Financial Review Debate — Ministry of Transport

Although the Finance and Expenditure Committee carried out a pro forma investigation of the Ministry of Transport, a number of issues need to be debated. The Greens enjoy a close relationship with the Government on the transport portfolio. It is also a portfolio that has probably the greatest environmental impact of any portfolio. The Ministry of Transport is also the ministry that has the greatest energy footprint of any ministry. Transport is also the portfolio that has the greatest impact on New Zealanders’ lifestyle and health. I am pleased to note that the Secretary for Transport mentions the whole-of-Government approach in his report. There is certainly no area where we require a whole-of-Government approach more than in transport. It is an area rich with opportunities for savings and for making a substantial contribution to New Zealand’s Kyoto commitments, while at the same time we prepare ourselves for a future where energy prices are likely to escalate dramatically.

I want to focus on a couple of issues from the overview by the Secretary for Transport. The Secretary for Transport states that he wishes to reduce transport-related deaths and injuries—300 fatalities is the target, and 4,500 hospitalisations, by 2010. Those are admirable targets. He also wants to enforce tougher enforcement measures for targeting speeding drivers—again, that is admirable. But I suggest that probably the simplest thing that the Minister and ministry could do would be to reduce the number of vehicles on our roads. It is interesting that in spite of the call for more roads and more infrastructure, there is probably more spare capacity on our roads and more spare capacity in this ministry than in any other sector. I did the sums the other day when Joel Cayford announced that $3.7 billion was to be spent on public transport, and well in excess of $10 billion in total on transport infrastructure in Auckland over the next 10 years or so. I did the sums, and I worked out that there were 700,000 cars on the roads in Auckland, with an average occupancy rate of 1.1 people per car. The roads in Auckland are currently cluttered with something like 2.5 million empty seats. If one has that kind of money to spend, then it ought to be possible to get a few bums on a few more of those seats—700,000 cars, 1.1 people per car.

💬 Peter Brown: Pass a law!

I do not think we need to pass a law. With that sort of money we ought to be able to give a few incentives. I remember the word Bernie Ogilvy used before was “incentivise”. We could do some incentivising, and encourage and persuade people to hop into somebody else’s car, maybe to travel to work with the wife or the husband occasionally, maybe to catch the bus, or maybe to move into town.

Since the Secretary for Transport’s report was published, peak oil and climate change have gone from being issues that the Greens were scoffed at for raising, to become headline issues in most newspapers in New Zealand. Last week there was a full-page article on climate change on the front page of the Dominion Post. It is no longer a laughing matter; it is already happening. We are seeing the consequences here in New Zealand, it is happening all over the world, and it will get worse. If something like 16 of the hottest years on record since records began to be kept have happened since 1980, and if that is the result of an increase of just 90 parts per million in carbon dioxide levels, what will happen when we have a doubling of carbon dioxide levels this century? If that does not worry members, it ought to. With the kind of money we are targeting at transport, I believe there are measures we can take to change behaviour. I am pleased the Government is taking measures to change the culture. It is evident from the report that there are good intentions there. We hope that those good intentions can be turned into measures that will actually clean up vehicle emissions, not just investigate methods of cleaning up vehicle emissions, that will increase vehicle occupancy rates, not just talk about it, that will reduce vehicle volumes, and that will implement comprehensive land-use reforms.

So far, successive Governments have spent a great deal of time on perpetuating certain bizarre transport behaviour. It is the kind of behaviour that the planet cannot handle, and we deserve better than that. Why would people move into a house, knowing that it is located much too far from all the places they need to be at, spend half their life paying it off, much of the rest of their life actually going to and fro, and a fair bit of their life earning the money to do that? There are better things to do with one’s time than to sit in traffic jams and put up with road rage. I think the measures set out in the report may just achieve something.

If ever there was a reason for the public to be very afraid, it was that speech from the Greens, because the member’s opening line was all about their wonderful working relationship with the Government, in the field of transport. But that is where the problem lies. That is why there has been so little progress on solving transport problems. The Greens had so much control over Labour policy that we ended up with a Land Transport Management Act that it was claimed would deliver all sorts of things, but it has not. No, I am wrong. It has delivered some things. It has delivered major delays to major projects, to the point that Transfund could not even spend its money last year—the year under review. Transfund ended up with nearly $230 million of unspent money.

Ask any New Zealander whether he or she thinks there were a range of roading projects that were not ready to go but could have been started. The answer is they were not ready to go because the Land Transport Management Act—the greatest sop this Government has ever given to the Greens, way over what it should have given—required all these projects to be reviewed. So we end up with a set of motorway arteries in Auckland. I say to members that if the arteries in their body did not join up at either end, they would not be of any use to them.

When one arrives at Māngere Airport and crosses the Māngere Bridge on State Highway 20, suddenly, bang, one hits Hillsborough Road. From then on it becomes a nightmare, an absolute dog’s breakfast, trying to navigate into the city centre. That is not true of Sydney and Melbourne. They used to have a problem as bad as ours, but decided to fix their connectedness issue. Those cities rolled out massive infrastructure, to the point where traffic congestion and delays are now lower than what we are experiencing in Auckland. They brought in major investment from the private sector, because they recognised that the Government could not do it.

When I first proposed private sector funding I certainly got some reaction. I have some wonderful quotes that I will be using come the election campaign. I am really going to enjoy that. I have some from the Rt Hon Helen Clark, who said that allowing the private sector to build roads in this country was selling our soul; it was actually selling our roads to foreign investors. But then the Labour Government had a change of heart, and when the Land Transport Management Act came along there was a part in there that would allow for private sector participation. I thought that was interesting. It was totally against Labour’s philosophy, totally against its core beliefs, because it thinks the private sector is evil and should not be involved. But it was interesting. So the Ministry of Transport must have had some impact on the Minister and his thinking to have achieved that legislation. The transport bill went through and, in this very Chamber tonight, I want members to tell me how many private sector - funded roading projects there are in New Zealand today. Mr Hide knows the answer; he just shook his head and went numb. He is right.

💬 Rod Donald: I hope none.

Mr Donald has played into my hands by saying that he hopes it is none. The Green Party is the absolutely right coalition partner for a Government that said it understood the private sector and would enter into public-private partnerships, because it understood those. Yet here is Mr Donald happily saying in this Parliament that he hopes there are none.

I ask members in this Chamber to think of any comparable jurisdiction they can name, and tell me whether they have any private-sector participation in the building of roads. No, I mean in the funding of roads, because the Minister will get up and give some smart alec answer and say that the private sector is already involved in their building—well, that is the contractors laying asphalt and tar. But there is not any private-sector funding of roads in this country. There is in New South Wales, there is in Victoria, and there is in Queensland. The Millau bridge in France was built in 3 years across a huge valley by the private sector—fully funded and tolled.

How many have we here? None! How many are we likely to see with a Government that has the Greens for a coalition partner, dragging it back? None! That is how many private-sector projects we will see. But in the State sector element, what did we see? Did we not see Transfund knocking at the Minister’s door and saying it was sorry but it had spent all the money it had? And there are just so many projects back-logged for a couple of decades. I admit that it is a long-term backlog—I openly admit it—

💬 Hon Mark Gosche: Why is that?

No, no—I admit it goes way back. If Mr Gosche wants to get smart, let me tell members where the big drop occurred. Up until 1985, historically this country spent around 1.3 percent of its GDP on roading. That figure today is still the OECD average. But in 1985, and members can guess which party was in Government—

That was an amazing speech—absolutely amazing! That speech was from the National Party spokesperson on transport, who from memory was the Minister of Transport two or three times during the 1990s, but who could not find a motorway in Auckland that he opened in his time as Minister. Could any member find a plaque anywhere in Auckland with Maurice Williamson’s name on it—or Jenny Shipley’s name on it? They were only in Government for 9 years, so we should give them a break! There is not one piece of motorway in Auckland with Maurice Williamson’s name, unless he might have scribbled his name with chalk under a motorway bridge—not a thing.

And did that party support the Government’s legislation that allowed the private sector to build roads? Did that party over there support the Government legislation that allowed tolling? Let us go and look at the Hansard to see who voted for that legislation. I think the Greens did. I think the Labour Party did. But I know damn well that the National Party opposed it. What a bizarre speech! It opposed it. He is now lamenting the fact that he opposed it. He was over there somewhere at the time. He was out of the party, in some sort of netherworld. He has now come back to be No. 27, or something. That is how highly rated the National Party spokesperson is. But in poor old Maurice Williamson’s time in the Minister’s chair, not one bit of motorway was built in the Auckland region.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Not true.

There was a bit—there was half a bit. But I opened that. Poor old Maurice Williamson! It slumped in the middle when they were building it because it took so long to build. And it was to get people out of Auckland, not around Auckland. It took a Labour Minister to get it fixed and opened. That party is just absolutely without ideas and without policies.

On the TV tonight I saw motorway construction all through Auckland. Public transport infrastructure is going flat out, as fast as it can, to catch up on years of neglect. There were more people riding on public transport in 1955, when I was born, than there are right now, thanks to Maurice Williamson’s party. It absolutely wrecked public transport; we are having to put it back together again. We are working with the private sector and the public sector to make sure that we have a balanced approach to transport in Auckland.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.