Genter Julie Anne: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: General Debate[Sitting date: 06 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3254. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green):Tomorrow Auckland Council will vote on the 3-year transport budget it will be adopting. Although the proposal involves a significant increase in funding in rail busways and public transport—all the stuff that Aucklanders have been asking for—unfortunately it has to be funded through rates rises because this National Government is failing Auckland and not putting the transport budget into the projects that Aucklanders really need and want.Last week my colleague Denise Roche our Auckland issues spokesperson asked the Minister of Transport Simon Bridges questions about transport funding and investment in Auckland. I have to set the record straight because surprisingly Minister Bridges got quite a few things wrong. Firstly he said that the National Government had spent $1.6 billion on rail in Auckland more than the Green Party had ever spent. I am not sure whether the Minister realises that the Green Party has not yet been part of a formal coalition in a Government and therefore although we could have perhaps dipped into our parliamentary office budgets to try to fund transport infrastructure in Auckland it would not have paid for much and it really is the responsibility of the parties in Government to spend the transport budget.That $1.6 billion he is referring to was not of course the initiative or the idea of this National Government. It is funding that was entirely committed under the previous Labour Government. In 2007 $1.1 billion was committed to Project DART and $500 million to the electrification of Auckland’s rail network largely thanks to the Green Party putting pressure on the Labour Government at the time. So despite not being in Government the Greens were instrumental in getting half a billion dollars of investment in Auckland rail. Of course once National came into power that $500 million turned into a loan so rather than actually paying for Auckland’s rail infrastructure it is forcing Auckland ratepayers to pay it back while it does pay for rail upgrades in Wellington. So this National Government has not committed a single dollar to my knowledge to new passenger rail infrastructure in Auckland since coming to power in 2008.This is despite phenomenal growth in the rail network. We saw patronage growth of 20 percent in the past year. We are now on track to hit the Government’s arbitrary target of 20 million rail passengers by 2017 which is 3 years earlier than the Prime Minister’s threshold for bringing funding for this City Rail Link forward and actually starting it on time. Of course that project needed to be started yesterday because it is going to have to be open by 2017 to meet the needs of Aucklanders. At the rate we are going now we will be lucky if it is open by 2021 or 2022 but that is only if National actually sees the light and commits some funding to this central project.Mr Bridges also claimed that 99 percent of people commute on the roads. I think he probably does know that it is closer to 80 percent who commute by car. Of course in central Auckland less than half of people commute by car. That is because they have options. When you provide high-quality affordable public transport options people use them. They would like to have more. This graph shows what Aucklanders want. It says right here that Aucklanders want much more spending on buses on cycling on public transport and on rail. Do you know how many more want more spending on State highways? It is very few because they know that when you make it easier for people to take public transport you free up the roads for those who need to use them.This diagram is the capital investment to set the record straight. We have had 8 years. We are finally seeing progress in Auckland rail thanks to the commitments made by the previous Labour Government thanks to the pressure by the Greens. But we are going to hit a wall because there has been no investment over the past 8 years. All of those projects are coming to completion and no new projects are yet in place because of the failure of this National Government to invest in Auckland. This diagram is the Government’s transport plan for the next 10 years. This is its new capital expenditure. This much is on State highways which carry a tiny proportion of traffic volumes and this much is on public transport infrastructure. Will that make it easier for Auckland families to get to work? No. The Government is spending a billion dollars to fast track the Pūhoi to Wellsford road which will be used by less than 1 percent of Auckland commuters.I ask the National Government to get some perspective get into the 21st century and start investing in the modes that are missing in Auckland that Aucklanders desperately want that will make it more affordable to get to work and to get to school and that will actually do more to reduce the pressure on the roads than anything it is planning to do. The Green Party would do that. We have a costed plan.