Norman Russel William: General Debate 
Norman Russel William: General Debate 
[Volume:667;Page:14431] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I start today by congratulating Mayor elect Celia Wade-Brown. The counting of the special votes has been finalised today and Celia Wade-Brown has been elected mayor of our capital city Wellington. It is an interesting development that both Wellington and Auckland—congratulations also go to Len Brown in Auckland—are led by mayors who support sustainable transport options. We now have the bizarre spectacle where the Minister of Transport is completely at odds with the leadership of two of the largest cities in our country Auckland and Wellington— 
Sue Moroney 
: And Hamilton. 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN 
: —and Hamilton as well. Pro-train councillors have been elected in Hamilton. 
A spectre is haunting the Minister of Transport and that spectre is green transport options. For the first time we find that leaders of our major urban centres are promoting sustainable transport options while the Minister of Transport is locked in the 1950s with his idea that we can build motorways to reduce congestion. Building motorways does not reduce congestion; building motorways induces more traffic and results in more congestion. As Transit used to say famously all we ever do is move the congestion point. 
There is one really good way to reduce congestion in our major urban centres. The people who have just voted in the local body elections in Auckland Wellington Hamilton and elsewhere have chosen that particular method and that is mass public transport. It is also active transport such as cycling and walking. When we build trains and train lines when we build light rail when we have more efficient bus services and when more people can walk or cycle to work then we reduce the amount of traffic on roads. It is one of the paradoxes that the major beneficiaries of more public transport are road users because it frees up the roading network when more people move off the roads and into mass transit or active transport options. 
The other side of course is that it reduces our greenhouse emissions and makes our cities much more livable. New Zealand has very high transport greenhouse emissions. They have increased by about 70 percent since 1990 and that is connected to our obsession over the previous 10 years with building more and more motorways and inducing more and more traffic and hence consuming more and more oil. It is also tied to the fact that oil is a finite resource. Just today the Parliamentary Library released a paper that looked at some of the issues around oil. The paper concluded that oil was going to increase in price quite significantly. It looked at international projections as well as domestic projections and the impact that increase would have on our domestic transport options. Of course our domestic transport system is entirely dependent on oil because we have thrown billions and billions of dollars at white elephant motorway projects instead of into sustainable transport options that actually reduce oil use. 
If we wanted to get home faster then we would support the kinds of options that people in Wellington and Hamilton have just voted for such as better public transport. If we wanted to reduce our greenhouse emissions we would support those options. If we wanted to reduce our dependence on oil we would support those kinds of sustainable transport options. If we wanted to live in more sustainable and more livable cities where we do not have giant motorways slicing and dicing our communities then we would support those kinds of sustainable transport options. That is exactly what the people of Auckland Wellington and elsewhere have just done. 
We now have the bizarre situation of conflict with central government which is still dominated by people from the 1950s who think the solution to congestion is to build more motorways. We have the conflict between the 1950s thinking of Steven Joyce and the National Government and what the people of Auckland and Wellington are desperately calling out for. They are the ones who live in big urban centres and understand that we cannot reduce congestion by building more and more motorways. That does not solve congestion. The urgent priorities in Wellington are around light rail both to the airport and to the hospital. The urgent priorities in Auckland are around a train system that extends through the central business district loop and also out to the airport. 
This is a great day for green politics in New Zealand. It is a great day for everyone who supports sustainable transport options for Aotearoa New Zealand.