Ward Mike: Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Ward Mike: Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:13997] 
MIKE WARD (Green) 
: 
 The Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill recognises that Auckland is a special case with special transport needs and circumstances that are different from other parts of New Zealand. While overall responsibility for land transport will continue to reside with the Auckland Regional Council through its regional land transport committee a new council-controlled organisation the Auckland Regional Transport Authority will be established to undertake the integrated planning funding and development of Auckland’s land transport. The bill will also require Auckland local authorities to change their planning policy documents and make the land-use provisions consistent with the Auckland regional growth strategy and the Auckland regional land transport strategy. 
The bill has the support of all Auckland local authorities and the overwhelming support of the majority of submitters. The Auckland Regional Transport Authority must plan fund and develop Auckland’s transport system in a way that contributes to an integrated safe responsive and sustainable land transport system for the Auckland region and a system that is consistent with the New Zealand land transport strategy and the Land Transport Management Act. 
Auckland with a million people and 700000 cars and growing has to transform itself from an overwhelmingly motorcar-dependent city with all the congestion safety health environmental and economic downsides that such an approach imposes to an integrated system that leaves Auckland with a much wider range of choices about how to move products and people including by car and truck where that is appropriate but on roads that have the space to accommodate them and without the delays air pollution inconvenience or enormous cost on personal regional or national budgets. 
We are concerned that while New Zealand has a great deal of expertise and experience in the business of designing and building roads our expertise in other areas is much more limited. We need look no further than Wellington to see how well public transport can work and how it can be made attractive and effective. However when it comes to car pooling or pedestrian and cycling strategies our efforts have been piecemeal. None the less one can travel to Nelson to visit the Broadgreen Intermediate School and check out its cycle stands—they are full. Along the back of Broadgreen Intermediate there is a cycleway. Put in place good cycling facilities and people will make those choices. Auckland could do it just as well. Of course cycling and walking are not just good ways of moving; they are also healthier ways of moving and they take the heat off the motorways. 
While we may have little expertise at persuading people to use their feet and their cycles or to use buses and trains we have even less when it comes to any of the elements that demand management or land-use mechanisms for changing transport behaviour. While the capital costs of demand management are much less expensive than the motorway model they none the less require expertise and a substantial shift in mindset. The Auckland growth strategy is an attempt to plan a more coherent future for Auckland—one where people are better able to live work play shop and go to school first and foremost without the need to spend too many hours every week sitting in their motorcars moving very slowly and many more hours working to earn the money to pay for the experience but more important simply to be able to live in their own communities without moving at all. 
The Land Transport Management Bill charges the Auckland Regional Land Transport committee and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority with providing sustainable healthy integrated options. Providing Auckland’s local body leaders can see beyond the motorcar and motorway model long enough to make their resource management documents consistent with the Auckland regional growth strategy that most beautiful city could go from being a seriously dysfunctional urban sprawl to an intelligently connected series of attractive and unique communities but it will require vision imagination and flair that has not been seen there since the days of Mayor Robbie. 
The bill provides a framework. I mentioned earlier the lack of expertise. I know that the Ministry of Transport is aware that it does not currently have the expertise. It is a gap that will need to be filled urgently if Auckland and the rest of New Zealand are to measure up to the new responsibilities. 
 During the hearings and since I have suggested a need for the equivalence of Transit but with expertise in the alternatives to roading. We now know that Transfund is obliged to fund a wider range of transport alternatives. It is going to do that only if the Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority have a similar level of expertise as that provided by Transit New Zealand. How else are they going to come up with the other strategies? The alternatives to roads may be cheaper and they are certainly healthier but they are not free and they will require the Auckland local authorities to talk to their communities and work out ways to make the alternatives more attractive. 
Recently Auckland City contemplated turning itself into a motorcar racetrack. Had I been an Aucklander I might have been a tad upset. My reaction however was tempered by the thought that if Auckland City was capable of reducing its demand on roads or tempering its motorcar fetish for even long enough for something as frivolous as a motorcar race how could it possibly claim that it might be too difficult to effect a similar shift in behaviour if it meant a healthier cleaner less congested city? 
This bill and the Land Transport Management Act that underpins it are bold moves to create a more sustainable New Zealand. Most of the things we do are highly unsustainable—they use up more energy than we can continue to provide and they use up future generations’ share of the planet’s resources. They also pollute and undermine the capacity of the planet to sustain and undermine our capacity to enjoy life. 
Sustainability has never mattered as much as it matters now. With oil running out and prices becoming higher it is inevitable that it will become even more expensive as a way of getting around. Barely a day goes by without attention being drawn to the reality of global warming and climate change. While New Zealand with a population of 4 million and Auckland with a population of just 1 million may have little to contribute on a planet with 6 billion people that does not excuse us from our responsibilities to play our part on this overcrowded and overheated planet which is crying out for examples of an intelligent approach to transport. Auckland could just provide such an example. 
But even if global warming turns out to be a myth—and I do not believe for one minute that it will—Aucklanders actually deserve real choice. This bill at least provides an enhanced likelihood of that choice. It is not just a choice of another road or 10000 models of motorcar but an opportunity to live in self-reliant communities that minimise the need to travel—a choice between fast regular and frequent bus services and comprehensive rail services. The motorcar option has served nobody particularly well but it has served the transport-disadvantaged particularly badly. Those who travel outside the daylight hours those who are too old or too young or too poor or those who simply prefer not to drive or those who would like to cycle or walk have particularly limited choices. So the Greens are pleased to support this legislation and look forward to an Auckland that is a more pleasant place to visit and a more pleasant place to travel around.