Williamson Maurice: Budget Debate 
Williamson Maurice: Budget Debate 
[Volume:631;Page:3265] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I am delighted to continue with the call I had the other night in the Budget debate and it will come as no surprise to members of this House that I want to concentrate on one specific part of the Budget—that is the part to do with transport. I will say as a straight up-and-down statement so that the Minister of Finance hears it that I am very pleased he has allocated some more public money. But does that fix it? No it most certainly does not because a multiple number of facets to roading are crying out for assistance. This Budget helped with one small element of that because it has improved the amount of public money that will go to the National Land Transport Fund. 
Interestingly we have been trying to get this Minister of Finance through a number of campaigns—including our billboard campaign—to say that he should spend all the money on the roads. Michael Cullen pooh-poohed that idea and now he has actually brought in a scheme where if we read his Budget speech he stated that he would allocate more than the petrol tax the motor vehicle registration and the road-user charges to the National Land Transport Fund and he will ensure that there will be a continuing 5-year programme of this. Even without levying a capital charge and so on this means the days of retaining any petrol excise duty in the Crown bank account are over. 
I say to the Minister of Finance that if it looks like a duck it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck then it is either a duck—or a mallard. I tell people that in this case it is a duck—that is the Minister has basically implemented the National Party’s policy of moving all the petrol tax road-user charges and motor vehicle registration fees to a dedicated account and making sure it has some longevity which means it is year on year on year ongoing. The National Party claims an enormous amount of credit for having moved Michael Cullen. Tony Gibbs might have moved him on the capital gains for foreign shareholding tax; we have moved Michael Cullen to move at least the public amount. But as I have said that will not be enough because if we look at all the projects and at what Dr Cullen actually claimed was going to happen from all this money we realise that there are still massive problems out there with our roading network. For example—and this is one of my personal favourites—Dr Cullen talks about bringing the Auckland - Manukau Harbour crossing forward by 1 year. Well that means it will still be halfway through construction when the Rugby World Cup takes place. If people think that the brief closures on the Mangere Bridge the other day that caused turmoil in Auckland were quite catastrophic they ain’t seen nothing yet compared with that. 
I say to the Minister that members on this side are not asking for any more public money to go into roading—we think that he has that about right—but a huge amount of more money is required for roading. People might be asking themselves what I am talking about if I am saying that enough public money is going into the roading account but I am talking about something that Labour members cannot say—even in the privacy of their own bedroom under their duvet with the torch they cannot say it—the private sector. That is what I am talking about and that is what every other civilised jurisdiction we could name is talking about. All three states on the eastern seaboard of Australia—Queensland New South Wales and Victoria—have huge amounts of private sector funding going into their roading as well as the level of public funding that is around about the level we now have from this Budget. Where is the move here to let the private sector take part? There is none. 
 We have a Land Transport Management Act that is so restrictive and so prescriptive that it was said at the select committee: “If you pass this bill as it is the private sector will never participate.” Guess what? It never has and it never will. Helen Clark actually said to John Banks while he was Mayor of Auckland: “I regret that we let the Greens have so much influence on that piece of legislation.” Well good on the Greens for having had that influence at that time but they were wrong and now it is time Helen Clark admitted they got it wrong and the Land Transport Management Act should be gutted to allow the private sector to participate. 
I was in the UK in March and I went up to Birmingham where I saw one of the best new roading projects that the UK has done in years. It is called the M6 toll road. Guess what? It has been built totally by the private sector. Macquarie Bank put up the whole funding. The British taxpayer did not have to put up 1c and that road is now producing huge relief to motorists travelling through the Midlands North-South. The English Minister said there was just no way the Government could afford to build those big chunks of infrastructure any more. That was the British Government—it could not do it; it was too big. 
Dr Don Brash 
: The British Labour Party? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: It was a British Labour Government actually. Don Brash makes a very good point. Also in the Australian states that are doing this Queensland has a Labor Government; New South Wales has a Labor Government; and Victoria has a Labor Government. So it is not the mad monk of the new right advocating this. It is something that is done by Labour Governments up and down the world. Tony Blair’s Labour Government has said that the only way it can get new roads of the level it is talking about now will be from the private sector. They will never come from public funding. So whereas Dr Cullen came up with the right amount to get public sector money into the accounts there was not a mutter not a murmur not a whisper about how they would get the private sector. 
I tell members opposite that if the Labour Government stays with 35 years as the concession period there ain’t a project in this country that will be workable. That has to go as do the restrictions on what percentage must be private what must be public and so on. It should be done contractually. The Minister for Roads in New South Wales asked: “Why does your madcap Government have rules about this in legislation? Why don’t you do it contractually?”. That was said by a Labor Minister. Members should ask him. His name is Carl Scully and that is what he had to say. 
Then there is the third leg to the tripod which this Government has done nothing about—that is the process of trying to get the consents to build a road. Anybody who travels around Auckland and down to the Waikato area must be appalled at the rate of progress on State Highway 1. There have been orange cones and speed-limit signs there for years. We can drive through there any time we like and see workers standing there breastfeeding their shovels and doing very little else and now we hear that this Budget will advance the Longswamp to Rangiriri safety improvement project at Meremere by 4 years! It will bring it forward which means that something that should have been done really quickly really fast and be finished and opened and running will be brought forward from its planned time frame by 4 more years. We can tell it will last that long. The red tape that surrounds building new roads in this country is just grossly unacceptable. 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: Rubbish! 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Judith Tizard would not know. Let me tell her what the chief executive of Transit said to the select committee. This is the Government’s man. This is the chief executive of its roading company. He said that it now takes longer to consent a new road in New Zealand than it does to construct it. I went: “Whoa! Is that the case anywhere else?” and he said: “Absolutely not. The average around the world would be about 9 months.” He pointed out what was probably the worst example that he raised with the committee but there are others. The worst example he raised was the Albany to Puhoi realignment stage 1 in which case the consents took 7 years because of the legislative framework and the fact that the Resource Management Act requires that every Uncle Tom Cobbleigh be consulted. It allows anybody to lodge objections. They are funded with legal aid money so that people can keep running the process. Until those other two legs of the tripod are done this Budget will be worthless if it carries on taking 7 years for a new road to be given consent. 
The Connect East motorway in Melbourne which is 39 kilometres of three lanes either way will take 3 years to build—from go to whoa. The Westlink M7 motorway in Sydney which is 40 kilometres of three lanes either way—a massive project—was finished in 3 years. It opened at Christmas last year. It was started in 2002 and finished in 2005. We have not seen anything like that and will not see anything like that while the roadblocks such as the Land Transport Management Act and the Resource Management Act stay in place. I say to the Minister that there is no point in just throwing lots and lots of public money at it when the solution requires several more pieces. The National Party will move as fast as it can once it is in Government to tidy up those two Acts— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: It’s a long-term plan. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No it is not a long-term plan. It will happen very soon. Here is the question that we need to ask motorists in Auckland and it is a simple one: has congestion got better or worse since Labour came to power 7 years ago? Members do not need to start going into history like Peter Brown does and blaming previous National Governments. The roads in Australia that I was talking about took 3 years from go to whoa.