Fitzsimons Jeanette: Urgent Debates — Toll Holdings—Rail and Ferry Purchase 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Urgent Debates — Toll Holdings—Rail and Ferry Purchase 
[Volume:647;Page:15858] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I begin by congratulating Dr Cullen and the Government on finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It has taken a long time. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: The trouble is it’s the 9.15 train coming the other way. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: It would be nice if the light at the end of the tunnel was a train but these days the chances are that it is not because there are not many of them. The reason we need to get back control over the rail system is so that there will be more trains. 
Not too long ago Dr Cullen in replying to my questions in the House was giving pretty much the same view of trains as we have been hearing recently from the National Party. But whether it is due to rising oil prices the threat of climate change or the Greens wearing him away like water wearing away stone he is now recognising that rail is an essential part of New Zealand’s infrastructure going into the 21st century in a climate-constrained world with very high and constantly rising oil prices. I congratulate him on that. 
The history of New Zealand’s rail system is the history of changing ideology. What a long way we have come from the early 1990s when Ruth Richardson sold the whole rail system for what she called “top dollar” to overseas interests that were not the least bit interested in running a railway. That was the biggest mistake in that decision. She did not sell the rail system to a company that was experienced and interested in running a good rail service. She sold it to people who were basically asset strippers and who took most of the value out of the rail system put very little back and left us with a run-down and seriously damaged asset. I campaigned against the sale of the rail system in 1993 along with the unions in Auckland where I lived at that time with environmentalists and with everybody else who at that time already knew that peak oil was coming—though we were a fairly small minority. 
It took the Greens a couple of years to persuade the Government to take back the track which happened in 2003. That was a bold and brave decision because in 2003 the ideology that the private sector can always do everything best can clip the ticket making a big profit on the way and can provide cheaper and better services to the consumer in the process still had not entirely disappeared. It was on the wane but it had not completely gone. The Government was not quite bold enough to recover the whole thing. It took back the track and it put in $200 million to fix up its very sad state. It was not enough but it was a good start. 
The Government thought it would get a rail company that was good at running trains to run the rail services. Separating the track and the trains seemed worth a try at the time. Getting an experienced rail company to run the trains seemed worth a try but ever since 2003 Toll New Zealand and the Government have been locked in combat about the meaning of the track access agreement and the size of the track access charges. The fact is that we cannot expect a seriously run-down asset to be upgraded and brought up to standard simply by using the profits made on the services. It was always clear that there would have to be major Government investment to get the rail service back on track. 
It may be that if we had bought the whole thing in 2003 we could have got it more cheaply than we have got it now. I think that is probably true. But that is not a reason for saying at this stage that we should not recover it and recognise that we missed some opportunities in the past. The fact is that oil is now roughly 12 times more expensive than it was in the 1990s. It is now well over US$120 a barrel. It dipped to US$10 a barrel in 1998. Does anyone still remember oil being US$10 a barrel? I do. 
Hon Annette King 
: You are so old! 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: Yes it is because I am so old I say to Mrs King—both of us I guess. At that stage in the 1990s after the oil price spikes of the late 1970s and the crushing to some extent of the hegemony of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries the world took some other strategies and the price dipped to the point where all of the preparation for peak oil was dropped all of the investments in alternative fuels were dropped and everybody said “Isn’t it lovely? Oil is so cheap.” and partied like there was no future. Well there was a future and it is a future of oil at US$126 a barrel not US$10 a barrel. 
It just so happens that when we send a tonne of freight a kilometre by rail it takes about a fifth as much oil as when we send it on a truck. For long-distance freight that is going from one major centre to another major centre there is no doubt at all that a properly laden train is the most efficient way of sending it. Better still if the line can be electrified—and most of the North Island Main Trunk Railway now is—we are using New Zealand renewable electricity rather than imported and expensive oil or diesel. In an energy-constrained world sending as much freight as possible by train makes a lot of sense. 
But that is not going to happen very quickly. We do still have a system that is seriously run down. We do still have areas where trains have to slow down because of the state of the track. We do still have tunnels and bridges that need upgrading to allow the larger containers and the heavier trains to pass. Signalling upgrades are needed. Station upgrades are needed. This is a case for biting the bullet while oil is still US$120 a barrel which will look really cheap in 10 years’ time and investing in upgrading a system that will enable us to run freight on a lot less oil in future. I believe that the Government now has the intention to invest seriously in the train system. That will not be easy: with reducing surpluses and the economy heading into a more difficult patch the Government will have to keep its nerve to continue investing in the rail system. But if it does not we will end up with an asset that is not capable of delivering what we will demand of it in future years. Once we have the track upgraded we need of course some new locomotives and we need some new rolling stock. That will be expensive but we need to order them now. We need to signal a very clear intention that this is the track we are going down. 
When we have done those things I look forward very much to a restoration of the long-distance passenger services that we once had. People these days are not very interested in spending hours and hours on a train when they can spend 1 hour on a plane. Well in future that 1 hour on the plane will be very much more expensive than it is now. Airlines all over the world including Air New Zealand are putting up their prices because of the price of oil. Nothing is actually going to replace cheap oil. We will have transport fuels of a sort but they will not be cheap. The same will apply to driving one’s car. So where a rail system exists I look forward to passenger trains being reinstated and to people once again discovering the delights of a trip where they can take a book where they can look out the window where they can plug in their laptop and do some work and where they are not constantly wrestling with the wheel of a car and negotiating other traffic or sitting on a bumpy bus. If I am sitting on a bumpy bus I cannot read without getting carsick and I think a lot of people are in that situation as well. 
So I say well done to the Government but it needs to have the nerve to keep going. This is only the start. This is the start of a decent rail system in New Zealand’s future but we need to make that investment now.