Genter Julie Anne: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee[Sitting date: 14 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:9883. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green):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 20000—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 100000 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.