Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill

This is about the title of the bill. Clause 1 is the title, and as members will know, the bill is called the Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill. But that is not really what this bill is about. It is about how legislation is passed to make it nigh impossible to get roads built in Auckland. That is what it is. It is a sop to the Greens. The Greens hate roads, they hate the things that drive on them, and they hate the people who drive in the things that drive on the roads. That is why all the press releases of Chris Carter, Judith Tizard, and the Prime Minister, and the big announcement on 12 December, talked about—I want members to remember this—fixing Auckland’s transport issues such as rail, bus, ferry, pedestrian, and cycle transport needs. There was not a mention, not a mutter or a murmur, about the one thing that will fix Auckland’s problems, and that is roads. We in the National Opposition will have a policy that will have bulldozer engines started within no time.

There are a number of things one can do, in order to do that. We will not be like Judith Tizard and just have our photo taken with a bulldozer every now and then, and that is all one does. We will do a number of things.

💬 Deborah Coddington: How can you tell the difference?

The member has raised a fantastic, important question. No legislation will work without one thing, and that is the political will of the Government to make it happen. Any legislation with any number of clauses can be passed, but if a Government is not committed to seeing it happen, not committed to seeing the tar-seal being poured, and not committed to seeing the carryalls moving hills, filling in valleys, and seeing the roads being built, then it will never happen.

It is not so much the Government members themselves—although some of them are as bad as that—but it is because of their coalition commitment to the Greens, who do not want to ever talk about roads, and I do not know why it is such a phobia. They should try it with me. Try the word “toad”. That is easy. It is green, and I am sure they would like it. Try it again: “toad”. It is easy. The word “road” is not very different. It is just a first-letter change. They should say: “road”. It is quite easy. They will say “broadcasting”, and I did not know until tonight that the word “road’ is hidden in there. “Road” is in the middle of “broadcasting”. They should say “broadcasting”, then I will say: “Gotcha, you at least said ‘road’ as part of the word.” But, no, Green members do not want to mention it. There has not been a mutter or a murmur from them about roads. This legislation is just adding more bureaucracy to Auckland.

Would any member here come with me to do a survey down around Stanley Street at 5 o’clock next Friday night and say: “Hands up those of you motorists who wanted some more bureaucracy for your roads to be fixed.”? I double-dog dare anyone to come with me. We will ask the question: “Do you think more bureaucracy will fix this?”. Members of this Committee know the answer to that question without even starting. The answer, of course, is that the last thing Auckland needs is some more bureaucracy: “ARTA”—“ARTA”, and “MARTHA”, and “FARTHA”, and everything else that has gone into the bureaucracies. People want actual solutions, and this will delay it even further. My colleague the Hon Lockwood Smith is dead right. It will delay it even further.

The title of this bill has to be the most misleading title I have ever seen. It is the Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill. No, it is not; it is the “We Hate Roads and We Are Going to Try and Stop Them or Slow Them Down as Much as We Can by Putting Barriers in Front of Them Bill”. That is not good enough.

I know that drive time will now be coming to an end in Auckland at about 10 to 10. Some of my constituents in Pakuranga will still be wending their way home, having left town about 5.30, but some will now be home. Some will have got really angry and put a hole in the wall because of the frustration and anger that they feel every night as they drive home. But will this legislation solve that? No. According to this legislation, people will see solutions. But when I look at the dates published in the national land transport programme I see: “State Highway 20 completion date 2017, State Highway 18 completion date 2018”, I see “2020” and “2021”. That is just a joke. People in Auckland cannot wait until 2007 or 2008, let alone 2017 or 2018. This bill is a disgrace.

What a brilliant speech! It was a re-recording of comments made over the last decade by a very experienced member of Parliament who knows all the form and the drill. In fact, he was actually starting to worry me because he mentioned the word “vision”, and I thought, hello, are we going to go into another stratosphere here? That is my experience of that party over there that made all those comments about the bill and did not refer once to local government except in a very slighting and disparaging way.

I say to those members of the Committee who have some doubts, that one is convinced by the record. I am talking about roads, and about coming from Northland. Over the last 3 years we have seen more additional funding put into Northland roads than ever before, and that trend is still continuing. That is on the record as happening, it has happened, and if that is the intention of the Government as manifested in Northland, then I have some confidence that this bill will be a sound local government bill.

I want to draw attention to the term “local government”. In relation to some of the comments made I have sensed that there is no faith in local government—those who represent ratepayers—and no understanding of the considerable funding that is required from ratepayers year by year. As I said earlier, for those who do not with some faith see local bodies as unitary authorities or councils, at least they are a democratic process, and those who do not agree with the whole thrust of local government—and we have already heard allusions made to the Auckland Regional Transport Authority—have got every opportunity in October to register their democratic rights with regard to those bodies.

I want to say that New Zealand First supports the title, because the greater funding for this bill and for the Acts that this bill will bring into being, will come from ratepayers. I have faith, therefore, in the ratepayer groups doing what they do best, and that is to represent their people.

Secondly, there is an intention in clause 2 to begin as soon as possible. If members of the Committee have been following through the steps that are already in place, I have some confidence that after tomorrow morning this bill can be advanced in a fairly quick fashion.

I say again that New Zealand First supports this bill because it is a first step. It is an opportunity to make a move and do things in Auckland that have not been done in the past. Last of all, we support the bill because, as I said earlier, if there is goodwill and a positive attitude, these things can happen. That is not just pious thinking; it is the reality of things, day to day.

As we are in the tradition of English lessons, started by Maurice Williamson this evening, there is one word that perhaps Maurice Williamson and his National colleagues should learn and that is “choice”. That is what this bill is all about. It is about giving people in Auckland, through an improved transport planning and funding structure, the choice about how they get from A to B—how they get to work, how they get to recreational activities, so that not only do they have the choice of a motorcar, caught in a traffic jam, but they also have the choice of going along a road on a bus or on a bicycle, walking along the footpath on the road, having a cycle track or a walkway to go along, or having a ferry to use; that is, so that they have real choice.

It is obvious to anyone who looks closely at Auckland and compares it with any other major city in the world, that Auckland’s public transport infrastructure is much weaker than that of any other city, such as Sydney, or Melbourne, or any of the European cities one cares to name. In those cities they have choice. We have to get Auckland to be a modern city, and to remove the overheads, which I referred to in a previous contribution, of $736 million lost. That is the external downside of car travel. Those costs are going up, as the oil price rises. It is just blindness if we do not look at making our transport more efficient, in terms of the carriage of people, by providing a proper rail backbone to Auckland, with buses linked off it, linked up to ferries, and giving people the opportunity to walk and cycle.

If we look at the goals in this bill for the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, for Auckland Regional Holdings, and for the Auckland Regional Council, they do very much relate to developing Auckland. Schedule 4A talks about the task as proceeding in a multimodal way. I think if Mr Mapp had gone to a North Shore event last year and listened to the head of Transfund talking about Transfund’s approach under the new legislation, he would know that Transfund is very much oriented now towards looking at all transport in terms of a multimodal approach—not just looking at car transport. That is the way we want to go. We want to be able to integrate the various modes of transport, and in that integration give people true choice.

As Mr Key said, Auckland’s rail usage, particularly compared with the past when rail usage was several times greater than it is now, is very low when compared with any other similar-sized city in Europe or Australia. We have to get that usage up, through improvements and putting in the planning and the investment, which this bill under this new system will do.

Progress reported.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.