Debate on Crown Entities, Public Organisations, and State Enterprises — New Zealand Transport Agency

The New Zealand Transport Agency—that is a great one. I wish to start with a speech from last week by a Mr Iain Lees-Galloway, the Labour member for Palmerston North. This was a speech that I found very, very helpful when writing my column for my local paper. I just want to read to you some of the words that have come from the de facto spokesperson for the left on transport—not the real spokesperson. The real spokesperson is Julie Anne Genter. Mr Iain Lees-Galloway is the puppet of the Green Party in a Labour dress. Congratulations to the Green Party on taking over another major plank of economic policy in transport. It is a shame that the Labour Party had to give up transport as well as economic policy.

But listen to these words. These are the words from the spokesperson from the Labour Party: “the National Government’s … determination to waste taxpayers’ money on monster motorways that serve no real purpose,”—determination to waste taxpayers’ money on monster motorways that serve no real purpose. I want to see that member and that party come to the Waikato and come to Hamilton and say that. They will not come to Hamilton and say that.

💬 Tim Macindoe: You bet they won’t.

You bet they will not, as Mr Macindoe says. The next line from Mr Iain Lees-Galloway is that this represents “the 1950s era of sprawl and motorways.” I remember a Labour Party that was proud of its heritage in the 1950s, a Labour Party that goes back to its time in the 1950s and talks about how that was the formation of the real Labour Party, but we do not see that real Labour Party in here today. It has moved away from its history. It has moved into bed with the Green Party, and has forgotten about what it truly represents, and that is very sad for Mr Iain Lees-Galloway.

But there is more. There is more in this speech from Mr Iain Lees-Galloway that really defines Labour Party policy. Another line: “so that it can pay for its unaffordable monster motorways—its roads of national significance.” It says here: “this Government does not believe in different modes of transport; it believes there is only one way to move people and freight around New Zealand, and that is cars and trucks.” That is simply not true. We have the KiwiRail Turnaround Plan. The future of rail is in freight in places like Hamilton. When you look at that freight development in Hamilton, it shows a true future for rail. If you look at rail in Auckland, the investment that the National Government has made into rail in Auckland, it is something that we should be very proud of.

But there is more—there is more. This is the best line. This is the line that I think he must have taken all day to think of: “Well, we know that the least sustainable form of transport is the car, especially the car carrying a single occupant.” This is the member from Palmerston North, who is saying that the least sustainable form of transport is the car, and that is a shame. It is a shame for a member of this Parliament to say things like that. When we look further we see that he calls it “ideological madness”, a “fossilised approach”, a “1950s vision of transport”. That is the Labour Party policy. It does not want the roads of national significance. For everybody in New Zealand—from the far north, where the roads of national significance give a hope of a lifeline for that economy of the far north, to the people of the Waikato, which produces most of the exports of New Zealand—the roads of national significance are seen as very important, and to the people of Auckland, who have gained from the roads of national significance in the last few years. The Labour Party does not believe in that. It does not believe in the golden economic triangle of Auckland, Hamilton, and Tauranga. It does not believe in that economic growth heartland of New Zealand going forward. The Labour Party has been consigned to the policies of Julie Anne Genter. The Labour Party will follow Julie Anne Genter through the trenches and blindly follow their approach for rail.

💬 Andrew Little: What are you going to do with State Highway 3?

There we have Andrew Little, the man from New Plymouth. Andrew Little was the next Labour speaker after Iain Lees-Galloway, and his whole speech was about how he wants State Highway 3 to be developed.

Last year we saw a huge funding gap developing because of the Government’s single-minded focus on throwing the vast majority of the transport budget at a few motorways. For the benefit of the previous speaker, David Bennett, who appears to erroneously believe that his Government is taking a balanced approach to transport funding, I have this pie chart that shows the New Zealand Transport Agency’s forward funding for 3 years. On this pie chart is all the new infrastructure spending for the next 3 years under the National Government, and the entire purple part is for a few new State highways. You have got this green bit that shows the local roads and this tiny, tiny bit here that is the red bit, for new public transport infrastructure, and an even smaller bit here in blue that is for new infrastructure for walking and cycling.

The reason the National Government has such an unbalanced transport budget is that it campaigned on a few very poor business case motorways. Those were the Waikato Expressway, the Pūhoi to Wellsford motorway—the “Holiday Highway”—and the Wellington Northern Corridor. These three motorways had such terrible business cases that the National Government had to invent a category called the roads of national significance so that they could get funded, because otherwise they never would have been funded because their benefit-cost ratios are so low. The benefits that they will provide to the New Zealand economy are not greater than the cost that they will incur. They never would be justified by any rational economic analysis. The Government tried to hide the poor benefit-cost ratios of these three projects by lumping them together with other projects like the Victoria Park Tunnel, which was planned by the previous Labour Government. Although it was completed under National’s watch, the truth is it was not National’s idea. It was a project that actually had some merits and it has been completed on time, under budget, and that is fine. But it does not mean that these three motorways, which most of the transport budget is going to be paying for over the next 10 years, make economic sense.

The Government has an opportunity to make much smarter investments in transport infrastructure. There has never been a better time to invest in walking, cycling, buses, and trains, because vehicle use has been falling for years now. If you look at the New Zealand Transport Agency’s traffic volume data, it shows that daily traffic volumes on State highways are still down at 2003 and 2004 levels. Freight volumes on State highways are also down, even though freight volumes on rail have been increasing in the past few years. Public transport boardings per capita, according to the New Zealand Transport Agency and the Ministry of Transport, all across the country are way up. They are growing.

New Zealanders want to walk and cycle. They want to be safe. They want it to be safe for their kids to walk and cycle to school, because it is good for their children’s health. It reduces congestion. Not everybody has to walk, cycle, and take the bus or train. If only a small portion of people were able to do this, that frees up the roads at peak times.

That is what smart Green transport is all about. We already have a road network and we already have a rail network, and we want to use them better and we want to use them smarter. The next best dollar of investment is going to be on those modes that are the most cost-effective, giving New Zealanders the choice that they have been denied by successive Governments obsessed with increasing road capacity, which made it impossible to walk, cycle, and take public transport.

So what we saw last year is that although the revenue from petrol taxes and road-user charges was down because there was less road use than was predicted, the National Government was so obsessed with building these really poor-value motorways that it decided to put up the petrol tax, in addition to allowing borrowing—in addition to going to the private sector to take out a loan for Transmission Gully, which we will be paying back for many years. The National Government, if it cares about New Zealand’s economy and about New Zealanders having choices, should really take advantage and reprioritise the transport budget.

As you can see here on this graph, traffic volumes and freight volumes in Auckland are much higher than they are for Ngauranga Gorge, State Highway 1. So where the Government is planning to spend $5 billion on these few—only 20,000—vehicle trips a day on Transmission Gully in 10 or 20 years from now, it could instead be funding the city rail link, which would move 100,000 Aucklanders by rail, taking the equivalent of 12 motorway lanes of traffic off Auckland’s roads. That is smart Green transport, and it is a shame that the Government is not willing to get behind it.

I do have another National member, if someone is seeking the call.

💬 Simon O’Connor: Mr Chairman.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Simon O’Connor. Sorry, I am not trying to lead members, but I do have a script here and I am just making sure that we—I gave similar encouragement to this side of the Chamber. There is no favouritism here.

💬 Tim Macindoe: We thought there was a Labour call.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): So did I, at one point. I call Simon O’Connor.

For the record, I am not standing on behalf of the Labour Party as a plenipotentiary or anything, I just think it is important—I know it is going to be a terrible disappointment to the other side of the Chamber.

It was interesting just now listening to the speaker from the Green Party, Julie Anne Genter. If you listened to the undertone of what was being said there, it was a completely pro-Auckland approach. Those members are prepared, actually, to drop the roading projects in other parts of the country in order to build a central rail loop for Auckland. If you listened once again very carefully to what was said there, it was: “Let’s drop this project, let’s drop that project, and let’s focus it all on Auckland.” Even I, as an Auckland MP, think that that is a little bit weird, because at the end of the day this is the Parliament for New Zealand, not the Parliament for Auckland. I think when we look at what the New Zealand Transport Agency is doing, particularly through the roads of national significance, it is an array of projects that are regional, operational, national, and significant. I know that my colleague Mike Sabin from up north, and Mark Mitchell as well, along with what the New Zealand Transport Agency is suggesting—the Pūhoi to Wellsford project is very important. As someone who has originally come from Whangarei, I am all for that. That is not about a “Holiday Highway”; that is about a highway of prosperity and opportunity. In fact, I can see here across the Chamber engagement from New Zealand First’s Tracey Martin. She understands it as well.

Projects through the Waikato and projects throughout the country are incredibly and vitally important—things like Transmission Gully. I was just driving back from Whanganui over the weekend and ran into the usual traffic issues in Nathan Guy’s electorate, through Ōtaki and that. Of course, the Green Party will stop that project. We have heard that very clearly: it is against Transmission Gully. A challenge that has to come, of course, is to the likes of the Labour Party. Is it going to stand and fall according to the principles of the Green Party?

It was really important when the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee went through the review with the New Zealand Transport Agency to understand that the agency needs to be responsive to what New Zealanders want. Some of us are quite prepared to walk and to cycle in Auckland and some of us are happy to take the buses and the trains, but there is also that reality check that kicks in that a lot of Kiwis take their cars. So we need to be able to respond to that appropriately. When I look at somewhere like Tāmaki Drive in Auckland, I think that is a very good example of what the New Zealand Transport Agency is dealing with. You have got people who want to walk, you have got people who want to cycle, and you have got people who want to take the bus—in fact, some people are even suggesting, Julie Anne, they want to take a ferry from St Heliers. There are people who want to take their cars.

The challenge for the New Zealand Transport Agency and the challenge for this Government and all Governments is how you balance those needs of people. We even have the walking buses—a great initiative, including from one who was my former lecturer in geography. It is a great initiative. But this is not an initiative that is an absolute. If we fall into the thinking of the Greens and if Labour follows that too, we are falling into transport fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the New Zealand Transport Agency is working across the board—

💬 Andrew Little: Ha, ha! “Transport fundamentalism.”

Transport fundamentalism—there is the phrase for the night: transport fundamentalism. This Government and the New Zealand Transport Agency, as it reported back to us in the financial review, are there working for what New Zealanders want. I know that Kiwis listening in tonight do not want to buy into that fundamentalism, because they understand: they want to drive their cars, they want to park them in the cities, and they want to get around. It is the same for freight as well. They want to move around. We are going to avoid this fundamentalism.

We applaud the work that the New Zealand Transport Agency has done and is doing. It was an excellent review process. I think the agency gave a very strong indicator of why it is implementing the projects it is doing. I just urge those looking at this review not to fall into that fundamentalism, not to take approaches like the anti - Transmission Gully, anti-roads approach but to take the approach that the New Zealand Transport Agency and this Government are following, which is about roads, about rail, and about cars.

Report noted.

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd