Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill

One of the important points to note about this bill is clause 2. The bulk of this legislation comes into force on 1 July 2004. In the real world, that is tomorrow, but in this Chamber it is still 29 June. We are trapped in a time warp. That is the whole trouble with Labour, is it not? Not only is it trapped in its own time warp, but we are dealing with this whole issue under urgency, simply to get this bill through before tomorrow. The Government is proud that it has so mismanaged its legislative affairs that the senior Government whip thinks it is a remarkable testament to Labour’s political skills that it runs things right to the wire and keeps New Zealanders poised on the brink.

Well, the one thing that New Zealanders are not pleased about is the time it takes to get to work. As my colleague Maurice Williamson said last night, there will be drivers in Auckland who probably started their journeys at half-past 6, and they will be ambitiously planning to arrive at maybe 9 o’clock. That is what happens. In Esmonde Road on the North Shore, one can be in a traffic jam for 1 hour just to go 400 metres. Yet members who do not come from Auckland might say that that is not possible—no one could imagine being stuck for 1 hour on a customary basis to go 400 metres. It is a daily occurrence—

💬 Jill Pettis: They could walk.

—and this bill will do absolutely nothing to change that.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Jill Pettis said they could walk!

Is not that a great collaboration between the Government and the Greens—that everyone could walk? That is obviously the grand design. I was reading in the Independent magazine today of Chris Trotter’s concerns about the future of oil. It will run out in 2016. He suggested, in effect, that this kind of legislative approach is all about preparing us to walk. The Government wants to hasten it, and that is why it is passing this bill—and I say this advisedly—on the 29th of this month.

This bill is a failure. There was a real opportunity to bring together central government, regional government, and local government—to have a single authority. That is National’s plan, and it is a plan put out there for the judgment of the people. We are doing it because we want a coherent, integrated strategy—the sort of words that are in this bill, but which this bill cannot possibly deliver. One has to make meaningful decisions to bring the three key groups together to achieve that.

A Government has an opportunity maybe only once in a 3-year term to get this kind of legislation right and make a real legislative difference. I presume we will not be revisiting this issue next year, yet that is exactly what will be required, because this bill will be completely inadequate to deal with the real challenges. The motorway network, which is used by private motorists and public transport, is largely paid for by Transit and Transfund. There is absolutely nothing in this bill that includes Transit and Transfund in the overall network. No money goes into it, and no money is designated directly from those two entities. They are not part of the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, they are not part of Auckland Regional Holdings, yet they are the key players.

Given that this is Government legislation, and that it is legislation for Auckland as a whole, one would think that the Government would have taken that crucial step of imagination, because only it can bring together central government, regional government, and local government. Instead, it has fiddled. All this bill has done is deal with the Auckland regional entities, and that is essentially Infrastructure Auckland, the Auckland Regional Transport Network, and the Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Have they got rid of all those? Has the Auckland Regional Transport Network gone?

The Auckland Regional Transport Network will be going into the Auckland Regional Transport Authority. TrackCo will still be there. Effectively, all the Government has done is rename existing entities. Infrastructure Auckland effectively becomes Auckland Regional Holdings. The Auckland Regional Transport Committee effectively becomes the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, perhaps bringing in the Auckland Regional Transport Network as well. That is a pathetic—

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: So it’s sort of deck chairs on the Titanic.

Deck chairs on the Titanic, as my colleague Maurice Williamson would say. It is just reshuffling, none of which, I suggest, will make any difference to the actual needs of the city.

National believes in an integrated approach. We do not just say “roads only”; we recognise that there is a place for public transport. In that integrated approach, we would have roads and public transport, and the most efficient public transport by a country mile is buses, not railways. The real fact of the railways is this, and the Green Party, in particular, needs to take it on board: in Auckland, 2.5 million trips per year are done by rail, and the annual subsidy today is $20 million. Members should work that out—it is a $10 subsidy per rail trip. For a large number of those people, it would be cheaper—say, two people together—to go by taxi, and it would be more efficient. Many people go by car to the station, then wait for a train that is often delayed by an hour. They go by train to the centre of the city, and then get a bus back up town to where they are going. It is grossly inefficient. In fact, if one analyses it from an energy point of view, it is almost sure to be less efficient than two people using a taxi. It is remarkable, is it not? That is the sort of thing the Greens praise.

The most optimistic prediction is that rail might, in 10 to 15 years from now, produce 20 million passenger trips. That is a tenfold increase. It is hard to imagine that a tenfold increase could actually be achieved, but even then the subsidy is predicted to be $4 a trip. Members should work that out. That is $100 million a year subsidy for rail for 20 million trips out of, by then, probably 1.5 billion trips. That is $100 million of taxpayers’ and ratepayers’ money to subsidise less than 2 percent of the trips.

One of the parties supporting this bill, which therefore must be supporting that kind of lunacy, is United Future. I have heard Mr Adams talk about the cost of rates, particularly regional rates—Auckland Regional Council rates. He is very concerned about how they will increase. What he does not seem to have absorbed—both in supporting this bill and the potential $100 million subsidy for 2 percent of trips in Auckland—is that there will be an absolute explosion in rates over the next 10 years. So on just about every conceivable basis, this bill is flawed.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: He doesn't care, at all.

He does not care, and his party does not care, about the impost and burden on the hard-working people of New Zealand as they have to deal, on a daily basis, with that huge rates burden. I do not want to go to another public meeting and hear Mr Adams saying how terrible Auckland Regional Council rates are, because his vote today will add to the burden. That is the reality. What we want to see from the Government is a realistic plan for Auckland.

I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.