Mallard Trevor: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMallard Trevor: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9796. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I note that no National Party member contested the call with me. I note that no National Party member is prepared to defend Gerry Brownlee. I note that no member with any responsibility for the transport area has bothered to sit in the chair or to defend the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. That is probably because it is more or less indefensible and they are waving the white flag on it.I do note the comments that my colleague Maryan Street made with regard to the Victory area. As the successor to the member for Pencarrow I note that my predecessor Sonja Davies cut her political teeth on the ripping of the railway line out of the Victory area. Now I understand Nick Smith wants to put a motorway through there. I think we might be past putting a railway back into that part of Nelson but I think this is the sort of bill that would allow a motorway to go through that community and that would be something that would be absolutely wrong.In making that comment my colleague was referring to the importance of integrated transport planning and spending. I do want to commend the Greens speaker who made the last speech Julie Anne Genter because I think she has got her head around the importance of having integrated planning as far as transport is concerned. I think all of us in our electorates have areas where if things were done more logically we would have less spending on roads and more on the alternative to roads.In my electorate Hutt South clearly an increase in public transport is warranted. An increase in alternatives to our roads would include in my area the Wainuiōmata Hillbridge—a bridge across the top of the hill that would mean that people could walk over the hill take the bridge over the top of the road and then walk down the other side. At the moment people have to dodge their way across the road slightly blind to transport coming from both directions and it is quite dangerous for people to either bike or walk on the paths and to cross at the top. A bridge was going to be available and was heading for the top of that hill—I think a bridge actually used to be proposed at Pētone before they made the changes at Pētone—and the National Government changed the rules as to the alternatives to roads. It meant that the money that would otherwise have been available was no longer available. I just think that that is wrong. It creates danger for individuals and it means that a lot of people who would bike do not bike because it is seen by them to be dangerous.In a similar way the focus on having more and more motorways means that some of the logical things such as the improvement of the railway links around the Wellington wharves have not happened. I think for a long time now probably for at least a decade there has been a focus on getting grade separation—that means bridges and overpasses—around the ferry terminal in Wellington in order to be able to bring in much more freight into the Wellington waterfront by way of train rather than truck thereby freeing up the motorways and freeing up the road from the Wairarapa so that things can come down—logs in particular—on the train and be there immediately in time for the ships. There is a lot of logic to it but the problem at the moment is that the trains and the road traffic conflict and when a train comes in you have a massive traffic jam. What is needed obviously—[Interruption] Sorry?Simon O’Connor: A log jam.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The logs are jammed up in both senses. Both the ones on the trucks and the ones on the trains end up getting jammed up and as a result of that there is clearly a much more logical way of using the money.The changes in the ratios mean that the Cross Valley Link which would take a lot of traffic off The Esplanade which is again another jammed-up point in the Hutt Valley and would feed across Whites Line East off the Wainui Hill out of Naenae and across a new bridge and into the Dowse Interchange—$40 million spent on the Dowse Interchange—Brendan Horan: How much?Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Forty million dollars was spent on the Dowse Interchange and what is it? It is an interchange to nowhere because the road that was meant to come off it has been cancelled by the National Government—cancelled by the National Government. You know it is just a silly approach.The last point that I want to make I make more with my sports spokesperson hat on. I refer to the definition of “event” here and the change in policy with regard to sports events which has been very recently drawn to my attention. Previously what used to happen—and I think this was probably under the leadership of the Hon Annette King although it possibly happened earlier—was that there was some funding going out of the land transport budget and into the police budget for the police to do safety work which included work around sports. I as members know have an interest in cycling. But that funding has been changed by the National Government from I understand only about 1 March this year or it might have been 1 April this year so that the police are no longer contracted—they are no longer funded—in order to do their police work around sporting events.I have got an example of this. It is one of the long-term examples just north of Mr Faafoi’s electorate Mana. For years during a local cycle race that goes round Akatarawa and up the Paekākāriki Hill the local policeman has come out for about an hour and overridden the traffic lights to let the cyclists through as they come through inbunches in order to not have 400 or 500 people together in a group on the road as a result of the lights turning red and the cyclists having to stop. This was a logical safety measure that allowed the traffic and the cyclists to flow and not to end up being many abreast and becoming a massive safety factor.The ruling of the Government means that that work is no longer done. At the first instance of that race happening after that ruling about 5 kilometres down the road afterwards because of a massive bunch of cyclists and the pressure from cars and trucks there was an accident that involved I think about 37 cyclists—37 cyclists—being knocked out of the race and two of them being hospitalised. Four ambulances were required and two of the cyclists were hospitalised all because the National Government in order to try to save a wee bit of money in this area said that the local policeman was not allowed to go there for an hour to do the safety work for which the police had previously been contracted.These people opposite know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I am not even going to say that they were conscious of the effects that they were making when they changed their rules because I am not sure that they actually read the papers that are put in front of them that make this sort of change. I appealed to Hekia Parata. I would have thought that Mr Brownlee the current Minister of Transport would have been across it—although it might have happened in the time of Steven Joyce and we knew that he did not read his papers properly. That was certainly the case with him. But we have got to know that safety is important to this Government. We have got to know that we have integrated transport planning and this bill gives us no hope whatsoever that the Government knows what it is doing.