Fitzsimons Jeanette: Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14023] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The road addicts are really suffering withdrawal symptoms tonight and their screams are truly touching. They cannot imagine moving 100 metres without carting a whole tonne of personal metal with each of them. They cannot bear the thought that anybody without a car should be able to move anywhere. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: The member uses the lift. What a hypocrite! 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Would the member be seated. The member on my left is a longstanding member. He has been in this House for a long time. He knows that what he yelled out—the word he used—is out of order and is unparliamentary. I ask him to stand withdraw and apologise. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I apologise. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: They cannot bear the thought that anybody who does not have a car should be able to travel anywhere by any other means. We have just heard John Key say that transport agencies should be socially and environmentally irresponsible. That is what he has told us. Social and environmental irresponsibility is what he wants in this legislation. Who is transport for? Who do we plan transport for? If it is to be socially irresponsible and make the lives of people miserable if it is to be environmentally irresponsible then what exactly is its purpose? Decades of research shows that trying to build our way out of congestion with more and more motorways has not worked anywhere in the world and that good public transport provision improves accessibility and improves free-flowing traffic in a city. 
We are in the middle of a paradigm shift in transport. It began with the New Zealand Transport Strategy. It continued with the Land Transport Management Act and this bill takes us further. This bill recognises that transport planning and land-use planning cannot be done separately. That was well recognised in the literature 15 years ago when I was working at university but there are still people who have not caught on. Decades of research shows that congestion and demand for transport are affected by things like housing density location of workplaces mixed land-use planning areas and the routes that public transport takes. The bill does a very sensible thing that has never been done in legislation before and has not been done by most local bodies before either. It aligns transport-planning instruments like the regional land transport strategy with land-use planning instruments and requires a review of the regional plan and the regional policy statement. 
Aligning transport planning and the regional land transport strategy with the Auckland growth strategy has some chance of achieving a sane and integrated transport system in Auckland where we have the combination of roads rail public transport and travel demand management and the opportunities for cycling and walking which this legislation is all about. Moving to another topic— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member again. Can I just say to members who are interrupting each other across the floor that rules permitting interjections are predicated on the assumption that the person being interjected against has the call—and none of the members interjecting on my right or my left has the call. Interjections are not permitted at all when they are directed at a member who does not have the call. I ask members to show some respect. 
Simon Power 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Those of us who have now been made subject to that ruling would appreciate an indication as to which Standing Order or Speaker’s ruling you were referring to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: It is my ruling—it is a Chairman’s ruling. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: I guess the level of general barracking and abuse is indicative of how sensitive some car users are and how vulnerable they find themselves in a situation where people are promoting the idea that there should be alternatives to cars in cities like Auckland. I guess that they will over time get used to it. 
I am concerned that of the money that is to be inherited by Auckland Regional Holdings from Infrastructure Auckland only 85 percent is to be used for the purposes that Infrastructure Auckland originally had as its main purpose—that is stormwater and transport. Stormwater and transport infrastructure are such serious needs in Auckland that both of them could spend the Infrastructure Auckland money many times over. I am quite concerned that 15 percent of that money will now be available to the Auckland Regional Council to subsidise rates if that is what it chooses to do with it. I think we should have stuck with the original purposes of Infrastructure Auckland and used the money for those purposes.