Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 July 2008. Volume:648;Page:17079. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I guess when we are talking about the title of this bill we need to try to summarise some of the things in the bill and try to analyse whether the title conveys that impression. I think I would have named this bill the “Mixed Bag Land Transport Bill” because some things in it are very good and I have already canvassed those. The hypothecation issue was long overdue and it puts to bed the argument over the years of how much money was being siphoned off to the Crown account. Now all those revenues that come from petrol tax road-user charges and motor vehicle registration— 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: We’ve come a long way on this one. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Well actually Mr Peters is one of the earlier converters to this view but I think at the time when the economy was still struggling to get into balance across the board it was a bit hard to justify. But with the levels of surpluses where they are now I think it is the right time to do it. So yes we all learn and I think we should give some credit to people who have learnt. 
Peter Brown 
: Just apologise; we’ll listen. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No I do not need to apologise. There are other good things in the bill like getting on to a proper planning cycle. I will be interested in the Government policy statement because the “GPS” the Government policy statement is a sort of a direction of funding and funding priorities— 
John Hayes 
: I thought it was something that goes in a vehicle. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No it is not the global positioning system; the Government policy statement is about funding priorities and areas where the funding will fall across the regime. I guess that that in part will offset the concerns I have about the funding agency being included in the provision agency and so on. 
Having said all that I get back to some of the stuff National did not approve of. When we had the land transport agencies before the select committee with the Minister a couple of weeks ago we learnt that one of the reasons they finished the last financial year with $220 million unspent was that there were too many pots of money. They said: “There is some money in this fund here but it can’t be used for that. There is some money in this regional fund for this region but it can’t be moved to that region.” It was clear from that what happens when we build too many pots and I think there are already too many pots in the land transport account. We would be better to actually get rid of all those little internal barriers and use the money where best we can and if it is not available for that year use it somewhere else. 
Hon Annette King 
: He’d take if off them. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No actually I would not take it off anyone. If they were ready to go and their project was up they are the ones that should go ahead. The problem is that that money was unspent because some people who were supposed to be up and ready were not and they were not able to take advantage of it. In fact Wayne Donnelly I think gave Tauranga as a good example of a project that was supposed to be up and running but was not ready and had to be delayed for some time and the money could not be spent elsewhere. So we were quite strongly opposed. 
What is not in this legislation? If I wanted a better title for this bill it would be the “What’s Not in the Land Transport Management Bill”. If there was truly a desire by the Labour Government to see alternative funding mechanisms there would be more in this bill. I guess that after hypothecation is passed into law it is very unlikely we will see Ministers of Finance allowing much more dedicated fund money. There will not be Crown money or other stuff coming into it so alternative sources of revenue will have to be found. Elsewhere in the world those alternative sources are legion: private debt public debt public-private partnerships private equity schemes infrastructure bonds all sorts of shadow tolling regimes and so on. Yet we seem to be absolutely fixated on funding our land transport infrastructure on the one tired old boring regime of spending only the current revenue that comes in. I do not know anybody who bought his or her first house by paying cash. People went to debt markets they got the infrastructure early at the then price and then they serviced that debt over time. I do not know any big business that builds plant and equipment or commits to major capital expenditure without using debt funding or capital markets—that is what they are there for. 
The Rt Hon Winston Peters asked me why we needed to change the concession period from 35 years. All I say to him is that he should look at every one of the major projects that I think we could try to emulate. He should look at the ConnectEast and the CityLink around Victoria the M7 in Sydney or some of the other projects there. He should go to the North-South Bypass Tunnel in Brisbane the Millau bridge in the south of France the M6 Toll in Britain done by the Labour Government and the Kilkock to Kinnegad Motorway in Ireland. Every one of those projects has had a concession period considerably longer than 35 years. When developers were asked about it they said that to get a return in that period either the toll had to be put at a grossly unrealistic level so that no one would use it or if there was a very long concession period the toll could have a flat rate at a realistic level so the return could be attained over time. And I am sad that that was not in this legislation.