Land Transport Management Bill

I move, That the Land Transport Management Bill be now read a third time. The Land Transport Management Bill signals a new era for the planning and operation of the country’s transport infrastructure. The legislation will ensure greater consistency in long-term planning of the networks, a more integrated transport infrastructure, and a multimodal approach to the sector, and it will provide new mechanisms for funding roads.

The legislation has been strengthened and improved by the work of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and the amendments in Supplementary Order Paper 165 in my name, approved by the Committee of the whole House yesterday. Consultation requirements have been simplified and clarified. Efficiency and effectiveness now appear in the purpose clause of the bill, and are taken into account when Transfund assesses applications or activities. Tolling is now permissible on new roading infrastructure, provided there is community support for a project. The select committee has also decided to include a degree of flexibility in the bill, in response to submissions. A project will require the specific approval of the Minister, and civil penalties have been added where any conditions of the project are breached.

Public-private partnerships are arrangements in which the private sector and public agencies work together to bring forward projects that are difficult to fund under existing funding arrangements. The bill now contains a more flexible funding option around lease arrangements, similar to the Melbourne City Link project in Victoria, Australia. The bill allows for early conditional approval from the Minister of Transport, who must be satisfied that any conditions are met before the concession agreement is entered into.

Regional transport planning has been improved by emphasising the strategic focus of regional land transport strategies, and by clarifying the relationship between various planning organisations. Regional councils will be able to own and operate public transport services and infrastructure, and that was a manifesto commitment by the Labour Party. This legislation is not the end of the story, and further legislation may be needed next year as a result of ongoing work being done between central and local government in the Auckland region.

Some thanks are due, given that we are in the process of passing this legislation. Firstly, I acknowledge the work of the Green Party and, in particular, of Jeanette Fitzsimons. She and the Green Party have worked constructively and collaboratively with the Progressive-Labour Government on this important issue of transport. On many occasions, the debate went long into the night, and the highlight for me was the debate around the issues of traffic demand management. In 10 years’ time, when that is such a standard thing in transport planning that no one even gives it a second thought, people will look back to this legislation and see that it was, indeed, a landmark. I also thank the United Future party and, in particular, Larry Baldock, who spent many hours with us in working through some of the issues, particularly those around alternative funding mechanisms. I thank the members of the select committee and the chairs, Helen Duncan and Mark Gosche. I also thank Roger Sowry, who stood in in an acting capacity for a short while.

I particularly thank the hard-working and dedicated officials, who have worked tirelessly for long and hard hours on trying to work their way through what have been some extremely difficult concepts and turn them not only into policy but also into law. I thank them for their dedication and hard work; we are now seeing the fruits of their labour. In particular, I thank the partners of the officials, because they have had to put up with their partners working many hours late into the night here. They are due a special vote of thanks. We now give them back their loved ones, hopefully in no worse a condition than when they left some months ago. I also thank the officials in my office, particular Susan Graham and Michael Parker, for the incredible work—now going back a very, very long time—that has been done on this legislation.

This is a particularly good bill. It is a landmark piece of legislation that will change the way in which transport is planned and delivered in New Zealand. I am particularly proud of it, and I commend it to the House.

This legislation is a shambles. It is all about lost opportunities. I want to start with the Minister’s long, exhaustive list of thankyous. It was noticeable to me that the Minister started off by thanking the leader of the Green Party, who had no role in the select committee process at all, but was only involved in the “round the back of the bike shed” negotiations that the Minister had to go through with both the Green Party and the United Future party, in order to try to cobble together what is a dog’s breakfast of a bill. It will not deliver private funding into roading in this country, and it does nothing to solve Auckland’s problems. The Minster has had to go around the Auckland mayors and say this is not really the bill for them, but they should not worry about that because the Government has some more legislation coming in February or March 2004 that will solve the problem for Auckland.

This bill started out as being the panacea for Auckland’s roading problems and the great restructuring of New Zealand’s roading system to allow public-private partnerships to develop. It has finished its course of action with the New Zealand Automobile Association producing a special report that ranks this bill on a 10-point scale, and scores it at two out of 10. When the Automobile Association goes through the bill step by step and points out that it scores only two out of 10, then the Minister has nothing to be proud of at all—nothing at all. I do not think I have ever seen legislation be so damningly criticised by everyone who came before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—by local government, business organisations, the Road Transport Forum, and the Automobile Association. Every one of them said that this legislation would not work.

In fact, many of those interest groups said privately to us that they had gone to the Minister and explained to him that the bill would not work, and that the Minister had said to them privately that he knew that, but the Government has some more legislation coming and is beholden to the Greens, so it can only do what the Greens let it do. A number of the lobby groups came to see me and asked National to please help Labour out here, because Labour was beholden to the Greens and the Minister did not want the bill to go through like this. The Minister told the mayors to make strong submissions on the bill. He said to the Mayor of Auckland that the bill would not work, but that he should make a really strong submission on it, and the Government would change it. That is what he said to the Mayor of Auckland. He said the same thing to the Mayor of Wellington and to the Mayor of Hutt City—that they should make strong submissions on the bill, and the Government would change it. So they made strong submissions and the Minister did change the bill, but he changed it in the way that the Greens wanted it to be changed, not in the way that the mayors and everybody else thought they would get the bill changed.

Finally, when the Minister was flushed out and said that he was sorry, but he could not get this bill through without the support of the Greens—that he was beholden to them—I wrote to the Minister. I said to him that we would work with him to get sensible transport legislation that would work for New Zealand—legislation that would allow the private sector to invest in our roading networks. The Minister did not even bother to reply to me, because by then the deals were already stitched. The deals were done, and we are left with legislation that basically does two or three things.

This legislation will allow Tauranga to get its second harbour bridge, as a toll bridge. That will be the only public-private partnership in New Zealand to come out of this legislation. It puts in more consultation for roading development by regional councils and regional land transport committees. It puts in extra layers of consultation for groups to work through. It requires Transfund to give money to Māori groups to upskill themselves in the objection process, so that they can object to roads that are being built or being proposed around the country. It removes from the regional land transport committees some of the road-user representatives, and replaces them with iwi representatives. It allows foreign ships to be subsidised out of the Transfund account.

The Labour Party fought night after night on the whole issue of having foreign vessels travel around this country, picking up empty containers in Auckland and dropping them off in Wellington and Timaru. Labour said that was outrageous, and the first thing it would do when it became the Government would be to stop that. Four years on, this Minister of Transport has done nothing to stop that. In fact, he has now come into the House with legislation that takes Transfund money and uses it to subsidise foreign shipping vessels. That is what this bill does, and that is outrageous—absolutely outrageous.

This bill, according to Local Government New Zealand, is not properly integrated with either the local government legislation or the Resource Management Act. Why is the Minister proud of that, when he is so proud of this bill? If this bill is so fantastic, I ask the Minister why he is scurrying around Auckland and telling people not to worry, because a real solution is coming next year. I ask the Green members what the Labour Government has said to them today to warrant their support for this bill, when they know that Labour is going around the Auckland mayors and undermining this bill by saying they should not worry, because Labour will get support from someone else to undo some of this legislation and solve Auckland’s problems in a few months’ time. How much double-dealing can this Minister do? On this legislation he is doing more than the United Future party does in a normal week.

I finish by coming to United Future’s position on this legislation. It has taken every position possible. The United Future members welcomed this bill when it came into the House. They said that the bill was fantastic and they would support it. But then, when the pressure came on them, they said they were working with Heather Simpson. That is what the United Future members told business groups and local government groups. They said that they were working with Heather Simpson—that they were writing things, and dealing with her—and that they would get the bill changed. That is what the United Future members said. Then they got on to the select committee, but virtually never came to meetings. Then they were sold out by the Government, when the Government did a deal with the Greens. What will United Future do? Those members will vote for the bill. Where is the common-sense approach in that? They started off by supporting the bill, then told everybody they would change it, worked with Heather Simpson, and won no battles, yet they will vote for the bill. That is as consistent as it gets with United Future—and that party wonders why it has problems.

This bill is a shambles. It will do nothing, except for one thing: it does allow, by the removal of the benefit-cost ratio, Labour’s grubby political hands to be put all over the allocation of funds from Transfund. That is what this legislation allows. It allows David Benson-Pope’s grubby little Labour Party mates to be appointed to Transfund, and to allocate the funds on the basis of political purpose—a sort of marginal seats fund, to try to hold seats like Otago. I say to the Minister that that will be seen through by local government and by New Zealanders. National totally opposes this bill.

That speech by the new No. 13, which is unlucky for some, and unlucky for that thirteenth-ranked member, was full of negativity. The difference between the member Roger Sowry and this side and this Minister of Transport is that National did nothing in its 9 years in Government. I was in local government in Hamilton and was deputy mayor of my city, and National did diddly-squat. It did nothing.

In the time I have, let me pay strong congratulations to the former Minister of Transport, the Hon Mark Gosche, for the work he did on this bill. I also congratulate the previous chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, Helen Duncan, and thank her and her team for the great work they did. For the first time in a long time, under the good Minister Paul Swain, we will give this country an integrated, long-term approach to land transport funding and management. What a pleasure it is to be a member of a Government that is actually doing something, as against that remnant of an Opposition whose members did nothing in 9 long years in Government.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Brent Catchpole.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder whether, because there was a bit of noise around the Chamber, the member who was on his feet thought his time had expired. If he believes that the bill is so good, I am sure he wants to use more than 2 minutes.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): That is not a point of order. [Interruption] I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, Brent Catchpole, but I say to those two gentlemen, one on my left and one on my right, that they will desist. They have had their first yellow card.

I would like to acknowledge the enormous amount of work put into this bill by the previous chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, Helen Duncan. She did a tremendous amount of work, and was very fair in listening to the submissions and in the work we did with her.

New Zealand First does not believe that setting up tolls everywhere and anywhere is the answer to roading problems in this country. Congestion problems exist throughout the country, and I will name just a few of the areas: Christchurch, Wellington, Tauranga, and Auckland. They are examples of areas where congestion and roading problems exist. There are many other areas throughout the country. The use of tolling will simply make motorists pay twice. An 18.5c per litre petrol tax has not gone into roading, but has gone into the consolidated account. Motorists pay that petrol tax, yet they will be asked to pay a toll. They will be asked to pay twice. Therefore, New Zealand First opposes the approach this bill takes of tolling everybody, anywhere, all over the country.

Planning for Auckland’s motorways and public transport corridors was done 40 years ago, in 1963. Sadly, successive Governments have failed to provide funding for that network. Plans for the whole network were put in place 40 years ago, but the funding has been piecemeal. Successive Governments have just knee-jerked from one position to another, and have changed the priorities throughout the whole network. In other words, each Government has based its planning on “The squeaky wheel gets the oil”. When one area has made enough noise, priorities are changed.

An example of Auckland motorway planning and key roading projects is the Albany to Puhoi realignment project north of Orewa, which was supposed to have been finished by the end of December this year. That project had resource consent to feed traffic into Orewa until the end of December this year, but the motorway has not even started. Now, the roading is not expected to be finished until 2007-08. That is one example of a project that should have been completed straight away. The Mount Roskill extension is another example. That one should have been finished 2 years ago. It was planned, and funding has been set aside for it. It should have been completed 2 years ago. It is now not expected to be completed until 2006-07. Once again, there has been a knee-jerk reaction. The Government has shifted funding from one area to another, and has not done a long-term plan for motorway projects in Auckland.

I will give an example of how, under this bill, the funding will work. Each year every roading project will have to go into a bidding war, and each year the priorities of each project will be reassessed and reshuffled. In other words, one may as well just take a pack of cards and throw it on the floor, and whichever one ends face up gets the money.

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: Ask them about the reshuffle.

The Minister bleating over there is asking for a reshuffle. Perhaps his position may be reshuffled shortly. The very junior Minister over there is asking for his position to be reshuffled; he is asking to be moved off that bench. Well, watch this space; I think he might be reshuffled off within the next 2 years.

But the bidding war is a ridiculous way of producing a definite, planned approach to our motorway systems. If the projects have to bid each year, if they end up being reshuffled each year, and if money is not planned for a long-term project, then how could that possibly solve Auckland’s motorway problems? That short-term approach is the reason for this situation. It was put to me recently that the motorway planners and funders of New Zealand take the approach that tomorrow is the immediate future, next week is the medium-term future, and next month is the long-term future. Why do we take such a short-term view of projects and try to fund them in the short-term? We should be planning 25 to 35 years ahead, and we should plan the funding for it. We should plan where that money is going to come from and where that money should be going. We should design our approach so that the planning follow the trends, and make sure that the trends are not getting ahead of the funding.

Tolling is not going to solve that problem. To throw in a toll here, there, and everywhere is simply going to add additional costs to individual motorists using the road. I give an example where tolling has failed miserably. The anticipated number of road users of Route K in Tauranga was 10,000 vehicles per day. That figure has been reassessed back down to 6,000. Currently, the usage is below 2,000 vehicles, and the tolling ends up barely paying for—if it is paying for—the manning of the tollbooths. We are not getting any money back from the project, at all. So it is a totally short-term view of funding. [Interruption]

I would like to summarise now, seeing as I have got members of the Government bleating away there. I have obviously hit a raw nerve amongst them. They really cannot stand the heat. The results of this ad hoc approach have done nothing to solve the motorway problems. If we consider the ad hoc approach to funding over the 40 years of Auckland’s motorway planning, it is no wonder Auckland has gridlock for hours and hours. It is estimated there is about a billion dollars of lost revenue, time, and transport costs. If we add in the potential loss of business to our ports because goods from them cannot be transferred around the country, then we see that the losses are far higher than that. The situation is great for other ports because they are picking up that transport and access, but they cannot transport the goods back into Auckland. So it is a loss all-round.

The short-sightedness of the planning of funding is a major cause of the problems around Auckland and everywhere else in the country. It is short-sightedness; it is short-term solutions.

The Greens welcome the passing of this bill and celebrate 2 years of collaborative work with Labour to bring it about. It heralds a sea change in transport planning and direction. It is a move to a balanced, multimodal system that matches each transport mode to its best use, respects people and the environment, and addresses transport demand as well as supply. I thank and congratulate the previous Minister of Transport, Mark Gosche, on his early work on the strategy and on this bill, and I thank and congratulate the present Minister, Paul Swain, on seeing the job through so ably. I thank Helen Duncan for her excellent chairing of the select committee, which made a lot of progress with the bill. I also thank the officials, who have been so helpful.

Let me go back to the beginning of the story. In late 2001 it was clear that more money was needed in the National Land Transport Fund if we were to address a serious lack of choice in transport options, a serious overloading of the road infrastructure, a wasteful underuse of rail, and a frustrating non-existence of effective public transport and facilities for cyclists and pedestrians. Labour proposed a 4c increase in the petrol levy, and every party voted against it except the Greens. Yes, all those parties that in the last few days have grizzled about lack of funding for transport refused to support the funding increase. The Greens accepted the responsibility of funding a decent transport system, but on condition that funding was spread in a balanced way across modes, and the decision-making system reflected modern criteria of social good.

The first step was the New Zealand Transport Strategy, which clarifies where we are going now as a country. The second step is this bill, which implements our agreement to change the objectives of Transfund, Transit, and local authorities. The new criteria for transport funding will take us gradually towards a sustainable transport system that can survive the huge shocks that are in store for us very soon—and the world is still in denial about those shocks. Nothing less will ensure the survival of our cities, our commerce, and our economy, which currently are running on near empty. All major oil companies now recognise that world oil production has peaked, or is close to peaking. Estimates of when the decline begins—and that, of course, is when the price begins to rise really steeply—vary from 5 to 20 years. What we do know is that currently we are finding one new barrel of oil for every four we burn. That is, of course, why the United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and why it may well continue to invade Middle Eastern countries, where most of the remaining oil is—hopefully, without New Zealand’s support.

The era of cheap oil has, for a short moment in history, made it possible for each individual in a few rich countries to carry a tonne of metal with him or her whenever he or she moves. It was never logical; it will not even be possible for much longer. Cars will remain a big part of the transport scene for a long time yet, but we must start to use them more sensibly, and we must start to develop the alternatives or face a future in which we can no longer move around.

Driving the same necessity is the effect of all the oil we have burnt so far—accumulating exhaust emissions in the atmosphere, which is starting to change the climate. Resource depletion and pollution are two sides of the same coin. They are two overwhelming reasons why this shift in direction has to start now. Add to that another reason: road crashes are the main cause of death for children under 15. Reduce the total miles travelled by car, and those deaths will reduce, too.

So this bill adopts bold new objectives: an integrated transport system, where one can make connections between cars, trains, buses, ferries, and cycles, and where each mode is used to best purpose; a safe transport service that notices the vulnerable—the children, the pedestrians, the elderly, and even, dare I say it, the slow—a responsive system that replaces a rigid cost-benefit calculation based on untestable assumptions with an approach that meets needs where they are greatest and involves people in the planning; and a sustainable system that requires road builders to take care when crossing fragile ecosystems, and avoid the siltation, pollution, and habitat destruction that so often go with road building’s cut-and-fill approach. Substantial new funding has been going into the National Land Transport Fund since April last year, and, to make sure that it is used for projects that meet the new criteria, Transit is reviewing the major projects that were approved under the previous rules, to see whether they still comply.

We have heard some entertaining polemics in the debate this week. We have heard Roger Sowry complain bitterly about congestion, then say he wants to see more traffic on the roads. He is utterly opposed to finding ways to reduce traffic, and he wants to see more of it. How many hours a day does he want to spend driving? We have heard constant demands for efficiency to be put into the bill, despite the fact it is there already in several places, including the purpose clause. We have heard Larry Baldock bravely try to define “efficiency” when no one else could or would. He told us that “efficiency” means “efficiency”. That is helpful! Then he said it means moving people around without delay. I do not think economists would agree that that is efficiency—that is effectiveness, and that is already in the bill, too. We have heard Lockwood Smith declaiming against responsibility, especially social and environmental responsibility. He just wants roads, irresponsible roads—the more irresponsible the better, one has to assume.

Then there is Maurice Williamson, who does know something about transport, but his prejudices always get in the way. He says we just cannot get people out of their cars. He needs to let the facts get in the way of his prejudices. In the last 3 years in New Zealand, with only a modest increase in funding and, therefore, in service and frequency, we have seen a 25 percent increase in the use of public transport. It is simple, really: if it is not there, one cannot use it. The figures prove that if it is there, people will use it. The Auckland Regional Transport Network Ltd has just announced the next phase of the Auckland rail upgrade and a business plan to increase patronage from 2.5 million trips a year to more than 20 million. I had the very good fortune yesterday to meet Jamie Lerner, the famous former Mayor of Curitiba, the Brazilian city that has grown from 600,000 people to 1.8 million, and whose transport system still works. That is because public transport passenger trips have gone from 20,000 to 2 million a day. If that city can do it, we can.

We have heard Peter Brown say we need more fuel tax to fund roads, instead of tolls. But when we did exactly that, his party would not vote for it. As I pointed out in question time today, the latest round of petrol tax makes that better, because for the first time none of it goes into general revenue. The proportion of petrol tax going into transport has just increased, and the Opposition still does not support it.

There is a particular kind of fury that erupts whenever the dominance of the motorcar over our lives is challenged in any way, and we have heard a lot of it this week. I would like to sum up with a possibly politically incorrect quote from Mayor Jamie Lerner. Mother-in-law jokes are very non - politically correct, but I feel OK about using it, because I am a mother-in-law myself, and I know my daughter-in-law and I would agree on this sentiment. He said yesterday: “The car is like your mother-in-law. You have to maintain a good relationship with her, but you should never let her run your life.”

I rise to support the Land Transport Management Bill. It has been a long, hard process for everyone in getting this bill into its current form, and I for one am satisfied that the bill is, at least, a good start. As should be expected for a party with only eight MPs out of a total of 120, United Future did not get everything it wanted. However, we were able to ensure the bill is a lot better than it might otherwise have been.

Mr Sowry’s comments earlier about submitters asking for many changes but not getting any completely floors me. Anybody looking at the bill in its current form can see the massive amount of changes, and most of them were made at the request of the submitters who appeared before the select committee. The changes have resulted in a bill that is much better than the bill introduced to the House earlier this year.

One of the common-sense changes that United Future was able to secure was to have reference in the Land Transport Management Bill to efficiency greatly strengthened. The reason we made this issue such a priority is that we believe that social and environmental considerations should be ranked in importance on a par with economic efficiency—not somewhere far above it. This is particularly important where the responsibilities of Transfund and Transit are involved. I have just been passed a little bit of good news from Tony Friedlander, the Chief Executive Officer of the Road Transport Forum, who acknowledges that the amendments to the bill with regard to efficiency will be of a great deal of benefit. I thank him for that.

Many lobby groups and political parties all around New Zealand have spoken of the need for tools with which we can solve our transport infrastructure deficit. This bill does contain a few of the necessary tools. It contains an opportunity for local communities to use tolling as a means for raising the funds needed to build roads that those communities have determined for themselves are needed in their areas. One important case in point is that Greater Wellington now has the tools needed to raise the money for and build the proposed Transmission Gully motorway. It is in Wellington’s hands entirely. Tauranga also needs to build a considerable number of new roads, and Tauranga will be able to make those decisions for itself.

💬 Peter Brown: We don’t need tolls.

The speaker for New Zealand First was saying earlier that this bill will result in toll roads all over the country. That will not happen, because communities must make that decision themselves. They must give full support to those proposals. We believe in empowering communities to make those decisions themselves.

It is clear that the Minister of Finance’s comments today in the House completely passed over the heads of New Zealand First members. He said we cannot expect any changes to the amount that currently goes into the Crown account from fuel excise, and that that is the way it will be for several years to come. The Rt Hon Winston Peters may dream about being Minister of Finance again, but I have to say that today he is not the Minister, and he is unlikely to be the Minister in the near future. Therefore, we must look practically at how we are going to build our roads, and tolling is one of the options that communities will be able to use—thanks to this bill.

The bill also allows for public-private partnerships in a variety of ways. Private investors may engage in partnerships with central or local government on projects that have the potential for public good and for providing a fair return on private investment.

After sitting through the Committee stage and hearing all the doomsayers predict that this bill will do nothing to help build roads, I cannot help but think of a passage from the Book of Proverbs: “ ‘Bad, bad’ says the buyer, but then he goes on his way rejoicing about the purchase of his good bargain.” That sums it up, really. Much of the shrill opposition to this bill is politically motivated—pure and simple. It has nothing whatsoever to do with its merits. Even groups comprising major transport operators—such as the Auckland chamber of commerce and Ports of Auckland—have been saying the bill is at least a start and provides a platform from which they can move forward. It is shameful for those Opposition parties, which profess to be acting in the interests of the public and of business, to be interested only in short-term political point-scoring when it comes to something as important as improving New Zealand’s infrastructure. New Zealand cannot afford to throw this bill out and start all over again. That would simply not be acceptable. We must move on. We must take what we have been given and build upon it.

Much has been said in this debate about tools. The best way to describe this bill is as a tool-box. It is not primarily about the tools themselves; it is the tool-box that the tools will go into. It does not yet contain all the tools we are going to need. There are some tools in this legislation, but there are more that can be added over time, and will be, thanks to the common-sense presence of United Future. The business leaders who met with Peter Dunne this week understood that. That is why they said that, although the Land Transport Management Bill does not represent all the progress they want: “We are nonetheless here to encourage the Government to implement the bill with urgency and a commitment to taking the further steps necessary to achieve faster network completion in Auckland.” The colour of the tool-box, as I have mentioned, is also a little greener than we would like it to be. However, that is the reality of MMP and it is the result of the three-way negotiation between the Government, the Greens, and United Future.

United Future was pleased to have the opportunity to make changes to the legislation, to the best of our ability. We are now prepared to accept what has been delivered, and to encourage Transfund, Transit, local and territorial authorities, road users—commercial and private—business, and the general public to make the most of the opportunities it now offers for moving forward. As I have said, we have begun to work already on cooperating with the Government to introduce the next bill, which will be more about tools and less about the tool-box. Those tools are going to be a different colour from the tool-box, and will address the concerns of those who know we must use every tool possible to deliver a transport network that New Zealanders can be proud of in the 21st century in which we now live.

My constituents in New Lynn are hungry to see the twin tracking of the western line to west Auckland. They are pleased with the progress the Government is making on this bill, which provides, as my colleague Larry Baldock has said, the tool-box into which we will insert this and other measures. I am pleased to support the bill.

I rise on behalf of the ACT party to speak in the third reading of this bill. Our party has opposed this bill all along. What is really sad about this bill is that so many New Zealanders who sit in traffic every single day—it is 5 minutes to 4 and there will be a lot of them sitting there right now—have been really hoping that this Government legislation will solve their transport problems. Will this bill do that? No, it will not. Absolutely not! This Government has raised expectations, it has promised some real solutions, and again it will be failing the people of New Zealand.

Something like $2 billion a year is collected in petrol tax and road-user charges. Most motorists out there, most people using the roads, think most of that money should go back into improving our roading infrastructure. That is just common sense. We know that, over the years, most Governments have not put all of that money back into infrastructure; they have put only a proportion of it. Parties like ours say the whole lot should go back there, because we have a lot of catching up to do around New Zealand. But the worst thing about this bill is that it is taking the bit of money that does go into roading, and it is putting a lot of it into walkways, pathways, ferries, barges, buses, railways—just name it, it gets it. The amount of money that is left over is what will go into roads. It will be diminished. It will be less.

The point about this bill is it will not add one more kilometre to our motorway roading network. [Interruption] Whatever that Minister says, who is sitting in the chair there, he is telling—I cannot say “lies”, can I?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): No.

No, I cannot say “lies”. He is not telling the truth. Can I say that?

💬 Hon Paul Swain: No.

He is misleading New Zealanders—

💬 Hon Opposition Member: Telling fairytales.

—telling fairytales.

💬 Hon Paul Swain: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The word “misleading” is beyond the pale, too. I ask that that word not be used.

“Fairytales”?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): It is OK; it is not OK only if it is “deliberately misleading”.

So “fairytales” we agree was a good word to use! He is giving promises to people that the Government will not uphold. This bill will not solve the congestion problems. It has been estimated that congestion in New Zealand is costing our economy $4 billion a year.

💬 Hon Mark Gosche: The Employers and Manufacturers Association made that up.

Well, you take that up with them, Mr Gosche.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): First, I say to members on the cross benches that under Speaker’s ruling 53/4 they cannot interject, because it muffles the microphone. Secondly, would the member please not bring the Speaker into the debate.

It has been estimated that the cost of congestion is some $4 billion a year. It is worked out on the fact that, in Auckland alone, 566,000 people who work every day get stuck in traffic for more than an hour. Mr Speaker, I say to you and to members opposite that New Zealand cannot afford that sort of loss of productivity. For goodness’ sake! This country is slowly slipping down the economic ladder. We are No. 21 in the OECD, and we are about to go down to No. 22. We should be up with Australia. Many New Zealanders hoped this bill would solve the congestion problems in this country, would increase our productivity, and would allow us as a country to earn more and start to catch up with the rest of the world. It is full of hollow promises. That is a shame.

This bill exposes this Government, which spent so much of its first term in office trying to pretend how pro-business it is, as being a totally anti-business Government. If it were not, it would know that the No. 1 thing it must do as a Government is to make sure its infrastructure allows its people to get out there to work, to make profits, and to build up this economy and the wealth of this country. It has totally failed in that regard.

When I look at this bill I see a bill that Government members have, basically, sold out to the Greens. [Interruption] If the member who is interjecting had been present for the Committee stage of this bill, he would know that, although I am not on the select committee, I did make many contributions during the Committee stage.

I would like to raise a particular issue that I have spent a lot of time on—and that former Minister knows that—and that is the Albany to Puhoi realignment, which is the northern motorway between Orewa and Puhoi. It is an absolute disgrace that the Government has the major motorway in New Zealand stopping dead in the middle of a paddock. That road then winds its way through a residential area before it hits back on to State Highway 1. That project was started in the early 1990s. The Environment Court held it up for 6 long years. The consents for that last piece of roading—7 kilometres—came through earlier this year. The Government previously had always said that the moment those consents came through, it would make the completion of that road a No. 1 priority, so that it was finished before more problems arose due to the consents lapsing and having to be reapplied for, and so on. The consents came through this year, in about April. Transfund New Zealand had $225 million in its bank account that was not going to be used, because of the way it has to forecast its demand funding. The project was going to cost about $150 million. Instead of Transfund calling for tenders to get on with finishing that piece of State Highway 1, what happened? This Government, through its mates on Transit and Transfund—its cronies; members should remember it is all done by ministerial appointment—decided to drop the priority of that section of road from No. 1 down to No. 6, No. 10, or whatever.

The Government says this bill will be the way to solve that problem. According to the professionals, who have looked at the private-public partnership provisions in this bill to allow tolling, this bill is completely useless. If anybody even thinks about entering into that sort of relationship, he or she will suddenly realise that it will not work. The investment money will not come in to allow the Government, in partnership, to finish that road, unless the Minister instructs Transit and Transfund—the Minister can say he cannot do that, but of course he can, because of all his mates there—actually to make it the No. 1 priority. It is so damaging to New Zealand. The cost to the economy of our not completing that motorway has been estimated at $1 million every single week. On current predictions it will be at least 15 to 20 years before people can actually finish their journey on State Highway 1 without having to stop in a paddock then go through a residential area.

This bill is a disgrace. That Minister and this Government have promised so much; they have promised that it will help to lift New Zealand and to get all the road problems out of the way, but they will deliver absolutely nothing except a lot of kudos, if one likes, to the Green members, who can go out there and skite about how they have now provided walkways, cycle tracks, and all the rest of it. This bill is an utter disgrace, and I can say that the ACT party has opposed it from the beginning. It should be sent back to a select committee so that some proper work can be done on it and a proper bill put forward.

Some people say the actions of members of Parliament outside this House bring this House into disrepute, and others argue that the actions of members inside this House bring it to disrepute. There are people who would argue that the general debate is a fiasco, and that the mud-slinging that goes on in this House brings nothing to democracy in New Zealand. But what really brings this Parliament into disrepute is what happens when a Minister is charged with a problem as large as this one, and when that Minister and the Government have facts and statistics at their fingertips that are so overwhelming that only a weak Minister and a pathetic Government would choose to ignore them.

This bill was heralded some time ago as a landmark piece of legislation in New Zealand. What an absolute joke that is! Trans-Tasman wrote this bill up as being the pinnacle of the Minister’s career. I certainly do hope it is not, because otherwise he will not have a Crown car to drive around in. That is how bad the situation will be. What an absolute joke this bill is! Larry Baldock of United Future, the party that has had four positions on this bill—one in every direction of the compass—tried to tell us that this legislation is a function of MMP. It is a sell-out to the Greens—an absolute sop—and then a couple of things were added for the benefit of United Future, just to try to make it feel good. What an absolute joke this bill is! The reality is that this bill is all about the Government wanting to go about forming coalition arrangements and shoring up its support, which, I might add, it will desperately need in 2005, because the way the Government is going means it is absolute toast. The Government is running scared; it is like a deer in the headlights. But that is for another day.

This bill is not about fixing the problems in Auckland. What are the problems in Auckland and New Zealand? Let me just talk about Auckland, where 49 more people are added every day to a city that has not had its motorway network completed since 1963. Since 1963 the good people of Auckland have been waiting to have their motorway network completed, yet every day we add 49 people and they bring 25 cars with them. What do we see? We see lost economic activity of something in the order of $1 billion to $2 billion—that is, somewhere in the order of 1 to 2 percent of gross domestic product. Any member of this House would think that the Minister of Finance, the Hon Dr Michael Cullen, and the Minister of Transport, Paul Swain, would take a moment to go out of their plush offices in the Beehive, sit down, get their calculators out, and work out just how much tax revenue would come off $1 billion to $2 billion of economic activity. But they are so worried about firming up their coalition agreement with that hopeless party called the Greens that they cannot even work out that this country and this Government alone would make $200 million to $300 million. The Government does not want to tackle the problem—not with this legislation.

The Government has made no attempt to look at the structure of roading in Auckland, which is a complete shambles. The Government asked Barry Curtis to say a few words on its behalf, because it did not have the courage to say that the structure was so unworkable that nothing would happen in Auckland. Seven territorial local authorities, Transfund, Transit, the Auckland Regional Transport Network, the Auckland Regional Council, and Infrastructure Auckland are all in completely different places, doing completely—

💬 Hon Paul Swain: We’re going to fix that.

We have been waiting for a long time for the Minister to fix it, and we would be absolutely delighted if he did. The National Party would cheer him on, because that is why the Hon Roger Sowry wrote to him and asked him whether we could support the Government. Roger Sowry pleaded and begged with the Minister, and the Minister did not respond. Why not? It was because of those words: “I’m sorry, we’re a bit busy doing our coalition arrangements with that hopeless party the Greens, and that four-position party United Future. We’re just a little too busy to write back to you and thank you for putting the people of New Zealand before politics.”

That is what has happened with regard to this legislation. We will have to wait until further legislation comes into the House to fix the problems. This Government is in paralysis—like a deer in the headlights—and is absolutely terrified. The problem is so big that the Government does not know what to do. Quite rightly, like the song sung by the Little River Band, the Minister said that help was on its way. Well, help is on its way, in the form of the general election in 2005. Let us bring it on for the National Party. The National Party will get into office, and it will solve the problems for the people of Auckland and New Zealand. They will thank us, and we will get more fan mail than David Beckham gets from the people of Manchester and Madrid. That is what will happen in 2005. Members can put a ring around that date; I am very, very confident about that.

The provisions on consultation in this bill are a disgrace. Submitter after submitter came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and pleaded with the committee not to make the provisions on consultation worse. Most of them asked nicely for that, though some of them did not even ask nicely. Some of them demanded that, some of them thumped the table, and some of them just asked the Government to help them out by reducing the consultation a little bit. The consultation provisions outlined in the bill virtually went beyond the letters of the alphabet. It is unbelievable. It takes three pages of the bill to look at the consultation that has to take place. What does that mean? It means that the Minister has been running around the country with the Hon Dr Michael Cullen, trying to put up a smokescreen that a lack of construction companies will stop Auckland’s roads being fixed. What an absolute hoax that is! Is he telling me that on this entire planet we would not be able to find construction companies to build $10 billion worth of roading that needs to be built in Auckland? I do not think so. If the Minister does not have enough credentials to get out the Rolodex and ring up some of those companies, he should write back to the Hon Roger Sowry and the National Party, and we will help.

I shall talk for a moment about public-private partnerships. They have been heralded in this legislation on toll roads as being a great success story and the reason why this bill is here in the House. Like the rest of the bill, those provisions are a complete and utter joke. First off, the provisions concerning public-private partnerships are prescriptive, the very thing that every submitter asked us not to make them. The Government went in the opposite way from what submitters had asked for, and made those provisions prescriptive. Now, I am prepared to accept the Minister moved his position, and that instead of 30 years being the maximum length of duration for a public-private partnership, he had changed that to 35 years, with a 10-year extension. That is it. However, the Minister demanded that a free alternative road be provided. The very day after the second reading of this bill in the House, Transit said that it wanted to build an alternative harbour crossing in Auckland 500 metres from the existing harbour bridge. This legislation would stop that, and that shows how hopeless this legislation is. The Government has said that existing highways cannot be tolled, so how can we ever make congestion lanes or “hot lanes” happen? We cannot do so.

One thing this legislation does is to prove that pork-barrel politics and coalition agreements are alive and well here in New Zealand, and are operating extremely well. One thing the legislation will not do is to fix traffic problems, for the benefit of the people of New Zealand. The Minister knows that, so he has set up a joint officials group. He has lobbied hard against his own bill, and will introduce new legislation that has been well and truly “de-Greened”. Maybe then Auckland will have a new road, or we will have a new road elsewhere in New Zealand. We all live in hope of that, but not with any great degree of assurance that it will happen.

It is a pleasure to follow that member, who has to travel 15 kilometres from his home to his electorate in Auckland. I am pleased to stand to support our Government and this wonderful legislation, the Land Transport Management Bill. New Zealand will benefit economically, socially, and environmentally from this legislation. We are a Government that keeps its word.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First): That speech was so short and sharp it even caught Mr Speaker on the hop. Whatever we say about this bill, there is certainly a varied range of views. The Greens want to get everybody into trains or buses, or on skateboards. I tell the Greens that there is no show of that, for two reasons. First, the average New Zealander loves his or her motorcar. Let us be absolutely honest about that; New Zealanders like their cars. Second, another little bit of information the Greens may like to take on board is that in the UK, in areas where a lot of people travel by train, they have a major stress problem. People are looking into the stress experienced by those who commute to and from work by train. That is true. Mr Gosche may laugh at that, but it is absolutely true.

Nobody should be ashamed about enjoying driving a car and wanting to drive a car. In an island, or two, three, or four islands as big as these ones, there is plenty of room for the number of people who drive motor vehicles here. Approximately 2.6 million motor vehicles are on the roads in this country, and there is plenty of room for them. It is in isolated areas—and I have to say large isolated areas, when I talk about Auckland—that there are problems. There are problems in Tauranga, and, as my colleague said earlier, in Wellington to some degree, and in Christchurch. Those are the areas where the solutions should be concentrated. There are 92,000, or thereabouts, kilometres of road in this country, and only 60-odd percent of it is even tar-sealed. We have motorways up north that end almost in a paddock. We have motorways that come down to little more than two-lane roads in areas of New Zealand where we should have major highways. Why do I say that we should have major highways? Because the motorist has paid for them time and time again.

New Zealand First believes that we should look seriously at the 18.5 cents per litre of petrol tax that goes into the Crown account. Mr Baldock asked a question earlier on in the House about what New Zealand First did about that, etc.—or something along those lines—and I would like to answer that, because the Minister could not. I think that he was ruled out of order. When New Zealand First was in Government, we transferred 2.1 cents per litre of the petrol tax in 1998 from the consolidated account into the roading account. Had that process continued, as New Zealand First intended at the time, instead of 18.5c per litre going into the Crown account right now it would be down to 8c per litre, and a further 10.5c per litre, on a basis of 2.1c per litre a year, would have been transferred across to the roading account. As a result of that, our problems with roading and with congestion in this country would have been a lot less serious than they are now.

This country is crying out for a comprehensive roading policy. The average New Zealander is crying out for something positive. Larry Baldock accused Opposition members—I think he was targeting New Zealand First members, and he might have singled us out by name—of looking short-term, and he then went on to say that this bill was just a tiny part of the solution. When he wanted to explain the bill he talked about the tools in the tool-box, saying that this was the tool-box and that was a tool. I guarantee that not one New Zealander who listened to the radio broadcast of this debate at that time would have understood what the dickens it was that United Future was talking about. I do not think its members even know that themselves. They talk of efficiency, and then cannot define it.

It is time that Parliament addressed this issue positively. I say to the Minister—and I think he has actually taken a little note here—that he should specifically identify the major concerns in terms of roading in this country. He should spell them out, to let the nation know what they are, and he should specify the time frame by which those problems should be taken care of. He should identify the costs, and then—

💬 Hon Paul Swain: They’re all in there. It’s called the Transit 10-year plan.

💬 PETER BROWN: The Minister is bursting at the seams here, and I can tell he has taken this on board. He should then specify a practical way of addressing the funding, because this bill does not do that—and the Minister knows it. He is not nodding now; he is turning away. The Minister should tell us how to solve the problem, but he does not know how to do so.

This bill is about generic road tolling—building road plazas all over the country, at the whim of God knows whom. I do not believe that tolling will actually happen to any great degree, because basically this legislation is not flexible enough for the private investor. There will not be enough profit in it, and the risks are too high. I agree with my National Party colleagues here, and say that very, very few people will take advantage—if advantage is the right word—of this legislation. It is not the most efficient use of the motorist’s dollar to invest it in concrete toll plazas that are manned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and to pay an administration cost for all of that. It is not the most efficient use of the motorist’s dollar to pay a profit motive, and to have to pay interest back to a private investor.

There is a far better way to address the funding issue, and that is to charge the petrol motorist through the petrol tax, and the diesel and commercial operators through road-user charges. We believe first and foremost that the motorist is already being overcharged in that 18.5c per litre petrol tax, and we welcome that report—the invisible report being compiled by the invisible man—that only the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Transport know anything about. I do not think that anybody has read it.

💬 Hon Paul Swain: It’s coming.

💬 PETER BROWN: Have they seen it? Well, if the Minister knows of its existence, he should have brought it to the House before this bill was passed. I give the Minister my assurance, on behalf of New Zealand First, that if that report justifies the 18.5c per litre petrol tax going into the consolidated account, we will not argue. We will examine that in detail, but we will not argue against it if we are satisfied it is fair. Then we will be pushing for a regional fuel tax, as I have outlined, on road-user charges in terms of the commercial diesel operator, and on the petrol tax in terms of the private motorist.

This bill was an ideal opportunity to address the core problem of roading in this country, and the inconvenience and extra costs that it imposes on motorists and the commercial world. I give the Minister one out of 10. The Automobile Association is more kind than me, and gives him two out of 10. I believe in the old philosophy. I am an old-fashioned guy, though members would not know that by looking at me. I am a bit old-fashioned, but there is a little piece of advice I give to the Minister: do it once; do it right.