Genter Julie Anne: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10700. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I rise to speak on the third reading of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. I would like to start out by talking about the cost of transport because I think it is something that Government members probably do not know that much about. What we know from the regulatory impact statement and from the Government books is that central government spends $3 billion a year on transport infrastructure and services and local government spends $1 billion to $1.5billion a year. So all together we are talking about $4 billion to $4.5 billion a year of spending on transport from local and central government.Of course that money that they spend comes from New Zealanders. It comes from petrol taxes from road-user charges and from rates. But of course a much larger cost is the cost of vehicles and fuel to run them so our road network does not work unless households and businesses have vehicles and have fuel to run those vehicles. New Zealand households and businesses are spending in the order of $12 billion a year on vehicles and fuel to run them.Andrew Little: How much?JULIE ANNE GENTER: Twelve billion a year. So while the Government is taking our tax money and spending it on transport infrastructure and spending in the order of $4 billion a year households and businesses are actually having to spend three times that much on vehicles and fuel to run them. And of course all of that contributes to our current account deficit because in this country we do not manufacture vehicles and we do not produce petrol that is used in the tanks of cars. Even if we did find oil off the East Cape we would not be using it in the tanks of our cars and trucks because we produce light sweet crude oil here in New Zealand and we export all of it.So the total cost of our transport system is more than the amount of taxpayer money that the Government is spending on infrastructure. It is the money that households and businesses have to spend on vehicles and fuel to run them because they have no other choice because subsequent Governments have spent all of the money on infrastructure for vehicles and cars rather than looking at a more cost-effective solution which would look at what the best way is to move people and goods. What is the most cost-effective way to move people and goods? What the Green Party is advocating is simply a rational approach to assessing the problem of what the most cost-effective way is to move people and goods.It turns out that since we have a very extensive road system the biggest bang for our buck is going to be in improving the productivity of our road system and of our existing rail network. That means investment in capital expansion of our rail network so that we can deliver better services for exporters who are using rail freight to get their products to market and also investment in passenger transport and safe walking and cycling because New Zealanders would actually like their kids to be able to walk and cycle to school but they simply do not have the choice. And of course it is much more cost-effective to provide safe walking and cycling infrastructure than it is to constantly increase the supply of roads for more and more vehicles.We live in an interesting time. It turns out that the trends of the past 50 years are no longer continuing in the direction that they were going in. Yet another report has come out of the United States there have been reports from Australia and there have been reports here in New Zealand that show that the fundamental drivers of transport demand are changing. What we have seen is absolutely no increase in traffic volumes on State highways since 2004. We have seen no increase in heavy-vehicle traffic volumes since 2007. This is an opportunity that the National Government could be seizing to catch up on the lack of investment in alternatives—that means safe walking and cycling public transport and rail freight. All of that enables our transport network to work more efficiently. But instead it has declined to take a rational approach to the assessment of transport infrastructure.What it has done through theGovernment Policy Statement on Land Transport Fundingis have three measures by which it is going to define the effectiveness of the projects: one is efficiency one is strategic fit and one is effectiveness. Efficiency is the benefit-cost ratio or BCR. That is the amount of benefit the project provides divided by the cost; that gives you the benefit-cost ratio. What we have seen is that the vastmajority of spending from the National Government on transport infrastructure has very low economic efficiency. The New Zealand Transport Agency has that data available. I have brought it up in the House many times. We have seen the relative benefit of our spending start to decline and it is actually all very low right now because the Government is prioritising projects that do not have very great benefits relative to their costs.But it justifies these projects on two other criteria: strategic fit and effectiveness. The strategic fit means whether they fit the strategy as defined by the Minister. The Minister of Transport said the strategy is to build the roads of so-called national significance which are just some pet project motorways that the Government thinks are going to win it votes. So it is a very circular logic obviously because to meet the strategic fit when it is defined as building this particular motorway—well only building the motorway is going to meet that strategic fit. It is a bit of circular logic there in terms of what the Minister has said: “We want to build these motorways. Never mind that they have very low economic efficiency; we will say they have high strategic fit because the Minister said we had to build them.” Effectiveness is very similar. Effectiveness is how effective the project is at achieving the strategic fit. We have got two circular logic reasons for justifying projects. We have one that is about economic efficiency and by that test the roads of so-called national significance absolutely fail.Unfortunately we are talking about the single largest bit of spending in the National Infrastructure Plan. When the National Government talks about its plan for lifting our economic competitiveness and productivity it often refers to investing in productive infrastructure but about 90 percent of the money it is spending on productive infrastructure in the National Infrastructure Plan is on these roads of so-called national significance which have low economic efficiency. It is spending tens of billions of dollars on projects that have very little benefit relative to their cost. There is an opportunity cost. Most people do not see the opportunity cost of not spending that $10 billion on projects that would have greater benefits and actually reduce the costs that New Zealand households and businesses are having to spend on transport. Instead of reducing the costs that we are spending on transport by investing the money in a network that works more efficiently the Government has decided to spend the vast bulk of the money on new infrastructure—on a few projects that will win it votes.There is one other point that I would like to raise right now and that is clause 14 of this bill and what it does. Clause 14 of this bill takes away the right of regional councils to determine the strategic direction for transport in their areas. In particular it takes that away from Auckland Council and gives it to Auckland Transport. Clause 14 says that the strategic direction they are setting for transport in their region has to be consistent with theGovernment Policy Statement on Land Transport Funding. Of course the Government policy statement is written by the Minister who just says: “We want to build these projects not because they are economically efficient not because they are going to deliver benefits for the country but because we think they are going to win us votes.”So what the National Government has done with this bill—there are many bad aspects to this bill—is take away the ability of local ratepayers to determine what their money is going to be spent on. It also takes away the right of Aucklanders to determine what their money is going to be spent on what transport solutions are going to work best for them and it puts it all in the hands of the Minister who is writing his Government policy statement on a whim.Ultimately those roads of so-called national significance in the Waikato north of Auckland and in Wellington are not going to be used by very many people and they are certainly not being paid for by the users. If you look at the traffic volumes on theseroutes they are much smaller than the average daily traffic volumes on an arterial in Auckland. Auckland Council will not even have that much money to spend on upgrading those arterials or investing in productive infrastructure that would mean there were fewer cars on those arterials. Ultimately what is going on here is the National Government is saying to Auckland that it is not going to let it have its regional fuel tax it is not going to let it fund the solutions that would actually work for its communities; it is going to make its rates be spent on National’s electoral priorities and it is going to make sure that the fuel taxes of Aucklanders stuck in traffic well into the future are going to pay for some very low-value motorways. Thank you.