Fitzsimons Jeanette: Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:618;Page:14061] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 We have a choice here between two different kinds of future. We can build more roads we can build more and larger vehicles we can smash down more houses to build the eastern highway we can take up more and more land with roads we can clog up those roads with more and more vehicles and then we can face chaos as eventually oil production reaches its peak prices rise astronomically and people have no alternatives. That is the future being proposed here by the National Party. 
Or there is another future. We can spread our options we can build those alternatives and we can give people choices. We can make sure that as well as roads we have a functioning national rail system capable of carrying a lot more of our freight than it does at present and passengers as well. We can make sure there is faster more frequent and much more used commuter public transport in our main cities. We can make sure we have at least occasional rural bus services between centres for those who do not have cars. We can make sure we have a balance of modes—ferries buses trains and cycleways. We can put in place travel demand management plans—for example carpooling to common workplaces and safe walking options for children going to school. Then we will have a resilient society. We will have cities that are capable of surviving much higher oil prices cities where the air is much cleaner cities that are convivial for walking in and where people are able to meet other people and cities that are not constantly divided by roads and pollution. 
This bill is part of the Government’s strategy of moving to that second option. It tries to apply to Auckland the principles of the New Zealand Transport Strategy and the new Land Transport Management Act: principles of integration of sustainability of community consultation and of responsiveness to social needs. Auckland of course is the supreme test of this new approach to transport. It is sprawled over an area similar to London with a twentieth of the population heavily dependent on cars containing one person its motorway system congested for much of the day with freight from New Zealand’s largest port needing to cross the sprawling city before it can go anywhere else and with weak public transport systems and a weak city centre so that radial transport services cater for only a minority of the needs. That is the challenge of Auckland and this bill gives us an opportunity to try to meet that challenge. 
The difficulties have been compounded for many years by political difficulties in Auckland local authorities working constructively together. With seven city and district councils and a regional authority all having statutory roles in provision of transport services and planning new governance and accountability structures are needed as well as new transport arrangements. After the passing of the Land Transport Management Act central and local government officials worked together on what is now known as the “JOG report”—the report of the Joint Officials Group—looking at how Auckland’s needs could best be met. Unlike many who believe that more motorways are the only answer the Joint Official Group the experts in transport planning in that area established clearly that if we want to address congestion—and does not everyone want to address congestion—then the priority is travel demand management and better public transport followed by a system of road pricing. Only then should there be a reassessment of what new roads are still needed to complete the system and have not been made unnecessary by the alternatives that have already been built. 
For decades Auckland has had expert transport reports prepared which have stated: “Here is what you should do to develop your roading system on one hand; here is what you should do to develop your public transport system on the other hand.” For decades the roading options have largely been built and the public transport options have not and we now have an extremely unbalanced situation in Auckland that needs to be addressed that needs to be rebalanced before we look at building more roads. The new structure for local government in Auckland depends on a complex system of accountabilities to deliver the outcomes that are anticipated by the new strategy. 
Three arms are needed to deliver those outcomes: planning operations and funding. At the planning level the aim is to integrate land-use planning through the regional growth strategy and the regional plan with regional transport planning via the regional land transport strategy. I spoke a little yesterday on how necessary it is to bring land-use planning and transport planning to be parallel with each other so that the one can support the other. All successful cities overseas are now trying to do that. Here the Auckland Regional Council is the key organisation responsible for both land-use planning and transport planning through its subcommittee the Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee. This is why the regional planning documents must be revised to provide in an integrated way for land-use planning and transport planning consistent with the Auckland regional growth strategy and the bill provides for that revision to be done. 
The bill requires that the regional land transport strategy is not a list of projects to build in order of priority as they tended to be in the past but a genuine strategy taking an overview of the transport needs of the region looking at access corridors and integration. There has been a lot of confusion about what this actually means and some people criticised the bill as introduced for not allowing the regional land transport strategy to get its teeth into any real issues at all. That was never the intention but I am glad that the wording has been clarified through the select committee so that it is now clear that the regional land transport strategy can and should look at modes and prioritise those. It should look at corridors and the needs on those corridors but it should be more of a structure plan than a wish list of activities. 
The Auckland Regional Transport Authority on the other hand is the operational agency. It should prepare a list of projects and prioritise them in order to meet the high-level needs identified in the strategy. It needs to integrate the planning for local roads public transport—both rail and bus—cycle routes and travel demand management such as school travel plans. Funding comes from two sources. The capital currently held by Infrastructure Auckland passes to the new Auckland Regional Holdings owned by the Auckland Regional Council and that will continue to fund transport projects particularly public transport. Other projects such as local roads will be funded by Transfund as they are now but the applications will be prepared together by the Auckland Regional Transport Authority in an integrated way rather than by eight different territorial authorities. 
This system is dependent for its smooth operation and policy consistency on strong governance by the Auckland Regional Council which must ensure that the statement of intent for both the Auckland Regional Transport Authority and Auckland Regional Holdings reflects the principles and objectives of the Land Transport Management Act carried over into this bill. It must also ensure that the Regional Land Transport Committee reflects the objectives of the Act and has on it people with experience in those areas—economic development public health sustainability accessibility. 
There is one problem that has not been solved. Perverse incentives have been written into the system of transport funding for as long as State highways have been fully funded by central government and local roads and public transport have not. Any local community hesitating between proposing a new State highway in its area and a new rail or bus service will opt for the former because it does not have to contribute any of the money. That is not integration and it is not sustainability and it is often not cost effective. Likewise any council that can persuade Transit and Transfund that a particular road should be a State highway rather than a local road absolves itself from paying for it. That is not an easy problem to solve but it should remain a priority for policy work in the ministry to find ways of ensuring that all options for meeting a particular transport need are considered and compared on a level playing field.