Land Transport (Rail) Legislation Bill

Like a good gentleman, I thought I’d allow the Minister to take a call. But instead, I’d just—you know, it’s a late Wednesday afternoon on a Friday. So I just thought I might just inquire, because I subbed into the committee for this bill. So we were keen to understand why it was that a piece of legislation had to be passed in order for people to talk to each other, maybe make a few plans—because we actually support the idea of an integrated approach to transport planning, which would include discussions about how all forms of transport, including rail, sit alongside our road network developments and plans.

So the Minister might like to stand, rather than just let this go through to the keeper, and perhaps give us the reason why it required legislation for this. I’ll give the Minister an example just to help. So if we take the integrated service response (ISR) for family harm, for instance, that’s a unit that sees members from multiple agencies, about half a dozen, maybe more, come together the day after a family harm incident, each of them having access to every piece of information, each of them understanding precisely what happened, discussing together what needs to happen, what should happen, and taking ownership, particularly for a lead, to make that happen.

So it’s not clear, Minister, why provisions in this bill are required for humans to get together and make sensible decisions. So you might actually like to take a call and tell us why we’re taking this time under urgency to pass a bill to simply enact what people have been doing since time immemorial, and it certainly has worked in Government with the example I used of the ISR. Let’s start with that one, please.

I thank the member Brett Hudson for his questions, and it provides a useful opportunity to set out the reason, then the purpose, of this bill at the beginning of this debate.

By statute, and by many decades of customer practice in this country, the planning and investment in decision making to support the country’s rail network has been siloed from, completely separate from, the broader management of our land transport system, and it does seem bizarre that rail hasn’t, by law, been considered land transport. And so our National Land Transport Programme—the three-yearly programme of investment in public transport and roads, State highways, local roads, walking, cycling—has not and cannot incorporate rail in its planning. That’s why, fundamentally, we are changing the law to bring rail in from the cold, to fully integrate it into our policy planning investment and decision-making framework.

And so the bill mandates the creation of a rail network investment programme on a three-yearly cycle. That will be signed off by Ministers, but on the basis of advice from Waka Kotahi, who are responsible for the land transport system, directly addressing this question about integration and coordination. We want all modes to be able to play to their strength. There is certain freight which is best carried by coastal shipping, some of which is best carried by rail, a lot of which is best carried by the road freight haulage industry—unless we have a good understanding of how they all join up, then we cannot make the appropriate infrastructure investments.

I hope that’s an answer to the member’s question. It’s certainly the intent of this bill, and I want to thank the select committee for all the good suggestions they’ve made and the amendments that have been incorporated.

Thank you, Minister. That was an answer. It didn’t answer the element of why it was necessary, but it certainly did answer why you want to do it. So my follow-up question to that is: OK, we accept that, we actually think this integrated planning is a good idea, but why, therefore, is it necessary to legislate to allow the pilfering from the taxes the hard-working motorists pay for their roading network to fund the decisions that follow from that planning process? Oh, come on. Do you want me to ask another one?

I will, hopefully, do justice to the member Brett Hudson’s question. In this country we have a world-leading transport funding and planning system based on the principle of hypothecation. So all of the contributions that are made through road-user charges and through fuel excise duty—every cent of that money is spent on transport in one way or another, so it’s completely hypothecated. It’s certainly been our Government’s policy that rather than investing all of that money only in one mode, that actually in the 21st century we have to take a more intelligent approach and invest across the modes in order to deliver the best outcomes for New Zealanders—whether they are motorists, whether they’re catching the bus or the ferry, or walking and cycling—that way we can get a truly efficient and sustainable system.

I’ll give the member one example of why that’s important. If you look in Auckland at the success of the Northern Busway that cost about $400 million to build a decade and a half ago, it’s taken three lanes of traffic off the Auckland Harbour Bridge, and actually saved the country billions of dollars. By investing in a busway, it’s created a massive benefit for motorists. That’s why we have to take a multimodal approach, including rail, which delivers year on year, as the EY report demonstrated three years ago. It delivers $1.5 billion of economic and social value to New Zealanders every year by getting freight off the roads, preventing deaths and serious injuries, reducing carbon emissions, and reducing wear and tear on the roads. So that’s the joined-up approach that underpins this bill.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 521 in the name of the Hon Phil Twyford be agreed to.