O'Rourke Denis: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 13 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10501. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I want to talk about this Government’s appalling record on transport infrastructure. We have often heard speeches in this Chamber about roads of national significance but we never hear anything about rail because this Government does not care about rail; it only cares about more and bigger roads. That is a forlorn strategy doomed to failure as shown in many places worldwide. A good arterial roading system is essential but that does not mean putting all the eggs into that one basket leaving other land transport modes a basket case which New Zealand rail has certainly become.Rail in New Zealand is grossly neglected by this National Government funding for capital development of rail is pathetic and maintenance in many areas is clearly underfunded. The saga of failures of the Cook Strait ferries alone—[Interruption]The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. I would like to hear what the member is saying. There are too many other discussions going on. If one wants to talk that is what the lobbies are for. All right?DENIS O’ROURKE: I was saying that the saga of failures of Cook Strait ferries alone proves what I have been saying. It shows that rail is being run down across New Zealand quite deliberately by this Government.Rail in Northland needs special attention with neglected lines failing to attract customers because of the sheer poor quality of the product offered to them. The line to Northland must be improved if the port is to realise anything like its potential and the Napier-Gisborne line remains mothballed damaging economic viability for many exporters in that region. Here is what one of them wrote just this week: “Transferring product moved by road to rail has huge implications for our area. During peak season we are restricted by the amount of trucks we can obtain and transport cost increases with volume. However transporting this volume to rail will decrease transport costs to port making Gisborne competitive.”I would also have to say that if New Zealand is going to have any hope at all of meeting its climate change obligations we cannot do it with a run-down rail system. Our only hope in fact is to reduce the growth of transport of road freight and to invest in rail freight. That is in fact what the road transport industry itself wants too. New Zealand First of course has a much better policy than this National Government; we have instead of “RONS” a “RONI” policy—railways of national importance. That is a strategy to redevelop rail in New Zealand properly funded through a single land transport fund giving rail the priority it needs.Turning to regional roads despite desperate promises for the two-laning of 10 bridges in Northland during the recent by-election Minister Bridges will actually only in fact build four of them as now set out in the National Land Transport Programme confirmed by this month’s Northland Regional Council’s transport committee. So it is clear the Minister has no genuine plans to widen more than the four bridges currently budgeted for when only three more are part of corridor studies and may be considered in the future.As for the remaining three of the promised 10 the report says: “The Government may decide on an investment approach …” for them. This “maybe” approach to six out of 10 promised bridge-widening projects for Northland shows the Minister’s duplicity on that matter—promising one thing and delivering less than half. He may be “Bridges” by name and by promises but not by promises fulfilled. This is a good illustration in fact of the National Government’s failure everywhere on transport. As I have said that is seen by a run-down rail system—run down actually quite deliberately by this Government by not properly funding the infrastructure that the country needs poorly funded regional roads and totally inadequate commuter rail for Auckland. This is all caused by a Government that has not the remotest clue how to invest to solve New Zealand’s transport woes. Its approach is non-strategic.