Williamson Maurice: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Williamson Maurice: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:631;Page:3060] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I am delighted to take a call about an organisation that I now think is appallingly dysfunctional and actually now needs to be completely overhauled by the new Minister Annette King. I am of course referring to Transit New Zealand. I can back up my claim because of the number of huge volumes that Transit has released starting with this plan in my hand which came out at the end of July last year—about 9 months ago. Transit issued this huge thick glossy document with tables charts and graphs and stuck on the front of it a 10c sticker that states: “This document does not include the funding for the State highways from the extra $500 million from the Government announced last week.” 
 So Transit produced a huge document like that. The Government had put out a press release just the week before that said the Government had found $500 million extra for roading. I guess everyone was quite excited about that. The money just fell from the sky. There was no rigorous process. Dr Cullen announced that day that he had found $500 million and it was all going to roading. I guess I was quite pleased as I thought the money was going to a good cause. And then the update came in August. Members will again remember this. It was another big thick glossy document with again a lot of charts and pictures and some new time lines for a whole lot of projects. 
Members of this House will understand that Transit sets the agenda with these State highway forecasts and communities up and down the country pore over them with great aplomb and then say: “Excellent so that’s where we are on the 10-year programme.” I think every member of this House would expect that if a 10-year plan were to change between July and the August update projects would be moved maybe 3 or 6 months. There might be a bit of slippage. If a bridge was due to be started next April the date might be moved to June. Everyone could live with that. 
But what did the document do? It actually did very little because between the August one and this big thick one—this is the mother of all documents which Transit issued in February—was a complete reversal of a whole lot of stuff that had come out in the August document. Again I say to the Minister in the chair the Hon Harry Duynhoven that it is fine if a community sees a 3-month slippage in the latest February update. 
But I will give some examples because there are some doozies. When the August update came out the Taupo eastern arterial was scheduled to start in 2007-08. By my calculation that is next year because we are in 2006. The Mayor of Taupo the Taupo District Council and a whole lot of the developers who were going to plan a whole lot of property around that said that 2007-08 for the Taupo eastern arterial was great. That was August. In February the document came out and they must have spent some time going through and through it but they could not find the project. Oh no. The start date of the Taupo eastern arterial had not slipped by a few months; it had gone from the 10-year plan. It is not in the years out to 2015 in the latest plan. 
We then saw some lovely sophistry from Mark Burton the member for Taupo—the headline on the front page of his local newspaper stated: “MP: Bypass delay is not acceptable”. He is a Minister in the Government. We asked Transit when it came before the select committee for the financial review whether it had alerted the Minister of Transport that this is the document it would have to put out based on the funding shortfall it had now identified and what the Minister had said he would do about it. Rick van Barneveld told us that Transit had alerted the Minister of Transport in November last year that there was going to be this problem. It had discussed it with the Minister—and the Minister of Finance—right through to December. Transit executives then went away on the Christmas break and got no assurances from the Government at all that the problem would be fixed. 
When all hell broke loose on the day that this report was released the Acting Minister of Finance Trevor Mallard within 1 hour said: “Don’t worry. All that stuff that Transit has put out is not valid any more because we will find the $685 million shortfall that was identified.” 
I say to this Committee that is an appalling way to do business. Transit is dysfunctional and admits it. I want to quote from the log of an interview with the chief executive of Transit Mr van Barneveld by Sean Plunket. I think it is a classic. Sean Plunket said to Mr van Barneveld: “But surely you knew that the $685 million shortfall wouldn’t be tolerated?”. Mr van Barneveld said: “Well no. We have to go on planning it because no Minister would give us an indication that they would plug the gap.” Yet the Minister said so an hour after the release of this document. But the doozy of this interview is that Mr van Barneveld said: “Well I look forward to working with Transit’s board and the Minister to understand the certainty of funding and then to reflect that very quickly to the community in New Zealand who are concerned about the timing of our projects so we can get on and do this quickly.” 
I think that Sean Plunket felt like I did—I do not actually know what that means. So he asked: “You don’t sound like you think the Government’s assurance of money in the bank are here?”. Mr van Barneveld said: “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to comment on that.” Sean Plunket then interrupted and said: “I think it’s entirely appropriate because it would seem that you’re the chief executive of Transit and you are responsible for putting out the sort of projections and draft plans that have caused so much controversy here Mr Barneveld. So I am just wondering whether or not you can tell us if you have anything more from the Government that would back up their claims this morning that they are going to make good the shortfall of $685 million that caused the problem in the first place.” Mr van Barneveld the chief executive of Transit said—and this is a classic—“I’ve only heard that advice this morning as you did on the radio.” Now how can Transit run a Government entity like the State highway roading business when its board members know there is a $685 million shortfall? 
They published an appallingly hopeless document that has so many mistakes. My favourite—not the Taupo eastern arterial actually—is Kopu Bridge which was scheduled for 2008-09 at best then slipped to 2010-11 and is now sitting at 2014-15 in the plan for the start of the project. Yet Rick van Barneveld said to Sean Plunket that he had only heard about it as Sean Plunket had on the radio that morning. Thank goodness that the chief executive of Transit was not having a shower when that news was on because he would have carried on labouring under the impression that he had a $685 million shortfall. 
I say to this Minister and to the Minister of Finance that in Thursday’s Budget where everyone truly believes that the $685 million will be in there to make up the shortfall that was identified in this last round that is not even getting us back to where we need to be. When the Government crows that it has fixed the gap and has taken the $685 million back and has plugged the hole let me make it clear that that is not even starting to address the shortfall of those projects. 
I move to Transit’s dysfunctional nature in another area which is to do with its pseudo-economic development role. Transit says that there are two ways of dealing with roading. Either when there is economic development and growth we say that if that is the level of growth we had better get on and build these roads to cope. Or we can take the Transit dog in the manger attitude—that is the level of economic growth we see happening in Warkworth Taupo or Queenstown and in every case we will race off to the court to block the project. Yes the territorial local authority the regional council the community and business want the project and all the consents have been done for it to happen. Then the politicised body that Transit has become—with the president of the Labour Party Mike Williams and John Wright a former Alliance MP—has now taken it totally under its wing to decide that it will determine where economic growth will occur. 
That is not Transit’s role. I say that to Transit today. Its role is to provide the State highway network. At the select committee Transit said that it did not want traffic flowing on to its roads. I say to Transit that they are not Transit’s roads. Those roads are owned by the people who pay petrol tax and road-user charges to fund the building of those roads. I have never seen a more dysfunctional body which puts out document after document. Then when we get to the doozy of them all the Government says that it is all the National Party’s fault.