Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Management Bill — In Committee 
Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Management Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:613;Page:9734] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I want to carry on the little theme I began to develop last night about the tool-box. I think the Mayor of Auckland said it as well I have heard it said. He was looking for a tool-box with a range of features and functions to fix Auckland’s problems. Auckland’s problems have without doubt got to catastrophic levels. Major congestion used to be at peak times and at certain locations but now it is anywhere anytime—and if it rains it is everywhere all the time. In Auckland the traffic just locks blocks and stops. 
When this Government came to power it was given a pretty damn good blueprint to start from called  
Better Transport Better Roads 
. Because of its ideological views the Government said some of it was too right wing. I warned the Minister last night—and I keep warning him—that if he wants to get stuck into me about the right-wing tolling projects we were proposing I have wonderful quotes from some of his senior party people including his Prime Minister about how dreadful and evil it was to have toll roads and this bill has some of it. However 4 years down the track—and believe me Auckland could not wait 4 months to progress this; when the Government came to power in 1999 its first priority should have been to pick up on that and move—we see an emaciated looking bill called the Land Transport Management Bill entered into Parliament then gutted by Green members because of their opposition to the motorcar. 
I found that opposition the most bizarre part. When I was Minister I went to a number of public meetings when we were standing at election time. Green members would show up in their caftans and sandals and get stuck into me about why I was not funding public transport better and about how the car was an outrage. I used to get someone in my team or I would do it myself to wait outside the hall and watch people arrive. I used to ask the question at the end of the meeting: “Could I have a show of hands please? How many people came to the meeting tonight using public transport?” I never had one hand go up even though we sometimes met in a hall right on a major bus route with a bus stop straight outside. 
Green members used to say: “We couldn’t because we’ve got to go on to another meeting.” What they were saying was: “It’s not us—it’s them.” There is some nebulous “them” out there who should not use their cars but not “us” because we have another meeting to go to. I tell Green members that everybody in Auckland has another meeting to go to. They have to pick their kids up go to soccer or to the supermarket. 
The motorcar will be the central product for delivering transport in Auckland regardless of any pie-in-the-sky Green members who think that cycleways or walking tracks will fix the problem. Yes I would like to see a move towards making public transport better and quality public transport will help fix the problem but it is not the panacea it is made out to be. Jeanette Fitzsimons and other Green members would have us believe that if we did this bill properly everyone would give up their cars tomorrow and walk to work. It will not happen and this bill does not provide anywhere near the tools that are needed to fund it properly. 
The public-private partnership provisions of this bill are the weakest and most ineffectual I have ever seen. Larry Baldock told the House yesterday that he knows lots of people who will get into public-private partnerships yet he was challenged over and over again to name one company that says that if this bill goes through it will put money into a public-private partnership. The silence is deafening as members can hear if they listen carefully. It is the flutter of the wings as the chickens come home to roost. This bill does nothing. It does not give us the tool-box of tools. John Banks says so employers and manufacturers say so and the Automobile Association says so. To go through the list of interested parties we would have to seek an extension of the whole debate into tomorrow. 
Then there is the next bit with regard to consents. My God it takes so long to get consent for anything now—even something ordinary! But if the Government wants to fix Auckland’s major arterial routes it has to circumvent the old Resource Management Act processes or in 10 years it will still not have got those consents and there will be outrage from Auckland. If members of the Labour Party think the public do not want to pay for this I challenge any one of them to come with me on a Friday night at 5 o’clock and stand in somewhere like Stanley Street as the cars are trying to get up on to the motorway. They are locked blocked stopped and going nowhere. I challenge them to come with me and tap on all the car windows and say: “Would you pay 5 bucks cash right now to be home within the next 10 minutes?”. There would not be a car that would not say yes. This bill does nothing to fix that problem.