Fitzsimons Jeanette: Third Readings 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Third Readings 
[Volume:622;Page:17237] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Greens are of course supporting the legislation which is the last piece of structural legislation needed to implement the New Zealand Transport Strategy the others being the Land Transport Management Act and the Auckland transport legislation. So this legislation is a landmark that puts in place a 21st century approach to transport which is very different from what we have had in the past. But it is only the beginning of the culture change that is needed to make this legislation work on the ground and in practice. 
The most important thing it does is merge Transfund and the Land Transport Safety Authority into Land Transport New Zealand which has the promotion of sustainable land transport as one of its statutory functions. This sustainability imperative is new and it will be a major challenge that needs a culture change right through the transport sector to make it work. But we are encouraged that it is now to be law. Deborah Coddington remarks that it is abhorrent that sustainability increasingly will be brought into legislation. Well I have to say that the Greens take a different view. We believe that the ability of our society and our economy to continue to function long term into the future is one of the most important things that we should bring into legislation in this country and we are glad to see it happening through cooperation between the Government and the Greens. 
The new entity of Land Transport New Zealand will be an active advocate for a safe sustainable integrated and responsive land transport system. It is an organisation that will have considerable local and regional outreach through offices out in the community and this will help with the new relationships that it needs to build with the community. It is the end of the old idea of legislation gradually being put in place to provide for the corporatisation of roads. The idea was that it would all just happen through the market if one created a corporate entity and left it to do it by itself. Well that clearly did not happen in the 1990s and we now have a much more hands-on transport-planning process that is driven by community needs. 
The staff of the new entity will face a challenge in learning to work with community groups and in broadening their horizons to take on board all five objectives of the New Zealand Transport Strategy. We will be watching closely to see how the entity rises to the challenge of building those partnerships with community organisations so that when transport infrastructure is built it is built in response to the needs of the community and with the support of the community. There will be far less hassle at the Environment Court and at later stages if that proper planning and consultation is done at the beginning so that the infrastructure is widely agreed to. Bike Wise is a good example of how those partnerships can deliver excellent results and we are very pleased to have been able to help find a funding solution to keep Bike Wise going so that that national strategic focus on assisting cycling strategies is able to continue. 
The other important thing the legislation does is align all the safety agencies with the principles of the New Zealand Transport Strategy so that they all now have the objective of providing a safe sustainable integrated and responsive transport system. I have to say that all this fuss that is happening over “safety at reasonable cost” is a smokescreen and a diversion. It is actually an absurdity that people are getting so worked up about this. The concept of “safety at reasonable cost” is already embraced in the five objectives of the strategy. The agencies do not have any ability to provide safety without considering cost—the economic development imperative assures that. The safety imperative is there but it is simply broadened to include being responsive to the community to include public health issues and to include sustainability issues. 
Making sure that projects deliver on all of the five objectives of the strategy is a complex balancing act and that is now provided for in the law. It is more complex than “safety at reasonable cost” but it is also more real. The trouble with “safety at reasonable cost” was that it depended on a narrow and rigid cost-benefit analysis which hung entirely on what price one chose to put on a human life. If anybody thinks there is an objective measure of the price one should put on a human life then that person has taken economics to an absurd extreme. These things are value judgments and it is much more honest to admit that at the heart of transport spending there will be value judgments about how we weigh and balance these five much broader objectives rather than our just saying: “Right because we valued a human life at $2 million the benefit-cost ratio came out positive and therefore we should build this bit of road.” We also know that an awful lot of projects that would not meet the benefit-cost ratio were redrafted to pretend they were safety projects in order to come up with figures that would meet the benefit-cost ratio. So this was never an objective analysis; it was always just a way of trying to make the figures suit one’s purposes. 
We look forward to the next part of the New Zealand Transport Strategy being implemented and that is vehicle emission testing which will occur in 2006. Under the new framework we will have better air quality cleaner vehicles and higher standards for what can come out of the exhaust pipe. 
I am glad that the legislation does not in fact promote Peter Brown’s idea of passing the costs of roads we might want to build now on to future generations by funding them totally through borrowing. I make the point in case it has escaped some people’s notice that future generations will actually have quite a burden to cope with. For one thing if we build a lot of roads now and defer the capital costs that will mean a much higher maintenance cost for future generations to cope with. In addition to that they will be coping with much higher fuel prices because of the world oil situation and on top of that they will be coping with the costs of climate change and the energy policy changes that are needed to meet the climate change imperative. If on top of those challenges we also require them to find the capital plus interest costs to pay for roads we want to build now we are passing a completely unfair and unsustainable burden on to future generations and I am glad that the legislation does not do that. 
Another matter that is dealt with in these bills is that the rule covering regional land transport committees is amended to clarify that those committees which are of course central to the implementation in the regions of the objectives of the strategy and the legislation have a balanced mix in terms of the five objectives of the strategy and that the representatives on those committees are drawn from the wider community. It was always intended that regional land transport committees should draw in people with experience in public health experience in sustainability and experience in access for and mobility of the disadvantaged so that they can contribute directly on those committees and not simply assign those purposes to people who were already there for other reasons. So we see that as a very positive change. 
We look forward to the revised land transport strategies which those committees will produce and to the growing sustainability safety and human responsiveness of the New Zealand transport system as a result of this legislation.