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

It is great to be here debating the financial review of the New Zealand Transport Agency, because just yesterday we had the Minister of Transport, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, give one of his famous Morning Report interviews. It was a cracker, actually. I am thinking of putting together, as a campaign fund-raiser, a collected edition CD of Gerry Brownlee’s transport interviews on Morning Report, because they are quite remarkable—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: And the EQC ones.

That is right—and the Earthquake Commission interviews. He said some amazing things, actually. When asked about the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport 2014/15 - 2024/25, he said: “The focus is not on roads.” As an example of deny, divert, and obfuscate, it was one of the classics, Mr Brownlee, and I want to compliment you on that. The other cracker quotation from Gerry Brownlee was: “Until this Government came along, no one was much interested in walking and cycling.” It is great to see Gerry Brownlee taking responsibility—taking personal credit—for the growth in public interest in and support for walking and cycling.

I mention the Government policy statement because the very interesting thing about this is that the Government policy statement sets out the Government’s transport priorities for the next decade. The reason it is relevant to this debate is that the Government’s policy statement for the next decade is almost exactly the same as the Government’s priorities that we have had to put up with for nearly the last 6 years. It is all about roads, roads, roads with this Government. What we see in the Government policy statement is a continuation of its spending more than $1 billion every year on its new mega-motorway projects. If you look at the funding there, it has allocated $20 billion to State highways and only a fifth of that—or $4 billion—over the same period to public transport, walking, and cycling. A full 87 percent of the Budget projections in the Government policy statement has been allocated to roads—39 percent for new State highways, which are predominantly the roads of National Party significance—10 percent for public transport, and only 1 percent for walking and cycling. Yet Gerry Brownlee goes on Morning Report and says that this is not all about roads. Well, this Government is obsessed with building new motorways. It has poured more than a billion dollars every year into these projects at the expense of the regions, at the expense of the maintenance of local roads, and at the expense of public transport in our large cities.

Why does this matter? Why does it matter that the Government has this incredibly unbalanced transport policy? Well, one of the reasons it matters is that it is structuring into our transport system, into the export supply chain, gross inefficiencies. This Minister and this Government believe that every freight task can be done—no matter what it is and no matter where it is going—most efficiently by being hauled on huge trucks on brand new, gold-plated, and mostly duplicate motorway projects. It refused to build a truly sustainably and efficient freight supply chain in this country by investing in and getting the best out of all the different modes of transport and all the different pieces of the transport system. So what it refused to do and what the next Labour-led Government will do is take an intelligent and clinical look at how the ports, how coastal shipping, and how rail can work together with the roading system to achieve much better connectivity and get our products to market in the most efficient and sustainable way.

But this Government is not interested in that, and what was, I think, particularly revealing was that the Government policy statement on transport cannot, under its own terms of reference, talk about coastal shipping, about rail, and about ports. Critical elements of the transport system are separated out from the Government’s main policy-making tool and its main statement of priorities, because the transport system basically exists in these silos. The Government likes it that way. Gerry Brownlee likes it that way, because he does not want to have to consider those other important parts of the transport system. He is not interested in rail, he is not interested in coastal shipping and ports; it is all about roads. Under the system that we have got, under the transport system that this Government is perfectly happy with, New Zealand Transport Agency is the big road builder. It is the deliverer of our transport policy. That will change under the next Labour Government.

I would like to just congratulate the Minister of Transport on the great work that he has done in this area over the last 3 years. He is an exceptional Minister, and always welcome in the Waikato. He can come there any time, unlike the Opposition members, who never come to the Waikato, and when they do come, they do not have anything to say of any consequence.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: You can’t say we never come and then say what we do when we do come.

Oh, that member is pretty much a non-event when Labour members do come, if they do come.

As for Mr Twyford, we hear this speech every year from the Labour Party, saying how it is going to have a multimodal solution, using all the terminology about “we’re investing in roads and rail and maritime and all those things, and public transport.” There is all that talk but no actual, definite details about what the Labour Party wants to do. Why does it not come out and actually say what it wants to do? There is a reason, New Zealanders, why Labour members do not come out and say what they want to do. It is because they know that what they want to do is in direct conflict with the Green Party, and they cannot afford to have that fight before the election.

Who runs transport policy in the left wing? It is the Green Party. It is Julie Anne Genter. Julie Anne runs it, not Phil Twyford.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Members’ full names.

If you were a betting person, you would put your money on Julie Anne Genter to have more power over the transport portfolio than Mr Phil Twyford—the nice guy that he may be. That is the reality of the Labour Party policy. It is all hot air and talk and no commitment. Will it commit to the Waikato Expressway? No, it will not commit to the Waikato Expressway. It will not commit to building that, because it knows that Julie Anne Genter has gone out and said that she wants to review that project. Julie Anne Genter, when asked about that project a mere 2 weeks ago, said that the Green Party would review that project.

What about other roads of national significance around the country? What about the Pūhoi road, which I am sure Mike Sabin will want to know about? What is the Greens’ policy on that? What is the Greens’ policy on Transmission Gully? The Green members will tell us the next time. They will be open and honest and tell you what they think. They will go out there and say that they are not doing them. The Labour Party, in effect, will not be doing them either. So New Zealanders need to listen to what the Green Party is saying, because that is the Labour Party transport policy.

Then we have New Zealand First, the other arm in the Labour - left-wing attempt to try to get seats in Parliament. It came up with this transport policy that I would love to see rearticulated in this Chamber. We had a transport debate last week, and we had the New Zealand First transport policy that was for passenger rail from every city in New Zealand: passenger rail from Wanganui to Wellington, passenger rail from Hamilton to Auckland, passenger rail from Timaru to Christchurch—passenger rail everywhere and anywhere.

💬 Denis O’Rourke: That’s right.

Oh, and all these trains would have been built in New Zealand, of course, under New Zealand First policy. But I want to see New Zealand First come up here and say what it said at that transport conference. Denis O’Rourke has got his chance to come out and say it. How is New Zealand going to afford a train from Wanganui to Wellington? Tell me that. How are we going to afford that? That is what the New Zealand First Policy is. The Green Party policy actually pales in comparison with New Zealand First’s policy. The Green Party used to be the party of trains, but now it is New Zealand First that is the party of trains, and the Green Party now has to up its game to match that.

On this side of the House, on the Government side, we see a party that has good, strong leadership, and a Minister who has taken a balanced approach to transport funding. Not only have we invested heavily in the infrastructure of our roads, but we have invested heavily in our rail network

. We have invested in the KiwiRail Turnaround Plan. We have invested in public transport options in Auckland, and we have a plan for that public transport going forward. That is a balanced approach. We have taken action in the maritime and aviation areas where it has been required as well. That is what transport policy demands, not the Julie Anne Genter model of transport policy. Thank you.

It is fantastic to follow in the wake of the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. It is strong chairmanship that he shows, as one would expect with such a strong and high-performing Minister of Transport as Gerry Brownlee, of course. What a great team. What a great team the National Party has put together on this side of the House. I just want to pick up on a couple of comments that were made by the new comedic home for evening comedy on the Labour Party, Phil Twyford, who talks about the comment that it is not just about roads.

💬 Phil Twyford: Say that again, Mike. I missed it.

I forget exactly what I said. We will go back to the Hansard.

It is not just about roads; it is actually about transportation on multiple levels. If there is one thing that we can say about the efforts of this Government in terms of transportation, what we have actually done is we have unwound decades of under-investment in some of the key areas of our transport infrastructure. Significant money has been put into KiwiRail. A Labour Government that sold off—[Interruption] Sorry, what is the member Tracey Martin saying? I cannot quite hear. [Interruption] No, Tracey Martin has got that wrong, because you will find that Marsden Point is in the Whangarei electorate. But is that an important piece of infrastructure? Absolutely, and that is why we are making sure when we have discussions with the councils that are looking at the Ports of Auckland, Tauranga, and Marsden Point that they understand the needs of the transportation infrastructure there. If the member wants to come up to Whangarei and have a wee discussion on it, I am sure the new member in Whangarei would be happy to allude to that.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Phil Heatley is still there. Don’t be so horrible.

No, I am talking post-election, of course, Ms Dyson.

We are a forward-looking party, and the reality is that when we look at the Government policy statement—let us take just one little small snippet of the programme of work that has been going on here, the Pūhoi to Wellsford road. As David Bennett has mentioned, the Greens and Labour have both signalled that road will come out. They say they will get rid of that project. This Government has fast-tracked the consenting process, alongside Auckland Council, which has also, 16 votes to four, recognised the importance of that road. It is a trade and economic highway to what is the fastest-growing economy in the country. The Northland economy is the fastest-growing and strongest-growing economy in the country. We know that $800 million of primary industries, particularly, is trundling down that road on an annual basis. That is a significant contribution to this country’s economic fortunes, and this Government is investing in that. In fact, this Government is ensuring that that programme is given every opportunity to move forward as quickly as possible.

When that was signalled in Northland, I can tell members across this House that it was absolutely strongly heralded as a fantastic initiative because of the importance of that road. It is not just about the road in itself. It is about the signals it sends about the economy of Northland and the opportunities that exist for other businesses to be involved in growing that economy and being a part of that economy. The road will take some time to build, but already, with the interest in activity, people are looking north and they are looking north because here is a region that is attached to the nation’s largest economy, in Auckland, and that is a vital link. If we look across the roads of national significance programme, that is exactly what we see. We see the arterial routes—the routes that are so often used by so much of the economy of this country. We are ensuring that the under-investment that has occurred for far too long in this nation is actually being caught up with and we are investing where we are going to free up and ensure that that transportation of our economy is going to move far more effectively.

We can talk about public transport all we like, but—I do not know; call me old-fashioned—I think buses tend to use roads as well. I have not seen too many “hover-buses”. Perhaps the Green Party might want to introduce some of those into the mix—I am not sure. Whether they are highways, motorways, freeways, or single lane roads, anything with wheels on it uses them, even cycles, which I know the Green Party, of course, is very, very interested in. The point is that what the Government has done is establish a programme of work across many facets of our transportation networks to ensure that where the bottlenecks exist, where the challenges in that network exist, we are absolutely investing in that and investing ahead of the curve, which is taking some investment to catch up on because, as I said, there has been a consistent under-investment in that. So what we are seeing—

This is a financial review of the activities of the New Zealand Transport Agency over the past year. Naturally, when considering that, one might look back and one might look forward. I accept that. But I was particularly distressed today by some of the comments in the speech offered to the House by the Labour spokesperson on transport. What he seems to have missed is that this process is guided—that is, the process of the Government policy statement and the work of the New Zealand Transport Agency—by the Land Transport Management Act 2003. I would suggest that if he is to be an effective spokesperson, he should go and read that Act so that he does not make some of the extraordinary statements that he made in the House this afternoon.

💬 Phil Twyford: Overdue for reform.

What I would like to hear from him at some point is that if he thinks that Act needs to be reformed, he starts to spell out what it is, because all I hear from him is about what Labour is not going to do, should the unlikely event of its receiving the opportunity to sit on the Treasury benches occur. Labour is not going to continue with the roads of national significance programme. It is not going to invest in cycle networks, as we have. It is not going to invest in pedestrian opportunities, as we have, and it is not going to have an arrangement that allows local communities to choose where they spend some of the funding that comes from the National Land Transport Fund on their own projects. Anyone can stand in this House and tell people what they are not going to do; to talk about what you are doing and what a Government is doing is a different matter.

We have, over the last short while, since 2012, spent a staggering $945 million—a billion dollars, effectively—on public transport. That has been matched by local authorities, which have contributed another $770 million. So there you see a huge commitment to public transport for a very small part of the transport task required in New Zealand. We have further said that if we can see that the demand for public transport is on the rise, we will be there to fund it. I want to know whether, in fact, the Labour Party is proposing that it would do away with the $800 million package that we have put together for Auckland to bring forward some of its roading projects. The answer would be yes, because Labour does not like roads. It somehow thinks that New Zealand should return to a sort of strange community where we do not make use of roads.

When it comes to KiwiRail, over a billion dollars so far has been reinvested in that company, trying to give it the opportunity to contribute more to the freight task throughout New Zealand. But the reality is that the rails do not run into many of the rural communities in New Zealand where the productivity that comes off our agrarian economy is carried out. So there has to be an ability to move freight by road. What I want to do this afternoon is congratulate the management of KiwiRail on collaborating with road freight companies throughout the country to get a better synergy between the opportunity to move goods over long distances on rail with the capacity to take significant loads by truck to the farm gate and beyond. When Mr Twyford stands up and says there is no big thinking going on here, I have got to tell him that out in the wide world people do not necessarily look to the Opposition spokesman’s office to see that big thinking. Thank God they do not, because there is none.

The reality is that we have a dynamic transport industry in New Zealand and we have a Government that is making investments in the transport infrastructure to ensure that it prospers along with the rest of the economy for years to come. It was the Romans who first worked out that if you want to have a dynamic economy, provide roads, and that is what we are doing.

Report noted.

Earthquake Commission