Debate on Crown Entities, Public Organisations, and State Enterprises — Transport Accident Investigation Commission (continued)

Last night I was referring to a document issued by Transit New Zealand, in August 2004, to every household in the Auckland region. It talked about investing half a billion dollars in the Auckland highways, with more to come. There were 17 projects listed, with start dates given. The only problem is that the document has proven to be false. All the projects planned to start in 2004, and we must bear in mind that that was only 12 weeks after the issue of that document, did not happen. Of the projects that were to start in 2005, the majority did not happen. The Government wonders why Aucklanders—the people of North Shore, the Employers and Manufacturers Association, and the chamber of commerce—are completely disillusioned, fed up, and disgusted with this Government. It is that kind of propaganda that has done it. I say this to the Government: it has lost the trust of New Zealanders, and it has lost the trust of New Zealanders because it has misled them. I seek leave to table a copy of the document from Transit New Zealand.

Document not tabled.

To quote the Leader of the Opposition, all I can say, after listening to that speech last night from the member and again this morning, is “Baloney!” I heard Dr Mapp last night claim that the National Party had the North Shore busway ready to go in 1997. Have members ever in their lives heard such a big misrepresentation of the truth? No. That is because transport issues do not matter to members opposite. Where is National’s transport spokesperson this morning? Where is Maurice Williamson? Why is he not here praising the Government for the projects that are reported as having been built or under construction?

The report talks about the central motorway junction in Auckland. What did the previous National Government do about that in 9 long years? It did nothing. It just looked at the bits of concrete sticking out of the ground, which had been there for 20 years, and did nothing. And it would do that again, if it were ever allowed to be in Government again.

Greenhithe, in Auckland, is under construction. Mercer to Long Swamp in the Waikato is under construction. Hewlett’s flyover in the Bay of Plenty is under construction. Mackay’s Crossing in Wellington is under construction. The inner-city bypass in Wellington is under construction. The Albany to Pūhoi realignment B2 is under construction. Then it will be a toll road—something the National Party talked about but did nothing about in terms of legislation. We had to pass legislation, one Christmas, I remember, to try to help Tauranga out. It was a special piece of legislation.

What has this Government done? We have legislation that allows it to happen, very simply, with the Minister of Transport being convinced that it is a good project, and ticking off a number of boxes that ask whether it will work financially, whether the public supports it, and whether there is an alternative road. All of that law has been passed. What did the National Government do? It did absolutely nothing. Did it allow for private-public partnerships in the law in 9 long years? It did nothing. But this Government has got on and done the real work.

That is why in Auckland there is a “buildability” problem. That is why the construction industry is in Samoa trying to recruit labour. It is also off in South Africa and Zimbabwe trying to get civil engineers. It cannot actually keep up with the tendering process, and at the moment a major project in Auckland—State Highway 20—is under way but other projects that follow it are having to get consortiums of New Zealand construction companies put together to be able to tender, because not one single company is able to do it on its own. There is too much work, and that is why the Australians are over here in consortiums actually tendering for New Zealand projects, because there is so much work, so much money, that the industry cannot keep up.

This report talks about that. It talks about the “buildability” problems—the labour shortages. It talks about the things the Government has done in terms of requiring 10-year plans, so that everybody knows that there is a major piece of construction going on, and that this Government is serious about fixing the issues.

The amount will be $18.9 billion over the next 10 years. What is National saying it will do? Last night we heard that a National Government would spend yet another $4.5 billion over that same period of time. How would that fix the problem? Labour is talking $18.9 billion over the next 10 years; National is talking $4.5 billion—and it is talking about having tolls. It is saying: “Oh, no, no. We’re going to give you a couple of bucks tax cut over here, before Christmas, in whatever year—who knows? But we’ll toll you so much that you won’t be able to afford to go on that road.” National would just tax people a different way. That is the age-old trick of the Tories over there. They do nothing but make the public pay for all the projects that this Government has the funds to do under its current regime.

This is a great report. This is a report that one would never have found under a National Government, because it has things in it that have actually been done. Construction is taking place all over the country. There are roadworks for half the distance between Auckland to Waikato. What happened under previous National Governments? Absolutely zip. They did nothing. They had a cost-benefit ratio system that made them think they could not do little improvements here or there, because that might stop a project from going ahead. They said that anyway there was not enough money.

When I became the Minister, I was told: “You’ll build nothing in Auckland in your first 3 years, because the National Government has done nothing to prepare for it, and there isn’t the money in the kitty to pay for it. In fact, in our first 3 years in Government, both Puhinui and Grafton Gully were built.

I would like to address the issue about Transit New Zealand, too. Last night I heard the Minister of Transport say that he would love to have a system where there were no police on the side of the road collecting fines, and that he would love our country to be one where people did not die on its roads. If he were really sincere about that, then his Government would do something about terrible pieces of roads, such as State Highway 2, and the road from Pōkeno to Tirau—State Highway 27. It is known now that the four-lane passing lanes will not go ahead there.

We will never get anywhere in this country while we continue down the path of having land transport politicised. It is totally politicised. For instance, the president of the Labour Party sits on the board of Transit New Zealand—and what an embarrassment that has turned out to be for the party. Transit New Zealand is just one of Mike Williams’ appointments. He gets $17,000 in fees from Transit New Zealand, $19,000 from the board of the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Ltd, $21,000 a year from the Railways Corporation, and $28,000 a year from Genesis Energy, and he is on the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, from which he gets another $25,000. That is $107,000. And it does not include the secret honorarium he gets for being president of the Labour Party. Not even Nick Venter has been able to find out how much that secret honorarium is.

When this debate was last raised in the House, Mike Williams faxed me and said that the figures I gave were wrong. I think I said the total was something like half a million dollars. His kids all asked for expensive Christmas presents, as a result. Well, if he gets upset every time someone raises how much he gets from the public purse, he should come clean and say how much he gets. But as Jonathan Milne asked, in that wonderful new publication the Herald on Sunday on Sunday, what will Labour do now about its president? He went to a meeting 2 weeks ago in the offices of the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Finance, where he embarrassed himself, was extremely rude, and brought to a halt the negotiations, and then he went and leaked it to Brian Rudman of the New Zealand Herald. What was written about that meeting was wrong. What was being written about The Way Forward in Auckland was wrong. That is the reason we will never get anything done.

On 30 June Transfund and Transit New Zealand will be releasing their 10-year programme. There is going to be some serious embarrassment for this Government in that statement. For instance, in this country we have roads that have proved to have a good benefit-cost ratio. That means they will deliver a very high rate of return to this country, they will enhance economic growth, and they will improve people’s lives. But they are not even going to appear on the 10-year programme. Why? Because it is not political. We will see roads in the South Island that do not have a good benefit-cost ratio, and the building of which will be very difficult to justify, but they will be there. Why? Because it is politically expedient in an election year to have them on the 10-year programme.

We have Government funding issues. The Government says that everything is all right and that we do not have to worry about it—everything is great. Well, it is not specifying starting and completion dates. As the honourable Dr Wayne Mapp pointed out, the paper that he tabled, which went to every household in Auckland at huge expense—

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: Frankly, can we believe it?

As Dr Mapp says, can we believe it? It is factually incorrect. It was proved at the select committee, under questioning, that there were incorrect statements in terms of what had and had not been started. I ask whether the Government does want to get serious about fixing the transport system in this country, which we predicted 3 years ago would get worse and worse when the Land Transport Management Act was brought in. It brought in a whole lot of other considerations that have to be brought into account when Transit New Zealand and Transfund are considering new roading projects.

And they are political. They are political to satisfy the Greens, they are political to satisfy that vote, and they are politicised to ensure that Ministers get back into Parliament when the election comes round again. We are just going back to the future.

The member who has just resumed her seat, Deborah Coddington, has made not very many strong arguments about not much at all, and I will not rebut them. But the member Wayne Mapp, who spoke last night and again this morning—apparently, he is the new National Party transport spokesperson, because we have not heard from the other National Party transport spokesperson—made a series of allegations that are scurrilous, that are outrageous, and that need to be rebutted. It is my pleasure to stand up here and give that member a towelling.

He stood up and said that Transit had put out a document that was incorrect. He said that Transit had put out a document that was a lie. He said that Transit had set out to mislead people. That is a scurrilous allegation and it is a wrong allegation, and I intend to dismiss it. The reason I intend to dismiss it is that it cannot stand unchallenged. The member made a series of allegations about Transit that are simply wrong.

There are 17 projects in the document he refers to. This is a document that 10, 11, or 12 months ago was put around the suburbs of Auckland. It is a document that states: “Auckland at a glance”, and it gives people an indication of what is going on in their city, in the Transit area. Of the 17 projects, 14 have been accurately described, and I will come to the other three in a minute. The 14 projects include the Greenhithe deviation. The document states that its construction is in progress. The truth is its construction is in progress. It states, in relation to the State Highway 18 upper harbour bridge and causeway duplication, that its construction is in progress. The truth is its construction is in process. It states, in relation to the State Highway 20 Puhinui exchange, that its construction is complete. Its construction is complete. It states, in relation to the State highway northern busway, that construction started in November 2004. Construction started in November 2004. It states, in relation to the State highway Grafton Gully stages I and II, that construction is complete. And on and on it goes. All of those 14 descriptions are accurate. There is a really interesting story about how come this Government can get 14 projects running in Auckland at once, and the member opposite cannot.

What about the other three? One of them is the Roskill extension, which was delayed by a 1915 piece of legislation on volcanic cones that, at the time this publication came out, nobody knew about. The member certainly did not. That legislation from 1915 that was discovered required a change of tack for the Roskill extension. Has the Roskill extension tender been let? Yes. Has the Roskill extension tender pre-construction work begun? Yes. When will the Roskill construction work begin? It will begin as soon as we get through the winter period. That one project has been put back by a number of months because of a statute nobody knew about. Did Wayne Mapp advise the House of that? No, he did not. Instead, he said that the document was an entire set of inaccuracies.

Two other projects need to be brought to the member’s attention. The first is the Hobsonville deviation. It says here that construction is due to start in 2005. It will not start in 2005, and the reason is the other project—the third project that the member did not mention—the Albany to Pūhoi realignment B2 (ALPURT B2). The reason the member did not mention that project is it is going ahead ahead of time. The bulldozers have already begun work. The ALPURT B2 extension is down in this document as being at the stage of consultation. In that respect the document is misleading, because the news turns out to be way better than was thought to be the case when it was written. The State Highway 20 Manukau deviation is on track; there are no problems with that at all.

The problem is that the ALPURT B2 construction had to go ahead for the reason that when the Tories were in power, the only thing they built in Auckland in 9 years was the Albany to Pūhoi realignment B1. Do members know what they did with that? They stopped it halfway. They stopped it on a corner of a suburban part of Ōrewa. That is where that stretch of road ends, to this day. They built a highway halfway to nowhere, then lost power. That is why ALPURT B2 had to go ahead.

But, wait, there is more. If one adds together the projects that were under way by National at the time of the change of Government, and also includes, out of generosity, projects recently completed by National—of which there were none—one comes up with $130 million worth of expenditure. ALPURT B2 alone is more than twice that. If one adds all 17 projects that the member decided he would take a go at, and the ones that have been recently completed—of which there are many, such as the Grafton Gully central motorway junction stage I or the Puhinui interchange, and on it goes—one does not come up with $130 million. One comes up with precisely 10 times that figure.

So that member should not stand up in this Chamber and say that the Government is not getting Auckland moving again. This Government is addressing a very serious backlog created by the Government of the member who just resumed his seat. That is the truth of the matter. At the time of the change of Government $130 million worth of construction was underway. Today, by precisely the same measurement, the amount is exactly 10 times that in value. Let us be very clear about who created the problem in Auckland, and let us be very clear about who is fixing it.