Twyford Phil: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Twyford Phil: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 September 2012. Volume:683;Page:5102. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 The Land Transport Management Amendment Bill is a bad bill. National has corrupted the decision-making and resource-allocation process for building new State highways. It is spending $1 billion a year on seven hand-picked motorway projects. It has politicised the whole business of building State highways in this country. Secondly by pouring so much money into these white elephant motorway projects it is locking this country into a high-carbon fossil-fuelled dependent transport future. In the process it is neglecting public transport and it is neglecting the maintenance of our State highways and our local roads. It is doing this country a disservice. Those two qualities—the politicisation and corruption of our decision making and resource allocation for building State highways and its obsession with roads at the expense of every other part of our system—are the two qualities that define this wasteful and mismanaged transport policy under this National Government. 
This bill reflects that policy and what it does is it sets in concrete the wasteful and mismanaged approach that National has taken to transport. It sets up a gerrymandered decision-making process for new transport projects. It puts into concrete its obsession with roads at the expense of everything else and it centralises more and more decision-making power in Cabinet away from communities and away from the Public Service. How does it do this? For a start it gets rid of the existing purpose statement in the Land Transport Management Act. Currently the Land Transport Management Act’s purpose in section 3(1) is “to contribute to the aim of achieving an affordable safe responsive and sustainable land transport system.” Well under this bill that is gone—it is gone. Let us apply the “Holiday Highway” test to this provision in this bill. Is the “Holiday Highway” affordable—$1.7 billion for a duplicate route that at best will slice 5 to 10 minutes off the journey between Auckland and Wellsford? Is it safe? No because a $400 million job would actually fix the accident black spots much more cheaply and much faster. Is it responsive? No it is not responsive to our country’s transport needs. Is it a sustainable transport solution? No it certainly is not. It is an overpriced gold-plated duplicate motorway route. 
OK what else does it do? There are five transport objectives that also appear widely in the Land Transport Management Act. They are set out in section 14(a)(ii): “(A) assisting economic development: (B) assisting safety and personal security: (C) improving access and mobility: (D) protecting and promoting public health: (E) ensuring economic sustainability;”. They are five criteria that should be the guiding principles of our transport system. Under this bill they are gone; they are gone by lunchtime. Let us apply the “Holiday Highway” test again. Does the “Holiday Highway” assist economic development? The Minister of Transport likes to say that it is going to solve all the economic problems of Northland. For $1.7 billion you could buy a lot of high-quality economic development in Northland. Would the “Holiday Highway” assist safety and personal security? No we have already talked about the fact that the Operation Lifesaver alternative for $400 million would solve the safety problems on that road. Does it protect and promote public health? No. Is it a model of economic sustainability? No it is the opposite. If the Act was used properly these principles these criteria would mean that projects that meet those criteria would be prioritised. But this Government’s approach is to make the land transport management legislation less sustainable less economically viable and less concerned with sustainability and with public health. 
The project level decision-making criteria under this bill—the criteria that we have been discussing—are swept away and they are replaced with three criteria that this Government is using to drive its agenda of the roads of national significance. What are those criteria? First to give effect to the Government policy statement—all right? So if Gerry Brownlee says: “Yes we’re going to build the roads of national significance” he has a tick in the first box. What is the second criterion? Effectiveness. Well what is the definition of effectiveness? It is whether it will deliver on the strategic fit. So the second criterion is whether it will deliver what Gerry Brownlee wants! OK two ticks in the first two boxes. The third criterion is efficiency or the benefit-cost ratio. That Minister does not even believe in the benefit-cost ratio because the other day in this House he gave an entire speech to the House saying: “Actually don’t pay too much attention to the benefit-cost ratio because it is not very important.” So the three criteria are—first what is the Government’s policy statement? Let us build the roads of national significance. What is the second criterion? How good the project is at delivering on the Government’s policy. What is the third criterion? The benefit-cost ratio. The Minister does not even believe in it. So the Puhoi to Wellsford “Holiday Highway” rates on the first two criteria very poorly and on the third criterion it is not even very good either yet it can still be funded. 
This is how Gerry Brownlee and Steven Joyce have totally gerrymandered the decision-making process for how they spend $1 billion a year of our taxes on white elephant motorway projects. That is what this bill is about. It enshrines a circular and self-serving politicised decision-making model for how we spend billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money. Any pretence of rationality in the decision-making process has been dispensed with. Any expectation that our transport system will be integrated and multimodal has been done away with because under this bill the references to rail and coastal shipping are being deleted from the purpose statement of the Land Transport Management Act. 
We have two other big objections to this bill. One is that it takes power away from local communities. Does that surprise anybody? This is the Government that killed democracy in Canterbury and it does not give a damn about the democratic rights of communities. Look at the local government legislation that is before the House at the moment. It is all about taking power away from the elected representatives and local communities. So it should not surprise us that in this bill the Government abolished the mechanism that would allow communities to use a regional fuel tax that was introduced by the last Labour Government to ensure that communities at least had the potential to raise money in their own communities and to exercise some autonomy about their transport priorities. Even though the current legislation keeps power in the hands of the Minister that is not enough for him. That Government wants to abolish altogether the right and the opportunity to institute a regional fuel tax. That provision is all about giving the two-fingered salute to Auckland because that Minister has not only already said it cannot have a regional fuel tax to fund its transport agenda but also already ruled out network charging—congestion charging. The Government does not want Auckland or any other community to have any autonomy in their transport priorities. 
The bill also reduces the obligation to consult communities on regional transport plans but that is academic because under this Government there is no money available to fund local transport projects anyway because he has spent it all on the roads of national significance. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: That’s utter rubbish. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: It is virtually impossible to fund a new State highway project in this country because there is no money left in the kitty. The third objection that we have to this bill is that it allows the New Zealand Transport Agency not just to borrow for cash-flow smoothing as it can already do but to borrow to increase the size of the transport budget. It makes toll roads easier to implement and it also makes it easier to use public-private partnerships for big transport infrastructure projects. Although we on this side of the House are sceptical about whether public-private partnerships can even deliver value for transport infrastructure projects we are not in principle opposed to any of those three mechanisms. But we are opposed to a transport policy that blows the budget on gold-plated low-value projects and then comes back asking to use the credit card. This is a bad bill. It is entirely consistent with this Government’s wasteful and mismanaged transport policy and Labour will not be supporting it.