acknowledgment that the Crown will stand the cost of these roads. The only decision we now need to make is about timing and getting on with the job. If last week’s announcements mean that there is more certainty in State highway funding and that the campaign I have waged since the early 1990s is now coming to an end and Transmission Gully is coming to its beginning—and its conclusion, eventually—then I for one say that is good news and something we should be celebrating. As we are having an urgent debate in the House this afternoon, we should be chivvying the Minister along to make sure he gets on with the job and sees this road built.
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) Link to this
This is a sad day for public transport and a sad day for Auckland. The transport package announced by the Minister—and I mention the Minister’s name out of interest because I would have thought that with a snap debate about transport the Minister would be in the House, but never mind—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) Link to this
The member must be aware that he cannot mention the absence of someone from the Chamber.
I apologise, Mr Assistant Speaker. For two reasons the transport package announced by Steven Joyce is bad: it is bad for public transport in Auckland and it is bad for governance in Auckland. It took a long time and a lot of patience and effort by central government, local government, and regional government to piece together a transport strategy for Auckland that was actually beginning to deliver at last on the aspirations Aucklanders have for a decent public transport system. The Auckland Regional Council had a plan. It had certainty, it had a budget, it had projects in place, and it was funded and organised. It took literally years to put this plan together, yet it has been swept away with the stroke of a pen. Now the Auckland Regional Council transport plan for Auckland is in complete disarray.
Let us talk about what exactly is in jeopardy. There is a $152 million hole in the Auckland transport strategy. Let us talk about what is in there—Penlink, for starters. A huge question mark is hanging over Penlink at the moment. A huge question mark is hanging over ferry terminals on the North Shore. Do members know what? A whole lot of railway station upgrades are at risk. The member for New Lynn will know that there is a hole in the ground in New Lynn at the moment. There has been a huge investment by regional government in the New Lynn development—$300 million has been developed, and a $160 million railway trench is being dug through New Lynn—yet it may be left as a gaping hole because there is simply no money left to pay for it. I ask the Government what it will say to the people of west Auckland and the people of New Lynn about that project. Did members see in the New Zealand Herald the hole in the ground at the Newmarket Railway Station with Auckland Regional Council chairman, Mike Lee, standing in front of it? I ask the Government what it will do about that.
I have a question for the member for Maungakiekie: what will he tell his constituents about the Onehunga line? My colleague Carol Beaumont has asked the member for Maungakiekie this very question: what will the Government do about the Onehunga line? It is a vital piece of infrastructure that the people of Onehunga need. What is the answer? We need some answers from this Government. For the Manukau spur the plans are there and the money was there—the funding was committed. That is another piece of infrastructure. The Government has basically given a one-fingered salute to the people of New Lynn, the people of Manukau, the people of Onehunga, the people of the North Shore, and the people of Helensville.
What did the Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce, say when he was asked about funding for these projects? He said that the Auckland Regional Council will have to look at its resources. Well, I have an answer for the Minister today: there are no resources. The Auckland Regional Council has calculated that to fill this hole in the transport budget would mean a 15 percent rate rise for the people of Auckland. There are no other resources. Funding from Auckland Regional Holdings is down because of the performance of international investments. There is nowhere else for this money to come from.
When the Minister of Transport spoke earlier this afternoon he talked about the fact that 84 percent of New Zealanders travel by car, and said it was arrogant to build a public transport system in Auckland because the reality is that at the moment people all travel by car. Well, do members know what? To build a public transport system one needs vision and leadership, and they are sorely lacking in this Government.
NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki) Link to this
We learnt today in the House that there have been 80 road fatalities from Foxton through to Paremata over the last 10 years. We need to do better than that. The Government has shown some leadership in announcing seven roads of national significance. One of those roads is from Wellington to Levin.
Hon David Cunliffe Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your advice. A well-known Standing Order says that we are not allowed to use a certain word starting with “h”. The Government has just removed funding for road safety through this package, yet a member is now campaigning on the very thing that the Government has just cut. How can members deal with that when they cannot use the “h” word?
What a hopeless point of order—trifling with the House like that! That member should be ashamed of himself. This is a serious issue. That is why this Government is showing some decent leadership.
I was horrified to see the former Minister of Transport, the Hon Annette King, stand up and say this National Government is not doing enough on roads, when in her reign as transport Minister she did nothing to reform the Resource Management Act. When Transit, the Government’s road-builder, came along to the select committee, it said openly that it takes as long to get a consent to build 1 kilometre of highway as it does to actually build it: on average, over 3 years. That is why this Government is getting started on reforming the Resource Management Act—so that we can get these roading projects started. That is why we have announced seven major roading network corridors—and I am delighted that one goes up through my electorate, where we have had some terrible fatalities—and why we are going to get on and improve the roading network.
We have heard from members on the other side of the House today about how terrible it is to remove the regional fuel tax—what I call the “jerry tax”. The reason I say that is that it would be very easy for people to move outside their region with their jerrycans on the back of their trailers, move into an area where there is no regional fuel tax, and fill them up. The announcement that we have made of a level playing field across the whole of the country—3c across the board—will be fairer and less complicated than a regional tax.
The former member for Ōtaki should know—he has actually buried the figures—that 1.5c was already signalled under the Labour regime, so we have actually announced 3c under this regime.
We also need to be aware that 84 percent of the people are travelling on the highway, whether in a bus, a car, or a truck. Yes, we are supportive of public transport. We have some great initiatives rolling through the Ōtaki electorate. Over $100 million of public transport projects are already under way; that has already started, and I think it is fantastic. It will give people a more reliable service into Wellington. There will be double tracking and electrification—which I have been supporting right through—through to Waikanae. That will take the congestion away from the Paraparaumu railway station and allow for greater frequency of services—as frequent as 15 minutes, ultimately—for residents from Waikanae who want to get through to Wellington.
So this is a great announcement. It has actually been very, very well received in my electorate. We are showing some leadership. I was interested to hear from Peter Dunne before, who signalled that we now have some decent leadership, so we can actually park the old funding debates of the past and move forward. I am looking forward to the New Zealand Transport Agency making some announcements of the significant projects that we can get under way sooner that had been proposed. The reason we will get them under way sooner is that we are going to reform the Resource Management Act, and that is why these corridors of national significance are a priority.
The other important thing to realise is that half the people across New Zealand travel on our State highway network.
No, I did not say that. I said it just now, which the member would know if he had been listening. You see, that is the problem: the member did not listen, and that is why the constituents of Ōtaki kicked him out of that seat.
This initiative will give some certainty to funding: $1 billion over the next 3 years; $4.4 billion over the next 10 years. It is a fantastic initiative, and I thank the former member for Ōtaki for bringing it before the House today, so that we could clarify some of the smoke and mirrors stuff that he has been out there bandying around the country. There has been strong leadership from this side of the House. We are getting on and addressing the big issues, lifting productivity through building more roads, getting people into work, and carrying on with our jobs and growth programme. This is a fantastic initiative.
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this
Following on from that great speech from the member for Ōtaki, Nathan Guy, who has delivered for the people in his electorate, I say we need to look at some of the arguments that have been going on about this issue. The Labour Party has been saying the rest of the country will pay for Auckland’s roads. If Labour members had gone to the select committee, they would have found out that the rest of the country made submissions against the regional petrol taxes. The rest of the country put in submission after submission against the regional petrol taxes.
Moana MackeyThe member should check the records; that is what happened. The reason that happened is that the previous Labour Government, in its approach of knowing best, told the regions how they had to split the regional petrol tax. The regions had to split the tax so that 5c went into public transport and 5c into roading.
The reason the regions did not want that is that they saw no need for 5c to go to public transport in some regions. There was no need for that.
The regions wanted to use that money for what they were talking about. If people were talking about Southland and its roading network, they would not have been talking about having a train go from one part of Southland to the other; they would have wanted the money to be used on their local roads. The regions wanted to have that discretion. The rest of the country made submissions against the regional fuel taxes, because the regions wanted to have discretion to decide how to spend the money. It is a bit rich for Labour members to come into this House now and say the rest of the country wanted that proposal. Members should go back and consider what was actually said by those in the regions. The regions did not want that proposal.
The Waikato Expressway in the Waikato region is an example of that. That is a road that the Labour Government would not have funded and would not have built. We did not hear the Labour members say that in all their commentary today. They have not mentioned that road, because they know they had no chance of delivering it; they had no plan and no funding for it. The National Government has made a commitment to build that road, and we will build it—this is the first step in building it. That road is the biggest payback my region has received from central government for many, many years. It has taken 9 years to get rid of the previous Government so that we can deliver for the people of the Waikato. We will deliver, and we have delivered.
The second part of Labour’s argument is that the Government is increasing the nationwide petrol tax. Labour was going to do that, anyway; it was going to charge another 4.5c, anyway. So it is rich for Labour members to come into this House and say the national petrol tax cannot be increased, when they were going to increase it. It was their plan to increase the national taxes on top of the regional taxes, so Labour members cannot come into this House and say they are not aware of that. In fact, during Labour’s term in office it substantially increased the national petrol taxes. Labour increased those taxes time and time again, so it cannot come in here and cry foul now, when that is what it did for 9 years.
The transport issues in Auckland have been raised by Labour members. Members have to look at that issue in the sense that if someone was in business, would that person own a railway network—KiwiRail—and then pay for two other organisations to run rail networks within the same network that the person owned? A person would not do that; it does not make any business sense for somebody to do that. I think Minister Joyce needs to be complimented on his business sense for putting all the rail network together, so that we can have the best possible public transport system and freight system in New Zealand. That will bring efficiencies to the system. It will mean that we can provide new initiatives in public and passenger transport through the rail network, because it has been put together in a more efficient basket, rather than being spread out and having different organisations funded to run the same thing. What the Minister has done makes good commercial sense, and we applaud him for making that decision.
The last thing I will talk about is what the Greens say about roading. They say that roading is not good. When one looks at what will happen in 10 years’ time, one sees that the cleanest, greenest form of transport will be electric cars on roads. It will not be dirty trains; it will be clean, green transport on roads, through the use of electric cars. The National Government is setting up New Zealand to have a clean, green economy for the future.