Key John: Land Transport Management Bill — Third Reading 
Key John: Land Transport Management Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:613;Page:9813] 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 Some people say the actions of members of Parliament outside this House bring this House into disrepute and others argue that the actions of members inside this House bring it to disrepute. There are people who would argue that the general debate is a fiasco and that the mud-slinging that goes on in this House brings nothing to democracy in New Zealand. But what really brings this Parliament into disrepute is what happens when a Minister is charged with a problem as large as this one and when that Minister and the Government have facts and statistics at their fingertips that are so overwhelming that only a weak Minister and a pathetic Government would choose to ignore them. 
This bill was heralded some time ago as a landmark piece of legislation in New Zealand. What an absolute joke that is!  
Trans-Tasman 
 wrote this bill up as being the pinnacle of the Minister’s career. I certainly do hope it is not because otherwise he will not have a Crown car to drive around in. That is how bad the situation will be. What an absolute joke this bill is! Larry Baldock of United Future the party that has had four positions on this bill—one in every direction of the compass—tried to tell us that this legislation is a function of MMP. It is a sell-out to the Greens—an absolute sop—and then a couple of things were added for the benefit of United Future just to try to make it feel good. What an absolute joke this bill is! The reality is that this bill is all about the Government wanting to go about forming coalition arrangements and shoring up its support which I might add it will desperately need in 2005 because the way the Government is going means it is absolute toast. The Government is running scared; it is like a deer in the headlights. But that is for another day. 
This bill is not about fixing the problems in Auckland. What are the problems in Auckland and New Zealand? Let me just talk about Auckland where 49 more people are added every day to a city that has not had its motorway network completed since 1963. Since 1963 the good people of Auckland have been waiting to have their motorway network completed yet every day we add 49 people and they bring 25 cars with them. What do we see? We see lost economic activity of something in the order of $1 billion to $2 billion—that is somewhere in the order of 1 to 2 percent of gross domestic product. Any member of this House would think that the Minister of Finance the Hon Dr Michael Cullen and the Minister of Transport Paul Swain would take a moment to go out of their plush offices in the Beehive sit down get their calculators out and work out just how much tax revenue would come off $1 billion to $2 billion of economic activity. But they are so worried about firming up their coalition agreement with that hopeless party called the Greens that they cannot even work out that this country and this Government alone would make $200 million to $300 million. The Government does not want to tackle the problem—not with this legislation. 
The Government has made no attempt to look at the structure of roading in Auckland which is a complete shambles. The Government asked Barry Curtis to say a few words on its behalf because it did not have the courage to say that the structure was so unworkable that nothing would happen in Auckland. Seven territorial local authorities Transfund Transit the Auckland Regional Transport Network the Auckland Regional Council and Infrastructure Auckland are all in completely different places doing completely— 
Hon Paul Swain 
: We’re going to fix that. 
JOHN KEY 
: We have been waiting for a long time for the Minister to fix it and we would be absolutely delighted if he did. The National Party would cheer him on because that is why the Hon Roger Sowry wrote to him and asked him whether we could support the Government. Roger Sowry pleaded and begged with the Minister and the Minister did not respond. Why not? It was because of those words: “I’m sorry we’re a bit busy doing our coalition arrangements with that hopeless party the Greens and that four-position party United Future. We’re just a little too busy to write back to you and thank you for putting the people of New Zealand before politics.” 
That is what has happened with regard to this legislation. We will have to wait until further legislation comes into the House to fix the problems. This Government is in paralysis—like a deer in the headlights—and is absolutely terrified. The problem is so big that the Government does not know what to do. Quite rightly like the song sung by the Little River Band the Minister said that help was on its way. Well help is on its way in the form of the general election in 2005. Let us bring it on for the National Party. The National Party will get into office and it will solve the problems for the people of Auckland and New Zealand. They will thank us and we will get more fan mail than David Beckham gets from the people of Manchester and Madrid. That is what will happen in 2005. Members can put a ring around that date; I am very very confident about that. 
The provisions on consultation in this bill are a disgrace. Submitter after submitter came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and pleaded with the committee not to make the provisions on consultation worse. Most of them asked nicely for that though some of them did not even ask nicely. Some of them demanded that some of them thumped the table and some of them just asked the Government to help them out by reducing the consultation a little bit. The consultation provisions outlined in the bill virtually went beyond the letters of the alphabet. It is unbelievable. It takes three pages of the bill to look at the consultation that has to take place. What does that mean? It means that the Minister has been running around the country with the Hon Dr Michael Cullen trying to put up a smokescreen that a lack of construction companies will stop Auckland’s roads being fixed. What an absolute hoax that is!Is he telling me that on this entire planet we would not be able to find construction companies to build $10 billion worth of roading that needs to be built in Auckland? I do not think so. If the Minister does not have enough credentials to get out the Rolodex and ring up some of those companies he should write back to the Hon Roger Sowry and the National Party and we will help. 
I shall talk for a moment about public-private partnerships. They have been heralded in this legislation on toll roads as being a great success story and the reason why this bill is here in the House. Like the rest of the bill those provisions are a complete and utter joke. First off the provisions concerning public-private partnerships are prescriptive the very thing that every submitter asked us not to make them. The Government went in the opposite way from what submitters had asked for and made those provisions prescriptive. Now I am prepared to accept the Minister moved his position and that instead of 30 years being the maximum length of duration for a public-private partnership he had changed that to 35 years with a 10-year extension. That is it. However the Minister demanded that a free alternative road be provided. The very day after the second reading of this bill in the House Transit said that it wanted to build an alternative harbour crossing in Auckland 500 metres from the existing harbour bridge. This legislation would stop that and that shows how hopeless this legislation is. The Government has said that existing highways cannot be tolled so how can we ever make congestion lanes or “hot lanes” happen? We cannot do so. 
One thing this legislation does is to prove that pork-barrel politics and coalition agreements are alive and well here in New Zealand and are operating extremely well. One thing the legislation will not do is to fix traffic problems for the benefit of the people of New Zealand. The Minister knows that so he has set up a joint officials group. He has lobbied hard against his own bill and will introduce new legislation that has been well and truly “de-Greened”. Maybe then Auckland will have a new road or we will have a new road elsewhere in New Zealand. We all live in hope of that but not with any great degree of assurance that it will happen.