van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): When is the rubber going to meet the road with transport commitments under this Government? Promise after promise has not been met. It's a failure to deliver. Look at the Safe Network Programme. The Government announced $1.4 billion to upgrade roads State highways last December. Waikato was going to be one of the priority areas under that first year of the programme. We're nine months into this now and we still don't have a plan for the projects in the Waikato. If that's a priority I'd hate to see what happens to the regions that are not. This is simply not good enough. Eight hundred and seventy kilometres apparently and yet then seven months later another press release from the Government and now suddenly they're doing 3300 kilometres under the Safe Network Programme. No change in the value. It's still $1.4 billion but now they're able to quadruple the distance covered with that same commitment. How does that happen? They also said they're going to upgrade local roads with that. Great for the Waikato" I was told by the Minister in written questions. So I said "Great. What's the list? Which roads are being covered?" "Oh we have no lists of local roads being covered. We cannot tell you how many kilometres will be covered." So it's pluck a figure out of the air and make it up. It is simply not good enough. In the Waikato we should have had an expressway extension down to Piarere being built. It was committed to under the previous Government. This Government scrapped it. There's so many high risk intersections in that area dangerous roads that need improvements. So I said "What's going to be done about this?" The Minister responded saying "We're putting in electronic signs." "Great" I said. "When are they going to be operating?" "End of January—end of January this year." It took until July and August for those signs to be operating—more than six months late. Why were they late? Oh they couldn't find a power supply. They couldn't get consent from the landowner themselves. They couldn't get traffic management sorted. This is the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA). Come on! Surely we can do better than that. The expressway would have bypassed those intersections and absolutely should still be done. The traffic volumes warrant it. The safety demands are increasing. The Waikato needs that investment.The Government said they were also going to do some safety upgrades on the existing piece of State Highway 1 to help mitigate some of that. Those safety measures four of them were meant to be completed by May this year. We're now in September. How many of these have been done do you think? Zero. Not a single one of the four commitments have yet been completed. Due in May it's now September and none delivered. Another broken promise by this Government and a failure to deliver. Then we come to Morrinsville the intersection of State Highway 26 and Avenue Road—a dangerous area. It's had far too many accidents. There were meant to be upgrades there. I called a public meeting because there'd been no action. Two hundred people turned out for that along with NZTA and police and council and we got some commitments. Great. There was going to be an upgrade to the traffic island. That would be installed in a few weeks. It was installed after six weeks. Then the police said they would put out some speed cameras. They did that: 60 infringements in the space of a few hours. Every four minutes someone was speeding and being ticketed through that intersection. It shows how important it is to shift that speed zone. It's a simple request: push the 50 kilometres zone out a few hundred metres. That's what the community needs for our safety and it's not being delivered on.A temporary roundabout was another commitment that they gave for that intersection. They'd make a decision by the end of June they said. We have the letter right here: "End of June a decision on the temporary roundabout will be made." We're in September. We still don't have a commitment from this Government. It's not good enough. The safety of residents and commuters in Morrinsville is being compromised. They deserve better. And as if that wasn't bad enough the result of my advocacy for the constituents is that the Minister has now blocked me from directly meeting with the NZTA. I have to go via the Minister's office instead. What a disgrace. This Government should be doing better. They've promised so much in transport and they've failed to deliver time after time. Commuters in the Waikato and residents in the Waikato need a better response than this. And as if that wasn't bad enough there's a commitment to rail from commuters to travel between Hamilton and Auckland: $78 million. Well now that's blown out to $91 million and the project hasn't even started yet. And of course it's not stopping in Te Kauwhata Pōkeno or Tuakau at the top end of the electorate. Transport across the Waikato is being failed by this Government. They need to do better. Waikato deserves more."