Bennett David: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Bennett David: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:4180] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 Following on from Maurice Williamson’s very good points about the three factors in the tripod the first thing I say is that that was a blatant theft of National’s policy going into the last election whereby we said we would spend all the money raised from road taxes on the roads. Due to a one-off payout from the energy sector which is another major part of infrastructural development the Government in essence said all the road taxes are going into road funding. But as the lights go on and off in Auckland over the next decade or so will all that funding for roading come through in the future? There is no guarantee of that; the Government has not entrenched that position in legislation. National has asked the Government on numerous occasions to do that but it has not done so. 
Maurice Williamson talked about private sector involvement and we saw an example today where the Minister of Corrections failed to give any indication that he would allow any private sector involvement in building jails. Ideologically the Labour Government will not allow the private sector to be involved and the same goes for roading. Private sector involvement will not happen because ideologically Labour does not want that sector to be involved. 
And we have seen big issues with regard to Auckland passenger transport a matter that was raised by the Greens after the Budget. Indeed they were quite right to do so. There was nothing in the Budget for Auckland passenger transport. There has been a lot of talk about negotiation at some point in the future but we have not seen anything happen. 
If we look at the Waikato we see a perfect example of what has happened under the Government. We have had about five major 10-year State highway project plans in the last 15 months. Let us look at what actually happened in the Waikato leading up to the election. We had a State highway plan in about February or March of last year that put the Waikato projects way down in priority. The Minister at that time was asked to come and explain that and he did. He said we should wait until June when a new plan was to be put out and we would be all right then. So the Government put out a new plan in June. There was no change in priority; we were still at the bottom. Then he came back and said we should wait for a joint officials group to report—after the election of course! Sure it did that but it was about 12 months later after the Budget. 
After the election we had to wade through five 10-year project plans and then we did not get much. 
Darren Hughes 
: Did they get it or not? 
DAVID BENNETT 
: All the Waikato received was $215 million—that is all. If we compare that amount with the Bay of Plenty at $400 million or Wellington at $885 million we see that is simply not good enough. The Government has let the Waikato down. It produced five reports that told us nothing. It is a case of putting it off and putting it off. Those are the sorts of flip-flops made by the Government as it tries to weasel its way out of any kind of roading programme for the future. 
With regard to the roading programme one of the key issues mentioned by the Minister was that all the roading taxes would go on roading as Maurice Williamson said. Winston Peters and the Minister of Finance both came out and supported those comments. But where has that position been enshrined in legislation? We have not seen that. Will we see that from the Minister of Transport Annette King? I hope she will stand up and tell us that that will be enshrined in legislation so that we all know that position will be part of the future of New Zealand and we will not have to campaign on that issue in future. We ask the Minister to take a call and say it will be enshrined that in future all roading taxes will go on roading.