Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:648;Page:17200] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 The problem with legislation in this Parliament when it includes lots and lots of elements is that if the Opposition likes certain bits of a bill it would love to be able to vote for those bits but because there are also some bits of this legislation that we found quite obnoxious and obscene it has proved difficult for us to vote for it. So the National Party will actually be voting against the third reading of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. But I want to make it very clear—I want it to be on record—that had the Minister been sensible enough to drop the regional petrol tax stuff then probably National would have definitely voted for it. 
But there are some steps that we are very strongly supportive of. For example there is the dreadful word “hypothecation”. That means that all of what comes from the roads goes to the roads. It is something that National has been out campaigning on. At the last election members will remember our billboards were promoting that very policy and it was Labour that was opposed and was saying that we must have been three sandwiches short of a picnic for advocating such a thing. But then it turned out that Labour saw the light—as has every other party in the House I think—and it believes now that hypothecation is the right way to go. 
We support some other things in this legislation as well—for example the restructuring of regional land transport committees into regional transport committees and the setting up of a planning regime that has a 3-year planning cycle and a 3-year Government policy statement accompanying it. We are quite interested in the concept of the Government policy statement which will basically be a structure of how land transport is to be funded for the coming 3 years. It will set out the priorities and specifics of that regime. The difficulty with it is that we do not know what that Government policy statement will look like so it is hard to be 100 percent supportive of legislation where even the Minister herself I think still has some ideas to flesh out about how the Government policy statement will be structured. Nevertheless we actually agree with it we think it is a great idea and we think it is worth supporting. 
There are some other aspects of the bill that we were not comfortable with and we are still not sure of their exact rationale—I do not think we have been given it. For example for a long time back in the 1990s the argument from local government in New Zealand and from councils up and down this country was that Transit as it was was both the funder of all roading and the provider of State highways. I can tell members that I got beaten up on a regular basis at local government forums and so on by people saying that Transit was abusing that privilege and that we must separate the funding and providing roles. They told me that we should get a funding agency that is independent of the road provider so that it would not have incentives to fund itself but would actually have a more transparent process. 
So the National Government went ahead and did something that was being asked for and was actually quite sensible: we separated the role of funder and provider. We set up an agency called Transfund and an agency called Transit. The Transfund agency had no reason to fund State highways over and above local roads because it had nothing to do with that agency. However in recent times the Transfund agency became absorbed with the Land Transport Safety Authority—something we did not object to; in fact the National Party thought it was probably reasonably sensible given that the agency did not have any conflicts. The Land Transport Safety Authority was involved with the safety of our land transport sector and with regulating and controlling safety and Transfund was to do with the funding of roading. So we were comfortable about that merger to form Land Transport New Zealand and we said so. 
But now we have come to the Next Steps review which is bringing what was Transfund and Transit back into this one agency to be called the New Zealand Transport Agency which will be the funder. It is all back into the one agency again. I think we were given some assurances during the course of the select committee process that there were enough checks and balances to prevent the old claim of conflict of interest. What I found interesting was that so many of the agencies from the past that had whinged and grizzled at length that there was such a conflict and had demanded the roles be separated were all quite carefully silent in that respect. When asked at the committee I think the best response came from one of the councillors on the Auckland City Council. His answer was brilliant. He said: “Well that was then; this is now.” I have to say that my “gast” was completely “flabbered”. That was as good as the answer could get—“That was then and this is now.” That was the only thing he could say to explain why Auckland City Council had changed its stance. 
Some other issues in the bill are worth thinking about. For a long time there has been a perpetual and ongoing debate about the designation of State highways. I give notice to this House that if anything we really have to go back as a nation and make a major review of what those delineations are. We really have only two types of roads in this country. A road is either a State highway which gets 100 percent of its money from the road users by way of the petrol tax road-user charges and so on; or a local road which is administered run built and maintained by the territorial local authority. Local roads get some form of a financial assistance rate averaging about 50 percent but the other 50 percent must be found from ratepayers. 
I know that every time Transit used to do the State highway review there were always huge arguments from territorial local authorities on why a particular road really should not be their responsibility any more—it was too big there was too much traffic or it was meeting the definition of a State highway. The reason was that if they could get a local road off their books and move it over to being a State highway then it became 100 percent funded by the State or central government and it came out of their responsibility. Interestingly this legislation will actually move the job that Transit used to do—a very methodical and actually quite frustratingly long-winded process of determining which roads were State highways—over to the Secretary for Transport. New section 101 which is to be inserted into the Land Transport Management Act by clause 32 proposes that the role of delineating what is a State highway will reside with the Secretary for Transport. That will put a lot of pressure on the Secretary for Transport. I understand we have a new Secretary for Transport as of Tuesday; it will put a lot of pressure on that person. 
The reasons for our objection to the regional petrol tax are manifold. First of all we felt that while hypothecation was being introduced it would probably guarantee enough of a revenue stream but there were other reasons. 
For example Land Transport New Zealand the funding agency finished the last full financial year with $220 million unspent. I guess the question is if it has this big pot of money in the National Land Transport Fund and was unable to spend $220 million in the last financial year—and it will be interesting to watch what happens when the current financial year is over and we have it reported back as to whether there is any more of that—then how on earth can we justify adding more cost impost to the poor old long-suffering motorists out there who are suffering shockingly at present from very very high petrol prices and to the trucking industry which is suffering from very very high diesel prices? How can we justify socking them with another thing called a regional petrol tax which will be up to 10c a litre and will be artificially broken down to 5c and 5c because again the Government took no heed of what was asked for by a number of parties like regional councils? 
The Taranaki Regional Council said: “Please understand that we know that in Auckland public transport is a big issue and it needs to be funded and we understand why the Government may be doing a 5c split to public transport and a 5c split to projects like some roading project. But in our particular area of Taranaki we do not have an issue with public transport; it is not even on our books. We have a major problem with roading. So please please at least take that artificial barrier of 5c maximum for roading and 5c maximum for public transport out and allow us to configure up a bid to the Minister.”—because we must remember that it is the Minister who will approve any regional petrol tax applications. The Government instead of saying that it will trust the regional council to at least make the application based on the needs of its area because it should at least trust it to do so has said: “No that is it. The 5c-5c split stays.” 
National members are opposed to the regional petrol tax. I am happy to tell Brian Rudman from the  
New Zealand Herald 
 that we are opposed to it for a number of reasons and the main reason is that there are a multitude of other funding devices. There is debt there is public-private partnership debt there are infrastructure bonds there is debt/equity ratio stuff there is long-term stuff. There are a multitude of ways of funding land transport and this Government has shut its eyes to it and said: “It is only petrol tax. We will ramp it up on the poor old motorist and that is it.”