Hodgson Pete: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Hodgson Pete: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21329] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 The member who has just resumed her seat Deborah Coddington has made not very many strong arguments about not much at all and I will not rebut them. But the member Wayne Mapp who spoke last night and again this morning—apparently he is the new National Party transport spokesperson because we have not heard from the other National Party transport spokesperson—made a series of allegations that are scurrilous that are outrageous and that need to be rebutted. It is my pleasure to stand up here and give that member a towelling. 
He stood up and said that Transit had put out a document that was incorrect. He said that Transit had put out a document that was a lie. He said that Transit had set out to mislead people. That is a scurrilous allegation and it is a wrong allegation and I intend to dismiss it. The reason I intend to dismiss it is that it cannot stand unchallenged. The member made a series of allegations about Transit that are simply wrong. 
There are 17 projects in the document he refers to. This is a document that 10 11 or 12 months ago was put around the suburbs of Auckland. It is a document that states: “Auckland at a glance” and it gives people an indication of what is going on in their city in the Transit area. Of the 17 projects 14 have been accurately described and I will come to the other three in a minute. The 14 projects include the Greenhithe deviation. The document states that its construction is in progress. The truth is its construction is in progress. It states in relation to the State Highway 18 upper harbour bridge and causeway duplication that its construction is in progress. The truth is its construction is in process. It states in relation to the State Highway 20 Puhinui exchange that its construction is complete. Its construction is complete. It states in relation to the State highway northern busway that construction started in November 2004. Construction started in November 2004. It states in relation to the State highway Grafton Gully stages I and II that construction is complete. And on and on it goes. All of those 14 descriptions are accurate. There is a really interesting story about how come this Government can get 14 projects running in Auckland at once and the member opposite cannot. 
 What about the other three? One of them is the Roskill extension which was delayed by a 1915 piece of legislation on volcanic cones that at the time this publication came out nobody knew about. The member certainly did not. That legislation from 1915 that was discovered required a change of tack for the Roskill extension. Has the Roskill extension tender been let? Yes. Has the Roskill extension tender pre-construction work begun? Yes. When will the Roskill construction work begin? It will begin as soon as we get through the winter period. That one project has been put back by a number of months because of a statute nobody knew about. Did Wayne Mapp advise the House of that? No he did not. Instead he said that the document was an entire set of inaccuracies. 
Two other projects need to be brought to the member’s attention. The first is the Hobsonville deviation. It says here that construction is due to start in 2005. It will not start in 2005 and the reason is the other project—the third project that the member did not mention—the Albany to Puhoi realignment B2 (ALPURT B2). The reason the member did not mention that project is it is going ahead ahead of time. The bulldozers have already begun work. The ALPURT B2 extension is down in this document as being at the stage of consultation. In that respect the document is misleading because the news turns out to be way better than was thought to be the case when it was written. The State Highway 20 Manukau deviation is on track; there are no problems with that at all. 
The problem is that the ALPURT B2 construction had to go ahead for the reason that when the Tories were in power the only thing they built in Auckland in 9 years was the Albany to Puhoi realignment B1. Do members know what they did with that? They stopped it halfway. They stopped it on a corner of a suburban part of Orewa. That is where that stretch of road ends to this day. They built a highway halfway to nowhere then lost power. That is why ALPURT B2 had to go ahead. 
But wait there is more. If one adds together the projects that were under way by National at the time of the change of Government and also includes out of generosity projects recently completed by National—of which there were none—one comes up with $130 million worth of expenditure. ALPURT B2 alone is more than twice that. If one adds all 17 projects that the member decided he would take a go at and the ones that have been recently completed—of which there are many such as the Grafton Gully central motorway junction stage I or the Puhinui interchange and on it goes—one does not come up with $130 million. One comes up with precisely 10 times that figure. 
So that member should not stand up in this Chamber and say that the Government is not getting Auckland moving again. This Government is addressing a very serious backlog created by the Government of the member who just resumed his seat. That is the truth of the matter. At the time of the change of Government $130 million worth of construction was underway. Today by precisely the same measurement the amount is exactly 10 times that in value. Let us be very clear about who created the problem in Auckland and let us be very clear about who is fixing it.