Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 July 2008. Volume:648;Page:17066. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 With regard to this opportunity of debating a bill to amend the principal Act the Land Transport Management Act 2003 I could not let the opportunity go past to test just whether the Government is genuinely serious about welcoming public-private partnerships—that is private-sector participation. When I have looked at projects overseas on a regular basis from the Millau Bridge in the south of France to the M6 Toll in Birmingham to the M7 in Sydney to the ConnectEast project in Melbourne I have seen that those projects have all had a concession period in the order of 50 60 or sometimes 65 or 70 years. The private funders have all said to me that the legislation in New Zealand is so restrictive at 35 years maximum that every time they try to configure up a funding proposal they find that they just simply cannot make the return in that time frame. 
Thirty-five is not the absolute number because if we read the principal Act it states that the term of a concession agreement must not exceed 35 years and the Minister gets to set what that time is. It may be that the Minister chooses 25 or 35 years but I would like to remove that artificial limit of 35 years so I have put forward an amendment to the principal Act that changes the figure from “35” to “70”. I stress again to members that that is just a maximum. It will be a real test as to whether Labour really does want the private sector involved in public-private partnerships because that would be the one issue that I have had raised with me as being the barrier more than any other by the financial institutions. If 35 years has to be the limit to recover one’s net investment in the public-private partnerships then it just cannot work. I would say to the Minister again that she should look at any of the very successful public-private partnerships that we know about including some that I have seen around the place—certainly in New South Wales Victoria Britain France and other places—and she will find that none of them have been able to be configured up with a concession period of 35 years. That is the reason for the amendment I am putting forward in my name. 
I will come back to the eastern suburbs of Auckland because that poses an important question. People ask me where if they are to pay a regional petrol tax their double-track electrified railway line is. They ask where their dedicated busway is. Where are their options to use public transport? The people of Invercargill do not want to pay for all of these things but why should the people of the east Auckland area pay for all these things when there is no railway line in sight for them? There probably never will be because of the economics of trying to build a new railway passenger system and so on. I think that those people have a genuine issue. 
The next issue I would raise with the Minister which is quite an interesting one that needs some work done on it is to do with the fact that the power has now been granted to the Secretary for Transport to designate what a State highway is. One of the problems we have had in this country for a long time—and I acknowledge that it was the case under both National and Labour so I am not getting at anybody—is that the designation between either State highway or local road is too much of a blunt instrument. I think that we probably need to go to say a three or four-tier category like a number of other jurisdictions do. We should have roads of national importance roads of regional importance roads of strategic importance and then local roads. I find it bizarre that in my electorate when I look out of my electorate office each day I look out on to the six-lane Pakuranga Highway which carries 64000 vehicles per day. I want to stress that number because it is more vehicles per day than any other road other than the motorway—64000 vehicles per day; more vehicles than any road other than the motorway. Yet that is a local road funded administered and operated by Manukau City and its ratepayers. I wonder why that is when I can look at another road elsewhere even in Auckland that because it has the designation “State Highway” in front of it is 100 percent funded from petrol tax and road-user charges because people were lucky enough to get that designation. 
I think that if there is one thing we will need to do in the future and I know that other jurisdictions have done it quite well it is to try to segment the various roads. We will have to say that this is a road of national importance and it will be 100 percent this is a road of regional importance and it will be 75:25 and this is a road of local importance and it might be 50:50 as we do. It may be that we could even get down to some small roads that are more the property developer and local territorial authority’s responsibility to be funding the vast bulk of but I would just stress again that I am not sure whether giving the Secretary for Transport this power is the right thing to do. I know that when Transit used to do the complete review of what was designated in the State highway system each year there were all sorts of pressures on people. Some of the local authorities wanted their roads out of their books and they wanted them moved to being State highways because if they could get that then those roads would be 100 percent funded by the State. Others were always on about and asking why this road was a State highway and another road was not. This legislation will confer to the Secretary for Transport quite strong powers. 
The last thing I want to do is to mention what I think is grossly unfair and I hope that at some stage this matter can be reconsidered and that is the representation on the regional transport committees by road users. It was brought to our attention along the way by the Road Transport Forum and by the Automobile Association that their people pay for all of this and I guess that is exactly right. It is the motorcar driver and the truckdriver who pay either the petrol tax or the road-user charges and therefore they should seriously have a voice. It should not have to be a crowded-out voice or multiple voices where they can win the day by their numbers but I would have thought that the old “no taxation without representation” principle really really should have kicked in here. Yet the regional transport committees—we are dropping the word “land” I remember—are still not acknowledging that those people have a right to both be represented and have voting rights. Yes they have to be consulted but so too does Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and everybody else. If we look at the consultation list I cannot think of anybody who will not be consulted along the way; in fact we probably should have put in an amendment stating that anyone who was not consulted will be anyway. But these people are the ones who pay the piper. I think that the Automobile Association and the Road Transport Forum represent very well the vast bulk of either motorcar drivers or commercial road users and I would have thought that letting them have a place at the table of the regional transport committees that are setting regional strategies would be the right thing to do. 
I said that that would be my last point but I would point out one other problem I have with regional transport programmes. Something like the Kopu Bridge is in the Waikato zone. I know that for the Waikato region Kopu Bridge is not its high priority. It is not its highest priority; there are lots of things to do with the Waikato Expressway and lots of things to do with other roads around Hamilton Cambridge Huntly and Ngaruawahia. But the biggest priority of the Kopu Bridge rests with people from Auckland and with people from the Coromandel who are trying to get to and from Auckland. We have people living on one side of the region who are trying to get through that bottleneck to the other side and when they are locked blocked and stopped it is by far a major priority. But when it comes time for the region where that located point is to set its priorities it does not. So again one of the issues we have about informing the National Land Transport Programme is that it should be very careful not to be driven solely by the regional plans. Thank you sir.