Hughes Darren: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Hughes Darren: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12787] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 Tena koutou katoa e nga mema o te Whare i te Wiki o te Reo Maori. Tena koe e te Rangatira Mr Tisch. Tena koe e te Minita o nga take katoa nga take o te Kawanatanga a Tipene Joyce. 
[ 
Greetings to you all members of the House in Maori Language Week. Greetings to you the Chair Mr Tisch and to you the Hon Steven Joyce Minister of all matters relating to the Government 
.] 
He is the Minister of all issues confronting the Government. It is great to be able to speak on Vote Transport this afternoon. I will try to canvass a number of issues in my 5 minutes if there is an opportunity. The first issue is around roads of national significance. I will mention two and a half of those. 
The first is the Kapiti Expressway just up the road from Wellington and in the area that I am proud to be from. It is a four-lane 100-kilometre-an-hour expressway that is being built through the communities of Kapiti. It is not a road for the people of Kapiti but a road through the communities of Kapiti. It is not a road that the National Party campaigned on at the last election. At the last election the National Party campaigned on exactly the same policy as the Labour Party campaigned on: to build Transmission Gully and to build a local Western Link Road to remove a lot of State highway traffic from the State highway and feed that traffic locally through a local road. The Minister shakes his head to indicate that the party did not but it did. I was a candidate in that constituency and I know exactly what the National Party said at the last election. It was in favour of a local Western Link Road. It was even in favour of electrification of the railway system through to Palmerston North at the last election to build up passenger services. That was Labour’s policy and it was National’s policy as well. Then we wanted to see improvements to State Highway 1 so that there was a free flow of traffic and freight of course through our part of the country. 
Kapiti does have transport problems. But they are not 24/7 transport problems and Mr Joyce with his close connection to the New Zealand trucking industry has arrived at a 24/7 solution—that is a four-lane 100-kilometre-an-hour expressway through the Kapiti coast. I know that the Minister will not answer all my questions about it but I have just two for him. First if a four-lane expressway for Kapiti is such a great idea why did the National Party not campaign on it at the last election? Right now today a local Western Link Road could be being constructed. All the work was done. It was ready to go; tenders were ready to be called for. That road could have been under way giving immediate relief to the people of Kapiti. So I want to know from the Minister why if it is such a fantastic idea for traffic to race through Kapiti on a four-lane 100-kilometre-an-hour expressway at the cost of $500 million an hour he did not campaign on that. I see the Associate Minister of Transport is arriving in the Chamber. Maybe he can tell us why that is such a good idea compared with the one that he campaigned on at the last election. I would be very interested to hear his answer on that although I would prefer it if he waited a few more months before he answers it so that we can be in an audience with some more local people. 
My second question for the Minister of Transport is this: if the Kapiti Expressway is such an urgent road of national significance why have we already lost a year on it? Last week the New Zealand Transport Agency came out and said the road would be delayed by a further year. There was going to be urgency around the issue of roads of national significance and Labour would like to know why that statement is on the website of the Minister’s own agency. 
The second road of national significance that I will mention is the famous “Holiday Highway”—the Puhoi to Wellsford road—which is just a deal for the mates of the National Party because there was no way that that road had been identified as having strategic importance up until that point. That proposal did not come from the officials; it was put on the agenda by the Minister. There is no doubt that some safety improvements are needed along that route. We absolutely agree with that particularly around the Dome Valley and Schedewys Hill. There is need for urgent and immediate safety improvements which could be done now. We could get the benefits of them straight away so that more people do not have to die or be injured and also it could be done for a much lower cost. We want to know from the Minister why he has prioritised that road at a huge cost: up to $2 billion is stated in his own papers. The Government is putting that amount of money up as a comfort level for the amount that it wants to spend but the safety improvements on that road could be on much more cheaply. Then we would also be able to do other projects around the Auckland and Waikato areas using that money. 
The Minister could also explain to us why he got the figures so wrong on the Hamilton to Auckland train service but I suspect that Sue Moroney the excellent member of Parliament from Hamilton will be following that up. The Minister has had to memorise the Standing Order required for making corrections to ministerial answers in the House. He knows it very well; he is always coming back after question time to correct his answer. 
Grant Robertson 
: How many? 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: He has one of the highest records of correcting ministerial answers of any Minister in Cabinet and that is by somebody who considers himself to be at the centre of absolutely everything in that respect. 
Then finally on the Waterview Connection issue the Minister delayed that project for a year and has ended up almost back with Labour’s plan although he greatly inflated and exaggerated the cost of that. There are many other issues and we have run out of time but I ask why the Minister did not change the blood-alcohol limit. Why did he run out of the courage to do that?