Coddington Deborah: Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Coddington Deborah: Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14036] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 To give Keith Locke credit— 
Simon Power 
: Steady! 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: It is late and I am feeling kind. He is the only Green person I see when I am running in the morning. He is the only Green person I see out there on his feet getting some air in his fur. But the Greens just do not get it do they? They think that if we put all the money into public transport and into rail in the eastern corridor then everyone’s problems will be solved. At one stage I had four children at four different schools in Auckland. It is impossible for working parents to get around Auckland efficiently just by using public transport. They have to have cars. It will not be all-polluting to use cars if there are good roads and congestion tolling which the Greens also do not seem to get. Congestion tolling to me is one of the best ways of getting rid of pollution because one of the worst things for the air is to have cars idle in the huge car-park we call the motorway. 
But in going to Part 3 and the schedules I see that this is the part that gets rid of the Auckland Regional Services Trust—or what was the Auckland Regional Services Trust but then became Infrastructure Auckland and will now become the Auckland Regional Holdings part of the Auckland Regional Council. It is not as Peter Brown said an amalgamation of local bodies; it is the creation of whole new bureaucracies. Let us just remember how we got to this stage. We now have schedule 5 in which we are already amending the Land Transport Management Act passed last year. It has been such an abject failure that we have to have this legislation to amend it. Let us backtrack rewind the video a bit and remember why we ended up with such a shambles as the Land Transport Management Act. 
What started out as a strategy to improve the roading system in Auckland was hijacked a bit on the way because of certain dinners at certain restaurants like Vinnies in Auckland because of certain discussions about prime-mover status and public-private partnerships and because of the Prime Minister and Ross Armstrong. 
The ACT party wanted an inquiry into that whole dodgy sleazy-looking affair where Ross Armstrong had the ear of the Prime Minister and was inviting people from Australia to come over and talk about prime-mover status. We wanted a select committee inquiry into it. We almost had one until the Greens were wooed by the Labour Government and promised that they would be given all the special concessions for alternative forms of land transport if they did not support an inquiry into the Ross Armstrong shenanigans. We saw evidence of that when Jeanette Fitzsimons stood up here in the Chamber and announced the land transport management strategy with the Labour Government. So we ended up with that disastrous legislation which we are now already amending with this bill. 
Rod Donald 
: Excellent legislation. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: Yes well the Greens would say it is excellent legislation because it will not allow a single road to be built will it? There will not be one road completed under that—[ 
Interruption 
] I say to Mr Donald that of course it will be reduced because everybody will go broke. But the Greens do not care about that. They care about humanity but they do not care about individuals. That is the role of the socialist. 
As I said before I do not usually agree with Brian Rudman. He is probably further to the left than most people in this Parliament; in fact if he took another step to the left he would bump into Joe Stalin. But members should listen to what Brian Rudman wrote in April this year when he talked about the dismantling of Infrastructure Auckland and the transfer of assets under the management of the Auckland Regional Council. He said: “Now Big Sister Helen Clark has decided that her fellow Aucklanders might just be adult enough to be trusted with the stewardship of 15 percent of our money but we have to submit our bank accounts to her in 2008 so she can check we haven’t indulged in anything she considers frivolous.”